SACW - 21 Sept 2017 | Pakistan: Mainstreaming Hard islamists / Sri Lanka: ’Civil Security Department’ / India: Blind faith; Anti-intellectualism / Turkey: Academics & medics under fire ? / Phones & State / Jihadist Breakup in Syria / The Puzzle of Poland

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 21 Sept 2017 - No. 2953 
[via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]

Contents:
1.  Sri Lanka: Report on the militarisation of Vani under the aegis of ’Civil Security Department’ 
2. The Religion State Nexus
   - India: Godmen’s own country | Meera Nanda
   - India: Akhara ’certified’ Babas? Go for a law against Superstition at the National Level | Subhash Gatade
3. India: Happy Birthday, Mr. Modi - you effectively murdered democracy (again) | Ashish Kothari
4. Hackmeeting 2017 Manifesto: To the Hackers of the Past | AI-Kaos155 year 2037
5. Recent on Communalism Watch:
 - India: Across the country, chilling replays of Dadri. And a long way to go before love or justice can prevail | Harsh Mander
 - India: "My Discussion of Yoga Was Threatening to Its RSS-Linked Administration" says Patricia Sauthoff
 - India: Gauri Lankesh’s murder by extremists sends a dark message to all fearless journalists | Garga Chatterjee
 - India: Cruel food and farm licence raj destroys livelihoods across the board in BJP ruled states | Saba Naqvi
 - India: Similar to Rajasthan police in pehlu khan case case, Haryana police trying to scuttle case against accused in Junaid Murder case
 - Cut out "all this sectarian squabble about who eats what kind of meat", Nobel-winning scientist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
 - India: #I am Akhlaq #I am Pehlu #I am Junaid #Not in my name #I am Gauri an open letter to the Prime Minister, Mr. Modi | Rajendran Narayanan
 - India: The American scholar defends her course at the Nalanda University which, the BJP national general secretary tweeted last week to say, had been ‘abolished’
 - India: ‘Hindutva forces corroding basic features of our cultural life’ Sunil P. Elayidom
 - India: The Editor of National Paper Hindustan Times who set up the unique Hate Tracker database quits
 - India now faces: Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism. | A.G. Noorani
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
6. Afghanistan: Proposed Militia a Threat to Civilians - Irregular Forces Lack Effective Oversight, Accountability | HRW
7. Pakistan: Backdoor electoral mainstreaming outfits connected with hate-based politics - Is that the future?
8. Can India and Pakistan ever be Friends? | Ayesha Jalal, Shashi Tharoor, General Tariq Khan, Kalpana Sharma, Jawed Naqvi 
9. Poverty report of South Asia unveiled
10. Sri Lanka: 20A - You only vote twice | Comment in Daily Mirror
11. No place for thinking - Anti-intellectualism in American and in Indian life | Ramachandra Guha
12. India: Instinct of the mob - The epidemic of vigilantism | Prabhat Patnaik
13. Defending academic and medical independence in Turkey
14. Facebook's war on free will (19.09.2017)
15. 'People don't want to speak frankly': How the shy far-right could spark a German election upset | Chloe Farand
16. India: Goddess in everyday life - Editorial, The Telegraph
17. Look at the phone in your hand – you can thank the state for that | Rutger Bregman
18. Combating Hatred With History | Guy Verhofstadt
19. A Jihadist Breakup in Syria: Tahrir al-Sham Splits | Aron Lund
20. The Puzzle of Poland | Jo-Ann Mort

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1.  SRI LANKA: REPORT ON THE MILITARISATION OF VANI UNDER THE AEGIS OF ’CIVIL SECURITY DEPARTMENT’
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continued intrusion of the military into civilian spaces and everyday lives of the Tamils in the Vanni can be seen in the work of the Civil Security Department (‘CSD’)
http://www.sacw.net/article13478.html

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2. INDIA: THE RELIGION STATE NEXUS
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* INDIA: GODMEN’S OWN COUNTRY
by Meera Nanda
The Dera Sacha Sauda fiasco is a classic example of the state-temple-business nexus and what ensues when the basic social functions of the state are “spiritualised” and contracted out to godmen.
http://sacw.net/article13478.html

* INDIA: AKHARA ’CERTIFIED’ BABAS? GO FOR A LAW AGAINST SUPERSTITION AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL
by Subhash Gatade
Perhaps the best way to move forward is not to leave the task of identifying the ’fakes’ to the fraternity itself and think of something like anti superstition law at the national level, a law for which Dr Narendra Dabholkar fought for more than eighteen years and was assassinated by right-wing fundamentalists for his tireless efforts in this direction only.
http://sacw.net/article13476.html

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3. INDIA: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. MODI - YOU EFFECTIVELY MURDERED DEMOCRACY (AGAIN)
by Ashish Kothari
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Yesterday (17th September), we witnessed the shameful spectacle of the prime minister of a nation celebrating his birthday by dedicating a dam to the nation, even as thousands of people were protesting that their houses and lands are being submerged by this dam without the rehabilitation due to them. Are we living in a democracy, or what farcically passes off as one?
http://sacw.net/article13477.html

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4. HACKMEETING 2017 MANIFESTO: TO THE HACKERS OF THE PAST | AI-KAOS155 YEAR 2037
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There are no longer any laws, the management system based on massive data implements detailed modifications of the conditions of service so that each citizen behaves in an optimal way. This system is framed as as an advanced cultural stage of freedom, progress and well-being. Questioning the system is considered a sign of mental illness and sociopathy.
http://sacw.net/article13481.html

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5. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
======================================== 
 - India: Across the country, chilling replays of Dadri. And a long way to go before love or justice can prevail | Harsh Mander
 - India: "My Discussion of Yoga Was Threatening to Its RSS-Linked Administration" says Patricia Sauthoff
 - India: Gauri Lankesh’s murder by extremists sends a dark message to all fearless journalists | Garga Chatterjee
 - India: Cruel food and farm licence raj destroys livelihoods across the board in BJP ruled states | Saba Naqvi
 - India: Similar to Rajasthan police in pehlu khan case case, Haryana police trying to scuttle case against accused in Junaid Murder case
 - Cut out "all this sectarian squabble about who eats what kind of meat", Nobel-winning scientist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
 - India: #I am Akhlaq #I am Pehlu #I am Junaid #Not in my name #I am Gauri an open letter to the Prime Minister, Mr. Modi | Rajendran Narayanan
 - India: The American scholar defends her course at the Nalanda University which, the BJP national general secretary tweeted last week to say, had been ‘abolished’
 - India: ‘Hindutva forces corroding basic features of our cultural life’ Sunil P. Elayidom
 - India: The Editor of National Paper Hindustan Times who set up the unique Hate Tracker database quits
 - India now faces: Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism. | A.G. Noorani

 -> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
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6. AFGHANISTAN: PROPOSED MILITIA A THREAT TO CIVILIANS: IRREGULAR FORCES LACK EFFECTIVE OVERSIGHT, ACCOUNTABILITY | HRW
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(Human Rights Watch - September 15, 2017)

(New York, September 15, 2017) – The Afghan government should reject proposals to create a new militia with inadequate training and oversight, Human Rights Watch said today. Western diplomatic sources in Kabul told Human Rights Watch that President Ashraf Ghani is considering establishing a defense unit modelled on the Indian Territorial Army, an auxiliary force comprising personnel who serve on a short-term contract basis with the regular armed forces. The NATO Resolute Support Mission is believed to support such a local security force in Afghanistan.

An Afghan Territorial Army with reduced training and potentially less oversight risks being yet another abusive militia operating outside the military’s chain of command, Human Rights Watch said. If approved, the Afghan government is expected to determine the location of a pilot project by September 20, 2017.

“The Afghan government’s expansion of irregular forces could have enormously dangerous consequences for civilians,” said Patricia Gossman, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of creating additional local forces, which are hard to control and prone to abuses, the Afghan government with US and NATO support should be strengthening training and oversight to ensure that all forces respect the law.”

In recent years, the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces have relied on militia forces such as the Afghan Local Police (ALP) to “hold” local territory reclaimed from the Taliban or insurgent groups belonging to the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP). The group is an affiliate of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) and is based in Nangarhar province.

The Afghan Local Police, established in 2010, was meant to serve as a local defense force. While these forces have gained some local support as a result of recent reforms, in many localities these forces have been responsible for numerous abuses against civilians, as well as summary executions of captured combatants and other violations of international humanitarian law. The proposed Afghan Territorial Army would ultimately replace the Afghan Local Police as a defense force at the local level. There is concern that existing Afghan Local Police units could remain armed as militia forces.

Instead of creating a new militia, Afghan authorities should improve the training and capabilities of its existing troops, and hold accountable those responsible for abuses, Human Rights Watch said. The inadequacy of Afghan police and soldiers has been evident in districts of Nangarhar province in which ISKP groups have carried out frequent attacks.

The Indian Territorial Army, the model for this proposed defense force, has been deployed to support Indian counter-insurgency forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Territorial army personnel have been implicated in serious abuses, and its irregular status has contributed to a lack of accountability.

In one prominent case, on March 8, 1996, Maj. Avtar Singh of the territorial army detained Jalil Andrabi, a human rights lawyer and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front member. Three weeks later Andrabi’s body was found floating in the Jhelum River near Srinagar. An autopsy showed that he had been killed days after his arrest. Indian authorities opened an investigation that ultimately indicted Major Singh, but state counsel asserted that Singh was not a member of the armed forces but under contract with the territorial army, and that his contract had expired and he was nowhere to be found.

The Afghan government has been unable or unwilling to hold powerful strongmen accountable for abuses, including those who command Afghan Local Police units or other militias. It’s not clear how the government intends to ensure that new Afghan Territorial Army units, whose members will be paid less than their army counterparts, won’t fall into the same pattern.

While the territorial army would operate under a regular army corps commander, diplomatic sources told Human Rights Watch that Afghan officials involved in the discussions have expressed concern about the force becoming used by powerful strongmen, or becoming dependent on local patronage networks. There is also concern that the new force could replicate the criminality that many Afghan Local Police units exhibited, and clash with other government forces and militias over control of territory and smuggling routes.

In addition to the proposed Afghan Territorial Army, the Afghan government is considering creating a new 15,000-strong tribal militia, under the Ministry of Tribal and Border Affairs, currently headed by former governor Gul Agha Sherzai. The model for such a militia appears to be those established along ethnic lines by the late President Mohammad Najibullah in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Members of those militia forces were responsible for serious human rights abuses.

“There is a long, unsavory history of using tribal and irregular militias in Afghanistan, and it has led to egregious crimes without accountability,” Gossman said. “Too often they have inflamed conflict rather than provide security.”

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7. PAKISTAN: BACKDOOR ELECTORAL MAINSTREAMING OUTFITS CONNECTED WITH HATE-BASED POLITICS - IS THAT THE FUTURE?
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Dawn, September 20, 2017

Editorial

BRINGING MILITANTS INTO THE MAINSTREAM

In the long term, the by-election result may be remembered most for the candidates who finished third and fourth.

The resurgence of the religious ultra-right in politics ought to be a matter of concern for state and society, with two new parties capturing 11pc of the overall vote cast in NA-120. The parties, which did not exist at the time of the last general election, owe their creation to two different radical ideologies.

Labbaik Ya Rasulallah is a Barelvi grouping that campaigned against the PML-N government for executing convicted murderer Mumtaz Qadri, while the Milli Muslim League has been created from the ranks of the Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaatud Dawa/Falah-i-Insaniyat network and endorses the worldview of Hafiz Saeed.

While the MML could not formally participate in the poll because of a technicality, the organisation’s candidate campaigned brazenly as an independent, and the ECP found itself unable to take action against it for flaunting its ties to a banned group. The two radical campaigns bode ill for next year’s general election.

If sections of the state are willing to experiment with the so-called mainstreaming of militant groups that have not taken up arms against the Pakistani state, democratic institutions must ensure that the terms of engagement are precise and democratic. The current approach of testing by stealth the viability of mainstreaming militant groups is unacceptable.

The MML attempted to participate in the by-election as if the usual rules applicable to normal political parties did not apply to it. In fact, in the case of MML and similar groupings that may emerge, special rules need to apply.

To begin with, there must be a clear and public denunciation of terrorism, militancy and extremism, and recognition that the constitutional democratic process is inviolable. The political process in the country cannot be distorted for the sake of an untested and unproven theory of mainstreaming that sections of the state may be willing to experiment with.

Such groups, if they can be permitted to be part of the democratic process at all, must be regularly audited by the state and the reviews made public. The NA-120 saw mosques being used as campaign centres by the LYR and MML. The ECP should review its rules governing such activities and local law enforcement must regularly monitor mosques, madressahs and social welfare centres that are used for political activities to ensure that violent ideologies and extremism are not promoted.

The democratic process is open and accommodating to a wide range of political thought; but that openness cannot extend to groups that may want to use it to destroy the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy in Pakistan. There needs to be a clear policy for militants willing to renounce militancy, but funnelling them secretively into the democratic process cannot be the right one.

o o o

Dawn, September 15, 2017

PATH TO NORMALITY
by Asha’ar Rehman 

THE road to normality is paved with sighs and grimaces. A Lahore in hectic mode today is a testament to this truth. There is an election to be taken care of. At the same time, a cricket series has to be dealt with. It has to be organised smoothly, no hiccups and no bumps, for the sake of our return to ‘normal’ times.

Cricket is an additional burden, even a distraction for those not enthralled by all English inventions. There was already quite a lot of activity here on account of politics, not to forget all the development work that Lahore must undertake around times of rain each year. This could have added a few decibels to the protest against attempts at revival and restoration.

But above all, it is ‘worth keeping in mind’ that the trends which are now being tackled with the motto of revival have left people in a sour state. They are in a situation where anger gets the better of them at the slightest pretext, even if the cause is not easy to explain.

The city is in the middle of an election which simultaneously brings the aspects of rehabilitation, revival, survival and change to the fore. It is a huge test for PML-N which is trying vociferously to retain the city. The revival part casts PPP in a very important role. The party has set its own targets for its candidate in the race to achieve just as PTI goes about playing the real opposition to PML-N, also as an agent of change. This is not all. There are yet others in the contest fighting for their own redemption.

    It was not for nothing that Hafiz Saeed allowed his picture to be shown in public after refusing to be seen around for decades.

The list of aspiring candidates in NA-120 will be far from complete if we don’t acknowledge the presence of yet another, by no means small, player in the arena. The Milli Muslim League is no bystander here. The party is making all efforts to be recognised as a political group out and about in the mainstream.

MML is a Hafiz Saeed offshoot. It has been on the cards ever since the Pakistani political right wing collected on The Mall in Lahore a few years ago to stand shoulder to shoulder with Hafiz Sahib. It was a declaration that the old Dawa infrastructure was now being readied to provide the wherewithal for a political party. Since then, the profile of the party in the making has grown under the umbrella of Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation, an organisation that has been in the forefront of the relief work in times of emergencies such as floods.

The party is yet to be formally launched. Therefore, it has adopted a candidate for the 120 by-election. More accurately, the fielded candidate in the election cannot contest on the party symbol or go around openly as an MML nominee since the party is yet to be registered. This has not in the least detracted from the value and intensity of the MML challenge which by all indications hints at a sustained, meaningful presence in the country’s politics in times to come.

The prospect has upset many. There have been loud calls for restraining MML and Hafiz Saeed. The Jamaatud- Dawa and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi links are just too much for some of us to ignore and harsh questions are being asked about allowing ‘pro-violence’ outfits to operate, without hindrance, in the Pakistani mainstream. There is even a move to remove Hafiz Saeed images from the posters of the ‘informal’ MML candidate in the NA-120 race.

Obviously, it was not for nothing that Hafiz Saeed allowed his picture to be shown in public after refusing to be seen around for decades. The change where his photographs were now available, even if in limited numbers, was a clue to a future of greater open public interaction. The Dawa founder has on occasions complained of lately being limited to a low-profile existence. It was only a matter of time before he expressed himself from the stage set up on a thoroughfare.

There’s a kind of inevitability to the emergence of MML which is slowly seeking recognition in the various newsrooms of Lahore. The rehabilitation had to happen, even if a certain number of people were opposed to the idea. It has been said before and will be repeated every time reconstruction is undertaken by a country following turmoil. There will be old elements with a record to answer for, not always everyone’s favourites, which will be drafted in and rehabilitated under various heads, as an advertisement for the others to give up old habits and choose the new alternative.

There is no running away from the age-old principles of rehabilitative cycles, however emotional the latest enrolment at the state’s treatment centre may make us. The process will continue in the face of protests and slogans thrown the way of those in charge. The process will continue because it is not very difficult for those at the helm to justify their preferences, because the world has no other way of dealing with the issues other than reforming and rehabilitating.

The suspicions about the state’s objectives cannot be easily dispelled. As appearances go, perhaps a more realistic demand would be that those who now commit to being a part of the democratic process agree to work by existing rules rather than try to amend them to their own advantage in the name of religion and patriotism or for any other reason. They must resolve to not use coercive tactics and fear and intimidation as part of their political strategy. If they care, the government and those in charge must avoid being seen as promoters of hate-based politics.

These are conditions which may or may not be adhered to but the people will have to bear with the process in any case. They had little choice in the matter when those who are being rehabilitated packed up and set out for the patriotic missions they are both credited with and blamed for. They have little say in the scheme now. Rescue, revival and rehabilitation. These are sensitive matters that cannot be fully grasped by the motley crowd.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

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8. CAN INDIA AND PAKISTAN EVER BE FRIENDS? | AYESHA JALAL, SHASHI THAROOR, GENERAL TARIQ KHAN, KALPANA SHARMA, JAWED NAQVI 
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(NewsLine Magazine - August 26, 2017)

Ayesha Jalal

Ayesha Jalal is the Mary Richardson Professor of History, Tufts University.

Unlike family bonds, which are inherited and undeniable even if difficult, friendships and relations between sovereign nation-states are a matter of choice based on affinities and perceptions of mutual self-interest. The congenital differences that divide Pakistan and India are traceable to the dynamics of British decolonisation in the subcontinent and are more aptly seen as a sibling rivalry than a parting of ways between two erstwhile friends. Like all family disputes that spill out into the open, the internationalisation of subcontinental political differences and their crystallisation into the national myths of both nation-states have, over the years, limited the options available for a judicious and enduring resolution of their various disputes.

Emerging out of a bitter and bloodstained batwara (separation) of the subcontinent in 1947 along ostensibly religious lines, Pakistan was cast in the role of a seceding state despite the vocal opposition of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Dissatisfied with its share of the spoils – notably the controversial accession of Kashmir to India – and sharing a disputed border with Afghanistan, Pakistan has sought in vain for a revision of the status quo that resulted from Partition. By contrast, independent India not only assumed the international personality of British India, but is the preeminent status quo power in the region.

So while India and Pakistan are not on course to become friends, now or in the near future, there are weighty reasons for them to establish good neighbourly relations in the larger interests of the common shared destiny of the South Asian region. Unfortunately, ingrained suspicions and unprecedented levels of distrust, made worse by endless bickering and successive wars, have contributed to a deficit of political will on both sides of the historic divide. This has confounded the dilemmas stemming from the unresolved conflict over Kashmir and, with the rise of religious majoritarianism in both countries, raised the frightening spectre of future water wars between two nuclear-armed states.

Instead of recounting all the lost opportunities for a breakthrough in India-Pakistan relations over the past 70 years, it seems more appropriate to recall the words of the man held responsible for India’s partition. Speaking to journalists at Allahabad in April 1942, Jinnah gave a poignant assessment of the role he would one day occupy in South Asian history. “Whether you are Hindus, Muslims, Parsis or Christians,” he declared, “all I can say to you is that, however much I am criticised, however much I am attacked and today I am charged with hate in some quarters, I honestly believe that the day will come when not only Muslims but this great community of Hindus will also bless, if not during my lifetime, after I am dead, the memory of my name.” Jinnah drew an analogy between himself and the first man to appear on the street with an umbrella, only to be derided by people who had never seen one before. “You may laugh at me,” the Quaid said thoughtfully, but a time will soon come when “you will not only understand what the umbrella is but…use it to the advantage of every one of you.”

In the face of emergent shifts in regional and international politics, Pakistanis and Indians urgently need to grasp the meaning of Jinnah’s metaphor. The political, economic and environmental challenges confronting the subcontinent call for bold and imaginative solutions that entail unlearning the more rebarbative claims of jingoistic nationalism of both the Pakistani and the Indian varieties. Regrettably, the prognosis for achieving even a modicum of normalcy in relations between the two countries is not promising. There has been a change of guard in India from an older generation conscious of cultural and emotional ties with the areas now constituting Pakistan, to one that is seeking global ascendancy by ignoring, if necessary, the truths of geography and recent history. India might well continue to see political wisdom in isolating its regional rival internationally by chanting the mantra of cross-border terrorism, harping on the fallacies of Pakistan’s creation and calling it a failing and insignificant state. But this well-worn approach runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. An unstable Pakistan, far less the failed state of Indian imaginings, will seriously dent India’s successful projection of its global power. As a revisionist state whose foreign and defence policies are for the most part shaped by the military establishment, Pakistan has very limited options. As the bigger and better endowed neighbour, New Delhi must ultimately decide whether to continue treating Pakistan as a wayward sibling or, as an aspiring global power, show some measure of openness, if not generosity, towards a smaller regional neighbour. Until that crucial choice is made by India and duly reciprocated by Pakistan, relations between the two countries are not about to improve in the foreseeable future.

 
Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor is an Indian MP and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. 

Can India and Pakistan ever be friends? It’s a tough question, because it reflects a paradox: Indians and Pakistanis not only can be friends, but are, in most places around the world; and yet the official hostility between the two countries seems intractable and insoluble.

When Pakistan was created in 1947, its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, publicly expressed the hope (and the expectation) that its relations with India would come to resemble those between Canada and the United States. His idea was of two countries with more in common than not – separate politically but united culturally, and linked by strong economic ties and close human relationships. As we all know, that was not to be.

Each reader of this article may have his/her own views as to why this wish of Jinnah’s did not come to pass. I believe that the state he created became something he had never imagined – an enterprise dominated by the military and sustained by the mullah.

The seeds for this lay in the British Raj, whose deliberate policy of divide et impera and pernicious “martial races” theory meant that at Partition, Pakistan received a larger share of undivided India’s military than of either its population or territory. With 21 per cent of India’s population and 17 per cent of its revenue, Pakistan got 30 per cent of the Indian Army, 40 per cent of the Indian Navy and 20 per cent of the Indian Air Force, obliging its government to devote 75 per cent of the country’s first budget to cover the costs of maintaining this outsized force.

This disproportionately large military establishment had a vested interest in its own perpetuation, since it needed to invent a military threat in order to justify its continuance. Therein lay the prosaic roots of Pakistan’s obdurate hostility to India. Sadly, instead of cutting back on its commitments to the military, Pakistan kept feeding the monster till it devoured the country itself. Even when Pakistan lost half its territory in the disastrous Bangladesh War of 1971, the army continued to expand in numbers, power and influence.

The central problem bedevilling the relationship between the two sub-continental neighbours is not Kashmir, but rather the nature of the Pakistani state itself – specifically, the stranglehold over Pakistan of the world’s most lavishly-funded military (in terms of percentage of national resources and GDP consumed by any army on the planet). In India, the State has an Army; in Pakistan, the Army has a State.

Unlike in India, one does not join the army in Pakistan to defend the country; one joins the army to run the country. The military has ruled Pakistan directly for a majority of the years of its existence, and indirectly for most of the rest. When out of power, the army lays down the “red lines” no civilian leader dare cross. In return, it enjoys privileges unthinkable in India. Since the only way to justify this disproportionate dominance of Pakistani state and society is to foment hostility to India, the Pakistani military will continue to keep the pot boiling, even if Kashmir were to be handed over to them on a silver salver with a white ribbon tied around it.

Islamist ideology infused into militarism creates a lethal cocktail. The two countries can never be friends as long as the Pakistani military continues to support, finance, equip and train Islamist militants to conduct terrorist operations in India, to bleed India from within and to inflict upon it what a Pakistani strategist called “death by a thousand cuts.”

India’s response has been defensive, not belligerent. India is a status quo power that seeks nothing more than to be allowed to grow and develop in peace. I have therefore long urged that India expand people-to-people contacts with Pakistan, be unilaterally generous with visas (terrorists, after all, rarely apply for visas) and enhance cultural and sporting links. This will not change the military’s attitude, but it may gradually narrow the space for their belligerence.

But ultimately, Jinnah’s dream of friendship can only be realised the day Pakistan is able to shed its militarism and shake off the malign influence of its jihadis. That is unlikely to be for a very long time indeed.

 
General Tariq Khan

General (R) Tariq Khan, Hilal-e-Imtiaz, was the Commander of 1 Strike Corps at Mangla.

India is a big country with an even bigger ego. It has always aspired to dominate the region and find a niche for itself among the more prominent nations of the world. However, Pakistan has been a constant irritant for India and is seen to somehow stand in its way as India tries to achieve the status of a global power. A relationship riddled with a history of animosity and disputes, Pakistan and India continue to view each other with suspicion. Pakistan wistfully hopes that once the disputes are resolved, relations would automatically improve. But India will not cede an inch and is unwilling to discuss matters that have disturbed the bilateral equilibrium. India contends that since it cannot be its own fault, it must be Pakistan’s. The Indian leadership is at the forefront, leading their nation in the hunt for answers that could explain Pakistan’s intransigence. India blames the Pakistan Army, claiming that it justifies its existence through the bogey of an Indian threat. According to them, the army interferes in the governance of the country and holds coups because it wants to promote this image that India is to be feared and must be contained. Central to any Indian argument is the point that the Pakistan Army’s modus operandi is to first create an artificial scare and then justify its own existence by establishing itself as the only viable institution that can handle this scare.

Pakistan and India parted ways on August 14, 1947. The two nations chose to live separately; it was an outcome of a political and ideological conflict, laced with hatred and intolerance. The human carnage that followed the mass exodus – the people murdered, maimed and left homeless – stand testimony to the fact that this Partition was not born out of kindness or love. The Pakistan Army was inconsequential at the time. Then, in October 1947, the Indian Army, under the auspices of a biased and partial British governor general, managed to arrange for a dubious Treaty of Accession and marched into Kashmir, a Muslim-majority area. The Pakistan Army was stopped from reacting because its Commander was General Sir Frank Messervy who, under British instructions, refused to act. The Indian Army was given a free hand. Pakistani tribesmen who had entered Kashmir in response to the Dogra atrocities against the Muslim population, responded to the call for ceasefire in January 1948, after having captured parts of Kashmir that lie within Pakistan today. India now lies to the east of the Line of Control (LoC) and Pakistan to the west of this line of hatred and deceit. The longest outstanding UN resolution on Kashmir remains unaddressed. India does not allow international observers, or a UN peacekeeping force, while Pakistan does. India will not allow for international mediation and calls this a bilateral issue, but refuses to talk to Pakistan on one pretext or the other. Kashmir is considered to be central to normalising relations between Pakistan and India. This has nothing to do with the Pakistan Army.

The Indian Army has systematically murdered more than 100,000 people in Kashmir since 1989, according to various human rights groups. Much more is available on the subject of Indian genocide in Kashmir – an attempt to suppress an indigenous uprising that has been demanding the right to self-determination. This is where the core issue lies and cannot be glossed over by juxtaposing the Pakistan Army as the cause for Indo-Pak animosity. Apparently having lost control of the Kashmir region, the Indians have resorted to lobbing shells across the LoC. They want to make it look as if they are containing the Pakistan Army’s aggression. But it’s not working.

No Pakistani politician has ever used the Indian Card as a political gimmick to gain votes, while hardly any Indian politician has refrained from singling out Pakistan for punitive action to vindicate a perceived slight or an imagined offence. Prime Minister Modi was, at one time, subjected to US travel restrictions after being suspected of fomenting violence, but was elected by the largest democracy in the world, based on his rhetoric against Pakistanis and Muslims in general. He is on record for admitting Indian subversion in East Pakistan and for threatening to do the same in Balochistan. Modi has also threatened to scrap the Indus Waters Treaty and deny Pakistan its share of water. Indian National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval’s, only claim to fame is planning and executing terror in Pakistan, while Kulbhushan Yadev, a high-ranking serving officer of the Indian Intelligence captured in Balochistan, is strong evidence of what India stands for. “India will never be secure until Pakistan is destroyed,” wrote Doval. Leading Indian politicians compete in fanning hatred against Pakistan time and again, so much so that cricket series have had to be cancelled and cricket venues changed because of this animosity. Demands to expel Pakistani artists are on record and reflect the extreme anti-Pakistan sentiment fostered by Indian Leaders. The blackening of Indian socio-political activist Sudheendra Kulkarni’s face by Shiv Sena, prior to the launch of the book Neither A Hawk, Nor A Dove by Khurshid Kasuri, Pakistan’s ex-foreign minister, is another sorry example of where India stands in the bilateral context.

The Samjhauta Express train attack, which led to the death of Pakistani passengers, was engineered by Lieutenant Colonel Rohit – a serving officer. He has not yet been charged. The mindset that instigated the demolition of the centuries-old Babri Masjid has no qualms in murdering India’s own citizens – the thousands of Muslims in Gujrat. It will stop at nothing to promote hatred against Pakistan for the sake of Hindutva, which was the cause of Partition in the first place. Hindutva, heavily influenced by its self-made philosophy of Akhand Bharat, will never forgive Pakistan for dividing India. The quest to dismantle Pakistan is conspicuous in every speech or conversation that one sees on the Indian media. Biased and prejudiced reporting stirs up further hatred as screaming anchor-persons accuse Pakistan of everything under the sun.

On the other hand, the Indian Chief of Army Staff, General Dalbir Singh, has already shown his enthusiasm in extending the war to Pakistan through the infamous ‘Proactive Strategy.’ India now is considering changing its nuclear strategy to ‘First Use.’ Indian military thought has always revolved on the offensive, whether it was the Sunderji Doctrine of the Air-Land Battle, or Cold Start. India fields an army of 1.7 million and a budget of $53 billion. Its field army is arrayed along the Pakistan border and not China, as is falsely projected by India. All of its three armoured divisions are deployed against Pakistan. Against China, the Indians have only the Eastern Command, which has four corps, comprising 11 mountain divisions. Of these, only two divisions are deployed along the border with China, while the rest have specific instructions to be merged into offensives planned against Pakistan at later stages. India today, is the world’s largest arms importer. Pakistan’s response to this antagonism is a declared policy of non-initiation of war. It has a defence budget of $7 billion and a field army of just under 0.7 million. Pakistan calls its conventional capability ‘minimum deterrence.’ Minimum because anything less would be counterproductive and incapable of meeting the real threat that India projects; it refers to it as a deterrence because that is what Pakistan’s sole military objective remains – to deter. There is a glaring irony in the fact that a large country such as India, with its vast arsenal, feels threatened by a nation eight times smaller and which has a defence budget 300 per cent smaller.

Unlike Indian politicians, there is not a single case of a Pakistani politician propagating hate against India. There is no case of state-sponsored acrimony of the kind engineered by the Indian PM, ministers and army chiefs. Generally speaking, the Pakistani media is not known to project anti-Indian themes or sentiment like the Indian media. There are no extremist groups in Pakistan that influence Indo-Pak relations like those in India do. There is no example of attacking artists, or throwing out Indians, or disrupting sports between both countries on our side of the border. And there is no example of the Pakistan Army encouraging anti-Indian feelings in Pakistan or interfering in the civilian government’s conduct vis-a-vis India. This is precisely why Indian PM Modi could arrive unannounced and meet PM Sharif privately, without any formal notice. It is also why Sajjan Jindal, an anti-Pakistan Army zealot, had unprecedented access to the PM without a visa or formal permission to enter the country. Yet when Musharraf, then president and army chief, went to Agra to conclude an agreement on Kashmir in the hope of securing peace between both countries, his efforts were scuttled by the Indian Foreign Office.

When one sifts propaganda from reality, it becomes clear that it is not the Pakistan Army that is falsely projecting India as an enemy to justify its own existence, but that it is India that is constantly projecting Pakistan as its nemesis. The Government of India has to justify its own failures in the indigenous separatist movements all over India, its genocide in Kashmir to quell the indigenous freedom struggle and the poverty that plagues the teeming masses as they sleep on the sides of roads. It is their army that points a finger at the Pakistan Army, accusing it of cross-border militancy, when the LoC is heavily fenced and electrified as in the Uri case. False flag operations have now become routine, whipping up hysteria and anti-Pakistan sentiment.

With Kashmir boiling over, Siachen an unfinished business and Sir Creek a long-standing dispute, there is enough reason for India and Pakistan to be at loggerheads without the Pakistan Army creating further bitterness to validate its own existence. The CPEC is a new development in Pakistan and has the potential to connect the country with international commerce. China has planned a $50 billion investment; Russia is already on board, while Central Asian countries too would want to use this trade corridor. India, meanwhile, has tried its utmost to develop Iran’s Chabahar port as an alternative to Gwadar, but because of its relatively limited potential, Iran has abandoned the idea in favour of joining CPEC. Then there is the looming disaster unfolding in Afghanistan. With American withdrawal imminent, the Indians will be forced out. Indian investment in its attempts to use Afghanistan as a proxy against Pakistan will go to waste.

These events have caused great dismay in India, who, in blind rage, lash out illogically and at times irrationally. The notion of surgical strikes and claims of cross-border punitive activity are bandied about. The ridiculous territorial claim to Gilgit-Baltistan, to disrupt the Pak-China land connection, and numerous and unfounded accusations of terrorism, are falsely projected. Whereas the Pakistan Army has so far effectively contained and managed Indian military pretensions, the threat of an Indian adventure is, nevertheless, very real. The rabid mobs, worked up into a frenzy by the Indian leadership, may demand and insist that India teach Pakistan a lesson. This is why Pakistan has an army.

Kashmir and other territorial disputes are the main irritants at the moment, but because of manufactured prejudices and preconceptions against Pakistan, even if these disputes are resolved, peace would remain an elusive notion. Indian extremist thinking, the Hindutva philosophy of Akhand Bharat, shall continue to hold the two countries hostage while India will always find it easier to blame someone else for its own shortcomings. Pakistan will be painted as the main villain, who India’s heroes are battling in make-believe battlegrounds. Bollywood at its best.

 

Kalpana Sharma

Kalpana Sharma is a columnist and former Deputy Editor of The Hindu.

Can India and Pakistan be “friends”? I don’t think so. Indians and Pakistanis can be friends, and are friends. I can vouch for that personally.

But as countries, nations, governments? I somehow doubt it. At least not in the foreseeable future. There is too much history between us to overcome and currently a surfeit of internal divisive politics.

On the other hand, can we live as peaceful neighbours? Yes, that is possible. Perhaps not in the immediate future. But it could happen.

The friendship and affection between Indians and Pakistanis at an individual level is a reality. You love our films. We love your music, your food and Fawad Khan!

But so what? How does all this make a difference to the state of an “absence of peace” that exists between our two countries? No war, but no peace either.

So let’s set aside, for a moment, these superficialities and actually discuss whether it is possible for us to live together as peaceful and cordial neighbours.

I believe that is possible.

It has long been accepted that peace between nations works if there is a constituency for peace within these nations. In both our countries, there is such a constituency. It may be small, but it exists.

Unfortunately, the elements undermining this constituency are growing stronger every day in India.

The main culprit for the growth of hatred and belligerence towards Pakistan is not just the ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its constituents – dismissed sometimes as “fringe elements” – who need to demonise Pakistan in order to push their agenda for a Hindu India, but also India’s mainstream media.

Since 2008 and the terrorist attack on Mumbai, it would be fair to say that Indian television news channels have launched an all-out war against Pakistan. For some of them, there is a Pakistani, or rather an ISI agent, hiding behind every bush. In the 1970s, Indira Gandhi would spot the “foreign hand” (in those days always America’s CIA) whenever there was internal conflict. Today, the “foreign hand” is the neighbouring country – Pakistan and its agencies. In fact, if you watch certain Indian news channels, this “foreign hand” seems so omnipresent, that you wonder how on earth India still survives.

Those who have paid the price for this constant anti-Pakistan rhetoric by the electronic media have been Indian Muslims. Never before has the demand that they “go to Pakistan” been more strident than today, 70 years after Partition and independence. “Pakistanis,” “beef eaters” – these are the swear words flung at ordinary, peaceful men and women, going about their daily lives, who just happen to be Muslim.

To me that is the real tragedy of this absence of peace between our two countries. We are creating more partitions, more exclusions, more deaths, more suspicion, more hatred, more sorrow. A soil poisoned thus cannot accommodate peace, or even real friendship.

 
Ayesha Siddiqa

Ayesha Siddiqa is an author, social scientist and expert on military affairs and South Asia.

It was just a couple of years ago that I was arguing with a trader – head of an informal association representing electronics retail from China – about the efficacy of trading with India. I thought he would argue against opening up. His view, on the other hand, was that opening up trade would strengthen the market and improve his own position in bargaining with China. There were many more trader-merchants like him in Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Karachi, Hyderabad and other cities that craved the opening up of trade opportunities with India. There were even those who thought that Narendra Modi’s election was a great idea, as a stronger government in India would ensure better trade initiatives.

But then everything blew away, as if someone had waved a magic wand. In two years, the tables have turned upside down and now India-Pakistan peace seems like a distant dream that is not possible to attain, at least in the foreseeable future. Unlike the past, when a crisis in relations was usually followed by a period of silence and then some shifting of gears to improve ties, this time it would take more time, greater commitment and effort, and far more clarity of purpose regarding peace. If one were to do a brutal assessment, the resultant prediction would easily be that peace between the two neighbours is nowhere in sight. There are two reasons for such morbidity.

First, both India and Pakistan are shifting geo-political camps. While Islamabad has moved from the US to China’s side, India seems to be laying its eggs in Washington’s basket. The next era belongs to China and Russia, who are expected to dominate international political airwaves. Pakistan sees a central role for itself as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that it hopes to build upon to grow into a significant regional player, which it never was in the past. As part of its partnership, Rawalpindi would aid Beijing in whatever way to counter an emerging partnership between India and the US. If approved by the US Congress, the $40 billion aid package requested for India and the terms and conditions accompanying it would put New Delhi next to Israel in terms of its significance. It will not just be Pakistan as a country but also the non-state proxies which will gain significance in China’s scheme of things to contest the Indo-American position in Afghanistan and the larger South Asian region. The non-state actors, in any case, are far more ideologically poised to fight the Christian West than the non-Muslim East.

However, this scheme of things will further deteriorate India-Pakistan relations that are at their lowest ebb, also because of a shift in perception of the other. I am reminded of my first ever visit to India in 2002, right in the middle of the military standoff. The people, even at the immigration counters, were far more welcoming than they were many years later. We are no longer seen as just an ordinary but estranged neighbour, but as a state responsible for the much publicised terror attacks in India. In Pakistan, there is fast growing fear and caution regarding ties with a country that is now dominated by a brutal Hindutva brigade that kills and silences ordinary Indians, what to speak of Pakistanis. The social shift underlines the psychological change that is taking place, thus pushing the countries at an even greater distance from each other. While Bollywood and Pakistan television will continue to connect some people, the next five years might push us away to such a degree that we may not even qualify as neighbours.

 
Jawed Naqvi

Jawed Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and correspondent for Dawn.

It has become difficult to guess what so many well-meaning people expect from their untiring display of faith in India-Pakistan peace prospects. Do they mean that the borders should be witnessing peace and tranquillity, a phrase borrowed from the Sino-Indian agreement of 1993? However, even that carefully crafted agreement between Narasimha Rao and Li Peng is up in the air in the Modi-Xi era, isn’t it? So China-India ties cannot be the inspiration any longer for the India-Pakistan peace-seekers. What other model is there, which can be cited as an example to follow between neighbours with unsettled disputes, not the least of disputes being Kashmir. And now there’s CPEC, which has raised India’s hackles. There’s nothing in South Asia as a model, is there?

The question of India-Pakistan peace (or no peace) boils down to expediency – domestic expediency, which may have little or nothing to do with India-Pakistan relations per se. This expediency flows from something more directly connected with power politics on both sides.

There was a requirement for both to come together to announce one fine day that their talks would never be derailed by acts of terror. Everyone applauded. It was the right gesture to applaud. They also promised to open consulates in Mumbai and Karachi. All that is there in writing, signed and sealed at the highest levels. Then there was a requirement for one or both to see to it that the agreement was locked up in the archives, to rot and be forgotten, but also to be available to be quietly revived at a more opportune domestic moment – domestic, not bilateral moment.

Sounds like a cliche. But both sides need military budgets. They need the budget as alibi for failures on the health front, poverty alleviation and so forth. Old hat. A military stand-off between India and Pakistan is otherwise a surer sign of a failed economic policy, a poor monsoon, uncertain elections ahead, random such events connected with power play at home. Any ruse is good to lay into the opponent. On the other hand, either side could ignore a big embarrassment and still continue to hold talks, depending on the need of the moment. Vajpayee was in Lahore despite a forbidding massacre in Kashmir on the eve of his visit, reciting Sardar Jafri and other beautiful poets. Modi, for his purposes, stopped all talks because some people met each other somewhere over a cup of tea, this despite Modi’s affinity with tea, many cups of tea.

The more important question to ask with regard to the elusive peace prospects relate to the nature of politics that has evolved or is still evolving on both sides over the last four decades.

Pakistan, since the late 1980s, has been struggling to pull out of the shadows of Zia-ul-Haq’s merger of politics with religion. Right-wing Hindu revivalists in India have seen in Zia’s Pakistan a useful model that worked for right-wing Islamists in the neighbourhood. And, in fact, still continues to defy efforts to fumigate the legacy of Shariah laws and sectarian hatred. India, led by Modi, is plunging headlong into that comfort zone of fascism.

On the practical front, Zia’s ties with India were pivoted on a policy of a thousand cuts. Now it’s India’s turn to deliver the cuts. Is it not? So the peace-seekers’ quest baffles me. What good came out of a friendship between Mussolini and Hitler, for want of a better analogy? Many kindly souls will visit the borders again on August 14, as is their wont. But they should think of staying home this time and fighting the bigger fight with fascism. A victory for enlightened democracy is needed on both sides before either one is ready for an overdue embrace across their borders.

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9. POVERTY REPORT OF SOUTH ASIA UNVEILED
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(The Times of India)
TNN | Sep 3, 2017, 23:49 IST
[A dialogue on governance for the margins with reference to South Asia was held at IDC on Saturday.]A dialogue on governance for the margins with reference to South Asia was held at IDC on Saturday.
CHANDIGARH: A triennial report on poverty scenario<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/poverty-scenario> in South Asian countries was released on Saturday at Institute for Development Communication (IDC). A Nepal-based South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE) has produced the report. A Chandigarh-based study circle Dialogue Highway in collaboration with IDC facilitated the release of the report.

This was followed by a 'dialogue on governance for the margins with reference to South Asia'. A special lecture 'on contesting claims of inclusion of diversity: challenges and opportunities' was also delivered by one of country's foremost sociologists Prof Shiv Vishwanathan. "Does the Indian Constitution represent the voice of the defeated and the marginalized people?," said Vishwanathan.

SAAPE is a regional platform of civil society organizations, social movements and people's networks fighting against the structural causes of poverty and social injustices in the region and beyond.

While launching its fifth poverty report, SAAPE questioned the existing development paradigm.

While sharing some of the findings of the report, Prof. Netra Timsina, regional coordinator, SAAPE Nepal said, "While South Asia houses 22 % of the world's population, the region, however, has only 1.3% of the world's income. The idea that market will correct imbalances through demand and supply has led to the gradual withdrawal of state from publicly providing services like education and health."

Panjabi University Vice Chancellor Prof B S Ghuman said the report should form the part of policy planning. Pramod Kumar, director, IDC said the state has been usurped by the market and the people at the margins do not have a voice.

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10. SRI LANKA: 20A - YOU ONLY VOTE TWICE | COMMENT IN DAILY MIRROR
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(Daily Mirror, 20 September 2017)

The Bill on the 20th Amendment to the Constitution has been so controversial that the Joint Opposition is said to have planned a “mass cross over” from the Government to the Opposition, when it is taken for debate in Parliament this week as scheduled. However, it is reported that the Government has deferred its debate.

Whatever the veracity of the reports on the crossovers was, the essence of this piece of legislation is very important in terms of democracy, as it is mainly meant for the conducting of elections for all nine Provincial Councils on the same day. 

However, other legal effects of the Bill are in fact highly contentious in the eyes of the Provincial Councils.

The Government also mulls to do away with the current Proportional Representation (PR) system and replace it with a mixed electoral system in respect of Parliament and Provincial Council elections through some other Acts. Monday’s Daily Mirror had carried two statements from President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to this effect. Already laws have been amended for the Local Government elections to be held under the mixed electoral system.

We have the experience of holding countrywide elections in one day as well as on a staggered basis. Parliament elections are being held on a particular day specified by the Elections Commission or the previous Elections Department, while the Provincial Council elections and the Local Government elections are being held normally on a staggered basis. Before 1960 the Parliamentary elections too had been held in various stages.

The disadvantages of holding elections in stages or on a staggered basis are long debated. During the ongoing debate over the 20th Amendment, not a single person had argued against holding elections for any of the three levels of people’s representation - Parliament, Provincial Councils or Local Government bodies– on a single day.

It is an oft -stated fact that holding of elections for Provincial Councils or Local Government bodies hikes up the burden not only on the public coffers but also on the political parties contesting at those elections. 

Apart from that, it carries with it a huge impact on the objective of democracy as the results of one phase of an election would definitely influence the voters, who would vote in the subsequent phases of the same election. 

In India the election for the Lok Sabha (Parliament) is held on staggered basis but the results of all stages of polling are announced only at the end of the election. However, even then, there is a possibility of voter behaviour during the initial stages of the election being an indication of the results of those stages and thereby having a bearing on the voter, casting his/her vote at the subsequent stages.

Needless to say, elections for some or all Provincial Councils would have to either be postponed or advanced, if elections for all Provincial Councils are to be held on the same day. 

Hence, it is hilarious in this case to argue, as some groups had done, that franchise of the people would be violated by postponing elections or rights of the members of the Provincial Councils elected by the people for a full term are violated by advancing the election dates of those councils.

Leaders of the Opposition in the Parliament and the Provincial Councils must be more responsible not to be hell-bent on defeating the Bill in toto without attempting to remove the other contentious sections, in order to embarrass the Government. 

On the other hand it is also pertinent for the Government to be amenable to remove the sections that are likely to go against the spirit of devolution such as those on transferring some of the powers of Provincial Councils and the Provincial Governors to Parliament. 

It is good to have an open dialogue on this matter between the two sides of the political divide, outside Parliament first. 

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11. NO PLACE FOR THINKING - ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN AND IN INDIAN LIFE | Ramachandra Guha
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(The Telegraph - September 16 , 2017)

Books set in other countries and published at other times can sometimes be strikingly relevant to India today. This is certainly the case with Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, published in 1963. I first read this book as a doctoral student 30 years ago, and reread it recently.

As a professor at one of America's most prestigious universities, Columbia in New York, Hofstadter watched, with fascinated horror, the persecution of scholars and writers by the senator, Joe McCarthy, and his gang in the 1950s. After the senator was disgraced and then had died, the historian sat down to set this recent witch-hunt in the context of other such episodes of anti-intellectualism in American history.

Hofstadter traced the deep roots of this hostility to scholars and scholarship to the Evangelical tradition and its Biblical literalism. Through the 18th century, he wrote, "[t]he Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter". These evangelicals looked upon "piety and intellect as being in open enmity". One writer, alarmed at the religious revivalism sweeping the American South in the 1770s, remarked: "Few or no Books are to be found in all this vast Country, beside the Assembly, Catechism, Watts Hymns, Bunyans Pilgrims Progress... Nor do they delight in Historical Books or in having them read to them... for these People despise Knowledge, and instead of honouring a Learnede Person, or any one of Wit or Knowledge, be it in the Arts, Sciences or Languages, they despise and Ill treat them - And this Spirit prevails even among the Principals of this Province".

(This description calls to mind Hindutva organizations of the present, within which well-researched works of history or social science are likewise disparaged, whereas the dated, dogmatic screeds of V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar are venerated. The Hindu fundamentalist of the 21st century, like the Christian fundamentalist of the 18th century, considers "piety and intellect as being in open enmity").

In 19th-century America, such anti-intellectual religiosity further consolidated itself. One influential preacher dismissed Shakespeare and Byron as "triflers and blasphemers of God". Another remarked that he would rather have zeal without knowledge than knowledge without zeal. "Thousands of college graduates are going as fast as they can straight to hell," said this anti-intellectual fundamentalist. "If I had a million dollars I'd give $999,999 to the church and $1 for education," he added.

In the first half of the 20th century, there was a belated awakening of respect for scholars and scholarships in the United States of America. Two presidents, bearing the same surname, were instrumental in integrating cutting-edge knowledge into politics and public policy. These were Theodore Roosevelt, who was associated with the Progressive movement; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was associated with the New Deal. But the tide turned backwards again in 1952, when the presidential campaign between General Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson "dramatized the contrast between intellect and philistinism in the opposing candidates". Eisenhower's victory, writes Hofstadter, "was taken both by the intellectuals themselves and by their critics as a measure of their repudiation by America". Stevenson's "smashing defeat" was seen by many as "a repudiation by plebiscite of American intellectuals and of intellect itself".

Some months after Eisenhower became president, the historian, Arthur Schlesinger, wrote that "[t]he intellectual... is on the run in American society". Writing of the "acute and sweeping" hostility towards intellectuals expressed by the right wing in the 1950s, Hofstadter said it constituted "a categorical folkish dislike of the educated classes and of anything respectable, established, pedigreed, or cultivated". Diehard Republicans thought intellectuals to be "pretentious, conceited, effeminate, and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive". They further believed that "the discipline of the heart, and the old-fashioned principles of religion and morality, are more reliable guides to life than an education which aims to produce minds responsive to new trends in thought and art".

American anti-intellectualism was fuelled by the cult of the practical or self-made man, who built businesses and won wars without going to Harvard or Princeton. As president, Dwight Eisenhower himself enthusiastically embraced this depreciation of the intellectual. At a meeting of the Republican Party in 1954, Eisenhower remarked: "I heard a definition of an intellectual that I thought was very interesting: a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows."

The parallels with contemporary India are striking. Narendra Modi's victory in 2014 has emboldened the Hindutva core to launch a full-fledged attack on independent-minded scholars and writers. Their language is far more crude than the Republicans of 1950s America; but the essence of their characterization, or dismissal, is the same. Instead of "pretentious, conceited, effeminate, and snobbish" they use "libtard, Aaptard, sickular, 10 Janpath bootlicker, toadie of the Italian waitress", and so on. Another and more worrying difference is this - that anti-intellectual ideologues can do far more damage in India than they ever could in America. For the likes of Harvard and Princeton are privately funded; and even public universities like Berkeley and Wisconsin zealously guard their scholarly autonomy and integrity. Here, however, our best as well as our worst universities are amenable to political control and manipulation. And so, instead of learning physics, biology, history, economics or international relations, the students at Jawharlal Nehru University shall be made to salute the national flag and worship an army tank to prove their patriotic credentials.

In his book, Hofstadter perceptively remarked that the Right "has always liked to blur the distinction between the moderate progressive and the revolutionary". This again, is as true of India as of America. Liberals who have made very public criticisms of Marxism, Maoism and Stalinism are characterized by Hindutva ideologues as communists merely because they oppose right-wing extremism as well.

Intellectuals may believe that they are merely writing books or essays, but their enemies on the Right see them as undermining the Nation itself. Writing of the search for scapegoats so characteristic of American religious fundamentalists, Hofstadter observed: "There has always been in our national experience a type of mind which elevates hatred to a kind of creed; for this mind, group hatreds take a place in politics similar to the class struggle in some other modern societies. Filled with obscure and ill-directed grievances and frustrations, with elaborate hallucinations about secrets and conspiracies, groups of malcontents have found scapegoats at various times in Masons or abolitionists, Catholics, Mormons, or Jews, Negroes or immigrants, the liquor interests or the international bankers. In the succession of scapegoats chosen by the followers of this tradition of Know-Nothingism, the intelligentsia have at last in our time found a place."

One could write in comparable terms of the Hindutva right-wing. The first group to feature in their capacious demonology are, of course, Muslims; followed by Christians, communists, foreigners, Nehru and the Nehru-Gandhi family, and (for some) Mahatma Gandhi himself. In this succession of scapegoats chosen by the followers of this tradition of Know-Nothingism, the intellectual has at last in our time found a place.

Writing of his own country, Richard Hofstadter observed: "Some individuals live by hatred as a... creed." In India, alas, one would have to replace the 'some' with 'many'. And while scholars like Hofstadter, living before the age of social media, were confronted with this hate only erratically and sporadically, intellectuals in our country face it every day, even every minute. The term 'McCarthyism' has passed into the dictionary, but in fact there is far more hostility to intellectuals in the India of today than there ever was in the America of the 1950s. Joe McCarthy and his henchmen worked to deprive independent thinkers and writers of their jobs; but the anti-intellectual Indians of today can go much further, and - as the examples of Dabholkar, Pansare, Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh show - even deprive independent thinkers and writers of their lives.

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12. INDIA: INSTINCT OF THE MOB - THE EPIDEMIC OF VIGILANTISM | PRABHAT PATNAIK
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(The Telegraph, September 20 , 2017)

My wife and I retired seven years ago after teaching in Jawaharlal Nehru University for nearly four decades, and neither of us gets a pension. The interest on our joint lifetime savings largely sustains us. This entire amount had to be invested in my name because she was not allowed to do so, as her name on her PAN card was grossly misspelt owing to a clerical error by the concerned authority issuing the card, an error which has not been rectified by it in spite of decades of effort on our part (though, interestingly, her tax payments have never been refused for this reason). This arrangement has been going on for several years; but I recently got a letter signed by two executives of the private firm through which our investment is made (whose agents frequent the corridor outside the JNU finance branch in search of potential customers), asking me to explain the source of my investment which they considered to be "disproportionate to the known sources" of my income. They backed off after I replied that it was none of their business and brought the matter to the notice of others within that firm, but it was a clear case of unwarranted vigilantism.

Another, more sinister, instance was reported recently in the papers. Some students from JNU and St Stephen's College, who had gone on a day-long picnic to a National Park near Delhi, were suddenly surrounded by a mob demanding to know why there was only one girl and four boys among them and how they were related to one another. Some in the mob even tried to molest the girl. The students, fortunately, were saved by the alertness of the taxi driver who had taken them there and who managed to make a quick getaway along with them.

Such instances can be multiplied. Quite evidently, a veritable epidemic of vigilantism has broken out in the country, where a much larger number of people than ever before now feel that they have the licence to throw their weight around, to intimidate the innocent, to harass women, and to engage in lumpen behaviour in the guise of enforcing a 'moral code'.

The vigilantism of the Hindutva forces, whether as gau rakshaks in villages and small towns, or as 'nationalists' in colleges and universities, has been palpable and pervasive. It has attracted wide attention and has been rightly condemned by those who still have the courage to speak out against such things. But this directly Hindutva-inspired vigilantism is also having a 'multiplier' effect by way of stimulating a much wider scenario of vigilantism, where the perpetrators may have only a few openly Hindutva-avowing persons among them, in the sense of persons actually belonging to this or that sangh parivar outfit, but where the vigilantism is carried out nonetheless in the name of defending 'our culture', that is supposedly the Hindu culture.

Such vigilantism, of prurient-minded mobs nosing into people's private lives, or sundry individuals gleefully throwing their weight around to harass people in the self-righteous belief that they are serving the 'nation', is an equally sinister, but even more comprehensive, intrusion into people's lives than that of the gau rakshaks and the 'nationalists'. The sort of 'action' that Hindutva outfits indulged in on specific occasions like Valentine's Day until now is threatening to become a pervasive phenomenon engaged in with impunity by lumpen mobs. Vigilantism, in short, is becoming more widespread, a veritable epidemic that is beyond anyone's direct control.

Each country's fascism has its own specific characteristics apart from certain general features. What we are witnessing here is fascism with Indian characteristics. Fascism elsewhere, say in Germany in the 1930s, was characterized by enormous centralization of power, together with a street 'movement' which itself, however, was centrally directed (for example, Ernst Röhm's SA before the "night of long knives"). Indian fascism, too, has the character of a street 'movement', but one that is not necessarily exclusively centrally directed; it has a kind of 'spontaneity' that no doubt derives sustenance from the centralization of political power in fascist hands, but is nonetheless distinct from it, even while complementing it. It is a kind of 'fascism from below' which complements the 'fascism from above' and is stimulated by it, but has a distinct identity of its own. This spectre of 'fascism from below' is no less terrifying than 'fascism from above'; together they threaten to crush all individual freedom, and negate secularism, democracy and the space for rational discourse.

Such 'grassroots vigilantism' to be sure is not an innovation of Hindutva politics and the fascism (or communal-fascism) that such politics is spawning. It is a hallmark of our feudal society and long predates the Narendra Modi brand of corporate-backed communal-fascism which is clearly a 'modern' phenomenon. But this 'modern' fascism creates the conditions in which such 'grassroots vigilantism' can thrive. Indeed, the fact that fascism allows the thriving of such 'grassroots vigilantism' is one of the reasons for the kind of popularity it enjoys in certain quarters.

It has suddenly removed the constraint imposed earlier by the need to be 'politically correct', and allowed scope for the expression without impunity of one's lumpen-feudal instincts. This constraint had been there for the last one hundred years, ever since Mahatma Gandhi had called off the non-cooperation movement in response to the Chauri Chaura incident (though that incident of anti-colonial fury can by no means be compared to the mob lumpenism we are witnessing now). Even during the horrendous Partition riots, when the country witnessed an orgy of violence, there was nonetheless a constant and tireless effort at 'rectification' on the part of the country's political leadership to re-impose the constraint of 'correctness'. The Bharatiya Janata Party government, however, has removed this constraint. Instead of making an attempt to lift politics above the mundane empirical instinct of a mob, it has glorified this instinct itself as its politics, which accounts for the sort of popularity it enjoys in many quarters.

This liberation from the need to be 'politically correct' enthuses not only 'vigilante' mobs; it is also a source of relief for segments of the middle class who can now give freer expression to their anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit and anti-women sentiments. If the mobs smother the notion of individual privacy, then these segments of the middle class now feel free to reject the notion of equality, to which they have been unwillingly paying lip service till now. And the BJP, which has,created an ambience where such rejection becomes possible, is naturally a favourite with them too.

Notions of individual freedom, democracy, equality and reason are the hallmark of true 'modernity'. It is not the growth rate of the gross domestic product but the degree to which these notions are realized that defines a country's march towards true 'modernity'. The 'modern' phenomenon of fascism, ironically, by effectively pooh-poohing these notions, most explicitly through its opposition to secularism, is rolling back India's march to true 'modernity'. (It is another matter that while doing so it is also overseeing a deceleration in the rate of GDP growth as well.) It is noteworthy that one of the arguments of the Central government in its submission before the Supreme Court on the question of whether 'privacy' constituted a fundamental right, was that privacy had never enjoyed the privileged position in India that it did elsewhere. This actually amounted to explicitly apotheosizing India's pre-modernity, and, hence necessarily by implication, the monstrous inequalities that were associated with it.

The Supreme Court judgment upholding privacy as a fundamental right has been seen by commentators as entailing a restriction on the encroachment by the State on the domain of individual lives, as facilitating same-sex relationships, and so on. All these it certainly does. But it also throws some sand on the mechanism of vigilantism. It may not, of course, stop the current outburst of vigilantism altogether, but the fact that it has made a pronouncement of principle against it by upholding the right to privacy, is no mean an achievement.

In a situation where the secular political leadership has lost a good deal of its credibility with the people and its attempt to uphold 'political correctness' does not cut as much ice now as it did earlier, and where the secular intelligentsia, too, is looked upon with greater suspicion than before, since it has been a beneficiary and generally an upholder of globalization which has simultaneously affected a large number of ordinary people adversely, the judiciary continues to remain a credible instrument for the reassertion of the values that the Constitution associated with a 'modern' India. In the current struggle between 'modernity' and fascism, the Supreme Court verdict on the right to privacy must be seen as a beachhead gained.

The author is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

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13. DEFENDING ACADEMIC AND MEDICAL INDEPENDENCE IN TURKEY
========================================
(The Lancet, Published Online July 27, 2017 | www.thelancet.com Vol 390 August 12, 2017 )
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32093-7

We write on behalf of 207 health professionals, academics, and researchers, and 25 health and human rights organisations from many countries (appendix). We wish to bring to the attention of The Lancet’s readers alarming events taking place in Turkey, where the state has been waging a campaign of terror and punishment against thousands of health professionals and academics.

Following the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the Turkish Government imposed various measures as part of a temporary state of emergency. However, these measures have been extended to undermine civil liberties and democracy. Among other actions, tens of thousands of public servants have been dismissed without explanation or due process.1 There have also been 63 blanket curfews imposed on towns such as Cizre, Silvan, and Sur, affecting over 1·8 million people.2

As part of this crackdown, 463 academics have been dismissed (11 of them have been recently suspended from their work, which is often a precursor to dismissal),3 for having signed a declaration for peace under the banner of “Academics for Peace”. Notably, this declaration was made in January, 2016, several months before the attempted coup. Many of the 463 dismissed academics have been banned from travelling via the cancellation of their passports. Among those previously dismissed and recently suspended are a number of academic physicians who are all highly respected doctors with international reputations. Additionally, many medical international non-governmental organisations have been banned from
working in Turkey.

The Turkish Medical Association has called on all parties to protect the professional autonomy of health-care workers to provide health care, respect their professional autonomy, obey liabilities originating from international legislation, investigate any violations urgently, and identify violators.4
The attack by the Turkish state on academic freedom and freedom of speech is part of a wider attack on democracy that has been documented by Amnesty International.5

However, these developments cannot be viewed simply as a national problem. They are also part of a worrying trend towards authoritarianism in several parts of the world.

The international academic community cannot stay silent. We must react strongly by expressing our disapproval to the Government and universities of Turkey, requesting the immediate reinstatement and standing in solidarity with our colleagues and fellow professionals who have lost their jobs, as well as insisting that restitution of civil rights is a prerequisite for the right to health. 

CB and DS are co-chairs of the People’s Health Movement. We declare no competing interests.
Alexis Benos, *Chiara Bodini, Hannah Cowan, David McCoy, Penelope Milsom, David Sanders on behalf of 207 individuals and 25 organisations; a full list of signatories is available in the appendix
chiara at phmovement.org

Laboratory of Primary Health Care, General Practice and Health Services Research, Department of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece (AB); Centre for International and Intercultural Health, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy (CB); London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK (HC, PM); Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK (DM); and School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa (DS)

1 European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission). Turkey— opinion on emergency decree laws nos. 667–676 adopted following the failed coup of 15 July 2016, adopted by the Venice Commission at its 109th Plenary Session, 9-10 December 2016. http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/ documents/?pdf=CDL-AD(2016)037-e (accessed July 23, 2017).

2 Human Rights Foundation of Turkey. Curfews in Turkey between the dates 16 August 2015–1 June 2017. June 1, 2017. http://en.tihv.org.tr/curfews-in-turkey-between-the-dates-16-august-2015-1-june-2017/ (accessed July 23, 2017).

3 12 peace declaration signatory academics discharged from Dokus Elül University. Bianet (Istanbul). June 29, 2017/. http://bianet.org/english/human-rights/187848-12-peace-declaration-signatory-academics-discharged-from-dokuz-eylul-university (accessed July 23, 2017).

4 Vatansever K, Tanık FA, Gökalp Ş, et al. Rapid assessment of health services In eastern and south-eastern Anatolia regions in the period of conflict starting from 20 July 2015. Turkish Medical Association Publications (Ankara). October, 2015. http://www.ttb.org.tr/kutuphane/g_rapor_en.pdf (accessed July 23, 2017).

5 Amnesty International. No end in sight: purged public sector workers denied a future in Turkey. May 22, 2017. https://www.amnesty.nl/content/uploads/2017/05/No-End-In-Sight-ENG.pdf?x82182 (accessed July 23, 2017).

Supplementary appendix
This appendix formed part of the original submission. We post it as supplied by the authors.
Supplement to: Benos A, Bodini C, Cowan H, et al. Defending academic and medical
independence in Turkey. Lancet 2017; published online July 27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32093-7.

individuals

First name Last name Title/position Organization City Country
Pol De Vos President Third World Health Aid (TWHA) Brussels Belgium
Maria Giulia Loffreda MSc, Department of Public Health Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam The Netherlands
Valeria Gentilini Resident Doctor of Public Health and Preventive
Medicine‐ University of Bologna Centre For International Health Bologna Italy
Stephen O'Brien Medical doctor ‐ General Practitioner Brussels Belgium
Tara Ballav Adhikari Member People's Health Movement Europe
Ardigò Martino Dr. Pdh Bologna Italy
Valentina Gallo Lecturer in Epidemiology Queen Mary, Unicersity of London London UK
Doreen Montag Lecturer/Coordinator of MSc Programmes in Global Public Health Queen Mary University of London London England
Leigh Haynes Policy & Advocacy Officer Brussels Belgium
Johan Steyn Family Medicine Registrar, Faculty of Health Sciences
Margherita Locatelli Midwife Lecturer Valbrembo (Bergamo) Italy
Andrew Harmer Lecturer, Global Public Health Unit Queen Mary University London England
Sean Roberts Policy and Campaigns Officer
Marina Ferri Pharmacist
Nick Spencer Emeritus Professor of Child Health, Warwick Medical School University of Warwick Coventry UK
Flavia Sesti PhD student La Sapienza universita di Roma rome Italy
Samuele Mazzolini Graduate Teaching Assistant University of Essex Colchester United Kindgom
Camille Paulsen Miss, Centre Adminstrator, Centre for Primary Care & Public Health Queen Mary University of London London United Kingdom
Kirsten Bobrow Public health registrar, School of Public Health and Family Medicine University of Cape Town Cape Town South Africa
Gayle Paul Art Curator 
[ . . . ]
see full the list of signatories at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(17)32093-7

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14. FACEBOOK'S WAR ON FREE WILL (19.09.2017)
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/19/facebooks-war-on-free-will

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15. 'PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO SPEAK FRANKLY': HOW THE SHY FAR-RIGHT COULD SPARK A GERMAN ELECTION UPSET | Chloe Farand
========================================
Lurch towards anti-immigrant stance could make AfD the main opposition to government
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-election-2017-afd-vote-far-right-immigration-merkel-upset-a7957621.html

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16. INDIA: GODDESS IN EVERYDAY LIFE - Editorial, The Telegraph
========================================
(The Telegraph, September 16 , 2017)	

Editorial

New India is spawning hordes of new Hindus. Their single-minded urge for destruction can only suggest the image of rampaging hordes. Jawed Habib, the owner of a multi-city salon chain, was forced to apologize on social media for an advertisement depicting Durga and her children comfortably using the services of a salon before their big festival. The image is funny and heart-warming, in the tradition of many such presentations of the goddess and her family in Bengal, not just in advertisements, but also in stories, plays, pictures and poems. Deities are intimate beings in much of eastern India, particularly in Bengal: it is enough to recall how the otherwise formidable Kali appears to Ramakrishna or Ramprasad Sen. And Durga is special. She, her children and her husband are all part of an ongoing family story; she may be slaying a terrible demon but she is also the daughter coming home. Humour, fun, warmth, nostalgia, prayer, new clothes, new styles, new songs, social mingling and a unique outburst of creativity from artisans and artists who make images, pandals, light arrangements, interiors as well as book covers all make up this festival. Laughing affectionately at gods and goddesses has never been a problem in the state, neither has it detracted from faith or ritual.

It is this wholeness of a healthy culture that thrives on the mutual respect between various peoples and encourages a multicultural fusion that is now under attack. An illustration of Durga as Mary with the infant Ganesh in her arms has aroused ire, and a depiction of Durga in the style of Ajanta paintings has been found unacceptably 'sexy'. The 'new' Hindus, or the advocates of Hindutva, seem not to have done their homework. They should actually read the ancient myths that they glorify at the drop of a garland and see what these contain. One of Mr Habib's salons in Uttar Pradesh has been vandalized after the advertisement appeared, which suggests that the attacks are part of the Hindutva-flavoured violent piety that is flooding north India. The focus is on Mr Habib's religion - he, like the artist, M.F. Husain, is supposed to have 'insulted' Hindu deities, showing them in a way the prophet would never be depicted. Religion nowadays seems to have no function except a political one.

Humour is an enemy of hatred, divisiveness and violence, as is the inclusive culture of Durga Puja. It is not just a great community and cultural festival, it is also the time of important exchanges in business and in the markets. The attacks on the advertisement and the fury against illustrated magazine covers spring from a total incomprehension of what the spirit of a religion can produce at its best moments of complex harmony. Hindutva followers seemed to have missed the real lessons of the religion they think they own, and therefore ram down everyone's throats.

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17. LOOK AT THE PHONE IN YOUR HAND – YOU CAN THANK THE STATE FOR THAT | Rutger Bregman
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(The Guardian - 12 July 2017)

We know the private sector has given us life-changing products. But we forget that it is state investment that makes innovation possible in the first place

• Rutger Bregman is the author of Utopia for Realists (translated by Elizabeth Manton)

Contact author
@rcbregman

Who are the visionaries who drive human progress? The answer, as we all know, is the geeks, the free spirits and the crazy dreamers, who thumb their noses at authority: the Peter Thiels and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world; the likes of Steve Jobs and the Travis Kalanick; the giants with an uncompromising vision and an iron will, as though they have stepped fresh from the pages of one of Ayn Rand’s novels.

“Innovation,” Steve Jobs once said, “distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Now, if ever there were a prototypical follower, it would have to be the government. After all, why else would nearly all the innovative companies of our times hail from the United States, where the state is much smaller than in Europe?

Media outlets including the Economist and the Financial Times never tire of telling us that government’s role is to create the right preconditions: good education, solid infrastructure, attractive tax incentives for innovative businesses. But no more than that. The idea that the cogs in the government machine could divine “the next big thing” is, they insist, an illusion.
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Take the driving force behind the digital revolution, also known as Moore’s law. Back in 1965, the chip designer Gordon Moore was already predicting that processor speeds would accelerate exponentially. He foresaw “such wonders as home computers”, as well as “portable communications equipment” and perhaps even “automatic controls for automobiles”.

And just look at us now! Moore’s law clearly is the golden rule of private innovation, unbridled capitalism, and the invisible hand driving us to ever lofty heights. There’s no other explanation – right? Not quite.

For years, Moore’s law has been almost single-handedly upheld by a Dutch company – one that made it big thanks to massive subsidisation by the Dutch government. No, this is not a joke: the fundamental force behind the internet, the modern computer and the driverless car is a government beneficiary from “socialist” Holland.

Our story begins on 1 April 1984 in a shed knocked together on an isolated lot in Veldhoven, a town in the south of the Netherlands. This is where a small startup called ASML first saw the light of day. Employing a couple of dozen techies, it was a collaborative venture between Philips and ASM International set up to produce “hi-tech lithography systems”: in plain English, machines that draw minuscule lines on chips.

Fast-forward 25 years, and ASML is a major corporation employing more than 13,000 engineers at 70 locations in 16 countries. With a turnover of over €5.9 billion (£5.2bn) and earnings of €1.2bn, it is one of the most successful Dutch companies, ever. It controls over 80% of the chip machine market – the global market, mind you.

In point of fact, the company is the most powerful force upholding Moore’s law. For them, this law is not a prediction: it’s a target. The iPhone, Google’s search engine, the kitty clips – it would all be unthinkable without those crazy Dutch dreamers from Veldhoven.

Naturally, you’ll be wondering who was behind this paragon of innovation. The story told by the company itself fits the familiar mould, of a handful of revolutionaries who got together and turned the world upside down. “It was a matter of hard work, sweat and pure determination against almost insurmountable odds,” explains ASML in its corporate history. “It is a story of individuals who together achieved greatness.”

    Government isn’t just there to administer life-support to failing markets. Without it, many would not even exist

There’s one protagonist you never find mentioned in these sort of stories: government. But dive deep into the archives of newspapers and annual reports – back to the early 90s – and another side to this story emerges.

From the get-go, ASML was receiving government handouts. By the fistful. When in 1986 a crisis in the worldwide chip industry brought ASML to its knees, and while several big competitors toppled, the chip machine-maker from the south of Holland got a leg-up from its national government. “Competitors who had survived the crisis no longer had enough funds to develop the next big thing,” explains the company’s site. So while its rivals licked their wounds, ASML shot into the lead. Is ASML an anomaly in the history of innovation? Not quite.

A few years ago the economist Mariana Mazzucato published a fascinating book debunking a whole series of myths about innovation. Her thesis is summed up in the title – The Entrepreneurial State.

Radical innovation, Mazzucato reveals, almost always starts with the government. Take the iPhone, the epitome of modern technological progress. Literally every single sliver of technology that makes the iPhone a smartphone instead of a stupidphone – internet, GPS, touchscreen, battery, hard drive, voice recognition – was developed by researchers on the government payroll.

Why, then, do nearly all the innovative companies of our times come from the US? The answer is simple. Because it is home to the biggest venture capitalist in the world: the government of the United States of America.

These days there is a widespread political belief that governments should only step in when markets “fail”. Yet, as Mazzucato convincingly demonstrates, government can actually generate whole new markets. Silicon Valley, if you look back, started out as subsidy central. “The true secret of the success of Silicon Valley, or of the bio- and nanotechnology sectors,” Mazzucato points out, “is that venture investors surfed on a big wave of government investments.”
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True innovation takes at least 10 to 15 years, whereas the longest that private venture capitalists are routinely willing to wait is five years. They don’t join the game until all the riskiest plays have already been made – by governments. In the case of biotechnology, nanotechnology and the internet, venture investors didn’t jump on the bandwagon until after 15 to 20 years. Venture capitalists are not willing to venture enough.

The relationship between government and the market is mutual and necessary. Apple may not have invented the internet, GPS, touchscreens, batteries, hard drives and voice recognition; but then again, Washington was never very likely to make iPhones. There’s not much point to radical innovations if no one turns them into products.

To dismiss the government as a bumbling slowpoke, however, won’t get us anywhere. Because it’s not the invisible hand of the market but the conspicuous hand of the state that first points the way. Government isn’t there just to administer life support to failing markets. Without the government, many of those markets would not even exist.

The most daunting challenges of our times, from climate change to the ageing population, demand an entrepreneurial state unafraid to take a gamble. Rather than wait around for the market, government needs to have vision, be decisive – to take to heart Steve Jobs’ motto: stay hungry, stay foolish.

• Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There is available from the Guardian bookshop

This article was translated from Dutch by Elizabeth Manton

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18. COMBATING HATRED WITH HISTORY
by Guy Verhofstadt
========================================
(Social Europe - 13 September 2017)

After a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which anti-fascist campaigner Heather Heyer was killed, and many others injured, US President Donald Trump notoriously blamed “both sides” for the violence. By equating neo-Nazis with those who stood against them, Trump (further) sullied his presidency. And by describing some of the participants in the Charlottesville rally as “very fine people,” he gave a nod to far-right bigots worldwide.

A few weeks thereafter, just as Hurricane Harvey was bearing down on Texas, Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona. Arpaio had been convicted of contempt of court in July for defying a federal judge’s order to stop racially profiling Latinos. But the way Trump sees it, Arpaio was “convicted for doing his job.”

Arpaio once boasted that the outdoor jail where he held undocumented immigrants was akin to a concentration camp. And he is now a leading exponent of the Tea Party and other xenophobic right-wing movements that rallied behind Trump in last year’s election. By pardoning Arpaio, Trump was, once again, implicitly embracing white supremacists and nativists worldwide.

Sadly, many of Trump’s allies in the Republican Party have barely raised an eyebrow in response to his latest words and actions. And according to a recent ABC News-Washington Post poll, 9% of respondents – “equivalent to about 22 million Americans” – find it “acceptable to hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views.”

This is a shocking finding. But it is not limited to the United States. Europe, too, is witnessing a worrying surge of racism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia. In a recent poll conducted for Chatham House, 55% of European respondents agreed that “all further migration from mainly Muslim countries” should be stopped. That is higher than the 48% of Americans who, in February, supported Trump’s executive order barring travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

It is time for Europeans who would prefer to dismiss white supremacy as an American phenomenon to mind their own backyards. Since Trump’s election in the US and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, hate speech and crimes against ethnic minorities and foreign nationals have started to become normalized in many Western countries.

Most worryingly, intolerance may be on the rise among young people. The British magazine TES reports that “hate crimes and hate incidents in British schools” increased by 48% in the summer and fall terms of 2016, compared to the same period of the previous year. As the report notes, this coincides precisely with the Brexit referendum and Trump’s election.

In today’s information landscape, social media have become the primary means for spreading hatred. The largest social-media platforms are now host to countless fake and anonymous accounts that spew xenophobic, nationalistic, and racist messages. These accounts are polluting a medium that many young people enjoy, and exposing impressionable minds to dangerous falsehoods and conspiracy theories. And more often than not, they are being operated with impunity by Russian-sponsored trolls in Macedonia or elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

But it is not just online trolls who are empowering people to be racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic. Many world leaders and prominent opinion makers are doing it, too. Although mainstream European leaders offered a clear rebuke to the Charlottesville violence and Trump’s reaction to it, they need to go further. Now more than ever, the European Union must demonstrate its commitment to upholding core values of equality and tolerance.

The fact that the current Hungarian and Polish governments are intentionally undermining democratic institutions in those countries should be evidence enough that we cannot take freedom, liberty, and the rule of law for granted. It took many years to build democratic institutions in Central and Eastern Europe, but it has taken just a few parliamentary elections to reverse that progress. For the sake of European democracy, the other members of the EU must take collective action now to sanction these increasingly authoritarian governments for their transgressions.

After an increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2004, when I was the prime minister of Belgium, I launched an initiative to remind young people of the costs of World War II. During their history lessons, Belgian students would learn about the implications and negative consequences of certain ideologies.

With hatred on the march again today, we must remember that education is crucial in the fight against authoritarianism, which can thrive on generational complacency. To ensure that democratic values prevail, we must encourage all people to reflect on the lessons of the past, when grotesque abuses were perpetrated against millions.

We owe it to all of those who suffered under past authoritarian regimes to stand up now for democratic values. We can start by pushing back, as Heather Heyer did, against the right-wing populists who are openly fomenting hatred across the West.

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19. A JIHADIST BREAKUP IN SYRIA: TAHRIR AL-SHAM SPLITS | Aron Lund
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(Foreign Affairs,  September 15, 2017)

On September 13, Syria’s most powerful jihadist group split. Not the badly degraded Islamic State (ISIS)—which the U.S. military believes is down to around 10,000 fighters in its crumbling eastern Syrian strongholds—but Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which dominates northwestern Syria’s Idlib region.

Tahrir al-Sham has recently lost some of its most important leaders, leaving the group’s hold on power weaker than before. Meanwhile Ankara-backed Syrian rebels are lining up behind a plan to sideline the group, just as Turkish officials sit down with Iran and Russia in Astana to talk about solving Idlib’s jihadist problem.

A defeat for Tahrir al-Sham would undoubtedly have far-ranging consequences both for Syria and for international counterterrorism planning. But the group’s enemies shouldn’t get their hopes up yet—on closer inspection, Syria’s jihadists may well weather the current storm.

COMING APART

When Islamist hardliners came together in January to create a new Syrian super-group under the name Tahrir al-Sham, that seemed like a final nail in the coffin of the uprising against the country’s authoritarian leader, Bashar al-Assad. Syria’s Sunni insurgents were already on the ropes, and if they were now to be fronted by a jihadist group, they could kiss all hopes of international support goodbye.

In July, Tahrir al-Sham cemented its power in Idlib by smashing its Turkish-backed rival Ahrar al-Sham and monopolizing key assets in the province, such as the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, the local sharia courts, and aid-funded public service providers. Tahrir al-Sham is back down to its historic core: the al-Qaeda offshoot previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra.

“Today Idlib is dominated by the Tahrir al-Sham faction,” I was told last month by Abderrazzaq al-Mehdi, an influential Salafist preacher in Idlib who briefly joined Tahrir al-Sham in January before leaving. The group “is the biggest and the strongest” in Idlib, Mehdi told me, although he added that there is still “a number of factions that have a presence and that exercise control in some areas.”

Since its triumph over Ahrar, Tahrir al-Sham has continued its attempts to consolidate power. But its overwhelming dominance has sparked new resentments and exposed internal rifts. One of Tahrir al-Sham’s constituent parts, a formerly U.S.-backed group known as the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Brigades, left in July to protest the crackdown on Ahrar. Then on September 11 the online jihadist celebrity Abdullah al-Muhaysini and another prominent Saudi preacher quit the group. Wednesday saw the most severe blow to the group yet, when Abu Saleh Tahan, a powerful former Ahrar commander, announced that his men would be leaving Tahrir al-Sham to work independently instead.

With Tahan’s defection, Tahrir al-Sham is back down to its historic core: the al-Qaeda offshoot previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra. As a rebel unity project, the group is starting to look like a failure.

Khalil Ashawi / Reuters Snow covers a village in southern Idlib province, January 2016.

GETTING TO DE-ESCALATION

Although Tahrir al-Sham has split, Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have been trying to cobble together an opposition force capable of challenging the group’s hegemony and making Idlib a “de-escalation zone” in accordance with the Astana peace process, run jointly by Iran, Russia, and Turkey. According to Russian Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi, the newest round of talks—which started yesterday in Kazakhstan—will specifically focus on how to bring Idlib into the de-escalation arrangements, which prescribe a long-term ceasefire and some form of temporary self-governance.

Doing so, however, is easier said than done. Policing a ceasefire in northwestern Syria will require dealing with Tahrir al-Sham one way or another. Although Abderrazzaq al-Mehdi argues that Tahrir may remake itself into an internationally accepted “civilian administration” that could continue to operate inside the de-escalation zone, diplomats have less faith in such schemes. The United States has warned of “military measures” if the jihadists consolidate control over Idlib, and a State Department official told me last month that the terrorism designations originally applied to the Jabhat al-Nusra in 2012 will remain in force “regardless of what name it uses or what groups merge with it.” Russia, too, refers to Tahrir al-Sham as a “dangerous enemy” and has warned that it must not be allowed to slip off terrorism lists.

None of the nations involved in the Astana process seems comfortable with treating the group as a legitimate actor, even though it is likely to dominate any ceasefire zone declared across Idlib. For months now, Moscow and Tehran have been pushing Turkey to develop a plan to tamp down the jihadist presence in Idlib, threatening to back a new regime offensive if Ankara doesn’t deliver.

Turkey has tried to play along to the best of its ability. “Our expectation is the declaration of Idlib as a de-conflict zone,” said Turkish presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin on Thursday, adding that “Turkey will do whatever [is] necessary if there is a role it can play.”

The problem is not that Turkey doesn’t want to comply, but that it doesn’t know how. After the purges in January and July, Ankara lacks a useful set of allies inside Idlib. Tahrir al-Sham still has plenty of enemies who are also friends of Turkey, but they are divided and leaderless. And if the Syrian war has taught us anything, it’s that many small factions who won’t work together cannot defeat a big, centralized group with no compunctions about violent repression. To undercut Tahrir al-Sham, the Turks first need to gather their own opposition allies behind a joint leadership.

TURKEY'S PLAN

On August 30, an influential group of exiled Sunni clergy known as the Syrian Islamic Council called on non-jihadist rebel factions to unite in a “national army” to be run under the auspices of the opposition’s exile government in Gaziantep, Turkey. The plan, which clearly enjoys Ankara’s blessing, has been endorsed by dozens of rebel factions, including a number of small Free Syrian Army affiliates and what’s left of Ahrar al-Sham.

On September 11, the Gaziantep government unveiled its proposed leadership for the new rebel force. Its choice of defense minister, Colonel Muhammed Faris, was an eccentric one: Faris has played no previous part in the insurgency, but in 1987 became the first and only Syrian cosmonaut launched into space. For army chief of staff, Gaziantep proposed an old Free Syrian Army hand—Salim Idris, an avuncular brigadier-general who served as the frontman for Syria’s armed resistance from 2012 until 2014, when his version of the Free Syrian Army collapsed in one of the insurgency’s countless, pointless splits. Idris, however, appears to have turned down the post.

Mukhtar Kholdorbekov / Reuters Syria peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan, September 2017.

Even hardline Islamists are now falling in line with Ankara’s strategy, apparently sensing that it is their last chance to get Tahrir al-Sham off their back and save Idlib from being branded a jihadist terrorist enclave and treated by the international community like ISIS-ruled Raqqa.

On Wednesday, the Ahrar al-Sham leader Hassan Soufan announced on Twitter that his group would henceforth “struggle at the negotiating table.” Though the wording was unclear, it was widely understood to mean that Ahrar al-Sham will finally give up on its rejectionist attitude and join the Astana talks.

Soufan confirmed that theory on Thursday evening: “Yes, we are indeed participating in Astana,” he told me. “And we are for the construction of a national army into which all opposition factions will enter under the ceiling of the country’s interest, in accordance with a just system that safeguards freedoms.”

For years, Ahrar al-Sham has refused to join rebel unity projects of precisely this type, citing concerns over their Islamic legitimacy. Now that the group is finally droping its resistance to policies that are already shared by virtually all other rebel groups except Tahrir al-Sham and its extremist allies, the Syrian opposition has, for the first time, a chance to create a politically unified rebel front opposing both Assad and Tahrir al-Sham. But is that enough to make a difference?

TAHRIR ISN'T DEAD YET

The decision of different groups to coalesce behind Ankara’s strategy may seem like an impressive display of opposition unity in the face of Idlib’s jihadist overlords, perhaps even a game changer in the wider war. But on its own, it is too little, too late.

For starters, the exile government's much-vaunted national army seems to be taking shape in exile only. Although their plan is backed by Ahrar al-Shamand the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Brigades, it lacks buy-in from the two other second-tier armed groups in Idlib, the Tahrir-friendly Chinese Uighur jihadis of the Turkestan Islamic Party and Abu Saleh Tahan’s splinter faction. What’s left is a potpourri of disaffected Islamists, commanders-in-exile, and star-crossed Free Syrian Army grouplets. Although such a coalition would have mattered in the past and might still make a difference in other parts of Syria, it seems unlikely to produce meaningful change on the ground in Idlib, where Tahrir al-Sham remains a formidable presence, ready to crack down on the first sign of rebel reorganization.

The only thing realistically capable of tipping the scales in favor of Idlib’s non-jihadist groups would be a forceful Turkish military intervention—one that provides the rebels with the firepower and hands-on leadership they lack. But although Ankara has flirted with intervention during the Astana talks and may at some point opt for limited cross-border deployments, Turkey doesn’t appear to have either the capacity or the commitment to completely reengineer the opposition politics of northwestern Syria. With Turkish troops already bogged down in one open-ended intervention elsewhere in Syria, Ankara will likely think twice before starting another. Any Turkish troop deployment, moreover, would be about fulfilling Turkey’s own interests as negotiated with Russia and Iran—not the interests of the Syrian opposition, which revolve around ways to topple Assad’s government.

This perfect storm, then, seems more like a breeze. In the absence of either a unified opposition or a Turkish intervention, even a weakened Tahrir al-Sham will likely continue to dominate northwestern Syria to the extent that foreign powers refuse to back rebel groups there. If so, Idlib will continue to slide closer to the abyss of Raqqa-style international ostracism, allowing Assad to bide his time until he can resume military operations—this time with international approval.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article failed to note that Salim Idris had turned down the chief-of-staff position, and misstated the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Brigades' position on the exile government's national army. We regret the error.

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20. THE PUZZLE OF POLAND | Jo-Ann Mort
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(Dissent, September 13, 2017)

Demonstrators rally against proposed judiciary reforms outside the Law and Justice Party headquarters in Warsaw, July 26. Their signs read "Constitution" (Grzegorz Żukowski / Flickr)

A quiet but fierce war rages in Poland today for the hearts and minds of the citizenry. The Law and Justice Party (PiS), a right-wing populist party, appears to have a long-term plan to solidify power by weakening all the levers of democracy and civil society. PiS is led by Jarosław Kaczyński—technically just one of Poland’s 460 MPs, but in reality the man pulling the strings of the government. The party’s penetration into all aspects of Polish life—in a strategic attempt to create a new conservative, pro-Catholic nationalistic political order—is being waged against a weak and divided opposition that includes the previous ruling party, Civic Platform, and a burgeoning left-wing party, Razem, along with at least eight other opposition parties, most of them minor.

The print media in Poland appears to be diverse and plentiful, but the large number of magazines at kiosks is deceiving. After coming into office in 2015, the PiS took editorial charge of public radio and television, where news is now fashioned like a government press release with the tone of Trump’s most egregious tweets.

Social media, increasingly used in Poland among all age groups, is heavily penetrated by political manipulation. Activists are particularly likely to be caught in the crossfire, especially those that become visible in the public media. “Trolling is an everyday thing,” said one digital-rights advocate. “All activists know it is a part of their life now.”

Yet, even though the center and left political parties are in disarray, there is a vibrant and well organized network of organizations fighting back. In late July, large street demonstrations successfully challenged the government’s plan to take control of the nation’s high court (although the Polish government continues to challenge the EU governing council’s threats by voicing support for judicial reform still to come). It is as likely that the government is using this as a maneuver to solidify their support by challenging the EU as it is that they will go ahead with the judicial changes, but many I met fear that the government will ultimately ignore the street protests and the EU and take control of the courts. Last October, there were successful protests against rigorous proposed anti-abortion laws in this profoundly Catholic country. The nonprofits forming this protest network support a range of issues, from democracy to gender equality and LGBTQ equality, and are led largely by millennials, for whom the fight against Soviet authoritarianism is either a distant memory or simply the stuff of history books.

Yet in a nation where competing histories are constantly being used by opposing sides to score political points, certain leading figures in that fight still loom large. Among the most important of these leaders is Adam Michnik, whom I met recently in his office at the New York Times of Poland, Gazeta Wyborcza. The offices themselves have taken on something of a Google-like caste, as smartly dressed millennials mingle with baby boomers amid trendy snack bars and work stations. The building housing them is a sleek, modern outpost on a residential side street, home to a diversified publishing empire of which the newspaper is one piece (and not a profitable one, behind subsidiaries in social media, publishing, advertising, cinema, radio, and so on). Atop the reporters and bloggers sits Adam Michnik, Gazeta Wyborcza’s editor-in-chief and the iconic intellectual of the Polish Solidarity movement that led the revolutions in the 1980s and early ‘90s.

Imprisoned for his anti-Soviet activities, forced from university when he was a young revolutionary, Michnik has been the editor of Gazeta Wyborcza since its founding in 1989. Gazeta was once known as the voice of the revolution. But it is now more the paper of and for the intellectual elite, a slice of society in which most of the original group of Solidarity intellectuals now find themselves.

Michnik chain-smoked as we sat in his book-strewn office, with citations, honorary degrees, and photographs recording his decades in the public eye mounted on the wall. With the help of translator Dawid Krawczyk, a journalist and managing editor of Political Critique (Krytyka Polityczna), a Warsaw-based social democratic/left journal and publishing house that has a collegial relationship with Dissent, Michnik and I discussed the government’s war against independent media and the courts.

“As an editor of a newspaper, I can say that there is now free media in Poland, but they took over public radio and TV and made it into a party institution,” say Michnik, reflecting on the precarious nature of his paper’s finances. “They say they are coming after us now . . . the state-controlled businesses are not allowed to advertise in our papers, only in the pro-regime paper, and public offices have been told not to subscribe.

“I wouldn’t like my children to live in a country submitted to the dictatorship of haters and fools. I will do my best to secure better for them. For now, they allow us to write and live but I feel like this atmosphere is much tenser. What’s important in Poland is that there is no fascism right now, but there are fascists active not being punished.”

Referring to the country’s current leadership, he continued with a big grin, “they are so happy about Trump!” In a more sobering moment, he said: “Trump’s election is a catastrophe for Poland. I hope for the democratic institutions in the U.S. to constrain him. How is it possible that the U.S. could elect a clown? The Trump administration just greenlighted authoritarian leaders in this part of the world.”

The EU has threatened to invoke harsh measures if the Polish government does indeed take over the courts, and they are watching the government’s war on the media. Michnik is pessimistic that this will do much. “I’m not sure they will just accept what the EU says, though most Poles want to stay in the EU, according to public opinion polling. The government wants a collision. I think they don’t respect European values. They would be very happy if Wilders and Marine Le Pen won,” he mused, referring to the Dutch and French far-right leaders. “They are psychologically anti-EU because they are anti-liberal.”

Poland, as the first domino to break away from Soviet domination, also led the way for the other breakaway countries—and even the Soviet Union itself—to turn away from communism. However, for those of us who hoped that this transition would lead to social democracy, the reality is jarring. Could something have been done differently?

“For us, from the democratic opposition—where I served for twenty-five years—when I was underground and in prison, it seemed that the key to everything is freedom, national and human rights, but in these societies, there is a very strong trace of the concept of ‘escape from freedom’ [also translated as fear of freedom], as Erich Fromm wrote. It turns out that for hundreds of thousands of people, security is more important. When the police state is over, there is fear for personal security, safety. A dictatorship keeps gangsters away,” he reflected, musing that people are comforted by authority—a difficult idea to swallow for someone who went to prison numerous times for the dream of breathing free air.

“There is a fragile structure in our young democracy, but we believe that there is no way back from democracy. We have NATO; we have the EU, at the same time we have Brexit. We have these two [competing visions of the future],” continued Michnik. “What I say now is very subjective. I am actively engaged in the conflict. I am among those who are most strongly attacked by propaganda. I would say that today, [PiS party leader] Kaczynski woke up vast demons in the Polish soul, like xenophobia. He is not anti-Semitic; he is anti-liberal. He won’t say Michnik is a Jew; he will say Michnik is from a Communist family and that he, Kaczynski, is from a patriotic family.” (Michnik was raised as a secular Jew; his parents were leaders in the Ukrainian regional communist party).

The hope that strong social democracies would take the place of the Eastern Bloc countries, from Poland through the rest of region, faded fast. No party with a serious chance at power today promotes economic egalitarianism. Instead, the region is dominated by a mix of neoliberal economic policies and conservative social ones. Many blame this on Michnik and his minions, who, very early on, brought in economists who administered “shock therapy,” that cold shower of capitalist reform, to the collapsing Soviet system. Solidarity, the unique trade union movement that led the revolution in Poland, today serves more as a marketing brand name, with its familiar red logo and font, than a force for economic and social justice.

I asked him what he thought about that. “I don’t know what neoliberal policies were in the Polish context, because we had a transition from a centralized to a market economy and of course, there were winners and losers. It’s a feature of a market economy. Our leaders were more focused on economic growth and infrastructure, and less interested in people in poverty. This was exploited by Kaczynski’s party,” Michnik postulates, referring to the PiS party’s appeal among those left behind by liberalization. In describing his sense of what happened, he seems genuinely baffled by this desire among the poor for economic well-being above all. This is where Michnik’s own liberal and not social democratic or socialist leanings began to show, and while I agree with him that the PiS-led government is cynically manipulating this economic insecurity to hold on to a base in Poland’s more conservative pockets, the fact is that the lack of an economic program that showed most people a better future for their children was a significant failing among all of the revolutionary governments that broke from communism.

Was there another way? I brought this same question to another former Solidarity leader, Konstanty Gebert, who is today a foreign affairs columnist and reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza. “The idea was that radical liberal economic reform was the only game in town. Jacek Kuroń [one of the leaders of KOR, a precursor to Solidarity] repeated that we first must build capitalism to then milk it for socialist purposes. And the reforms worked: hyperinflation was curtailed and goods appeared in shops again. Everything else smacked of socialism. The new leadership was aware of the social cost, but called it the ‘unavoidable price of transformation.’”

“The working class initially bought it,” said Gebert. “They thought they were trading equality of income (largely hypothetical anyway) for equality of opportunity: they expected their children will have, once the transformation is complete, as good a start in life as anybody else. It is when the workers realized inequality is being inherited that they started to rebel. They were willing to be yet another generation serving as the manure of history—but they were supposed to be the last one.”

“In the underground, we were all ‘us’ against the ‘them’—now the workers started to fear that the elite part of ‘us’ was becoming the new ‘them.’ Cultural differences, hitherto immaterial, started to become relevant again, as indicators of alienness,” Gebert explained, referring to most Catholics among the workers and a high percentage of Jews among the intellectuals and opposition, or atheists of Jewish origin. “And it went downhill from there.”

Certainly, this is something that many of the young activists on the streets of Poland today are forced to grapple with as the hearts and the minds of the non-elite intellectual class are captured by a dangerous conservative right.

Here’s how Gebert summed it up: “In history everything could have been different. Post-‘89 transformations offer only negative counterexamples. On the other hand, who knows: maybe we would have become the positive one, had we adopted the then much-ridiculed ‘third way’ [in this context, social democracy or a ‘mixed’ economy]. In any case, the belief that ‘it cannot be different’ (keine Experimente!) was part of the problem, because it tended to delegitimize any criticism.”

Yet the failure to maintain a strong social welfare state in the wake of communism directly helped fuel the right-wing attack on the courts, the media, culture and increasingly, academia that Poland is witnessing today. By disregarding the need for a stable economic foundation expressed by many of their compatriots, the extraordinary heroes like Michnik who toppled communism put their own project of growing freedom and democracy at risk. They left a huge gap into which xenophobic, corrupt right-wing governments are now stepping, in Poland and across the region. The previous government, under the Civic Platform party that has since nearly disintegrated, promoted human and personal rights and freedoms, but also gave free rein to its business allies. Moreover, it neglected the real poverty and economic fear afflicting those not winning out from the reforms it oversaw. Perceived as a legacy of the very heroes who toppled communism—now an intellectual and cultural elite, according to most Poles—Civic Platform therefore strengthened the divide between the elites and those who now cling to the hope that the PiS party will finally stand up for them.

Unlike the Trump administration, the PiS government is successfully making some economic changes to benefit its base. It is even helping keep the coal mines open—echoing Trump’s promise to the miners in West Virginia, but matching it with state subsidies to keep coal afloat despite its diminishing viability (ironically shadowing a Soviet style economy of keeping workers working in spite of the need for their product). A cornerstone of the PIS government’s social policy is a monthly subsidy of 500 zlotys (about $140 USD) that they are providing to families with a second child. This not only aids family welfare in a direct deposit framework, but it encourages larger Catholic families, who form a significant part of the PiS’s base. This reform, which Michnik dismissed in our conversation as a cynical move, is not perceived that way by those Poles, who feel real relief when they receive the checks. This majority now believes that the PiS government is on their side, cynical though the party’s aim may, in fact, be. As Michał Sutowksi of Political Critique told me: “Kaczynski doesn’t know too much about economics, but what is interesting to him is sovereignty and what kind of economic policy can help sustain power.”

Just ask a taxi driver, as any journalist is quick to do. As I watched Warsaw through the windows of my taxi en route to Chopin Airport, my taxi driver told me: “The old government was good for business and Europe”—not the people. Having graduated from high school in the late 1980s, his memories were not about communism, but about feeling left out of the prosperity that communism’s collapse provided for others. “The new government accepts normal people—it’s for poor people. 500 zlotys is a big change for these people,” he said as he pointed out the bumper sticker on the car in front of us that read 500+, the slogan of the popular second-child campaign.

My driver, who kept insisting that he didn’t follow politics, did reveal that he had been closely following the fight over the judiciary and that he was concerned that the PiS party had pushed too hard. “It’s very good that the president vetoed the judges issue,” he told me. (The veto marked a first for Polish president Andrzej Duda, a faithful member of PiS.) “It’s dangerous for our country, dangerous for democracy. I like this president,” he concluded, hoping to keep me from asking him more political questions so that he could press me for advice on where he should go on his upcoming first visit to the United States, besides fulfilling his lifetime dream to see the Grand Canyon.

As the largest economy in Central Europe and the eighth-largest in the EU, Poland is still key to the future of the region, just as it was in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. If there is hope, it is with the younger generation, which feels the benefits of life in the EU and whose worldview is not shaped by memories of life under communism. While the PiS party rails against Europe and the EU, seeking to consolidate its more rural, conservative base and build a new Polish right-wing nationalism, university-age and millennial Poles feel otherwise. “Leaving the EU could trigger mass protests,” Krawczyk told me. “The EU is part of the historical identity of my generation. It’s so strongly rooted that you must have a position regarding the EU. And the base of PiS has a significant economic stake in the EU [too], even if their cultural heart is at home in the Polish countryside. The biggest beneficiaries of EU integration are Polish farmers.”

While the current crisis in Poland does not feel like class war, it is class warfare of its own sort—much like the one that brought Trump to power in our own country—as a vocal, conservative segment of the working class faces off against the liberal elites it has long seen as ruling the country from on high.

Without a more inclusive alternative on offer, crude, xenophobic populism takes hold. How the liberal elites, in Poland and elsewhere, respond will determine whether values that these same elites hold dear—like freedom and democracy—can indeed be nourished. Freedom must include freedom from want—that is, economic equality and opportunity. The strength of the organizations that put tens of thousands of people on the streets in early July could play a major role in changing Poland’s course, much like the groups that have proliferated in the wake of Trump’s election here. But they will only succeed with electoral counterparts to match them—counterparts that can shift the political winds enough to finally allow social democracy to get its chance in Poland. Razem, a left-wing party formed in 2015, represents the politics of many of these groups, but it is still a relatively fledgling and small political force.

Despite rosy projections from some economists, the legacy of the shock-therapy 1990s is still acutely felt today. Poland’s GDP per capita is among the lowest in Europe, ranking just above that of Greece. Economic insecurity—and a sense of being stuck for future alternatives—is widespread, and discontent along with it. Can a new democratic left gain enough stature to offer a tangible alternative to the right-wing populism strangling Poland today, and recapture the hearts and minds of an angry working class in the process? This remains the unanswered question from the momentous revolutions that collapsed the communist states.

Jo-Ann Mort is a member of the Dissent editorial board.

Read more Dissent coverage of Poland, dating back to the 1980s and beyond.
Correction: This article originally described Jarosław Kaczyński as an “unelected politico.” As a member of parliament, he is in fact elected, although his power in the country is vastly disproportionate to his elected position. The text has been corrected above. We regret the error.

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