I think the thing with Brexit is that it plausibly has the same causal factors as the rest of populist and authoritarian global trend, while at the same time definitely not being in the same category of antidemocratic and authoritarian that Trump, Modi, Xi are in.
So, when looking at the US in global comparison, there is a strong tendency to treat it analytically as a "black box", without the domestic political movements and actors that would be recognized and analyzed in other states. It is the hegemon, so it acts as a hive mind to pursue the maintenance of hegemony. All Americans believe in and support the furtherance of US hegemony; there are no ideological divisions because there is no internal political life to the US. Only external action matters.
Actions that other liberal-ish states take usually get analyzed in a more constructivist way, looking at domestic political conflict (Brexit as an expression of English nationalism at a popular level and of inter-Tory maneuvering at the elite level, for instance).
What would happen if the usual black box analysis was suspended? We could see that the rise of movement conservatism, an inherently illiberal movement, was the dominant US political trend in the post-Cold War period, although the movement build its power for domestic political reasons during the Cold War. George W. Bush was the figure under whom this political movement achieved the zenith of its power. The Iraq War was its psychological and ideological project, carried out because its reactionary adherents had an aversion to the collapse of ideological conflict in the aftermath of the Cold War.
Yes, this movement's time of unchecked institutional power has made the US more illiberal and economically much weaker than it was in the 1990s, but that's relative. The movement seeks a return to the institutional illiberalism of Jim Crow and the other social and political institutions of the pre-rights revolution US.
The movement went into decline following the imperialist, plutocratic chaos of the Bush administration, in the sense that it lost majority support and hegemony over the mainstream.
But it still has plurality support, institutional advantage, and weak opponents who won't challenge the material or institutional basis of its power.
You should have mentioned Peter Turchin, (founder of cliodynamics) who developed a whole system theory to collapsed societies, Ive got the excel sheet of all the UK protests for the last decade which is used for reference. In 2010 Turchin published research using 40 combined social indicators to predict that there would be worldwide social unrest in the 2020s. He subsequently cited the success of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign as evidence that - negative trends seem to be accelerating and that there has been an unprecedented collapse of social norms governing civilized discourse. He uses population as one significant variable Follow me here: https://twitter.com/ajfiner21
1,500 dead in Iranian protests. I'm genuinely intrigued as to who reported this number and how reliable these reports are.
Also, you're being quite generous to the US. "Mostly non-lethal violence". It has been overwhelming violence over a protracted period of time that had led to the widespread spontaneous protests. And the police crackdown was brutal. Contrast this with the HK police, who used no lethal force at all over a much longer period of time. Is capital fleeing HK. I don't think this is even close to be true. At least not yet. Despite the negative press against China, investors still want a piece of it. And they will always want a piece of it because, believe it or not, the CCP have created a fundamentally sound economy that is growing. The only thing that can stop China's rise is war and that is precisely what the West is preparing their populations for.
The West is projecting on Xi. He is not war mongering. For sure, he is strong on China's territorial claims. But these are all on its borders and no further than what they have claimed historically - both Xi, his predecessor, and indeed the ROC. Libya, Iraq, they were caused unambiguously by American overreach. If the world wants peace, they can work with countries like China and Russia. Furthermore, if the world wants peace, the international community should work towards shackling America's military. They should reject the cold war the US is inducing. We are seeing countries in SE Asia and Korea refuse to choose between China and the US. They don't want war. Despite Japan being a US vassal, they also don't want war. It's curious that Japanese companies were the first to back Xinjiang cotton.
On Myanmar, please take a look at Filipino Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin's take on what is happening there. He "pours scorn on the West" for tearing down the reputation of Suu Kyi and diminishing her standing and reputation. Further he derides the Brits for creating subclass of non-residents being the Rohingya. Similar to what European colonisers have done all over the Global South. Think of what happened in Rwanda. Very similar type of social division was deliberately created in Myanmar. And this is the root cause of Myanmar's issues. How can the West now rally around Suu Kyi, whom they destroyed, and restore the status quo in Myanmar? However, is this exactly what Britain wanted? To break Myanmar again and prey on her vast resources.
The developing world knows the West. They know their values are full of crap. They know that in the not-too distant past, the West was conducting genocide against indigenous peoples. The West was exploiting Asia, Africa and Latin America. Can the West continue to impose itself on a far more populous developing world? They simply can't. The breaking point is coming. People won't cop the crap. They know the projection of Western sins onto China is almost totally crap. The question is whether the US is actually belligerent enough to plunge themselves and Asia into a bitter war. The international community must not let this happen.
Is it possible that *both* the trend towards illiberal populist rule and the more recent wave of protests (sometimes against illiberal populist governments) have a single cause, namely rising dissatisfaction with established styles of politics? Explaining the protests as having been caused by illiberalism seems to require an explanation of the illiberalism itself.
I can't help feeling that Noah is giving short shrift to the "technological explanation". Yes, previous waves of protests happened without today's technology, but that in itself doesn't prove that social media hasn't caused the wave happening now. It's definitely a dominant factor here in Ethiopia.
Fiji - in trouble with Covid. The economy is at the mercy of tourism which is non-existent. Samoa's democratically elected government blocked from taking power. And, Britain is in a mess. I agree with Nathan, Brexit has completed divided Britain and the tensions are exacerbated by Covid. It is a sign of the general malaise that the most popular song in 2020 was "Boris Johnson is a F------ Cu--" and prices of food are going through the roof.
I am not sure the economic source and the political source for the protests are so distinct. In many places---I am thinking of the US and India at the very least, the places I'm most familiar with---they are increasingly seen to be closely linked. David Graeber has a talk from a few years ago where (if I remember correctly) he said that events around 2011 with Occupy Wall Street would be viewed as the start of a wave of revolutionary action, and that protest certainly strongly combined economic and political demands.
I believe Graeber himself would take the line connecting the protests even further back to the global justice movement of the 1990s, though of course they have been intensifying in recent years.
My theory is that we're witnessing a conflict between emergent entities. Swarms of bees, flocks of bird, and schools of fish often seem to act like one larger organism by each of them following simple rules. I think a similar thing is happening with a conflict between egalitarian and authoritarian entities emergent from human behavior, precipitated by improved communication. The authoritarian one feels existentially threatened and is clawing for survival. Nothing is synchronized or coordinated; there are no significant conspiracies. It's all happening at once, internationally, because the same stimuli are happening everywhere, but there is no center.
Your post is very good at pointing out the global outbreak of protests, something those of us following the news are somewhat aware of but perhaps have not seen it as a pattern. The Carnegie Endowment Date makes clear that there is a real international pattern. The fact that it is international fits into your interpretation in the sense that protests in liberal regions of the world - the US, Western Europe, Taiwan. Hong Kong are interrelated. Given the Internet and the rapid spread of communications this is something we would expect. Once Black Lives Matter protests break out in the United States it is not surprising we see sympathetic movements breaking out in France and the United Kingdom for instance. You can call it a kind of political virus spreading.
While the speed of global communications has accelerated in the last several decades the phenomenon of global spread of political viruses has been around for at least two centuries. It has accelerated - as computerization and smartphones have increased pretty much everywhere - but the construction of underwater cables for transmission of messages and information, the boom in literacy worldwide, and the creation of international institutions like the UN, WTO, and IMF have accelerated have set the stage for the spread of the political virus.
This was apparent during the interwar period when the Russian Revolution ushered in the spread of putative communist revolutions on the one hand, and the spread of its adversary Fascism in Western and parts of Eastern Europe. Consider China which was politically contested by a pro-Fascist Chinese Nationalist Party and the Soviet-backed Chinese Communist Party. The Soviet led Communist International, realizing Western Europe was slipping out of its revolutionary grasp, actively supported revolutions in the developing world as a mechanism for weakening the imperialist colonialist hold many of the developed countries held over the developing world. That this ushered in World War II is not surprising. After all what we are talking about during this period is violent revolutions and rebellions leading to civil wars.
The problem with comparing the breakdown of the international economic order in the 1930s and the current climate is this: what we are mostly seeing today are rebellions, not revolutions. In the two parts of the world where revolutionary movements are important - the Middle East and North Africa; Latin America - there are already civil wars going on. We are not seeing this in most of Asia for instance - the former Burma being an exception for sure - nor are we seeing this in Europe, Russia, or North America.
While nobody should doubt China's determination to exert geopolitical dominance in East Asia I am personally doubtful that it will leas to a great war. Two reasons: taking over Taiwan militarily even if possible would usher in a lot of problems for China. The mouse could end up eating the cat. Anti-Communist Party sentiment in China would actually intensify if Taiwan were brought under the aegis of Beijing. It is one thing to be belligerent about an island nation that was once Chinese, then Dutch, then Japanese, now independent and happily democratic. It is another thing to absorb into into a greater China. The other reason I am skeptical is that China has too many enemies that would love to test its military: the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and Vietnam for instance. A coalition of these geopolitical foes, not impossible by any means, is a sobering thought even for Xi.
This is very good. I agree with all you are saying, but am struck by the fact that at the same time things in many ways are better than ever, particularly in the US. Racism in my eyes, for example, was at an all time low here.
That doesn't mean there isn't still a problem, and I think it kind of makes the problem that remains even more frustrating.
The point of your article is, where is all this going? You suggest perhaps war, or other things. Maybe the future we are going to is a much better world, and we are clearing out big pieces of problems that remain. Despite things being so much better, people are frustrated because they want more, and why not?
Honestly, 2019-2020 reminds me more of 1830/1848, depending on how you view them. Both were relatively unsuccessful - while modest gains were made, generally the powers that be held the line and turned back the tide, and the big revolutions really only came later - this is what muddles 1848, since it can be viewed as the "big" followup to 1830, but also was itself a prelude to bigger conflicts.
At any rate, I think you're right about the things we're trending towards overall now.
Underlying all of this is the illiberal control that that the mega-rich have on politics in all countries. So even in liberal counties it feels like the levers of power are being held by a super elite unconcerned with the welfare of the masses.
Not sure if this is cause for more optimism, but I think this analysis should incorporate Sudan, where the big protests did topple the government and replace it with something (JUDGING BY WESTERN NEWS COVERAGE AT LEAST, big caveat) less horrifically despotic.
Also, what was all the stuff that happened in Ecuador and Peru?
Meanwhile Brexit . . . Whatever that means. Presumably it’s some kind of self proving statement based off of the outrageous reporting from the NYT. Meanwhile have you seen what they did to the gilets jeaune in France?
I think the thing with Brexit is that it plausibly has the same causal factors as the rest of populist and authoritarian global trend, while at the same time definitely not being in the same category of antidemocratic and authoritarian that Trump, Modi, Xi are in.
Hey Noah
On the role of tehcnology, I also recommand this book
https://www.amazon.fr/Hype-Machine-Disrupts-Elections-Health/dp/0525574514
In it, S Aral mentions the 2011 protest in Russia where a natural experiment occurred
and cites a paper show that digital technology can cause protests as well
( link toward the paper https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3982/ECTA14281)
So, when looking at the US in global comparison, there is a strong tendency to treat it analytically as a "black box", without the domestic political movements and actors that would be recognized and analyzed in other states. It is the hegemon, so it acts as a hive mind to pursue the maintenance of hegemony. All Americans believe in and support the furtherance of US hegemony; there are no ideological divisions because there is no internal political life to the US. Only external action matters.
Actions that other liberal-ish states take usually get analyzed in a more constructivist way, looking at domestic political conflict (Brexit as an expression of English nationalism at a popular level and of inter-Tory maneuvering at the elite level, for instance).
What would happen if the usual black box analysis was suspended? We could see that the rise of movement conservatism, an inherently illiberal movement, was the dominant US political trend in the post-Cold War period, although the movement build its power for domestic political reasons during the Cold War. George W. Bush was the figure under whom this political movement achieved the zenith of its power. The Iraq War was its psychological and ideological project, carried out because its reactionary adherents had an aversion to the collapse of ideological conflict in the aftermath of the Cold War.
Yes, this movement's time of unchecked institutional power has made the US more illiberal and economically much weaker than it was in the 1990s, but that's relative. The movement seeks a return to the institutional illiberalism of Jim Crow and the other social and political institutions of the pre-rights revolution US.
The movement went into decline following the imperialist, plutocratic chaos of the Bush administration, in the sense that it lost majority support and hegemony over the mainstream.
But it still has plurality support, institutional advantage, and weak opponents who won't challenge the material or institutional basis of its power.
You should have mentioned Peter Turchin, (founder of cliodynamics) who developed a whole system theory to collapsed societies, Ive got the excel sheet of all the UK protests for the last decade which is used for reference. In 2010 Turchin published research using 40 combined social indicators to predict that there would be worldwide social unrest in the 2020s. He subsequently cited the success of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign as evidence that - negative trends seem to be accelerating and that there has been an unprecedented collapse of social norms governing civilized discourse. He uses population as one significant variable Follow me here: https://twitter.com/ajfiner21
1,500 dead in Iranian protests. I'm genuinely intrigued as to who reported this number and how reliable these reports are.
Also, you're being quite generous to the US. "Mostly non-lethal violence". It has been overwhelming violence over a protracted period of time that had led to the widespread spontaneous protests. And the police crackdown was brutal. Contrast this with the HK police, who used no lethal force at all over a much longer period of time. Is capital fleeing HK. I don't think this is even close to be true. At least not yet. Despite the negative press against China, investors still want a piece of it. And they will always want a piece of it because, believe it or not, the CCP have created a fundamentally sound economy that is growing. The only thing that can stop China's rise is war and that is precisely what the West is preparing their populations for.
The West is projecting on Xi. He is not war mongering. For sure, he is strong on China's territorial claims. But these are all on its borders and no further than what they have claimed historically - both Xi, his predecessor, and indeed the ROC. Libya, Iraq, they were caused unambiguously by American overreach. If the world wants peace, they can work with countries like China and Russia. Furthermore, if the world wants peace, the international community should work towards shackling America's military. They should reject the cold war the US is inducing. We are seeing countries in SE Asia and Korea refuse to choose between China and the US. They don't want war. Despite Japan being a US vassal, they also don't want war. It's curious that Japanese companies were the first to back Xinjiang cotton.
On Myanmar, please take a look at Filipino Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin's take on what is happening there. He "pours scorn on the West" for tearing down the reputation of Suu Kyi and diminishing her standing and reputation. Further he derides the Brits for creating subclass of non-residents being the Rohingya. Similar to what European colonisers have done all over the Global South. Think of what happened in Rwanda. Very similar type of social division was deliberately created in Myanmar. And this is the root cause of Myanmar's issues. How can the West now rally around Suu Kyi, whom they destroyed, and restore the status quo in Myanmar? However, is this exactly what Britain wanted? To break Myanmar again and prey on her vast resources.
The developing world knows the West. They know their values are full of crap. They know that in the not-too distant past, the West was conducting genocide against indigenous peoples. The West was exploiting Asia, Africa and Latin America. Can the West continue to impose itself on a far more populous developing world? They simply can't. The breaking point is coming. People won't cop the crap. They know the projection of Western sins onto China is almost totally crap. The question is whether the US is actually belligerent enough to plunge themselves and Asia into a bitter war. The international community must not let this happen.
Is it possible that *both* the trend towards illiberal populist rule and the more recent wave of protests (sometimes against illiberal populist governments) have a single cause, namely rising dissatisfaction with established styles of politics? Explaining the protests as having been caused by illiberalism seems to require an explanation of the illiberalism itself.
I can't help feeling that Noah is giving short shrift to the "technological explanation". Yes, previous waves of protests happened without today's technology, but that in itself doesn't prove that social media hasn't caused the wave happening now. It's definitely a dominant factor here in Ethiopia.
Fiji - in trouble with Covid. The economy is at the mercy of tourism which is non-existent. Samoa's democratically elected government blocked from taking power. And, Britain is in a mess. I agree with Nathan, Brexit has completed divided Britain and the tensions are exacerbated by Covid. It is a sign of the general malaise that the most popular song in 2020 was "Boris Johnson is a F------ Cu--" and prices of food are going through the roof.
I hate to say it, but I think you're right. We all need to buckle up.
And we need to keep fighting for freedom against Kefka (Trump) and Sephiroth (Putin). And also evil Winnie the Pooh over there in China. 👎👎👎
I am not sure the economic source and the political source for the protests are so distinct. In many places---I am thinking of the US and India at the very least, the places I'm most familiar with---they are increasingly seen to be closely linked. David Graeber has a talk from a few years ago where (if I remember correctly) he said that events around 2011 with Occupy Wall Street would be viewed as the start of a wave of revolutionary action, and that protest certainly strongly combined economic and political demands.
I believe Graeber himself would take the line connecting the protests even further back to the global justice movement of the 1990s, though of course they have been intensifying in recent years.
My theory is that we're witnessing a conflict between emergent entities. Swarms of bees, flocks of bird, and schools of fish often seem to act like one larger organism by each of them following simple rules. I think a similar thing is happening with a conflict between egalitarian and authoritarian entities emergent from human behavior, precipitated by improved communication. The authoritarian one feels existentially threatened and is clawing for survival. Nothing is synchronized or coordinated; there are no significant conspiracies. It's all happening at once, internationally, because the same stimuli are happening everywhere, but there is no center.
Your post is very good at pointing out the global outbreak of protests, something those of us following the news are somewhat aware of but perhaps have not seen it as a pattern. The Carnegie Endowment Date makes clear that there is a real international pattern. The fact that it is international fits into your interpretation in the sense that protests in liberal regions of the world - the US, Western Europe, Taiwan. Hong Kong are interrelated. Given the Internet and the rapid spread of communications this is something we would expect. Once Black Lives Matter protests break out in the United States it is not surprising we see sympathetic movements breaking out in France and the United Kingdom for instance. You can call it a kind of political virus spreading.
While the speed of global communications has accelerated in the last several decades the phenomenon of global spread of political viruses has been around for at least two centuries. It has accelerated - as computerization and smartphones have increased pretty much everywhere - but the construction of underwater cables for transmission of messages and information, the boom in literacy worldwide, and the creation of international institutions like the UN, WTO, and IMF have accelerated have set the stage for the spread of the political virus.
This was apparent during the interwar period when the Russian Revolution ushered in the spread of putative communist revolutions on the one hand, and the spread of its adversary Fascism in Western and parts of Eastern Europe. Consider China which was politically contested by a pro-Fascist Chinese Nationalist Party and the Soviet-backed Chinese Communist Party. The Soviet led Communist International, realizing Western Europe was slipping out of its revolutionary grasp, actively supported revolutions in the developing world as a mechanism for weakening the imperialist colonialist hold many of the developed countries held over the developing world. That this ushered in World War II is not surprising. After all what we are talking about during this period is violent revolutions and rebellions leading to civil wars.
The problem with comparing the breakdown of the international economic order in the 1930s and the current climate is this: what we are mostly seeing today are rebellions, not revolutions. In the two parts of the world where revolutionary movements are important - the Middle East and North Africa; Latin America - there are already civil wars going on. We are not seeing this in most of Asia for instance - the former Burma being an exception for sure - nor are we seeing this in Europe, Russia, or North America.
While nobody should doubt China's determination to exert geopolitical dominance in East Asia I am personally doubtful that it will leas to a great war. Two reasons: taking over Taiwan militarily even if possible would usher in a lot of problems for China. The mouse could end up eating the cat. Anti-Communist Party sentiment in China would actually intensify if Taiwan were brought under the aegis of Beijing. It is one thing to be belligerent about an island nation that was once Chinese, then Dutch, then Japanese, now independent and happily democratic. It is another thing to absorb into into a greater China. The other reason I am skeptical is that China has too many enemies that would love to test its military: the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and Vietnam for instance. A coalition of these geopolitical foes, not impossible by any means, is a sobering thought even for Xi.
This is very good. I agree with all you are saying, but am struck by the fact that at the same time things in many ways are better than ever, particularly in the US. Racism in my eyes, for example, was at an all time low here.
That doesn't mean there isn't still a problem, and I think it kind of makes the problem that remains even more frustrating.
The point of your article is, where is all this going? You suggest perhaps war, or other things. Maybe the future we are going to is a much better world, and we are clearing out big pieces of problems that remain. Despite things being so much better, people are frustrated because they want more, and why not?
Honestly, 2019-2020 reminds me more of 1830/1848, depending on how you view them. Both were relatively unsuccessful - while modest gains were made, generally the powers that be held the line and turned back the tide, and the big revolutions really only came later - this is what muddles 1848, since it can be viewed as the "big" followup to 1830, but also was itself a prelude to bigger conflicts.
At any rate, I think you're right about the things we're trending towards overall now.
Underlying all of this is the illiberal control that that the mega-rich have on politics in all countries. So even in liberal counties it feels like the levers of power are being held by a super elite unconcerned with the welfare of the masses.
Not sure if this is cause for more optimism, but I think this analysis should incorporate Sudan, where the big protests did topple the government and replace it with something (JUDGING BY WESTERN NEWS COVERAGE AT LEAST, big caveat) less horrifically despotic.
Also, what was all the stuff that happened in Ecuador and Peru?
Meanwhile Brexit . . . Whatever that means. Presumably it’s some kind of self proving statement based off of the outrageous reporting from the NYT. Meanwhile have you seen what they did to the gilets jeaune in France?