Archive for the ‘human rights’ Category
The Long Year of BREXITRUMP
The year 2017 began on 24 June 2016 with the leave result in the EU Referendum and was accelerated several months later with the successful election of Donald Trump as President of the United States on 9 November.
In both events, significant proportions of the electorate in both the UK and the US had ostensibly become fed up with the status quo, and a renewed politics of resentment ushered in two astounding electoral victories that will change Anglo-American politics forever.
Much of the diagnosis of the problems of contemporary politics and governance was correct: globalisation, free trade, democratization, human rights, integration, and other symbols of a liberal world order simply had not delivered enough tangible benefit to enough people who then used their power of the vote to make their voices heard.
The solution being offered for the ills of this liberal world order, however, have been extremely divisive with their appeal to the baser instincts of human nature: relative deprivation, xenophobia, racism, isolationism, economic nationalism and an extreme over-simplification of politics that divides the world between notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
BREXITRUMP is my own neologism that captures what we experienced in 2017 and what we will experience in 2018 and beyond as the full ramifications of these two elections run their course. As 2018 begins, my deepest worries are about how profound and how long the effects of BREXITRUMP will be.
First, the campaigns for leaving the EU and Making America Great Again engaged in a certain ‘logic of equivalence’ where highly disparate groups of people are discursively constructed to be the same (or at least equivalent) with a view to galvanising supporters through a politics of ‘the other’ and fear of the unknown.
For Nigel Farage, the scion of the leave campaign, all migrants to the UK were bad, whether they were EU nationals with legal rights to movement, illegal immigrants, refugees or asylum seekers. The nadir of his appeal to voters’ darker instincts came with his billboard proclaiming ‘Britain is at Breaking Point.’
For Donald Trump, the logic of equivalence meant that significant ‘outgroups’ (Mexicans, Muslims, Syrian refugees, among others) were no longer welcome in America; a stance that manifested itself in repeated attempts at a travel ban against 8 Muslim majority countries, the fortification and enhancement of ICE, and the continued promise to build a wall to separate the United States from Mexico.
Second, there has been a dismantling or threat to dismantle long fought human rights achievements. The Withdrawal Bill, if passed, will allow the UK Government to reconsider and rescind human rights commitments found within the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, as well as various social and economic protections found within EU directives and regulations.
More fundamentally, in the US, Donald Trump does not seem to understand the basic protections and rights set out in the US Bill of Rights (perhaps with the exception of the Second Amendment) and the US Constitution. In his recent interview in the New York Times, he declared that he has ‘absolute authority’ to do what he wants with the Department of Justice. Such a statement comes off the back of a year of firing Department of Justice Officials (e.g. Sally Yates and James Comey), lambasting federal judges for challenging his attempted travel ban, and casting aspersions on the FBI and other intelligence agencies for their work on investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Third, there has been a retreat from global alliances. The year-long process of getting past stage one in the EU negotiations has seen repeated attempts by the UK government to not honour its financial commitments to the EU, while asserting a renewed sense of national identity and independence through an appeal to changing the colour of UK passports. Whether we have a hard or soft BREXIT, the economic dip I predicted on 24 June 2016 is upon us, and likely to affect us for some time. Indeed, the World Economic Forum shows that the UK economy will contribute 1.6% to global growth in 2018 next to the Euro Zone at 7.9%, India at 8.6%, the US at 17.9%, and China at 35.2%.
Fourth, there has been an assault on both reason and reasonableness. Bold claims from many in the EU referendum simply did not bear empirical scrutiny (e.g. the claim that the NHS could see an additional £350 million per week), while Mr Trump has cast doubt on well-established scientific findings, prohibited the publication of scientific findings (particularly those related to climate change), and has gaslighted the media for false reporting, while telling remarkable tall tales himself. White House officials have either sought to present ‘alternative facts’ or have had to reinterpret what the President has said (or tweeted) to maintain some semblance of rationality in public discourse.
The assault on reasonableness is probably the most troubling. On line and off line behaviours have degenerated into more confrontation, which at times, has led to extreme inter-personal violence (e.g. the murder of Jo Cox in the UK and the ram raid against a protester at the Charlottesville ‘alt right’ rally). Public debate and discussion on fundamental issues facing society are proving elusive, as opposing groups retreat into their own news and social media bubbles. Death threats have been made against anyone who questions BREXIT negotiations and process, or those who were survivors of the Las Vegas shooting.
This descent into barbarism must be confronted and challenged through a re-centring of our politics and a re-grounding of it on reasonable discussion of facts, patterns, and evidence. There are simply not ‘alternative facts’ but competing bases of evidence and interpretation that should form the basis for rational debate. There is also an accumulation of scientific knowledge that is based on observation, theory, collection of evidence, testing of theories, findings, and refinement of theories and explanations. Pure assertion without evidence is simply not good enough and can lead to the polarised post-truth politics that are destined to destroy our societies if left unchecked.
There should be an acceptance that mainstream media (MSM) do not always get it right, but their work is grounded in reason and evidence, and their role is to hold public officials to account. When they get it wrong, they explain and retract. The honesty of explanation, apology, and retraction is not evidence of ‘fake news’ but evidence of the fallibility of news reporting and the challenges of quality reporting in an era of real time access to information.
The academy also has a role to play here. Across the disciplines is a commitment to engage in the genesis and evolution of ideas, where freedom to enquire and challenge is the bedrock of the scholarly endeavour and raison d’être of academic institutions. Many scholars are stepping out and sharing their research with wider communities, but more could be done to engage with the world’s smartest minds in order to solve some of society’s toughest problems. The dismissal of ‘experts’ in the UK is done at our peril. Legal, political, economic, and other experts have much to share on the many problems that confront us today.
All of us need to transcend our informational and cultural bubbles. We need to engage with other bubbles, read uncomfortable thoughts and ideas, and discuss problems without lapsing into vitriol and violence. Failure to address these problems now risks a prolonged crisis of politics for the medium to long term. The impact of BREXIT will, in many ways, be more profound and long lasting than Trump, but after March 2019 when the UK leaves the EU and after Donald Trump (whenever that might be), the sentiments, attitudes, and instincts that underpin much of this dark turn in politics will remain. This week’s release of the Thatcher papers show that the issue of Europe has riven the conservative party for decades, while political scientist Cas Mudde argues that a post Trump America will still harbour all the same feelings that led to Trump’s America.
The Turn Away From Human Dignity
The New Year ushers in a new era for global history and politics. The United Kingdom will officially invoke Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union and will thus trigger the two-year process of exiting the European Union. The new Prime Minister will both trigger and oversee this process, while any legal challenges will focus on the degree to which Parliament and the courts have any formal oversight. She is also keen to revoke the Human Rights Act, which is a piece of domestic legislation that brought rights home; rights forged by Britain in the aftermath of World War II, and with the express purpose of constraining future leaders to prevent us from the worst forms of our own behaviour. On 20 January 2017 Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States; an event that is surrounded by controversy following an unorthodox electoral campaign and an unorthodox period of transition.
These developments, borne of a significant shift in popular attitudes, are likely to have profound implications for the world, and are likely to lead to similar developments in France, Germany and the Netherlands throughout 2017. Far beyond simple electoral outcomes and popular referenda, these developments for me represent a turn away from human dignity. They are centred on an inward view of self that is scared of the unknown and scared of ‘the other’. Diversity, identity, and difference have all been brought under question and positive trends in their formal and informal recognition are being cast aside with a worrying degree of casualness and without due care and attention to the full ramifications that such a course of action entails. The year will require vigilance, courage, tenacity, and hard work to limit the negative consequences that will result from these momentous changes, and it is great to see the green shoots of movement politics taking hold.
Brexit and Human Rights
The political and economic arguments over BREXIT will continue. Remainers worry about the profound disruption to the economy, polity, and culture in the UK and the wider Europe, as debates rage on over the status of EU citizens living and working in the UK, the mobility of people more generally, the status of UK financial institutions, and the net impact on trade, investment, and overall economic performance of the UK. Brexiters remain confident and buoyant about the future, ask for patience during an exceedingly complicated process of extraction from the EU, and promise a golden future of greater prosperity for a more assertive and independent United Kingdom.
Over the holidays I heard similar sets of competing views and arguments expressed at various events. I was struck by the observation from a colleague who said that her analysis suggested a large segment of the British public simply rejected the growth of the EU beyond the original promise made in 1975; the promise of greater economic integration, but not greater political integration. The enhanced political integration was not something many people wanted and the burden and constraints that come with ‘an ever closer union’ were simply too much for many to bear. The young people with whom I spoke are deeply worried as they had never known a world without the EU, and yet turnout within this demographic was remarkably low, and for many, explained why the vote on 23 June went the way it did.
Accepting that Brexit will happen, the task ahead for this year and beyond is to secure the very best outcome from the process and to have a future and outward oriented vision for this country. There are 194 countries in the world, 32 OECD countries, and emerging markets with dynamic economies in need of goods, services, and expertise that in my view are in abundance in this country. Students will continue to flock to our shores for high quality education and our UK students will continue to represent some of the best minds available for solving global problems. Industry, charity, innovation, culture, media, and many other sectors continue to produce world-leading products, ideas and solutions and are likely to do so for years to come.
The deep suspicion about human rights is nothing new. Many of my friends and colleagues raise doubts about the value and purpose of human rights, focus on the negative outcomes of rights challenges and their seemingly ‘over protective’ quality for those less desirable in society, such as criminals and terrorists. In 2000 I attended the launch ceremony for the 1998 Human Rights Act hosted by then Home Secretary Jack Straw along with senior colleagues from the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, including the late and great Professor Kevin Boyle. This event and the act that came with it domesticated international human rights, whose content, nature, and specification had been forged formally through iterative and inclusive processes since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This Declaration and the subsequent international law of human rights, as well as domestic declarations, constitutions, and protective instruments are grounded in a deep commitment to and articulation of human dignity; a dignity that recognizes the sacredness of the human being, whether derived from appeals to God, nature, or reason. From this basic underlying principle of human dignity comes a range of values and principles such as equality, respect, inclusion, participation, non-discrimination, responsibility, and accountability. Given the absence of a written constitution and a slow accretion of statute law and common understanding about rights and responsibilities, the Human Rights Act has served to cement centuries of rights commitments more forcefully into the legal, social and political fabric of British society.
Some argue that we have done very well without the act, but they miss the point that (1) Britain was one of the main architects of the 1951 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), (2) Britain remains part of the Council of Europe under whose auspices the ECHR is enforced, and (3) the Human Rights Act is merely an extension of commitments that we have already made, but which fortifies these commitments throughout our domestic legal system. To turn our back now on the ideals upheld in the act and the larger supranational commitments we have made seems folly indeed. These commitments are part of the post World War II settlement for peace and security in Europe, and the ECHR is upheld as the most successful and respected international system for the promotion and protection of human rights.
Trump and America’s Tortured Soul
On 8 November 2016, Donald Trump lost the popular vote by over 2.5 million votes, but secured the Electoral College vote, which officially elected him President on 19 December. The campaign for the Presidency was more of a circus than ever before. Hillary Clinton spent over $1 billion, while Trump adopted a successful strategy of guaranteeing free media coverage through making a range of outrageous statements. Beyond seeing these utterances as pure electoral strategy, I am minded to heed the advice of the late Jean Beth Elshtain, who in writing about just war theory and the fight against terrorism, urges us to take what terrorists say at face value. I will thus take what Donald has said and done at face value.
He has asked us to turn away from human dignity. He has asked us to focus on making America Great Again, as if to suggest that somehow it was in serial and significant decline (the main socio-economic indicators suggested otherwise). He asked us to be suspicious of ‘the other’: to remove all illegal immigrants (many of whom are undocumented and not illegal), to ban all Muslims from entering the country, to form a Muslim registry, to refuse entry to Syrians fleeing brutal conflict, and to build physical and virtual walls around America in ways that will only lead to a decrease in opportunity and further division at home and abroad. He has asked us to congratulate African Americans for not voting, since their lower that expected turnout guaranteed his victory. He has asked to overlook his financial irregularities, multiple law suits, and overt misogyny.
During his transition he has assembled a confederacy of dunces in the true Swiftian sense of the term that is diametrically aligned against almost every policy development from the Obama Administration. Many of the proposed members of the cabinet appear to be the antithesis of the office for which they are being chosen. His casual use of social media and absence of diplomatic protocols would have made Hillary’s opponents howl with rage had she behaved in such a fashion. And yet, there continues to be a quiet acceptance and acquiescence across many quarters to the ‘new normal’ of Trump’s America.
Women’s March and the Work Ahead
Brexit and Trump have framed a new set of discourses that many thought were a thing of the past. Progress on law, culture and politics had begun to remove barriers, to liberate people from oppressive structures, to celebrate difference in all its forms, and to recognize that difference and diversity are healthy for modern societies the world over. Brexit and Trump have unleashed an unfortunate set of trends in hate crimes and racist attacks, the nature and extent of which we have not seen in some time. Brexiters have denied any direct causal connection between the EU Referendum and these new troubling trends, while supporters of Trump willingly embrace the discourse with an alarming degree of enthusiasm.
The first public event, despite its billing, that will challenge Trump (and in my view the larger turn away from dignity) is the Women’s March on Washington to be held on 21 January, a day after the Trump inauguration. In the spirit of Martin Luther King and the many other protest events on The Mall between the Capitol and Lincoln Memorial, this march is grounded in a celebration of dignity and diversity.
‘In the spirit of democracy and honoring the champions of human rights, dignity, and justice who have come before us, we join in diversity to show our presence in numbers too great to ignore. The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.’
Beyond articulating the event in women’s rights terms only, the march challenges the sentiment, discourse, and unease unleashed by the Presidential campaign:
‘The rhetoric of the past election cycle has insulted, demonized, and threatened many of us – immigrants of all statuses, Muslims and those of diverse religious faiths, people who identify as LGBTQIA, Native people, Black and Brown people, people with disabilities, survivors of sexual assault – and our communities are hurting and scared. We are confronted with the question of how to move forward in the face of national and international concern and fear.’
The march is also keen to promote and encourage ‘sister marches’ outside Washington and the United States, where there has been take up of the idea in other US states, Europe, and Oceania thus far.
This one event will not change what has happened, but it is the beginning of a movement that challenges the most negative consequences of Brexit and Trump and rearticulates a commitment to the values and principles that have underpinned so much global progress since the Second World War.
For me, the world has been here before, and the precarious triumph of democracy and human rights challenged oppression, repression, and intolerance. The gains of the post war period will be very hard to reverse entirely, and in my own work, I will remain dedicated to the kind of education and research that appreciates difference, opens minds to new ideas, challenges intolerance, amasses systematic evidence to reveal inconvenient truths, and upholds fundamental values and principles grounded in the idea of human dignity.
SUBVERSION: Politics, Magic and Jazz
This week has seen a fascinating array of my own public engagement. My week began with my lecture on Race, Rights and Justice in the Age of Brexit for the national Being Human Fetsival. Held in the fabulous Galleries of Justice in Notttingham, I set out my thoughts and reflections on the many challenges during the age of what I have called BREXITRUMP. My remarks urged us all to remain mindful of our common humanity and the shared values of dignity, respect, non-discrimination, equality, and inclusion.
The current turn in politics is undermining years of struggle for rights and justice, the legal codification of these struggles, and the many advances that have been achieved in the popular understandings of identity and difference. The rhetoric of Farage and Trump shares many of the same features: a simplification and dichotomisation of society into ‘us’ and ‘them’ in ways that have proved highly divisive, hurtful, and regressive. It has also invited arguments online and offline that appear more vitriolic than ever before.
With these developments at the forefront of our minds, the staging this week of my show SUBVERSION seemed more fitting than first imagined when I conceived of it. The show celebrates the common thread that joins the disparate worlds of politics, magic and jazz; worlds that have been my world since the early 1970s. Each in their own way has moments that have challenged the status quo and moved history forward. I explore these connections through the medium of performance magic, mind reading, and mentalism. Our topics have covered the ideas and achievements of over 50 of my favourite ‘subversives’; our understanding of the notion of free will; Hobbesian thought as expressed in Leviathan; the philosophy and art of surrealism; Said’s notion of Orientalism; the ‘veil of ignorance’; the value of predictions; and my own blend of psychic perfect pitch.
The show has been well received and well-reviewed, while the proceeds are being used for the Life Cycle Campaign to raise funds for research into the early detection of breast cancer, something that has touched my family and I am certain many other families here and abroad. The Djanogly Theatre at Lakeside Arts provided the perfect setting, while the sound and light crew could not be more professional and supportive.
In the middle of this performance schedule, I had the honour and pleasure of performing to a group of students from the University of Nottingham for a new film project on Academic Magic. They were from all over the world and studying degree courses in chemistry, maths, biology, business, law, finance, psychology, and medicine. After the filming they were full of questions and theories about how I managed to know what they had chosen, thought, or wrote down. It was a wonderful afternoon with the youth of today.
2016 has indeed been an extraordinary year with the death of so many icons of my youth, and significant political developments that will have huge and long lasting consequences. All eyes are on the election in France with the surge in support for Marine Le Pen, the election in Germany, as Angela Merkel seeks an historic 4th term as Chancellor, and in the UK, the Government’s plan for Brexit; the phasing, contours and consequences of which still remain shrouded in uncertainty.
I for one, will remain vigilant, continue to engage, and work hard to defend what I think are the many important principles and rights that have been secured through so many years of struggle.
Upcoming public lecture!
Norms, Values, Morality: The Politics of Human Rights
Please join the Research Priority Area in Rights and Justice at the University of Nottingham for a special lecture by Professor Todd Landman, a world-leading expert on human rights. He will discuss the evolution of the international human rights regime, different kinds of human rights measures, and systematic ways in which to map, explain, and understand the variation in human rights abuse around the world.
Professor Landman is the Pro Vice Chancellor for the Social Sciences faculty at the University of Nottingham and internationally renowned for his work on the measurement and analysis of human rights. His many books include Human Rights and Democracy: The Precarious Triumph of Ideals (2013), Measuring Human Rights (2009), Assessing the Quality of Democracy (2008), Studying Human Rights (2006), Protecting Human Rights (2005), and Citizenship Rights and Social Movements (1997, 2000). He has worked with a wide range of international governmental and non-governmental organisations, including the Inter-European Consortium for Human Rights, the United Nations Development Programme, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UK Department for International Development, and Amnesty International. He writes for and appears in The Guardian, The Conversation, openGlobalRights, Al Jazeera, and other media outlets.
For more information, CLICK HERE