The 'fitna' in Washington DC
https://arab.news/pw7up
What happened in Washington DC in anticipation of the certification of the US election result that formally declares Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States is a cataclysm that merits deep and sustained reflection. There are five immediate things that may help us in that process of reflection.
One, the good news: the storming of the US Capitol Building was not a coup d’etat, nor is it comparable to the numerous coups that have taken place in numerous countries over the last many decades.
The US system of checks and balances, and the institutional edifice that sustains them is deeper, stronger, better financed, and better owned by the American elite than the constitutions and norms of countries where coups have taken place. That the American elite also presides over institutional mechanisms that actively conspire to deny people in other countries the same freedoms that they pride their own system for is a relevant point if your drink of choice is schadenfreude. But for any reasonable analysis or insights to be drawn from the storming of the Capitol, we need to first dispense with lazy analogies. What Trump supporters did was criminal and it was dark. But it was not a coup. It was a mob attack on a building and on a process. The fact that the process went ahead, and the building and its occupants, for the most part, survived, is the good news.
Two, the bad news: what the storming of the US Capitol signifies is much more profound and problematic than the affirmation of the US presidential election, or the image of the United States around the world. It signifies a set of divisions in America that are so deep, that there is no possible end in sight. The Proud Boys are permanent. Unlike the Nation of Islam, or Malcolm X, or other political movements with real elbows and knees, the white supremacist nature of Trump insurrectionists will not be stamped out. Its leaders will not be assassinated. Its perpetrators will not be prosecuted by batons and the use of excess force. The dead bodies will pile up for the Black Lives Matter movement, not for the Proud Boys.
Three, the worse news: the new, incoming US administration will be hamstrung, handcuffed and paralysed by three factors that will shape and define President-elect Joe Biden. The first is the thin margin of the Democratic majority in the House (11 representatives) and the Senate (one senate vote, Kamala Harris’). The second is the institutionally embedded nature of white supremacist views and attitudes within US law enforcement and military ranks. The third is the intensely held beliefs, and a powerful sense of human decency, that define Joe Biden, the person.
The people that will run the US from January 20 onwards will be accountable to a boss that seeks consensus and middle ground with everyone and believes that everyone is ultimately decent and wants to do good. This means that rather than stamping out the narratives and people that are fuelling insurrection, President Biden will be looking to accommodate and adjust for their grievances. Few US politicians that are alive today have the kind of record of meeting their opposition halfway as does Biden. He will attempt to focus on a pandemic response that privileges cash payments to Americans hit hard by COVID-19, and vaccinations. But he will discover that at each step of the way, his path is beset by the poison that has seeped into middle America’s central nervous system, via the Glenn Becks, Sean Hannitys and Alex Jones’ of America.
On January 20, the Trumpistas will not disappear. They will be mobilized for a four-year mission unlike any time in history. If you thought the Obama era complicated, rather than resolved, American harmony and racial unity, wait till you see how the angry white supremacists talk about Kamala Harris, Susan Rice, Neera Tandon and other visible minorities in Biden’s camp.
On January 20, the Trumpistas will not disappear. They will be mobilized for a four-year mission unlike any time in history. If you thought the Obama era complicated, rather than resolved, American harmony and racial unity, wait till you see how the angry white supremacists talk about Kamala Harris, Susan Rice, Neera Tandon and other visible minorities in Biden’s camp.
Mosharraf Zaidi
Four, what does all this mean for the rest of the world? The Obama era veterans that President-elect Biden has chosen to lead national security and foreign policy will be a remarkable breath of fresh air for believers in a more peaceful world. But they carry the liability of institutional memory and will try to establish a foreign policy and national security posture that harkens back to ideals in accordance with the process of their socialization and politicization.
This is why there is talk of a “return” to the JCPOA, a “slowing down” of the Afghanistan withdrawal process, a “de-escalation” with China and a “renewal” with Europe. The problem is that America carries neither the economic, nor diplomatic coercive powers it had in 2008, nor those it retained by 2016. More worryingly, the emergence of peripheral narratives as ones that shape the mainstream at both ends of the US political spectrum, means that the idea of American norms and values is not the same as it was from 2008 to 2016.
America’s power abroad will be exercised by officials that were blooded into the system in the past, but ones that are dealing with a world in which Foreground 2024 is much closer, and more real than Background 2008. Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China aren’t the same as they were. And the middle powers that seek to negotiate between the right side of America and the wrong side of it, have that much more room to do so.
How will Biden’s decency play in Brasilia, where Latin Proud Boy Jair Bolsanaro presides over a racial and social catastrophe? How will Jake Sullivan’s entreaties to human rights and freedom play in New Delhi, where Muslims are increasingly being hounded by mobs, the media and legislatures that have scurried deep into fascist territory? How will the Middle East respond to the kind of diplomatic appeals and military power that was suspended for four years? We don’t know. And sadly, neither does Joe Biden.
Five, and finally, we need to openly and robustly acknowledge what brought us to this state. All opinions are not equal.
A PhD in medicine with a specialization in infectious diseases is more important on the issue of COVID-19 than a passionate university student. This is not ageism, sexism or expertism. It is fact. Social media tools have created a world in which every voice has a reasonable chance at having weight and currency. This is what has manufactured the Nigel Farages of the world. But all this freedom and voice and agency is as fake as the fake news that it constantly laments.
Ultimately, social media needs substantial regulation. Otherwise, the attack on the US Capitol is only the beginning of a global and local process in which the mobs will rule earth. It may be orthodox and old fashioned, but it was never more true: order is better than fitna.
– Mosharraf Zaidi is a columnist and policy analyst. He works for the policy think tank, Tabadlab.
Twitter: @mosharrafzaidi
