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How Matthew Goodwin became part of the right-populist movement he once sought to explain.

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How Matthew Goodwin became part of the right-populist movement he once sought to explain.

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People who study cults sometimes end up joining them. Has this fate befallen Matthew Goodwin, one of Britain's most visible scholars of the hard right? Since the release of his debut monograph on Ukip, Revolt on the Right (2014), Goodwin has scaled the heights of academic stardom: a professorship at Kent, a fellowship at Chatham House, advisory roles with the UK government, regular media appearances and lucrative after-dinner speeches. Shot to prominence by the boom in "populism studies", he has joined the crop of political scientists who counsel mainstream policymakers on defusing challenges from the margins. Yet, while mapping the contours of Farageism over the past decade, he has steadily mutated into an advocate for its most crankish tendencies.

Writing in the New Statesman in 2013, Goodwin rejected the argument that voters were gravitating towards Ukip because their anxieties about migration had been ignored by the major parties. On the contrary, he observed, "Britain has tirelessly debated immigration and its effects", adopting countless measures to tighten the border regime and deter new arrivals, none of which had succeeded in puncturing the appeal of hard-line xenophobic politics. Tossing red meat to the hounds had only made them hungrier - prompting Goodwin to conclude that "the more we stoke public anger and distrust on immigration, the more we threaten the stability of our political system". The answer was to "chart another course".

Ten years later, Goodwin has performed a volte-face. He now urges the government to intensify its anti-migrant campaign, lamenting its failure to break with the "model of mass migration" and dismissing its recent reforms as "too little too late". The best electoral bet for the Conservative Party, he says, is to mimic the US Republicans: "raising the salience of the small boats crisis", taking a "tough line on illegal migration and national security" and "consciously leaning into the cultural axis". During this period, Goodwin's political function - to protect moderate centrists from right-populists - has remained fixed. But he now believes this can only be achieved if the former fully remake themselves in the image of the latter. If you can't beat them, join them.

Goodwin's new book, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics, reflects this shifting sensibility. Its argument is wearily familiar: that the UK's elite stratum has become divorced from the conservative instincts of the majority; that the commanding heights of our culture - media, universities, political parties - have been captured by cosmopolitans who impose their outlook on the rest of the country; and that this woke mob has cultivated a censorious political climate to silence its opponents. The atmosphere has become so oppressive, writes Goodwin, that "a range of actions that are not racist" are now considered unacceptable - such as "imitating the accent of another group... [or] feeling uncomfortable about somebody speaking another language in Britain". To win back the trust of the masses, politicians must stop condemning such behaviour and end the tyrannical prioritisation of immigrants and minorities.

When setting out these positions, Goodwin often sounds like a duller Piers Morgan. Yet, unlike Morgan, he tends to obscure his most unpalatable opinions behind a dense thicket of polling data - distancing himself from their pernicious implications by informing us that this is simply what the average Red Wall voter thinks. He traces the recent eruption of such sentiments back to the Thatcher era, which destroyed Britain's traditional industries and economic boundaries, effectively internationalising the state. From there, he argues, it was only a small step to the "radical cultural liberalism" of New Labour: throwing open the borders and threatening the nation's indigenous way of life. The Cameron government then doubled down on this globalist "revolution" against the better judgement of the electorate - who finally launched a "counter-revolution" by voting for Brexit and Boris Johnson.
[See also: The strange death of the centre right]
Goodwin notes in passing that political-economic factors may have influenced this populist revolt: power had been hoarded in Westminster's cartelised electoral outfits and Europe's unaccountable bureaucracy; free-market dogma had aggravated inequality and deprivation. But he frames these dynamics as epiphenomena of the more fundamental clash between traditionalism, which seeks to defend British identity, and progressivism, which seeks to dissolve it. In his eulogies to Britain's post-industrial heartlands, class is always subordinated to the more amorphous concept of national culture. And in his broadsides against its urban centres, the enemy is inevitably exoticised: the "new plutocracy in London ", we are told, is composed of "international, jet-setting elites, Russian oligarchs, and non-domiciled 'High-Net Worths' who might have had a home in London but felt just as at home in New York, Paris or Heathrow Terminal 5, on their way to another global city".

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This brand of reactionary identity politics views immigration - rather than income or asset ownership - as the UK's primary fault-line. Values, Voice and Virtue circles back to this issue with single-minded compulsion, stressing its centrality to the so-called counter-revolution. Consequently, the book's account of the backlash to neoliberalism omits any political movement that does not foreground border politics. There is not a single paragraph of sustained engagement with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour leadership - even though, in 2017, it secured the party's strongest election result in recent memory and retained significant support in the Red Wall while running on an internationalist, anti-racist manifesto. Goodwin neglects this upheaval because, in his schema, Corbyn's support for immigration aligns him with the "ruling class" that has governed since 1979, whereas the dysfunctionally posh Boris Johnson is seen as a "renegade" who defected from that culture.

Anti-elitism, thus conceived, is synonymous with ethno-nationalism. This tallies with the strange forms of muscular communitarianism that have emerged in recent years: Keir Starmer waving the flag and singing the national anthem; the proliferation of culture-war platforms like Unherd; the tireless repetition of David Goodhart's distinction between "somewheres" and "anywheres". Goodwin forms part of this broader movement of liberals who - at some point during the Brexit saga - realised they had strayed too far from "the people" and are now attempting to appease their guilt through nativist symbology and sound-bites.

The irony is that by adopting this view of the British public as inherently hostile to other nationalities, Goodwin reproduces the discourse of the moralising Remainers whom he claims to loathe. For both these strands of opinion, material grievances - falling wages, gutted public services, decimated trade unions - have little to do with the ascent of Farage and Johnson. Rather, prejudice is thought to be embedded deep in the psyches of ordinary voters outside major cities. The chauvinist impulses of this proletarian layer are incurable. The only difference is that Goodwin defends them while liberal cosmopolitans condemn them.

Of course, even a cursory look at the historical record belies Goodwin's simplistic tale of progressivist revolution and traditionalist reaction. The elites whom he accuses of prioritising the foreign over the domestic, diversity over nationality, are the very people who incubated the Farageist syndrome. Thatcher, having vowed to prevent the UK from being "swamped by people with a different culture", used the British Nationality Act of 1981 to enshrine an exclusionary definition of Britishness based on blood-ties rather than birthplace. Blair followed suit: barring migrants from access to benefits, forcibly dispersing them across the country, expanding detention facilities, pouring resources into border security and setting arbitrary targets to remove asylum seekers. Cameron further restricted visas and welfare entitlements while rolling out the "hostile environment" strategy and streamlining deportations. All of them engaged in routine rhetorical attacks on migrants - as well as other minority groups - that were often as incendiary as the philippics of Farage and Johnson.

Far from abandoning national identity, politicians have spent the past 40 years constantly invoking it (as Goodwin himself recognised in 2013). The purpose is twofold. First, nationalism was crucial to consolidating the neoliberal project. It generated an idea of Britain - Cool Britannia - that could be sold on the global marketplace and created a homology between "British culture" and "enterprise culture". Those who refused to conform to one were cast as opponents of the other. Anyone who failed to compete in this open, dynamic sphere was accused of betraying Britain itself. Both New Labour and the Tories used these tropes to demonise migrants, depicting them as too backward to integrate into an enlightened market society: prone to criminality, helplessly reliant on benefits.

Second, as Thatcher and her successors waged economic war on the majority of Britons - smashing the labour movement and enforcing punitive austerity - it became increasingly expedient to scapegoat non-natives for social problems: dividing the subaltern classes and displacing blame onto their weakest fraction. After Brexit, liberal Remainers attempted to erase this dark history and proclaim their internationalist bona fides. But in denouncing right-populism they were merely recoiling from a refracted image of themselves. Now that Britain's departure from the EU is sealed, though, our politics has reverted to type. Both parties, run by ostensive centrist technocrats, are whipping up hysteria about Channel crossings and promising a robust response in the hope that this will re-engage their respective bases. In this climate, Goodwin may try to position himself as a maverick - crusading against the woke orthodoxy at Westminster and beyond - but in fact he is in lockstep with elite opinion on both sides of the aisle. Values, Voice and Virtue may not offer an accurate or original assessment of our political moment. But it captures the extent to which establishment centrism can comfortably accommodate the ideology of the hard right.
[See also: Lucy Easthope: "We are all disaster survivors now"]
This article appears in the 29 Mar 2023 issue of the New Statesman, Easter Special

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How Matthew Goodwin became part of the right-populist movement he once sought to explain.

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Populism has polluted the fight for clean air

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Populism has polluted the fight for clean air

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Your interview with Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, for whom I act as a solicitor in claims arising from her daughter's death, highlights the clear need for an urgent and precise response to address the risks to health from exposure to air pollution ( How anti-Ulez campaigners misused air pollution finding in Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah death, 16 September).

The politicisation of London's ultra-low emission zone makes a mockery of the strengthening scientific consensus that poor air quality causes severe health conditions. History will judge harshly the failure to heed these warnings.

In an era of polarisation, some issues rise above the popularity contests of today's political discourse. Unless we act swiftly to use our better understanding of the threats to human health through air pollution, we risk an increased number of deaths and significant economic damage. The "enormous health costs" of air pollution could reduce global gross domestic product by 6.1%, according to the World Health Organization.

We need cross-party consensus on the implementation of measures to reduce air pollution, with adequate funding to facilitate them, including helping people with low incomes to buy less polluting vehicles. The urgency calls not simply for the training of coroners and medical professionals or the installation of more pollution monitors, but most importantly for definitive action by those in power.

The shocking backlash faced by Sadiq Khan in response to novel and brave measures is absurd when set against the reality of the scientific evidence. Short-term political slogans used to gain advantage in the run-up to an election will result in an unacceptable cost to us all.
Nancy Collins
Partner, Hodge, Jones & Allen

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Populism has polluted the fight for clean air | Letter

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Letter: The backlash faced by Sadiq Khan in response to novel and brave measures is absurd, says Nancy Collins

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Why we should reject the dangerous populist science of Yuval Noah Harari

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Why we should reject the dangerous populist science of Yuval Noah Harari

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Watch videos of Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the wildly successful book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and you will hear him being asked the most astonishing questions.

"A hundred years from now, do you think we will still care about being happy?" - Canadian journalist Steve Paikin, on the "The Agenda with Steve Paikin"

"What I do, is it still relevant, and how do I prepare for my future?" - a student studying languages at the University of Antwerp

"At the end of Sapiens, you said we should be asking the question, 'What do we want to want?' Well, what do you think we should want to want?" - an audience member at TED Dialogues, Nationalism vs. Globalism: The New Political Divide

"You are somebody who practices Vipassana. Does that help you get closer to the force? Is that where you get closer to the force?" - the moderator at the 2018 India Today Conclave

Harari's manner is soft spoken, even shy, in these encounters. On occasion, he good-naturedly says that he doesn't possess the powers of divination, then briskly moves on to answer the question with an authority that makes you wonder if indeed he does. A hundred years from now it is quite likely that humans will disappear, and the earth will be populated by very different beings like cyborgs and A.I., Harari said to Paikin, asserting that it is difficult to predict "what kind of emotional or mental life such entities will have." Diversify, he advised the university student, because the job market of 2040 will be very volatile. We should "want to want to know the truth," he announced at the TED Conference. "I practice Vipassana meditation to see reality more clearly," Harari said to the India Today Conclave, without so much as cracking a smile at the absurdity of the question. Moments later, he elaborated: "If I can't observe the reality of my own breath for 10 seconds, how can I hope to observe the reality of the geopolitical system?"

If you are not yet disquieted, consider: among Harari's flock are some of the most powerful people in the world, and they come to him much like the ancient kings to their oracles. Mark Zuckerberg asked Harari if humanity is becoming more unified or fragmented by technology. The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund asked him if doctors will depend on Universal Basic Income in the future. The CEO of Axel Springer, one of the largest publishing houses in Europe, asked Harari what publishers should do to succeed in the digital world. An interviewer with The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) asked him what effect COVID would have on international scientific cooperation. In favor of Harari's half-formed edicts, each subverted their own authority. And they did it not for an expert in any one of their fields, but for a historian who, in many ways, is a fraud-most of all, about science.

Times are tough, and we are-all of us-looking for answers to literal questions of life and death. Will humans survive the coming waves of pandemics and climate change? Do our genes contain the key to understanding everything about us? Will technology save us, or will it destroy us? The desire for a wise guide-a sort of prophet who boldly leaps across multiple disciplines to provide simple, readable, confident answers, tying it all together in page-turning stories-is understandable. But is it realistic?

It scares me that, to many, this question appears to be irrelevant. Harari's blockbuster, Sapiens, is a sweeping saga of the human species-from our humble beginnings as apes to a future where we will sire the algorithms that will dethrone and dominate us. Sapiens was published in English in 2014, and by 2019, it had been translated into more than 50 languages, selling over 13 million copies. Recommending the book on CNN in 2016, president Barack Obama said that Sapiens, like the Pyramids of Giza, gave him "a sense of perspective" on our extraordinary civilization. Harari has published two subsequent bestsellers- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017), and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018). All told, his books have sold over 23 million copies worldwide. He might have a claim to be the most sought-after intellectual in the world, gracing stages far and wide, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per speaking appearance.

We have been seduced by Harari because of the power not of his truth or scholarship but of his storytelling. As a scientist, I know how difficult it is to spin complex issues into appealing and accurate storytelling. I also know when science is being sacrificed to sensationalism. Yuval Harari is what I call a "science populist." (Canadian clinical psychologist and YouTube guru Jordan Peterson is another example.) Science populists are gifted storytellers who weave sensationalist yarns around scientific "facts" in simple, emotionally persuasive language. Their narratives are largely scrubbed clean of nuance or doubt, giving them a false air of authority-and making their message even more convincing. Like their political counterparts, science populists are sources of misinformation. They promote false crises, while presenting themselves as having the answers. They understand the seduction of a story well told-relentlessly seeking to expand their audience-never mind that the underlying science is warped in the pursuit of fame and influence.

In this day and age, good storytelling is more necessary, but riskier, than ever before, particularly when it comes to science. Science informs medical, environmental, legal, and many other public decisions, as well as our personal opinions on what to be wary about and how to lead our lives. Important societal and individual actions depend on our best understanding of the world around us-now more than ever, with the plague in all our houses, and the worst yet to come with climate change.

It is time to subject our Populist Prophet, and others like him, to serious scrutiny.

This may be surprising, but the factual validity of Yuval Harari's work has received little evaluation from scholars or major publications. Harari's own thesis advisor, Professor Steven Gunn from Oxford-who guided Harari's research on "Renaissance Military Memoirs: War, History and Identity, 1450-1600"-has made a startling acknowledgement: that his ex-pupil has essentially managed to dodge the fact-checking process. In the New Yorker's 2020 profile of Harari, Gunn supposes that Harari-specifically, with his book Sapiens -"leapfrogged" expert critique "by saying, 'Let's ask questions so large that no one can say, We think this bit's wrong and that bit's wrong.' ... Nobody's an expert on the meaning of everything, or the history of everybody, over a long period."

Still, I tried my hand at fact-checking Sapiens -the book that started it all. I consulted colleagues in the neuroscience and evolutionary biology community and found that Harari's errors are numerous and substantial, and cannot be dismissed as nit-picking. Though sold as nonfiction, some of his narratives hue closer to fiction than fact-all signs of a science populist.

Consider "Part 1: The Cognitive Revolution," where Harari writes about our species' jump to the top of the food chain, vaulting over, for example, lions.

"Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous."

Harari concludes that, " many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump."

As an evolutionary biologist, I have to say: this passage sets my teeth on edge. What exactly makes for a self-confident lion? A loud roar? A bevy of lionesses? A firm pawshake? Is Harari's conclusion based on field observations or experiments in a laboratory? (The text contains no clue about his sources.) Does anxiety really make humans cruel? Is he implying that, had we taken our time getting to the top of the food chain, this planet would not have war or man-made climate change?

The passage evokes scenes from The Lion King -majestic Mufasa looking out into the horizon and telling Simba that everything the light touches is his kingdom. Harari's storytelling is vivid and gripping, but it is empty of science.

Next, take the issue of language. Harari claims that "[many] animals, including all ape and monkey species, have vocal languages."

I have spent a decade studying vocal communication in marmosets, a New World monkey. (Occasionally, their communication with me involved spraying their urine in my direction.) In the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, where I received my doctorate, we studied how vocal behavior emerges from the interaction of evolutionary, developmental, neuronal, and biomechanical phenomena. Our work succeeded in breaking the dogma that monkey communication (unlike human communication) is pre-programmed into neural or genetic codes. In fact, we discovered that monkey babies learn to "talk," with the help of their parents, in a fashion similar to the way human babies learn.

Yet, in spite of all their similarities to humans, monkeys cannot be said to have a "language." Language is a rule-bound symbolic system in which symbols (words, sentences, images, etc.) refer to people, places, events, and relations in the world-but also evoke and reference other symbols within the same system (e.g., words defining other words). The alarm calls of monkeys, and the songs of birds and whales, can transmit information; but we-as German philosopher Ernst Cassirer has said-live in " a new dimension of reality " made possible by the acquisition of a symbolic system.

Scientists may have competing theories on how language came to be, but everyone-from linguists like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, to experts on primate communication like Michael Tomasello and Asif Ghazanfar-is in agreement that, although precursors can be found in other animals, language is unique to humans. It's a maxim that is taught in undergraduate biology classes all around the world, and one that can be found through an easy Google search.

My scientific colleagues take issue with Harari as well. Biologist Hjalmar Turesson points out that Harari's assertion that chimpanzees "hunt together and fight shoulder to shoulder against baboons, cheetahs and enemy chimpanzees" cannot be true because cheetahs and chimpanzees don't live in the same parts of Africa. "Harari is possibly confusing cheetahs with leopards," Turesson says.

Maybe, as details go, knowing the distinction between cheetahs and leopards is not that important. Harari is after all writing the story of humans. But his errors unfortunately extend to our species as well. In the Sapiens chapter titled "Peace in our Time," Harari uses the example of the Waorani people of Ecuador to argue that historically, "the decline of violence is due largely to the rise of the state." He tells us the Waorani are violent because they "live in the depths of the Amazon forest, without army, police or prisons." It is true that the Waorani once had some of the highest homicide rates in the world, but they have lived in relative peace since the early 1970s. I spoke to Anders Smolka, a plant geneticist, who happens to have spent time with the Waorani in 2015. Smolka reported that Ecuadorian law is not enforced out in the forest, and the Waorani have no police or prisons of their own. "If spearings had still been of concern, I'm absolutely sure I would have heard about it," he says. "I was there volunteering for an eco-tourism project, so the safety of our guests was a pretty big deal." Here Harari uses an exceedingly weak example to justify the need for our famously racist and violent police state.

Illustrations by John Biggs

These details could seem inconsequential, but each is a crumbling block in what Harari falsely presents as an inviolable foundation. If a cursory reading shows this litany of basic errors, I believe a more thorough examination will lead to wholesale repudiations.1

Harari is often not just describing our past; he is prognosticating on the very future of humanity itself. Everyone is, of course, entitled to speculate on our future. But it is important to find out if these speculations hold water, especially if a person has the ear of our decision-making elites-as Harari does. False projections have real consequences. They could mislead hopeful parents into thinking that genetic engineering will eradicate autism, lead to enormous amounts of money being poured into dead-end projects, or leave us woefully unprepared for threats such as pandemics.

Now here's what Harari had to say about pandemics in his 2017 book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

"So in the struggle against calamities such as AIDS and Ebola, scales are tipping in humanity's favor. ... It is therefore likely that major epidemics will continue to endanger humankind in the future only if humankind itself creates them, in the service of some ruthless ideology. The era when humankind stood helpless before natural epidemics is probably over. But we may come to miss it."

I wish we had come to miss it. Instead, over 6 million of us have died of COVID as per official counts, with some estimates putting the true count at 12-22 million. And whether you think SARS-CoV-2-the virus responsible for the pandemic-came directly from the wild, or through the Wuhan Institute of Virology, we can all agree that the pandemic was not created in "service of some ruthless ideology."

Harari could not have been more wrong; yet, like a good science populist, he continued to offer his supposed expertise by appearing on numerous shows during the pandemic. He appeared on NPR, talking about "how to tackle both the epidemic and the resulting economic crisis." He went on Christiane Amanpour's show to highlight the "key questions emerging from the coronavirus outbreak." Then it was on to BBC Newsnight, where he offered "a historical perspective on the ​​ coronavirus." He switched things up for Sam Harris's podcast, where he told us about "the future implications" of COVID. Harari also found time to make an appearance on Iran International with Sadeq Saba, on the India Today E-Conclave Corona Series, and a slew of other news channels around the world.

Using the opportunity to promote a false crisis-another core trait of a science populist-Harari gave dire warnings of "under-the-skin surveillance" (admittedly a worrisome concept). "As a thought experiment," he said, "consider a hypothetical government that demands that every citizen wears a biometric bracelet that monitors body temperature and heart-rate 24 hours a day." The upside, he says, is that a government could potentially use this information to stop an epidemic within days. The downside is that it could give the government an enhanced surveillance system, because "if you can monitor what happens to my body temperature, blood pressure and heart-rate as I watch the video clip, you can learn what makes me laugh, what makes me cry, and what makes me really, really angry."

Human emotions, and our expressions of emotions, are highly subjective and variable. There are cultural and individual differences in the way we interpret our sensations. Our emotions cannot be inferred from physiological measures stripped bare of contextual information (an old enemy, a new lover, and caffeine can all make our heart thump harder). This holds true even if more extensive physiological measures than body temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate are monitored. It even holds true when facial movements are monitored. Scientists like psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett are finding that-contrary to long held belief-even emotions like sadness and anger are not universal. "Facial movements do not have inherent emotional meaning to be read like words on a page," explains Feldman Barrett. This is why we have not been able to create technological systems that can infer what you or I feel at a given moment (and why we may never be able to build these all-reading all-knowing systems).

Harari's claims are scientifically invalid, but they cannot be dismissed. "We live in a digital panopticon," as my colleague, neuroscientist Ahmed El Hady, says. Corporations and governments are constantly monitoring us. If we let people like Harari convince us that surveillance technologies can "know us far better than we know ourselves," we are in danger of letting the algorithms gaslight us. And that has real-world implications for the worse, such as deciding who is employable or who poses a security risk based on the supposed wisdom of an algorithm.

Harari's speculations are consistently based on a poor understanding of science. His predictions of our biological future, for instance, are based on a gene-centric view of evolution-a way of thinking that has (unfortunately) dominated public discourse due to public figures like him. Such reductionism advances a simplistic view of reality, and worse yet, veers dangerously into eugenics territory.

In the final chapter of Sapiens, Harari writes:

"Why not go back to God's drawing board and design better Sapiens? The abilities, needs and desires of Homo sapiens have a genetic basis. And the sapiens genome is no more complex than that of voles and mice. (The mouse genome contains about 2.5 billion nucleobases, the sapiens genome about 2.9 billion bases, meaning that the latter is only 14 percent larger.) ... If genetic engineering can create genius mice, why not genius humans? If it can create monogamous voles, why not humans hard-wired to remain faithful to their partners?"2

It would be convenient indeed if genetic engineering were a magic wand-quick flicks of which could turn philanderers into faithful partners, and everyone into Einstein. This is sadly not the case. Let's say we want to become a nonviolent species. Scientists have found that low activity of the monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A) gene is linked to aggressive behavior and violent offenses-but in case we are tempted to "go back to God's drawing board and design better Sapiens" (as Harari says we can), not everyone with low MAO-A activity is violent, nor is everyone with high MAO-A activity nonviolent. People who grow up in extremely abusive environments often become aggressive or violent, no matter what their genes. Having high MAO-A activity can protect you from this fate, but it is not a given. On the contrary, when children are raised in loving and supportive environments, even those with low MAO-A activity very often thrive.

Our genes are not our puppet masters, pulling the right strings at the right time to control the events that create us. When Harari writes about altering our physiology, or "engineering" humans to be faithful or clever, he is skipping over the many non-genetic mechanisms that form us.

For example, even something as seemingly hardwired as our physiology-cells dividing, moving, deciding their fates, and organizing into tissues and organs-is not engineered by genes alone. In the 1980s, scientist J.L. Marx conducted a series of experiments in Xenopus (an aquatic frog native to sub-Saharan Africa) and found that "mundane" biophysical events (like chemical reactions in the cells, mechanical pressures inside and on the cells, and gravity) can switch genes on and off, determining cell fate. Animal bodies, he concluded, result from an intricate dance between genes, and changing physical and environmental events.

Take taste. Reading someone like Harari, one might think that the behavior of newborn human babies, for example, is almost exclusively dominated by their genes, since babies have almost no "nurture" to speak of. But research shows that the six-month-old babies of women who drank a lot of carrot juice in the last trimester of their pregnancy enjoyed carrot-flavored cereal more than other babies did. These babies like the flavor of carrots but not because of "carrot-liking" genes. When mothers (biological or foster) breastfeed their babies, tastes of the foods they have eaten are reflected in their breast milk, and their babies develop a preference for these foods. Babies "inherit" food preferences from the behavior of their mothers.

For generations, new mothers from Korea have been told to drink bowls of seaweed soup, and Chinese women have pigs' feet stewed with ginger and vinegar soon after giving birth. Korean and Chinese children can inherit culture-specific taste preferences without the need for "ginger-eating" or "vinegar-wanting" genes.

In this modern world, no matter where we live, we consume processed sugars. A prolonged high sugar diet can lead to abnormal eating patterns and obesity. Scientists have used animal models and uncovered a molecular mechanism through which this happens. High sugar diets activate a protein complex called PRC2.1, which then regulates gene expression to reprogram taste neurons and reduce the sensation of sweetness, locking animals into maladaptive patterns of feeding. Here dietary habits are altering gene expression-an example of "epigenetic reprogramming"-leading to unhealthy food choices.

Nurture shapes nature, and nature shapes nurture. It is not a duality; it's more like a Mobius strip. The reality of how the "abilities, needs and desires of Homo sapiens" come to be is far more sophisticated (and elegant!) than what Harari portrays.

Geneticists Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb say it best in their book Evolution in Four Dimensions:

"The idea that there is a gene for adventurousness, heart disease, obesity, religiosity, homosexuality, shyness, stupidity, or any other aspect of mind or body has no place on the platform of genetic discourse. Although many psychiatrists, biochemists, and other scientists who are not geneticists (yet express themselves with remarkable facility on genetic issues) still use the language of genes as simple causal agents, and promise their audience rapid solutions to all sorts of problems, they are no more than propagandists whose knowledge or motives must be suspect."

Harari's motives remain mysterious; but his descriptions of biology (and predictions about the future) are guided by an ideology prevalent among Silicon Valley technologists like Larry Page, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and others. They may have differing opinions on whether the algorithms will save or destroy us. But they believe, all the same, in the transcendent power of digital computation. "We're headed toward a situation where A.I. is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now," Musk said in a 2020 New York Times interview. Musk is wrong. The algorithms will not take all our jobs, or rule the world, or put an end to humanity anytime soon (if at all). As A.I. specialist François Chollet says about the possibility of algorithms attaining cognitive autonomy, "Today and for the foreseeable future, this is stuff of science fiction." By echoing the narratives of Silicon Valley, science populist Harari is promoting-yet again-a false crisis. Worse, he is diverting our attention from the real harms of algorithms and the unchecked power of the tech industry.

In the last chapter of Homo Deus, Harari tells us of a new religion, "The Data Religion." The practitioners of this religion-"Dataists," he calls them-perceive the entire universe as flows of data. They see all organisms as biochemical data processors, and believe that humanity's "cosmic vocation" is to create an all-knowing, all-powerful data processor that will understand us better than we can understand ourselves. The logical conclusion to this saga, Harari predicts, is that the algorithms will assume authority over all facets of our lives-they will decide who we marry, what careers we pursue, and how we will be governed. (Silicon Valley, as you can guess, is a hub of The Data Religion.)

" Homo sapiens is an obsolete algorithm," Harari states, paraphrasing the Dataists.

"After all, what's the advantage of humans over chickens? Only that in humans information flows in much more complex patterns than in chickens. Humans absorb more data, and process it using better algorithms. Well then, if we could create a data-processing system that absorbs even more data than a human being, and that processes it even more efficiently, wouldn't that system be superior to a human in exactly the same way that a human is superior to a chicken?"

But a human is not a spruced-up chicken, or even necessarily superior in all ways to a chicken. In fact, chickens can "absorb more data" than humans, and "process it better"-at least in the domain of vision. The human retina has photoreceptor cells sensitive to red, blue, and green wavelengths. Chicken retinas have these, plus cone cells for violet wavelengths (including some ultraviolet), plus specialized receptors that can help them track motion better. Their brains are equipped to process all this additional information. The chicken's world is a technicolor extravaganza that we can't even fathom. My point here is not that a chicken is better than a human-this is not a competition-but that chickens are uniquely "chicken" in the same way that we are uniquely "human."

Neither chickens nor humans are mere algorithms. Our brains have a body, and that body is situated in a world. Our behaviors emerge because of our worldly and bodily activities. Living beings are not just absorbing and processing the data flows of our environment; we are continuously altering and creating our own-and each other's-environments, a process called " niche construction" in evolutionary biology. When a beaver builds a dam over a stream, it creates a lake, and all the other organisms now have to live in a world with a lake in it. Beavers can create wetlands that persist for centuries, changing the selection pressures their descendants are exposed to, potentially causing a shift in the evolutionary process. Homo sapiens have unrivaled flexibility; we have extraordinary ability to adapt to our environments, and also modify them. Our acts of living don't just differentiate us from algorithms; they make it near impossible for the algorithms to accurately predict our social behaviors, such as who we will love, how well we will do at future jobs,3 or whether we are likely to commit a crime.

Harari is careful to fashion himself as an objective scribe. He takes pains to tell us he is presenting the worldview of the Dataists, and not his own. But then he does something very sneaky. The Dataist view "may strike you as some eccentric fringe notion," he says, "but in fact it has already conquered most of the scientific establishment." In presenting the Dataist worldview as conclusive (having "conquered most of the scientific establishment"), he tells us that it is "objectively" true that humans are algorithms, and our march to obsolescence-as the passive recipients of decisions made by better algorithms-is unavoidable, because it is integrally tied to our humanity. Turning to the footnote in support of this sweeping statement, we find that of the four books he cites, three have been written by non-scientists-a music publicist, a trendcaster, and a magazine publisher.4

There is nothing predetermined about the fate of humanity. Our autonomy is eroding not because of cosmic karma, but because of a new economic model invented by Google and perfected by Facebook- a form of capitalism that has found a way to manipulate us for the purposes of making money. Social scientist Shoshana Zuboff has given this economic model the name " surveillance capitalism." Surveillance capitalist corporations-Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and others-construct the digital platforms we increasingly rely on to live, work, and play. They monitor our online activities in astounding detail and use the information to influence our behaviors in order to maximize their profits. As a byproduct, their digital platforms have helped create echo chambers resulting in widespread climate denialism, science skepticism, and political polarization. By naming the enemy, and characterizing it as an invention of humans-not a fact of nature or technological inevitability- Zuboff gives us a way to fight it. As you can imagine, Zuboff, unlike Harari, is not a loved figure in Silicon Valley.

In October of 2021, Harari released Volume 2 of the graphic adaptation of Sapiens. Coming up next are a Sapiens children's book, Sapiens Live, an immersive experience, and a multi-season TV show inspired by Sapiens. Our Populist Prophet is relentless in his search for new followers-and with them new heights of fame and influence.

Harari has seduced us with his storytelling, but a close look at his record shows that he sacrifices science to sensationalism, often makes grave factual errors, and portrays what should be speculative as certain. The basis on which he makes his statements is obscure, as he rarely provides adequate footnotes or references and is remarkably stingy with acknowledging thinkers5 who formulated the ideas he presents as his own. And most dangerous of all, he reinforces the narratives of surveillance capitalists, giving them a free pass to manipulate our behaviors to suit their commercial interests. To save ourselves from this current crisis, and the ones ahead of us, we must forcefully reject the dangerous populist science of Yuval Noah Harari.

Listen to a Current Affairs podcast episode with the author about this article here.

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The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari ❧ Current Affairs

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The best-selling author is a gifted storyteller and popular speaker. But he sacrifices science for sensationalism, and his work is riddled with errors.

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The Santiago Boys: a podcast by Evgeny Morozov

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The Santiago Boys: a podcast by Evgeny Morozov

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08 : 07

"Allende's colleagues remember it differently"

Allende related this story to his political advisor Joan Garces, his secretary Patricia Espejo, and his cardiologist Oscar Soto (who was with Allende in New York).

08 : 34

"Allende ascends the stage at the United Nations"

The full video of Allende's address (in Spanish) can be seen here. Excerpts in much better quality are also available on the UN's website.

13 : 39

"take over the Catholic University"

The changes triggered by that occupation are discussed in Bernedo P., Patricio. A 50 años de la reforma universitaria en la UC: Seminario 1967- 2017. Chile, Ediciones UC, 2018. See also Cox, Cristián, et al. La reforma en la Universidad Católica de Chile. Chile, Eds. Sur. Available for download here.

16 : 18

"reverses the decision"

This article from an official Cuban source even contains a photo of an envelope of a letter sent from I.T.T.'s local subsidiary in Cuba to Fidel Castro in 1951. See Aguilera Vega, Abel. "Fidel Castro: El abogado de las causas justas (Parte II)", available here. Philip Bonsal, US ambassador to Cuba in the late 1950s, tells his side of the story of how ITT's property was nationalized on pp. 46-48 of his book. See Bonsal, Philip W.. Cuba, Castro, and the United States. United States, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971, pp. 46-48. The notorious golden telephone that appears in the Godfather movie was reportedly a gift to Batista in recognition of his favors; today it's on display in a Cuban museum.

20 : 07

"a name to remember"

See the Church Report for an overview of the US involvement in that election: United States, Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations. "Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973." U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975. Available here. Good biographical sketches of McCone are to be found in two books about Bechtel; see Denton, Sally. The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2017. and McCartney, Laton. Friends In High Places: The Bechtel Story. United States, Random House Publishing Group, 1989.

20 : 53

"a new political party called MIR"

See Álvarez Vergara, Marco. La constituyente revolucionaria: historia de la fundación del MIR chileno. Chile, LOM Ediciones, 2015, and Palieraki, Eugenia. ¡La revolución ya viene! el MIR chileno en los años sesenta. Chile, LOM Ediciones, 2014.

23 : 07

"Even Allende's daugther Beatriz"

The best account of Beatriz Allende's life is found in Harmer, Tanya. Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America. United States, University of North Carolina Press, 2020. See also Álvarez Vergara, Marco. Tati Allende: una revolucionaria olvidada. Chile, Pehuén Editores, 2017.

24 : 01

"when her father suffers a heart attack"

The heart attack is mentioned in various sources. See Harmer, Tanya. Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America. United States, University of North Carolina Press, 2020, p. 154. See also United States, Central Intelligence Agency. "Memorandum From Director of Central Intelligence Helms to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)." June 16, 1970. Available here.

25 : 31

"They use every tool at their disposal"

A good inside view of what the CIA was up to in the 1970 election can be found in a memo written by one of its senior officials. See United States, Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Operations. "Memorandum by the Acting Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division." Washington, August 23, 1970. Available here. A reference to even earlier strategizing can be found in United States, State Department. "Memorandum for the Record. Discussion of U.S. Government Activities Leading Up to the Chilean Election in September 1970." Washington, January 19, 1970. Available here.

26 : 52

"Social Property Area of the Economy"

See our interview with Oscar Guillermo Garreton, one of MAPU's most senior members who was directly involved in drafting and implementing some of UP's early economic initiatives. Our interview with Joan Garces would be of interest. An informative table on the US firms targetted by the UP government is to be found in United States, Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee. "United States and Chile During the Allende Years, 1970-1973." Washington, 1975, p. 71. Link.

29 : 37

"What exactly is ITT?"

The early best-selling attack on corporations is Sampson, Anthony. The Sovereign State: The Secret History of ITT. United Kingdom, Coronet Books, 1974. A more balanced account is provided by Sobel, Robert. ITT: The Management of Opportunity. United States, Beard Books, 2000. For ITT's activities in Latin America, see various chapters (especially on Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, and Puerto Rico) in Telecommunications in Latin America. United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 1998, edited by Eli M. Noam.

37 : 35

"when the commander is mortally wounded"

Chapter 1 of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability is an excellent guide to the murky events surrounding Schneider's kidnapping. See also Chapter 6 of González, Mónica. Chile, la conjura: los mil y un días del golpe. Chile, Ediciones B, Group Zeta, 2000.

41 : 13

"That person is Fernando Flores"

On Fernando's early career, see our interviews with him, Bernardo Andrews, and Gabriel Rodriguez.

45 : 36

"He actually asks I.T.T."

Our interview with Joan Garces confirms this. See also the summary of the meeting between Allende and ITT executives in Multinational Corporations and United States Foreign Policy: On the International Telephone and Telegraph Company and Chile, 1970-71, part 2, p. 584. United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973. Available here.

50 : 07

"where Beer served as a leader"

SIGMA was quite a special place to work. See our interviews with Stafford's colleagues there - John Ludley, Jonathan Rosenhead, John Culhane, Mike Kent, and Gloria Gillott.

50 : 12

"Fernando is deeply familiar with Beer's ideas"

The most accessible introduction to Beer's thought is his book that was initially delivered as Massey lectures in Canada - Beer, Stafford. Designing Freedom. United Kingdom, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1974. You can listen to the lectures here. To learn more about Beer, check our interviews with Trevor Hilder, Andrew Pickering, Angela Espinosa, Robin Asby, Jon Walker, Joe Truss, and Michael Jackson.

51 : 34

"with Lord Mountbatten"

For Beer's contacts with Mountbatten, see Stafford Beer collection, Box 6, Liverpool (it includes a photo of them both at a cocktail party).

51 : 37

"disgraced press baron Robert Maxwell"

On Beer's connection to the Maxwells, see our interview with Vanilla Beer. See also Beer's oral history - recorded in 1996 - about his involvement with Operations Research with Rebecca Capey, on file with the author.

54 : 05

"He's meeting Stafford at the Atheneum"

See our interview with Michael Wheeler, who wrote a history of the club: Wheeler, Michael. The Athenaeum: More Than Just Another London Club. United States, Yale University Press, 2020. On the broader significance of the Clubland to the intersection of Britain's scientific, policy, and business elites, see our interviews with David Edgerton and Jon Agar.

54 : 57

"he later describes him as follows"

This is from a letter that Stafford sends to Richard Haas, his counsel in Intercounsel. See Beer, Stafford. Beer to Haas. October 14, 1972. Stafford Beer collection, Box 67, Liverpool.

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Populism in power: A scholarly comic by Takis Pappas

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Populism in power: A scholarly comic by Takis Pappas

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Simple as this comic story might be, it is based on many years of research and writing on the topic of populism, including books, academic and non-academic articles, various infographics, a TED-Ed video, and much more. The comic is scholarly since most of its dialogues are exact quotes by real populist leaders. Alecos, my collaborating cartoonist, and I hope you are going to enjoy it.

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Simple as this comic story might be, it is based on many years of research and writing on the topic of populism, including books, academic and non-academic articles, various infographics, a TED-Ed ...

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In India, fascism is reinventing itself.

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In India, fascism is reinventing itself.

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🌊 Hindutva fascism threatens the world's largest democracy

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In India, fascism is reinventing itself. It has crept through Hindu nationalism - Hindutva - and now poses a serious threat to Indian democracy, writes Amit Singh

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Clear parallels between Nazi, Modi regime: Yale Uni professor

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Clear parallels between Nazi, Modi regime: Yale Uni professor

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Yale University professor and renowned scholar on fascism Dr Jason Stanley said that India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi mimics the Nazi playbook.

"Modi's far-right supporters and other Hindu supremacists celebrate their connections with Nazis. The RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh) explicitly says, 'We want to do to Muslims what the Nazis did to Jews," Dr Stanley said.

RSS is a Hindu militant organization and progenitor of Hindutva/Hindu supremacist ideology. BJP is its political wing.

Dr Stanley's remarks came at the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) event held on Sunday in Woodbridge, New Jersey, commemorating the 21st anniversary of the Gujarat pogrom.

The pogrom took place during the reign of the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was then the chief minister of Gujarat.

The state had witnessed widespread communal riots which started on February 28, 2002, a day after the Godhra train burning incident that claimed 59 lives.

The pogrom that it triggered killed at least 1,044 people, on record. Giving details, the Central government informed the Rajya Sabha in May 2005 that 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed in the post-Godhra riots.

The event also featured a panel discussion on 'Hindu Far-Right in India and the US' where Dr Stanley argued that BJP's recent Citizenship Amendment Act could be used to strip Muslims of Indian citizenship, just as the Nuremberg laws were used by Nazis to strip German Jews of citizenship.

"Modi's visions of a pure Hindu past also mirror the idealized Aryan past envisioned by Adolf Hitler. I don't need to uncover connections between Modi and prior fascist regimes. They are clear and explicit. Both RSS and BJP were central examples in my 2018 book 'How Fascism Works," Dr Stanley said.

Imran Dawood, a British Muslim man who was stabbed and left for dead during the Gujarat pogrom, echoed Stanley's condemnation of Modi's policies. Two of Dawood's uncles and a family friend were burned alive during the riots.

"This trauma will always be with me, but I won't be defined by it. Going forward, we must denigrate the hateful ideology that allowed the pogrom to happen. We must oppose the BJP's ongoing, destructive bulldozer policies. Bulldozers must be used constructively for humanity, not to destroy humanity," Dawood said.

The IAMC slammed the Modi regime over regularly sending bulldozers to illegally demolish Muslim homes which they stated have since become an international symbol for Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s Islamophobic policies.

Dawood's condemnation of bulldozer policies resonated with the local Muslim community, which just last year witnessed a bulldozer decorated with pictures of Modi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister, a Hindu monk, Yogi Adityanath paraded through Edison, New Jersey on Indian Independence Day.

Imran Dawood's uncle, Yusuf Dawood, recounted how excited his nephew had been to finally vacation in India, to taste its food, see the Taj Mahal, and learn about the land his parents loved - only to find himself brutally stabbed and saddled with the shattering loss of two uncles and a friend.

"The police lied to us and told us our relatives were missing. They knew they were dead. Our vision of India was changed from one moment to the next," Yusuf said. "We must not let Hindu supremacists' vision of hatred destroy our own values." He also recounted how the police in Gujarat had failed to gather signatures to witness statements, effectively nullifying scores of eyewitness accounts.

Aakashi Bhatt, daughter of jailed whistleblower and former senior police officer Sanjiv Bhatt, recounted how the current regime had sentenced her father to life in prison for speaking out against PM Modi's complicity in the pogrom.

"Justice has been systematically delayed and intentionally denied," Bhatt said. "We live in Modi's India now, where rapists and murderers walk free, but an honest officer must live in prison. In Modi's India, a fair day in court is not afforded to the honest and upright. The Indian judiciary has been systematically dismantled to assure that Modi cannot face trial and whistleblowers go to jail."

Bhatt also pointed to the example of Haren Pandya, who was murdered shortly after speaking out about Modi's complicity, and RB Sreekumar, who was also arrested for whistleblowing.

Renowned activist and Executive Director of Polis Project Suchitra Vijayan, who is also the author of the award-winning book "Midnight's Borders," further characterized Modi and the BJP's vision of India. "Modi's Hindutva [Hindu nationalism] is based on an exclusionary idea of what it means to be Hindu. A Hindu is not a Muslim, is not a Christian. Hindu Supremacy is foundational to the BJP and RSS," said Vijayan.

She explained how failures by previous governments to deal with communal violence in India cleared the ground for present Hindu supremacist violence. "What we saw in Gujarat was a continuation of previous attacks. But we must remember that what happened in Gujarat never ended. It goes on every day in India. Statistics prove attacks against Muslims continue to grow under Modi's rule," she said.

Azad Essa, a journalist at Middle East Eye and author of "Hostile Homelands," a recent book on Modi's international religious nationalist influences, explained how Hindu supremacists exported their agenda to the United States.

"We have to remember that numerous high-profile RSS members were banned from India in the 1970s. Then its members came to the US and started spreading their ideology here. So we see the Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, and later the Hindu America Foundation continuing to influence American politicians with a covert Hindu supremacist agenda," Essa said.

He noted how these US-based Hindu supremacist organizations weaponize the term Hinduphobia to denigrate anyone critical of Modi's policies.

The event closed with a lively discussion between the audience and panellists. Panellists recounted the victories of the civil rights movement, one of the only mobilizations in the world to successfully challenge an ethnic supremacist regime without resorting to mass violence.

Members of the African-American community shared their support for the event and called for the defeat of the Hindutva movement in India, the US, and elsewhere.

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Clear parallels between Nazi, Modi regime: Yale Uni professor

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Yale University professor and renowned scholar on fascism Dr Jason Stanley said that India's ruling BJP under PM Modi mimics Nazi playbook.

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What do elections in an "illiberal democracy" look like?

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What do elections in an "illiberal democracy" look like?

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Fear and voting in Cambodia's one-horse election race

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Seventeen parties registered for election alongside PM Hun Sen's party, but it is almost impossible for him to lose.

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The world's coolest dictator in El Salvador?

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The world's coolest dictator in El Salvador?

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Among the colourful houses of Comunidad Iberia, an impoverished neighbourhood of San Salvador, the dark glass cube of the Urban Centre for Welfare and Opportunities (or Cubo in its Spanish acronym) is an eye-catching piece of urban architecture. Inside local children take art classes, read in the library and play online games. Outside, a mural depicting Armando Bukele, the father of El Salvador's president, extols Salvadorans to "live with love and responsibility".

Futuristic, Instagramable and faintly ominous, the Cubo is a fitting tribute to Nayib Bukele's presidency. Since coming to power in June 2019, the 40-year-old former publicist has adopted bitcoin as legal tender, used his social-media accounts to generate an approval rating that is the envy of presidents worldwide, and introduced authoritarian measures to undermine the country's political opposition and civil society.

On Tuesday, speaking for the first time at the UN general assembly, he took a selfie on the podium and told the audience that "a couple of images on Instagram have a greater impact than any speech in this assembly." Then he updated his ever-changing Twitter bio to "The coolest dictator in the world". But increasing numbers of Salvadorans suspect a darker truth behind the trolling.

'El Dictador más cool del mundo mundial': The coolest dictator in the world. Photograph: TWITTER

Last week, an estimated 15,000 people took to the streets of the capital to protest against Bukele's growing authoritarianism, destroying a recently installed bitcoin ATM machine in the process. It was the latest sign that Bukele's sky-high approval ratings - which regularly exceed 80% - may be starting to slip.

Having won the February 2019 presidential election with 53% of the votes, Bukele benefited from popular anger over violent crime and the corruption and incompetence of the traditional ruling parties. The Cubos - of which an additional 21 have been commissioned across the capital - are the friendly face of his "territorial control plan", which also involved the retooling of the armed forces - members of which turned up at the national assembly in February 2020, guns in hand, to dissuade the opposition from resisting the plan.

"I think it is very clear now who is in control of the situation," Bukele reportedly said.

Through these measures and a secretive pact with the country's notorious gangs, Bukele managed to bring the homicide rate to historic lows. His decision to press corruption charges against El Salvador's spectacularly unpopular traditional political parties also won him support.

"Bukele flipped the tortilla," says Edwin Ramos Siguenza, a 26-year-old tourism worker. "Today, it's not the Salvadoran people who are feeling the pressure, it's the political classes who have hidden their corruption behind their own laws - they're the ones feeling the heat."

Few world leaders have navigated the Covid-19 crisis for their own political benefit better than the Salvadoran president. "The pandemic was a blessing for Bukele," says Carlos López Bernal, a professor of history at the University of El Salvador. "He presented an apocalyptic scenario to which the only solution, supposedly, was to give the president everything he asked for. More money and more power."

Even after a slight dip in response to the hasty and error-laden bitcoin law, Bukele's approval rating remains above 75%, boosted by promises of Chinese investments in large infrastructure projects and a region-leading vaccination campaign.

"The interesting thing about Bukele is his ability to capitalize on popular disenchantment with the political parties while proposing nothing," says López Bernal. "He has no interest in ideology and there is no political thinking behind his plan for the country."

A former marketing executive who regularly shows up to work in skinny jeans and a baseball cap, Bukele meticulously documents each of his political wins on his prolific Twitter account, with a familiarity for internet vernacular that escapes most older politicians. He updated his profile pic to feature the "laser eyes" of cryptocurrency enthusiasts after announcing the bitcoin law, and when the country's newly acquired bitcoins lost 17% of their value, he announced plans to "buy the dip".

For Bukele the ends justify the memes. He has used his popularity to consolidate and perhaps extend his stay in power. In February his party won a supermajority in legislative elections; a year later, he wasted little time replacing judges on the constitutional panel of the supreme court and approved a plan to fire all judges over the age of 60. He has also created a hostile atmosphere for local independent media and civil society.

Aside from his penchant for aviator sunglasses, Bukele has far more in common with Central America's historical dictators than initially meets the eye, according to Greg Weeks, a professor of Latin American politics at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. "His tactics are identical to Latin American strongmen throughout history," he said. "He is putting loyalists in key positions of power, using intimidation against the legislature and opposition and attacking the media."

Bukele's ultimate goal appears to be rewriting the country's 1992 constitution, signed in the aftermath of El Salvador's civil war, in order to radically reshape the politics of the country. In September, days before Salvadorans celebrated 200 years of independence, his newly installed judges in the constitutional chamber ruled that he could run for consecutive terms. In recent years, courts in neighbouring Honduras and Nicaragua have abolished term limits intended to prevent presidents becoming entrenched in power.

"The bicentennial is a significant date and on social media the talk is of a 'new republic' with a new constitution," says López Bernal. "But behind the pretense of reform, the real motive is for Bukele to remain in power, and the Salvadoran institutions are too weak to protect the constitution or put limits on a megalomaniac president."

His example could provide a blueprint for copycat strongmen across the region, said Weeks. "Bukele's actions will instil more confidence in Latin American politicians that they can also manipulate and violate the constitution for their own benefit."

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Nayib Bukele calls himself the 'world's coolest dictator' - but is he joking?

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El Salvador's president is consolidating power and seems intent on rewriting the country's constitution

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Donald Trump for years has promoted baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In truth, Trump was the one who tried to steal the election, federal prosecutors said Tuesday in a sprawling indictment that paints the former president as desperate to cling to power he knew had been stripped away by voters.

The Justice Department indictment accuses Trump of brazenly conspiring with allies to spread falsehoods and concoct schemes intended to overturn his election loss to President Joe Biden as his legal challenges floundered in court.

The felony charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith are built around the words of White House lawyers and others in his inner circle who repeatedly told Trump there was no fraud.

It's the third time this year the early front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary has been charged in a criminal case. But it's the first case to try to hold Trump responsible for his efforts to remain in power during the chaotic weeks between his election loss and the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump has said he did nothing wrong, and has accused Smith and the Justice Department of trying to harm his 2024 campaign.

Here's a look at the charges Trump faces and other key issues in the indictment:

____

WHAT IS TRUMP CHARGED WITH?

Trump is charged with four counts: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy to prevent others from carrying out their constitutional rights.

In the obstruction charge - which carries penalties of up to 20 years in prison - the official proceeding refers to the Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress at which electoral votes were counted in order to certify Biden as the official winner. Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding also carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

That obstruction charge has been brought against hundreds of the more than 1,000 people charged in the Jan. 6 riot, including members of the far-right Oath Keepers and extremist groups. More than 100 people have been convicted at trial or pleaded guilty to the offense.

Conspiracy to defraud the U.S., which is punishable by up to five years in prison, prohibits efforts to obstruct or interfere with government functions "by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest," the Supreme Court has held. The indictment alleges that Trump used "dishonesty, fraud and deceit" to obstruct the counting and certifying of the election results.

Trump had the right to contest the election - and even falsely claim that he had won, indictment says. The charges, however, stem from what prosecutors say were illegal efforts to subvert the election results and block the peaceful transfer of power.

The indictment alleges a weekslong plot that began with pressure on state lawmakers and election officials to change electoral votes from Biden to Trump, and then evolved into organizing fake slates of pro-Trump electors to be sent to Congress.

Trump and his allies also attempted to use the Justice Department to conduct bogus election-fraud investigations in order to boost his fake electors' scheme, the indictment says.

As Jan. 6 approached, Trump and his allies pressured Vice President Mike Pence to reject certain electoral votes, and when that failed, the former president directed his supporters to go to the Capitol to obstruct Congress' certification of the vote, the indictment alleges.

Finally, the indictment says, Trump and his allies tried to exploit his supporters' attack on the Capitol by redoubling their efforts to spread election lies and convince members of Congress to further delay the certification of Biden's victory.

"Each of these conspiracies - which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud - targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election," the indictment says.

WHAT IS THE 'CONSPIRACY AGAINST RIGHTS' CHARGE?

Trump is accused of violating a post-Civil War era civil rights statute that makes it a crime to conspire to interfere with rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution, in this case: the right to vote and have one's vote counted. It's punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The provision was originally part of a set of laws passed in 1870 in response to violence and intimidation by members of the Ku Klux Klan aimed at keeping Black people from the polls.

But it has has been used over the years in a wide-range of election fraud cases, including to prosecute conspiracies to stuff ballot boxes or not count certain votes. The conspiracy doesn't have to be successful, meaning the fraud doesn't have to actually affect the election.

WAS ANYONE ELSE CHARGED?

Trump is the only defendant charged in the indictment, which mentions six co-conspirators. The six people are not explicitly named, but the indictment includes details that make it possible to identify some of them. It's unclear why they weren't charged or whether they will be added to the indictment at a later date.

The co-conspirators include an attorney "who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies" that Trump's 2020 campaign attorneys would not, and an attorney whose "unfounded claims of election fraud" Trump privately acknowledged to others sounded "crazy." Another co-conspirator is a political consultant who helped submit fake slates of electors for Trump.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The case was filed in Washington's federal court, where Trump is expected to make his first appearance on Thursday.

For more than two years, judges in that courthouse - which sits within sight of the Capitol - have been hearing the cases of the hundreds of Trump supporters accused of participating in the Jan. 6 riot - many of whom have said they were deluded by the election lies pushed by Trump and his allies.

Trump has signaled that his defense may rest, at least in part, on the idea that he truly believed the election was stolen, saying in a recent social media post, "I have the right to protest an Election that I am fully convinced was Rigged and Stolen, just as the Democrats have done against me in 2016, and many others have done over the ages."

But prosecutors have amassed a significant amount of evidence showing that Trump was repeatedly told he had lost.

Trump "was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue - often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts and he deliberately disregarded the truth," the indictment says.

Trump is already scheduled to stand trial in March in the New York case stemming from hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign and in May in the federal case in Florida stemming from classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Smith said prosecutors will seek "a speedy trial" in the latest case.

Unlike in Florida, where Republicans have made steady inroads in recent years, Trump will likely face a challenging jury pool in overwhelmingly Democratic Washington, D.C. Of the roughly 100 people who have gone to trial in the Jan. 6 attack, only two people have been cleared of all charges and those cases were decided by judges, not juries.

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2020 united states presidential election

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2024 united states presidential election

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The election-meddling indictment against Trump is sprawling. Here's a breakdown of the case

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Former President Donald Trump has for years pushed baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.