Posts by author:
Chris Bertram
From back when I was shooting film sometimes:
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Kitchy and quasi-totalitarian ghastliness, USA (from 2008)
Obviously people are shocked, and particularly shocked at the rejection of normal sensible politics by the rubes who have elected an oaf, a criminal and a rapist to the White House, again. But the trouble is that this kind of thing keeps happening, or nearly happening, and not just in the United States. And it turns out that the policies pursued by the MAGA extremists, by Le Pen, Meloni or Farage, aren’t really all that different from the ones followed by the normal sensible people, albeit that the rhetoric from the sensibles is less crude and laced with sweeteners about “compassion”.
The underlying problem is nationalism and the organization of the world into nation states, a form of organization that fosters and promotes nationalist sentiment and attachment and downplays transnational concern and solidarity, which is “all very well” but shouldn’t come “at our expense”. This has been the problem since well before 1914, but was particularly in evidence then as the greatest movement of international solidarity that had ever been built largely collapsed in favour of supporting “our boys” against theirs. It was there in the 1930s, not only in the rise of particularly agressive nationalisms but in the failure of normal sensible states to come to the assistance of those threatened by it, such as Jews fleeing across borders. All very well, but not at our expense. And it is, rather obviously, in evidence now as countries struggle with people moving and with climate change. All very well, but not at our expense.
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Donald Trump has made very public threats to persecute his political opponents should he be re-elected and statements by him and by other leading Republicans suggests that he might persecute others on the grounds of their religion or their membership of certain social groups. If this were happen (rather than simply being bluster) then it could turn out, very soon, that some US citizens will find themselves outside of their country, with a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds outlined in the 1951 Refugee Convention, and on the territory of a state signatory of the Convention. Some of those states will also be allies of the US through NATO and other treaties and will have extradition treaties with the US. In which case what might happen?
- Currently most of the relevant states try to prevent people likely to claim asylum from arriving on their territory (and their leaders denounce those who do arrive as “illegal immigrants”). Most of the states concerned currently have visa waiver programmes for US citizens and would probably be reluctant on economic and geopolitical grounds to shut those down, although it is possible they might in response to a similar tightening by a Trump administation. So one question is whether such states will try to make it more difficult for Americans to visit. If they don’t then US citizens will find it relatively easy to escape to those countries.
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At the Château of Azay-le-Rideau in the Loire.
Kids today probably don’t know about punched cards, but when I was at school we all had to play around with them a bit as we learnt about state-of-the-art computing …. But the technology derives from weaving, and from the Jacquard loom of 1804.
