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Mcvie, S (2009) Criminal Careers and Young People, In: Barry, M & McNeill, F. Youth Offending and Youth Justice, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd
The age-crime curve, which peaks at around 18 years old for males and females, is described as one of the brute facts of criminology. There is a debate about whether the curve is due to an increase in frequency in offending or prevalence. But I think when looking at this with Fassin’s argument in mind this curve perhaps shows who the police are targeting instead of a trend in offending behaviour. Facts like this puts stigma onto a certain population group which gives police a target to focus on. This can then lead to 18 year olds ‘anticipating police action’ which is described in Han’s (2017) article. Furthermore, by stigmatising young people it gives individuals a higher chance of being ‘sucked into’ the criminal justice system and having a longer ‘criminal career’ compared to if the stigma was put on a higher age group.

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The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336, VAT Registration Number GB 592 9507 00, and is acknowledged by the UK authorities as a " Recognised body " which has been granted degree awarding powers.

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This TV show (based on a book) is about Jacob, a teenage boy, who is charged with first degree murder of his classmate. The show follows the family and the effects the murder has on them. Jacob’s Dad, Andy is a lawyer and Andy’s dad is a convicted murderer. As the show goes on Jacob’s mother loses faith in him and goes crazy with the torment of not knowing if he committed the murder or not, which we never find out. The story opens with Jacob’s father saying he believes in the system and just wants the truth to come out but the show illustrates how the system does not get to the truth. The same can be said for Sarah Koenig’s podcast, where the justice system did not get to the truth of Anna’s case.

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Defending Jacob — Official Trailer | Apple TV+

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Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist. This documentary captures the migration crisis across many different countries. One key moment that I remember is when Ai Weiwei Is having a conversation with a refugee and switches passports with them. It is quite striking how this would change someone’s life and the power attached to some passports over others. And then when reading Khosravi’s paper, he talks about his ‘second-grade’ passport because it was photocopied, rather than a ‘look-alike’ passport sold by backpackers. He was worried about his passport not being believable but his smuggler said his passport would be overlooked with a bribe. So whilst passports hold a lot of power, money can override any weaknesses a passport may have.

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Human Flow (Official Movie Site): Home - Own It On Digital HD

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Human Flow (Official Movie Site) - Own It On Digital HD

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Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II. Human Flow, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration.

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“The message from the visceral scenes [wild fires] unfolding in the western US is clear: climate displacement isn’t something that happens only outside of our borders.” I think this is interesting to take into account when thinking about compassion, like in Ticktin’s paper she asks “what conditions evoke compassion and why and what hierarchies are reproduced by it?” (P44) With medical humanitarianism compassion is easily evoked because of the physical and visible nature of sickness. With climate displacement the bodily suffering is not as visible so compassion might be harder to evoke for these migrants, and so are placed further down the moral hierarchy. However, the migrants in the news article are from within the borders so perhaps they will evoke more compassion regardless compared to any kind of migrant outside of the border.

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n November 2018, I traveled with a caravan of thousands of Central American migrants as they marched across Mexico towards the US border. While some were seeking refuge in the US from gang violence or political persecution, many others were looking to escape something much more subtle: climate change. The Trump administration decried these climate migrants as "invaders" and attempted to build a wall to keep them out.

But today, as much of the western US burns, and the country looks on in horror as San Francisco suffocates in an orange cloud of ash, we see that the US way of life is also gravely threatened by climate change. More than 8,100 wildfires have burned over 3.9m acres in California this year. The fires have killed 30 people, destroyed more than 7,500 structures, and displaced thousands in the state. Meanwhile in Oregon, half a million people were put under an evacuation order.

The message from the visceral scenes unfolding in the western US is clear: climate displacement isn't something that happens only outside of our borders. It has already begun in the US, and we can no longer turn our backs on the more than 20 million climate migrants worldwide.

The message from the west is clear: climate displacement isn't something that happens only outside of our borders

The migrants I traveled with in the caravan primarily came from the Dry Corridor of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador - a tropical dry forest region known for its irregular rainfall, and often considered the most susceptible region in the world to climate change. An unusually prolonged five-year drought dating back to 2014 destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares of beans and maize, leaving smallholder farmers at risk of starvation. Faced with no other option, many decided to migrate.

Day after day, families walked dozens of miles along unfamiliar Mexican highways, uncertain of their next meals. Five-year-old children solemnly trudged along in the pre-dawn darkness, pulling toy cars behind them. Young mothers carried newborn daughters over tired shoulders, while weary men gazed restlessly ahead towards the unknown. Just like the Dust Bowl refugees of the 1930s, these climate migrants hoped that the failed harvests of yesterday would soon be replaced with the American dream of tomorrow.

But the American dream of tomorrow is also under great stress. The climate displacement of the Dust Bowl era is already here - and has been here for many, many years.

In Louisiana, the coast has been losing at least a football field's worth of land every 100 minutes, which has prompted thousands of coastal Louisianans to migrate from the state. The Urban Institute estimated that in 2018 more than 1.2 million Americans left their homes for climate-related reasons. One 2018 study, published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, predicts that one in 12 Americans in the southern half of the country will relocate over the next 45 years due to slow-onset climate influences alone. While mega-disasters like the wildfires in the western US capture our attention, slow-onset disasters such as sea-level rise or annual flooding are even more likely to cause permanent displacement.

With such an imminent threat looming over the country - and the world - the time for action is now.

The international community took a step in the right direction in December 2018 when it recognized climate migrants for the first time, including those from the US. Leaders from 164 countries formally adopted the UN Global Compact for Migration, which acknowledged climate change as a driver of migration and urged countries to begin preparing for a surge in climate migration. But clearly more needs to be done, starting with seriously trying to mitigate climate change. Instead, the Trump administration continues to dispute its existence, has pulled the US out of the Paris agreement, and has rescinded regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Rather than granting protections to climate migrants abroad and at home and recognizing a collective global challenge, the administration has ignored the issue (much like its response to the coronavirus pandemic) and ramped up its inhumane policies at the border.

When the Dust Bowl ravaged the United States in the 1930s, a mass exodus of 2.5 million midwestern farmers migrated towards California. These climate migrants, just like the ones today, were derided as "aliens" and "undesirables". The state of Colorado even deployed its militia for 10 days to stop the migrants from entering. Ultimately, this act was deemed unconstitutional, as it was declared that "the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states".

The US response to climate displacement today must recognize a similar collective responsibility towards all those affected by climate change. Many of today's climate migrants are, after all, American.

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Americans are becoming climate migrants before our eyes | Alex Domash

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n November 2018, I traveled with a caravan of thousands of Central American migrants as they marched across Mexico towards the US border. While some were seeking refuge in the US from gang violence or political persecution, many others were looking to escape something much more subtle: climate change.

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Blackout Tuesday was a very prominent part of the Black Lives Matter movement this year and I think it is interesting to think about protest and resistance on social media. Khalid Abdalla in ‘The Square’ documentary filmed parts of the revolution in Egypt and posted it on youtube and he spoke to news stations in the US to try to get people’s attention outside of Egypt. So I think social media has drastically changed how protests function, because of its instant nature and how easily and far information can spread. It’s partly why BLM has gained so much traction this year compared to other years. But at the same time there is a slight danger in social media because blackout Tuesday then got a lot of criticism because it flooded the hashtags on instagram meaning information about live protests could not reach as many people. So social media can be self-sabotaging, but perhaps that is more to do with the nature of protests in that overcoming power is messy; as the documentary showed when Mubarak resigned it was not the end of the revolution and the protestors then became fragmented because of religion.

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You may be wondering why your social media feeds were been engulfed by black squares yesterday.

Celebrities, corporations, music labels and sports stars vowed not to post on their accounts on what is being called Blackout Tuesday following the death of George Floyd.

Demonstrations have broken out across the US following the death of Mr Floyd and other allegations of police brutality against people of colour.

Amid a febrile atmosphere, police have clashed with protesters in cities including New York, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, while Donald Trump has threatened to deploy the country's military unless state authorities stop ongoing violent demonstrations.

What is Blackout Tuesday?

The idea was to fill Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with black squares, freeing up the time usually dedicated to social media for people to educate themselves on the Black Lives Matter movement.

Organisers said they wanted Tuesday to be a "a day to disconnect from work and reconnect with our community" through "an urgent step of action to provoke accountability and change".

The campaign hit a slight bump in the road early on Tuesday with many people using the hashtags dedicated to Black Lives Matter.

This clogged up feeds meant for information related to protests around the world, which is something organisers were understood to be keen to avoid.

Why were celebrities posting black squares on Instagram?

George Floyd, a 46-year-old bouncer, was killed on Monday May 25 by Derek Chauvin, a police officer, who pressed his knee into Mr Floyd's neck until he died while other police officers watched.

Footage of the killing, taken by a bystander, showed Floyd lying face down and handcuffed, groaning for help and repeatedly saying, "please, I can't breathe," before becoming motionless.

Chauvin, had his knee on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in total and two minutes and 53 seconds after Mr Floyd was unresponsive, according to a criminal complaint released by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office.

On June 1, a medical examiner in Minnesota classified Mr Floyd's death as a homicide.

Mr Chauvin is charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for the Floyd family, has now called for the Minneapolis police officers to face the more serious charge of first-degree murder, based on the new findings.

It has restored the Black Lives Matter movement at the forefront of the news agenda.

Celebrities unite for Blackout Tuesday

A host of well-known celebrities have posted black squares on their social media accounts to their millions of followers.

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Blackout Tuesday: What is it - and why were people posting black squares on Instagram?

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You may be wondering why your social media feeds were been engulfed by black squares yesterday. Celebrities, corporations, music labels and sports stars vowed not to post on their accounts on what is being called Blackout Tuesday following the death of George Floyd.

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Similarly, over the summer during lockdown there was a lot of protests about the climate emergency by Extinction Rebellion activists. Instead of sit-ins like in ‘The Square’ they have been staging ‘die-ins’ among other actions like preventing distribution of newspapers for inaccurate reporting and meditating outside banks that lend money to fossil fuel companies. By looking at these acts of resistance as a diagnostic of power (Abu-Lughod 1990) one can see the power in newspapers and the information they are spreading as well as banks and how they ‘give power’ to environmentally damaging companies by investing in them. Or as one activist says, “I realised anything I was going to do in my personal life wasn’t going to cut it, the system is the greatest problem”, which shows her personal acts of resistance are futile given the power of ‘the system’.
On another note, crime and protests is an interesting overlap. The Egyptian revolution saw a lot of police brutality against civilians and rebels, and in the first week of September “Hundreds of XR supporters have been arrested - believed to be significantly fewer than in previous ‘rebellions’” (the Guardian). This supports Durkheim’s argument that “we do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it” (as cited in Fassin 2018:2) and so this shows the logic behind Chidi Oti-Obihara’s speech calling for ecocide to be made a crime (the Guardian). And reiterates where power lies; if ecocide is made a crime then change is more likely to happen.

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Thousands of Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists and supporters have been staging "die-ins", preventing copies of newspapers from being distributed and meditating outside banks over the past week in a series of actions aimed at highlighting the worsening ecological crisis.

At printing plants in Merseyside and in Hertfordshire on Friday evening, many trucks carrying newspapers were unable to deliver to shops. The prime minister, Boris Johnson, accused XR of seeking to limit the public's access to news amid suggestions that the environmental group could subsequently be treated like an organised crime group by the authorities.

Amanda, 23, a barista from Liverpool, was among those stopping newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch from leaving Newsprinters' Knowsley plant, and said she was motivated by frustration about how some of the media have reported on the environment.

"I'm increasingly realising some newspapers don't report on the climate crisis accurately," she said. "With some of the billionaire owners climate change sceptics, how can you expect what they write to really represent what is happening?"

For Amanda, who did not wish to give her surname, the action highlighted the importance of "freeing the truth" and showed how people can take direct action to significant effect.

"I joined XR about 18 months ago out of despair and helplessness in the face of the terrifying prospect of runaway climate change. I realised anything I was going to do in my personal life wasn't going to cut it, the system is the greatest problem."

Hundreds of XR supporters have been arrested over the last seven days - believed to be significantly fewer than in previous "rebellions" - the oldest of whom was 92-year-old retired engineer John Lynes, from Hastings.

"I don't enjoy being a nuisance," he said following his second arrest after protesting with XR and refusing to cooperate with the police on Parliament Square in London. "But we've tried everything else, there's no sense of urgency; they're talking about 2050, but by then it will be a bit late to do anything."

He said it was crucial to keep pressure on the government ahead of the UN climate change conference next year, which the UK is chairing. "It's my generation that has caused all this and we have a responsibility which I can't duck," Lynes said.

"The government response to climate heating is pathetic, that's why we're protesting. They're doing so little and nothing in proportion to what's needed."

In Cardiff, 19-year-old Poppy Silk and her XR Youth comrades have been protesting to urge MPs to support the passage of the climate and ecological emergency bill, introduced to parliament by the Green party MP Caroline Lucas on Wednesday to reflect the urgency of the escalating climate emergency.

If passed into law, it would help ensure the UK has a comprehensive strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, amid frustration over inaction.

"We see how the government has dragged its feet and reacted slowly to the coronavirus pandemic, and it's the same with the climate," said Silk, who also protested outside her local MP's office in Witney, Oxfordshire, this week.

"Neither of my MPs from home or where I study have backed the bill yet. Climate heating is the biggest threat to humanity and we need to act now. We'd far rather be having fun than putting our civil liberties at risk."

Back in London, Barclays bank - which lends money to fossil fuel companies - was the object of activists' ire. Katja Behrendt, 35, a non-clinical NHS doctor, was part of an XR Buddhists demonstration outside one of its branches by Tottenham Court Road.

"Often we meditate as part of our protests," she said. "It takes some getting used to but I've found these are the moments I feel really connected to my values.

"I find in activism sometimes it can be a bit 'us and them' and that people burn out so I was really happy to find other Buddhists interested within XR because it's about how do we participate and protest and not further division."

However, Chidi Oti-Obihara, a former banker and 2017 Green party parliamentary candidate in East Ham, who protested outside Downing Street and in the City of London last week - making a speech calling for ecocide to be made a crime - said promises had been made by the government and others that were not being fulfilled.

"It's incredibly important to keep the issue of climate change firmly on the agenda because so much has been done to deal with one emergency without contextualising it properly in terms of another emergency," he said, contrasting the government's dual responses to the pandemic and the climate emergency.

"The government has dropped everything, ignored due process and thrown everything at Covid-19 without considering the longer-term environmental impact of such bailouts."

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'Freeing the truth' - Extinction Rebellion activists on their week of action

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From blockading printers to meditating outside Barclays, the climate crisis campaign is drawing a variety of participants

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I think disability and disabilism encapsulates many of the themes from this week’s readings.
There has been a shift from the medical model of disability (which places the problem with the individual) to the social model of disability (which places the problem with the environment). This relates to Paul Farmer’s work on structural violence particularly because of how discrimination towards people with disabilities relates to much larger (structural) problems and its ‘two-way link to poverty’ (linked article).
The huge growth in prenatal testing and selective abortion in recent decades has increasingly put the choice of who should and should not be born in the hands of the parents. This relates to the idea of sovereignty in Mbembe’s ‘necropolitics’ as well as Foucault’s work on biopower because of the division of people into who must live or die. However, with the social model of disability in mind we can see how everyday struggles of people with disabilities is similar to the ‘death-worlds’ Mbembe talks about as unique forms of social existence and living conditions.

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What is a Disability?

There is no universally accepted definition of "disability", although various attempts have been made to produce one. The World Health Organisation (WHO) in its International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) takes into account the social aspects of disability and does not see disability only as a "medical" or "biological" dysfunction. Two key concepts were distinguished by the WHO as follows:
Impairment: Any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological, or body structure or function, for example, paralysis or blindness.
Disability: Any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) states that "disability is an evolving concept and that disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others". According to Article 1, "Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments...". The extent to which these impairments disable someone depends on the level of barriers encountered in society.

A recent position adopted by international organisations is that having a disability is a consequence of a dynamic interaction between, on the one hand, a person's health and other personal factors (such as age, sex, personality or level of education) and on the other, the social and physical environment in which they find themselves. This approach is referred to as the "social model of disability".

Who is Disabled?

The WHO estimates that over a billion people, about 15% of the world's population, have some form of disability and that only about 5% of these disabilities are congenital. 80% of people with disabilities live in developing countries, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP). The World Bank estimates that 20% of the world's poorest people are disabled.
People with disabilities are referred to as the world's largest minority, but unlike most minority groups, this one always has open membership: any one of us could become a member at any time because of an accident, illness or ageing. Disability is thus part of a human condition. In the vast majority of cases disability is believed to be a result of social, economic or political factors, accident or armed conflict. Currently, there might be more factors present that contribute to the incidence of impairments, including environmental pollution, HIV/AIDS and drug abuse. Disability is also a development issue, because of its two-way link to poverty: disability may increase the risk of poverty, and poverty may increase the risk of disability. As many as 50% of disabilities are preventable and directly linked to poverty.

Groups within the disabled community may have a shared socio-cultural history. Some groups share a common language, such as American or French Sign Language, Braille, or even some specific terms which they use to talk about disability or themselves. They often share customs and traditions, such as celebrating disability awareness and pride. Today the disabled are often viewed as a specific cultural group within a diverse society. A disability culture can acknowledge and celebrate the lives of people with disabilities, recognising that these are not necessarily tragic, nor should they be devalued.

Question: Can you think of films or books where disabled people feature? Do they present a positive image of disability?

Disability as a Human Rights Issue

Eugenics and the threat to life

The right to life is a most basic human right; however, throughout history, there have been times when people with disabilities have had their lives threatened, because they were considered less worthwhile than "normal" people. The theory of Social Darwinism and the related Eugenics movement promoted the idea that the human "gene pool" could be improved by human intervention, and played major roles in labelling people with disabilities as "inferior". Eugenics reached its peak in Nazi Germany, resulting in the murder of more than 200,000 disabled people who were some of the earliest victims of concentration camps during the Second World War. Although the movement has largely been discredited, eugenicist ideas and practices continue today in various forms, including forced sterilisation and selective abortion. Negative eugenics is the term given to the practice of discouraging or preventing people considered to be "unfit" from breeding. With the development of medical science, neo-eugenic beliefs are finding new supporters. Prenatal screening and amniocentesis provide prospective parents with the power to decide "who should and who should not inhabit the world".

Forced sterilisation in Europe

Five human rights groups united against forced sterilisation of women with disabilities in France. In August 2011, they submitted written comments to the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Gauer and Others v. France, launched by five young women with mental disabilities who were sterilised without their knowledge or consent. The applicants stated that their rights to family life, to marry and to being free from degrading treatment and discrimination enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated. The coalition of the five groups expects the Court to make a positive decision, and, in that way, reinforce the autonomy of women with disabilities with respect to their reproductive health. The case was still pending at the time of writing.

The Right to choose?

The disability rights movement has raised questions about "selective abortion", or abortion on the basis of foetal impairment. While the women's rights movement, appealing to the values of freedom and autonomy for women, tends to recognise women's unconditional right to have an abortion, selective abortion is very strongly opposed by disability rights activists. They claim that future parents should be provided with objective and unbiased information on disability, and be offered support. Should the above be available, it is likely that fewer women would opt to abort a disabled foetus. The UN Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (1993) have gone some way towards recognising not only the rights of disabled people to have sexual relationships and experience parenthood, but also the need to address societies' prejudices on this issue. The UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities establishes the rights to be free from torture and ill-treatment, to have respect for private and family life, to found a family and be free from discrimination on the basis of disability.

Question: Should parents be allowed to abort a foetus on the grounds that it has impairment? What could count as impairment?

Disability rights movement

Increasingly vocal and well-organised disability movements were behind the crucial paradigm change - change from viewing disability as a personal tragedy towards viewing disability as a human rights issue. The work of such disability movements led to a "nothing about us without us" approach to the issue, and to a policy shift from the medical model to the social and human rights-based models: from the "patient" to the citizen. The key issue is that people with disabilities should be entitled to the same rights as non-disabled persons, and that discrimination on the grounds of disability should be outlawed.

Medical and Social models of Disability

Before the 1970s, people with disabilities were viewed as medical failures and victims of circumstance, deserving of pity. These were the chief characteristics of the "medical model" of disability, which placed the problem firmly with the individual and assumed that only a medical "cure" could remove it.
Against this dominant model, a major shift in thinking took place in the 1960s, initially in the United States, with the "independent living movement". The paradigm shift sees the solution to the problem of disability in the restructuring of society and removal of barriers. This understanding of disability is referred to as the Social Model. It focuses on eliminating the barriers, promoting positive attitudes and making sure that laws and policies support the exercise of full participation and non-discrimination. It suggests that the individual and collective disadvantages suffered by people with disabilities are mainly a result of a complex form of institutional discrimination that is as deep-seated in our society as are sexism or racism.

What is wrong with you?

What is wrong with society? What social, economic, political and/or environmental conditions need to be changed to facilitate the full enjoyment of all rights by
all people with disabilities?

Are your difficulties in understanding people mainly due to a hearing problem?

Are your difficulties in understanding people mainly a result of their
inability to communicate with you?

Did you move here because of your health problem?

What deficiencies in your housing caused you to move here?

Does your health problem / disability prevent you from
going out as often or as far as you would like?

Are there any transport or financial problems preventing you from
going out as often or as far as you would like?

The medical model does still prevail in many countries today and the social model is not universally accepted or applied. Despite its undeniably important focus on social factors, the social model can miss out some essential personal factors, for example the pain involved in severe disability. One disability activist put it this way: "We can insist that society disables us by its prejudice and by its failure to meet the needs created by disability; but to deny the personal experience of disability is, in the end, to collude in our oppression". Disability activists acknowledge that the social model should go beyond saying that "disability is created by the environment". They argue that is important to see people with disabilities neither as passive victims of a medical impairment, nor as passive victims of the environment. Rather, they should be perceived as active agents with full entitlements to rights and capable of exercising autonomy over their own lives.

Social protection systems have often prevented disabled people from taking control of their own lives. Instead, they should facilitate the active participation of people with disabilities. This, however, needs to be coupled with the recognition that people with disabilities have a right to social support regardless of their potential contribution to society. Inclusion of people with disabilities also requires putting in place the policies and programmes that remove barriers and guarantee the exercise of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.

Equality and non-discrimination

Most of today's human rights concerns relating to disability are connected to discrimination. People with disabilities are entitled to exactly the same human rights as people without disabilities, yet they are subject to direct and indirect discrimination and exclusion in almost every area of life.
Either because of societal prejudices, or of structural problems in society, or because of their own impairments. This means that they often need positive efforts from society if they are to have an equal chance of participating. In particular, this can apply to areas such as access to information, health, education and employment. Positive action seeks to promote the representation of particular groups that have traditionally suffered from discrimination, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society.

Reasonable accommodation

Non-discrimination includes the concept of reasonable accommodation that must be made for people with disabilities. Reasonable accommodation means carrying out, when necessary, appropriate modifications and adjustments, which do not impose a disproportionate or undue burden, so that people with disabilities can enjoy their human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis with others. Such reasonable accommodation applies, for example, in cases where a person with a disability is provided with tailor-made solutions and access to information, transportation, workplace, facilities and services. Its overall aim is to facilitate the person's participation in the community.

Disability and Human Rights instruments

Disability is not specifically referred to in any of the key international documents on human rights drawn up before 1961, when the European Social Charter - the first international treaty including explicit provisions on the rights for people with disabilities - was adopted. Complementing the International Bill of Rights, the following key texts specifically address the rights of people with disabilities:

1971 Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons
1975 Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons
1982 World Programme of Action on Disabled Persons
1983-1992 International Decade of Disabled Persons
1993 United Nations Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with
Disabilities
1993 The Vienna Declaration on Human Rights
2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD)

The creation of many key human rights instruments was triggered by the disability movements. While the core international human rights instruments offer significant potential to promote and protect the human rights of persons with disabilities, this potential has not yet been fully realised. This was the main reason for the creation of the new UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities

The Convention was adopted in 2006 and is the first legally binding international UN instrument on disability, which sets out the minimum standards governments are obliged to meet in order to ensure that people with disabilities effectively benefit from their civil, political, economic and social rights. The Convention explicitly recognises disability as a human rights issue. While the Convention does not create new rights, it specifically prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in all areas of life, including civil rights, access to justice and the right to education, health services and access to transportation. The Optional Protocol to the UN CRPD allows for complaints to be submitted to the CRPD Committee by individuals and groups of individuals, alleging that their rights have been violated by states parties to the Protocol.

The Convention underlines the greater risk of poverty for people with disabilities, and emphasises multiple discrimination faced by minorities, women or girls with disabilities. Importantly, the Convention stresses the unique obligation to actively involve civil society organisations of people with disabilities in its implementation. Article 3 of the Convention identifies a set of overarching principles that serve the interpretation and implementation of the Convention:

Respect for inherent dignity and individual autonomy, including the freedom to make one's own choices, and independence of persons

Non-discrimination

Full and effective participation and inclusion in society

Respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity

Equality of opportunity

Accessibility

Equality between men and women

Respect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities and respect for the right of children with disabilities to preserve their identities.

Of particular concern is the fact that people with disabilities are often subjected to the decision making of other people. Article 12 of the UN CPRD seeks to correct this approach, by recognising the legal capacity of people with disabilities and providing measures to support their right to exercise their legal capacity, for example, by eliminating the practice of appointing guardians who make decisions on behalf of persons with disabilities and, instead, providing support to people with disabilities so that they can make their own decisions. Respect of Article 12 is a prerequisite for realising some of other Convention rights, such as the right to political participation, access to justice or the right to have a family.

The Council of Europe and disability rights

The Council of Europe has been a leading human rights actor in the disability field. Its European Social Charter (1961) contains explicit provisions on the rights of persons with disabilities to independence, social integration and participation in the life of the community.

European Social Charter, Article 15

With a view to ensuring the effective exercise of the right of the physically or mentally disabled to vocational training, rehabilitation and resettlement, the Contracting Parties undertake:
1. to take adequate measures for the provision of training facilities, including, where necessary, specialised institutions, public or private
2. to take adequate measures for the placing of disabled persons in employment, such as specialised placing services, facilities for sheltered employment and measures to encourage employers to admit disabled persons to employment.

The Council of Europe "Action Plan to promote the rights and full participation of people with disabilities in society: improving the quality of life of people with disabilities in Europe 2006-2015" sets out specific actions to be implemented by member states in areas including participation in political and public life, education, health care, or awareness raising. It has important cross-cutting aspects: women and girls with disabilities, children with disabilities, people with high support needs, ageing people, and people with disabilities from minorities. The Action Plan is also seen as a policy tool to assist member states to put into practice the UN CRPD and to ultimately mainstream disability throughout all the policy areas of the Council of Europe member states.

EU Disability policies and actions

At the level of the European Union, the European Disability Forum (EDF) - a European umbrella organisation representing the interests of 80 million people with disabilities - has lobbied with others for the recognition of the rights of disabled persons. The result is a specific reference to discrimination on the grounds of disability in the Treaty of Amsterdam, and the EU Directive on Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation, which prohibits discrimination in the field of employment on the ground of disability and encourages reasonable accommodation.
Article 26 of the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights (2000) recognises and respects the right of people with disabilities to benefit from measures designed to ensure their independence, social and occupational integration and participation in the life of the community. In 2010 the European Commission adopted the EU Disability Strategy 2010-2020, which aims to empower people with disabilities so that they can benefit fully from participating in society and in the European economy.

The European Union has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, becoming the first regional integration organisation to sign up to any human rights treaty. All institutions and agents of the EU will have to endorse the values of the Convention in all policies under their competence ensuring the mainstreaming of disability: from transport to employment and from information and communication technologies to development co-operation. They will also have to adjust the accessibility of their own buildings, and their employment and communications policy.

What is Disablism?

Disablism can be defined as discriminatory, oppressive, abusive behaviour arising from the belief that disabled people are inferior to others. Disablism refers to prejudice, stereotyping, or "institutional discrimination" against disabled people. The main problem about disablism (also known as abilism or ableism) is that it is not easy to identify. In many cases, people do not realise that it exists. Disablism is first and foremost about people's attitudes: it does not only refer to consciously discriminatory behaviour, but also to the way that people unconsciously relate to people with disabilities. The unconscious part of discriminatory attitudes is much harder to tackle than conscious acts of discrimination, but both need to be equally targeted in the struggle for human rights.

The vast majority of people would say that they are not against people with disabilities, and that may be true. However, the majority still do not consider people with disabilities as equal, and cannot appreciate the obstacles that exist in society preventing disabled people from living "normal" lives. For example, some people use parking spaces set aside for people with disabilities with the result that disabled drivers may have to turn back home. Disablism permeates all layers of society. Conscious disablism on economic grounds is widespread (for example, discrimination in hiring), but it is the unconscious disablism, resulting from ignorance or a general lack of understanding, which gives more cause for concern. This may show in an "attitude of apartheid", that is, the societal view that inclusive planning is not of high importance since people with mobility impairments have their own separate buildings and institutions, and means of transport. Disablism is also exhibited in the widespread use of separate and unequal entrances to public buildings for the disabled. A non-disablist environment would allow elderly people, mothers with small children and others temporarily or permanently impaired equal access to shopping centres and other public institutions or spaces.

Question: Which areas of your local environment would be inaccessible to you if you became disabled?

Young People and disability

Mainstreaming disability is the process of assessing the implications for disabled people of any planned action, including legislation, policies and programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is important to work towards the mainstreaming of disability in all youth issues, and towards the mainstreaming of youth in all disability issues. Both disability and youth need to be key concerns in formulating any policy. In order to design effective policies, a greater knowledge of disability issues by decision makers is needed and youth with disabilities themselves should take part in decision making. This will only be achieved through closer partnerships of state institutions with organisations of disabled people.

The challenge here is that there are few organisations representing the interests of disabled young people or being run by young people with disabilities. On the international and regional level, most active representatives of disability and youth issues include the International Federation of Hard of Hearing Young People, the Leonard Cheshire Disability Young Voices, the African Youth with Disabilities Network, the Pineda Foundation for Youth, the World Federation of the Deaf Youth Section, and the European Disability Forum Youth Committee.

International Federation of Hard of Hearing Young People (IFHOHYP)

IFHOHYP is an international NGO for national and regional youth organisations dedicated to hard of hearing young people throughout the world. The Federation works to improve the quality of life of hard of hearing young people and to promote equal rights for them at all levels of society. IFHOHYP is actively co-operating with the Council of Europe, for example in organising study sessions for hard of hearing young people, and has been a member of the Advisory Council of Youth of the Council of Europe on several occasions. Other activities of the Federation include international summer camps, training programmes, workshops and English language courses for young people with hearing impairment.

The Right to Education

For decades, special schools for the disabled have been seen as a tool for segregation, and criticised for often being below par with mainstream education. There has been much debate over the advantages and disadvantages of segregated education and special schools, as opposed to mainstreaming special education in general education systems. Whatever the outcome of this debate, young people with disabilities and their families should have the right to choose between special and mainstream schools, based on the specific needs of a child. One key advantage of inclusive education is that the integration of disabled and non-disabled pupils in the first years of schooling can help to prevent prejudices and contribute to the overall inclusion of disabled people in society.

Some of the main problems faced by children and young people with disabilities are inaccessible school buildings or teaching materials, lack of staff trained in specific disability needs, direct and indirect discrimination. There should be opportunities for children and youth with disabilities at schools - whether inclusive or specialised - to learn life and social development skills needed for equal participation in education, to have peer support and mentoring, access to technologies and accessible methodologies.

Non-formal education and the active learning it provides can be more inclusive for people with disabilities than the formal education system. Due to limited possibilities within special education systems or to social exclusion, the lack of social, communications or foreign language skills is more prevalent among people with disabilities than their non-disabled peers. These factors make non-formal education particularly important for people with disabilities, since they can help to build up the necessary life skills which might not have been provided by their formal education. There is also a need to introduce the disability dimension more in mainstream training courses, by including activities that could bring participants in touch with dimensions that some may never have encountered before, or encouraging participation of disabled young people in the mainstream training courses.

ExchangeAbility project

The Erasmus Student Network (ESN), the Youth Agora and the European Disability Forum created the project ExchangeAbility with the support of the Council of Europe to make ESN accessible for disabled students at all the levels of its activities. The project, running in the academic year 2009-2010, aimed to increase the number of exchange students with disabilities and to create the best conditions for them during their stay abroad. A follow-up project with new partners was launched in 2010. Read more at www.exchangeability.eu.

The right to participation in public, political and cultural life

Participation in society tends to be seen by disabled youth as key to their overall objective, which is to achieve full inclusion, with recognition of their particular needs and rights. Many young people with disabilities would like to be involved in mainstream organisations if this was possible. In mainstream organisations young people are able to meet each other because of a common interest. Young people with disabilities do not always have that option, because of both physical and psychological barriers.
Barriers to greater participation include the absence of structures either at local or national levels for representation of disabled people and their concerns. Lack of information is another barrier. Information about whether buildings are physically accessible or whether there are facilities for the hard of hearing or the blind is often unavailable or inaccessible. This lack of information about accessibility - or sometimes the fear of inaccessibility - often prevents people with disabilities from participating in events.
One persisting obstacle to participation is self-identification: whether people perceive themselves as being "disabled" or as members of a "minority". Some disabled people do not want to see themselves as a minority, since this has negative connotations for them; others do not consider themselves to be disabled but as members of particular linguistic and cultural minorities. In terms of political participation, the right to vote is denied to many people with disabilities deprived of legal capacity, or when voting procedures are inaccessible.

When it comes to the participation and inclusion of people with disabilities, the media's role in raising awareness about disability rights and changing attitudes is crucial. The mass media often depicts disabled people as lying at one or other extreme: either being poor and to be pitied, or celebrated as heroes who dare to live. Such portrayal only contributes to stereotyping disabled people and not to understanding that they form a group as interesting and diverse as any other group in society.

No Barriers, No Borders

The SALTO booklet "No Barriers, No Borders" ²⁴ is about how to run international mixed-ability projects for young people with and without a disability. It provides specific tips and guidelines to youth workers and project organisers concerning, for instance, how to interact with people with different disabilities, how to fund youth projects or how to organise training courses for them.
www.salto-youth.net/rc/inclusion

Endnotes

1 www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/dis50y10.htm
2 Note: the term "handicap" is no longer considered appropriate or in keeping with the contemporary understanding of disability. Preferences for terminology among persons with disabilities and among geographic regions may vary. The individual wishes of persons with disabilities should be respected as much as possible.
3 WHO, "Disability and Health Fact sheet N°352", 2011: www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs352/en/index.html
4 United Nations, 2008, "Mainstreaming disability in the development agenda (E/CN.5/2008/6)": www.un.org/disabilities/documents/reports/e-cn5-2008-6.doc
5 United Nations, 2006, "Some Facts about Persons with Disabilities", International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: wwww.un.org/disabilities/convention/pdfs/factsheet.pdf
6 WHO, "World Report on Disability", 2011: www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/report/en
7 Department for International Development (DFID) 2000, "Disability, Poverty and Development", DFID, UK
8 Mckee, Barbara, Disabled and the holocaust: Disabled Persecution, 2004: www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/holocaust/holocaust_remembrance_2004_-_other_victims/holocaust_remembrance_2004_-_disabled___the_holocaust.htm
9 Written Comments Submitted Jointly by Center for Reproductive Rights, European Disability Forum, International Centre For The Legal Protection Of Human Rights (Interights), International Disability Alliance, Mental Disability Advocacy Center, 16 August 2011: http://mdac.info/sites/mdac.info/files/Gauer%20v%20%20France_Submission_ECHR_FINAL.pdf
10 European Court of Human Rights, "Reproductive Rights, Factsheet", 2011:
www.echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/4B7D24F7-F9EF-4749-B16B-68E650B95C5A/0/FICHES_droits_procr%C3%A9ation_EN.pdf
11 UN Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, 1994
12 Oliver, Michael, Understanding Disability: From theory to practice, 1996, Macmillan: Basingstoke.
13 Morris, Jenny, Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability, 1991, Women's Press: London.
14 Handbook for Parliamentarians, No.14, 2007, From Exclusion to Equality Realizing the rights of persons with disabilities, UN and Inter-Parliamentary Union: www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=212
15 The term "mentally retarded" is not up to date anymore and not in the line with contemporary understanding of disability.
16 www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/CRPDIndex.aspx
17 www.internationaldisabilityalliance.org
18 Press release of the European Disability Forum, January 5, 2011: www.edf-feph.org/Page_Generale.asp?DocID=13855&thebloc=26586
19 Note: "Ableism" is a preferred term by some experts and researchers as it focuses not just on disability but the formation of abledness which is always in relationship with disability.
20 www.simonstevens.com
21 UN High Level Meeting on Youth, "Youth with Disabilities" Fact Sheet: http://social.un.org/youthyear/docs/Fact%20sheet%20youth%20with%20disabilities.pdf
22 Carol Miller and Bill Albert, "Mainstreaming disability in development: lessons from gender mainstreaming", 2005: www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/PDF/Outputs/Disability/RedPov_gender.pdfp
23 "Young and Disabled: Daily Challenges for Equality", EDF Youth Committee publication, 2009: www.edf-feph.org/Page.asp?docid=18486&langue=EN
24 "No Barriers, No Borders", SALTO-YOUTH Inclusion Resource Centre, 2008:
www.salto-youth.net/downloads/4-17-913/NoBarriersNoBorders.pdf

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There is no universally accepted definition of "disability", although various attempts have been made to produce one. The World Health Organisation (WHO) in its International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) takes into account the social aspects of disability and does not see disability only as a "medical" or "biological" dysfunction.

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“Abortions carried out when the foetus is malformed, which accounted for 98% of legal terminations last year, have now been outlawed”
Leading on from disability and disabilism, abortion is one example that shows how violence is symbolically at the heart of politics:
Women’s rights activists argue for women’s autonomy and freedom and their right to choice, whereas disability rights activists are against selective abortion because of an impairment to the foetus(previous linked article). On the one hand denying women’s rights is structurally oppressive and violent. On the other hand abortion is a physically violent act upon the foetus and contributes to disabilism which is structurally and sometimes physically violent. There’s many different layers of violence evident here and it affects political decisions and political reason differently.
This news article also encapsulates many other week’s topics such as protest and resistance. Citizenship because of who is or is not allowed to be born which reflects desired citizenry values, but also whose rights are favoured; women’s rights or disabled people’s rights. Abortion and this news article also relates to week 2 about crime because most of previously legal terminations are now illegal which shows how criminalisation is used as a tool to mould citizenship.

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Paris traffic after lockdown announcement 

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Paris traffic after lockdown announcement 

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A dash by Parisians to either escape the new national lockdown or scramble back to the French capital to prepare for the restrictions caused record traffic jams on Thursday night.

The movement in and out of the city created a record 706km of traffic on roads in the region by 6pm, according to France's traffic department.

France's new four-week lockdown comes into effect at midnight on Thursday, prompting those who can afford it, or who don't have children, to leave Paris to spend "reconfinement" in the countryside - and those already on holiday to return en masse.

France's lockdown comes into effect two days before the end of the All Saints school holidays, which mark the half way point between summer and Christmas. French president Emmanuel Macron said there would be "tolerance" so that "everyone can return from their vacation spot, so that families can organise themselves".

Thursday's total traffic was nearly 200km longer than the previous record, which was also at the end of the All Saints holiday in 2019, le Parisien reports. Then, the record was was 525km at 6pm.

Under the lockdown, people will only be allowed to leave their homes for essential purposes: food shopping, commuting to work if it is not possible to work from home, and medical or imperative family reasons. Outdoor exercise will be allowed for one hour per day and within 1km of home. Schools will remain open, with children aged six and over required to wear masks.

Le Figaro reported that several accidents and breakdowns occurred in and around Paris.

"Paris traffic is legendary," wrote one user on Twitter, "but this I've never seen."

Others referred to the traffic as a "mess", a "madness" and a "hell".

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Paris region sees record traffic jams ahead of lockdown

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A dash by Parisians to either escape the new national lockdown or scramble back to the French capital to prepare for the restrictions caused record traffic jams on Thursday night. The movement in and out of the city created a record 706km of traffic on roads in the region by 6pm, according to France's traffic department.

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In Bringa and Christie’s film they do not show any of the physical acts of violence from the civil war in Bosnia, instead they focus on the affects this violence has on the everyday lives of those in a village. This film portrays the importance of showing and understanding the consequences of violence and I think Covid-19 demonstrates this as well. With Covid-19, like the film not showing the physical violence, this virus is not visible to the naked eye and its cellular violence can not be seen, however, the consequences of this ‘invisible’ virus have impacted the everyday lives of nearly the whole population. And some of these consequences lead to more violence, for example, the increased reports of domestic violence during the first lockdown in March. It is important not to focus on just the physical acts of violence but also its consequences and its impact on the ‘everyday’.

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But Armenia has denied the town has been captured. "The battles in Shushi continue, wait and believe in our troops," Armenian defence ministry official Artsrun Hovhannisyan wrote on Facebook.

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Nagorno-Karabakh: Azerbaijan 'takes key town' in Armenia conflict

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But Armenia has denied the town has been captured. "The battles in Shushi continue, wait and believe in our troops," Armenian defence ministry official Artsrun Hovhannisyan wrote on Facebook.

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The Fathers of the terrorist and the victim

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The Fathers of the terrorist and the victim

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The father of the terrorist explains how his son “had slipped away from them gradually, becoming withdrawn. By his early 20s, he had fallen into the influence of radicals who he followed on the Internet. He began setting his alarm for 4am to go to the mosque, stopped wearing ‘European’ clothes, and eventually dropped out of a law degree.” But this process of radicalisation is not always the case as Devji (2020) shows.
Interestingly, the father of one of the victims of the terrorist, Salines, believes he has absolutely no reason to blame the father for his son’s crimes and says that “what we are, above all else, is two fathers who have both lost a child.”  This shows how he was able to recognise the similarity in social conditions they both found themselves in, and thus a similar or common humanity among them.

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To mark the fifth anniversary of the Bataclan attack, fathers Georges Salines and Azdyne Amimour open up about why they decided to meet

On Monday 16 November, 2015, almost 72 hours after the Paris terror attacks, principally on the Bataclan theatre, in which 130 people were killed, Georges Salines was led down the east corridor of the Forensic Institute on the Quai de la Rapée, beside the Seine, to identify the body of his beloved 28-year-old daughter Lola. She had taken a spare ticket to the concert at the Bataclan at the last minute.

It was late afternoon when the family were told they could finally see her, from behind a glass screen. 'You won't be able to touch her,' they were told. 'Her body is covered in a sheet. Her face is intact, her mouth is a bit open. Her expression is calm, but her face is very red, as no embalming has been carried out and your daughter was lying on her stomach for a long time on the floor of the Bataclan.'

Georges, his wife Emmanuelle, now 62, and Lola's two elder brothers, Clément, 38, and Guilhem, 36, held each other and sobbed as they looked on at Lola. She was known for her kindness and compassion; she worked as a book editor at a publishing house in Paris and enjoyed roller skating and dancing.

'She seemed to be sleeping,' recalls Salines, now 63. 'Strangely, passing through this stage made us feel better. The serenity of her expression allowed us, and still allows us today, to imagine that maybe she didn't see death coming, that she was too busy dancing to the music.'

The orchestrated attack on the concert hall, where the band Eagles of Death Metal were playing, and in the surrounding areas, was the worst terror attack in France in modern history. It was the worst violent loss of life in France since the Second World War. Nine terrorists died at the different locations, including three at the Bataclan theatre.

The lunchtime before she died, Lola had met her father for a swim, but their meet-up was briefer than usual because he had forgotten his goggles. Don't worry, she told him, I'll come home for lunch tomorrow. 'I didn't know there would be no tomorrow for her,' he says, 'and that this would be our last ever conversation. I didn't ask her what she would be doing that evening, either.'

Only when Clément called him at 1am to say Lola had been at the Bataclan and was not answering her phone, did panic set in. Salines, a doctor specialising in public health (who has now retired), clung on to hope. Perhaps Lola's phone had been dropped in the crush? But after fruitless calls to helplines and a false alarm on Facebook by somebody mistakenly claiming that Lola had been seen alive, hope ebbed away.

On Saturday 14th, they got confirmation that she was dead. 'I broke down,' says Salines. 'It was over... Lola was gone.'

The same day that Georges Salines identified Lola's body, a SWAT team of 10 smashed down the door of Azdyne Amimour's apartment in Drancy, Seine-Saint-Denis, a deprived region on the outskirts of Paris. 'I'll let you in!' he shouted when he saw a ray of light through the keyhole, but they shouted, 'Police, hands up!'

Amimour, now 73, and his wife Mouna, 59, were handcuffed and hooded, put in separate police vans and taken to the offices of the General Directorate for Internal Security, on the north-western side of Paris.

The Amimours had two daughters, Alya, now 36, and Maïssa, 27, and a son, Samy. It was Samy who brought them endless worry.

Once a quiet, well-behaved boy who liked judo and football, Amimour had high hopes for his only son - he wanted him to become a footballer or an airline pilot, and had taught him aeronautical terms, as well as the world capital cities, which Samy had found great fun. But he had begun to change in his teens and in September 2013, at the age of 26, Samy travelled to Syria to join the jihad. His family assumed he had been radicalised online, and with the encouragement of two school friends who went to Syria with him.

Desperate to persuade Samy to leave the extremist cell and return home, Amimour travelled to Syria in 2014, but found his son hardened, with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. 'He was calm, cold, and this wasn't the warm reunion I had been expecting,' writes Amimour. He returned home deflated.

When he first saw the news of the Bataclan attack he never connected it with his son; in fact he had fleetingly worried about his youngest daughter Maïssa's whereabouts. Even when the police arrived, he still did not think Samy was involved, believing he was still in Syria.

After days of interrogation, Amimour was told that Samy was among the terrorists at the Bataclan and had been shot down by an armed officer. 'I was unable to speak,' says Amimour, 'I felt broken. I didn't shed a tear... I was somewhere between sadness, hatred, anger, fatigue and resentment.'

The Amimours were released after four days of interrogation. For a long time, they never spoke of Samy, or his terrible crime.

More than a month after the Bataclan attack, the Amimours walked down that same corridor of the Forensic Institute that the Salines family had previously: they too were to identify the body of their child.

Georges Salines had passed through tented checkpoints and medical and psychological emergency units, set up to help them with the trauma. The Amimours were told coldly which room Samy's body was in. His head was shaved, his eyes as vacant as they had been when his father saw him in Syria. Amimour kissed him on the forehead. '[I] screwed the coffin lid in place myself,' he says. 'That was the end of that.'

Samy is buried in an unmarked grave in the Muslim section of a cemetery near their home. The ceremony took place after dark, after the cemetery had closed to the public. Lola is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery; there was a national tribute for the victims at Les Invalides and a commemoration spoken by the then French President François Hollande.

In February 2017, Amimour requested a meeting with Salines after seeing that he had co-founded a support group for the victims of the Paris attacks, 13Onze15 Fraternité et Verité. The two fathers have since met many times, and built a relationship on trust, a need for understanding and a shared crusade for the prevention of radicalisation.

'What we are, above all else, is two fathers who have both lost a child,' says Salines.

They have also written a book together, We Still Have Words: A Story of Hope and Friendship in the Shadow of the Bataclan Attacks, based on their conversations. Salines's decision to meet with the father of a terrorist prompted some criticism on social media - he has been called 'an Islamo-leftist' and an 'accomplice of Islamism' - and yet the book received widespread praise when it was published in France at the start of the year. The English translation is out next week in the UK.

When Amimour first approached him for a meeting, Salines admits he was nervous. His wife and sons were supportive and understanding, but they had no interest in going to meet Amimour themselves. 'I understood that,' Salines says. 'It is difficult for them, as it is for the family of many victims to meet with somebody who is so closely related to one of the perpetrators. It's not rational, it's an emotional thing.'

He adds: 'I didn't know exactly what Azdyne wanted to tell me.' He was worried that Amimour, who was clear that he himself was a victim of the attacks in that he too had lost a child, might want to join the organisation for the victims: 'I was well aware that this would be totally unacceptable for most of our members.'

They met in a café on Place de la Bastille in central Paris in February 2017 (accompanied by a survivor of the attack, who herself had met the mother of one of the other attackers), and they talked for two hours. Azdyne shared his life story: how he had been born in Algeria; had 13 siblings and an illiterate mother; how he had overcome poverty and moved to France in his late teens, determined to make a life for himself. At first he worked in the film industry, which he fell into by chance, and then he ran a clothes shop.

Samy, he explained, had slipped away from them gradually, becoming withdrawn. By his early 20s, he had fallen into the influence of radicals who he followed on the internet. He began setting his alarm for 4am to go to the mosque, stopped wearing 'European' clothes, and eventually dropped out of a law degree.

The first raid on the family apartment had been in October 2012. Samy, then 25, lived at home. He was hooded and taken away, and spent four days under arrest. 'It was difficult to exert much influence over him,' Amimour told Salines.

Salines remembers that first meeting well. 'It moved me deeply.' In Amimour he saw a man who loved life, was tolerant, humane and self-taught. Of Georges Salines, Amimour remembers 'there was such warmth in his touch when we shook hands'.

Salines had already written a book, The Unspeakable, from A to Z, following the attack; it was, he says, a form of therapy. (In it, he describes the terrorists who killed his daughter as 'victims of their own madness and of their recruiters').

The idea of a joint book of dialogue between the fathers was mooted in September 2018, by Sébastien Boussois, an advisor to a number of programmes and organisations combating radicalisation and extremism. Salines was nervous, but he adds, 'Why should I refuse to engage in such a dialogue? I have absolutely no reason to blame the father for his son's crimes.'

Meanwhile Amimour drew strength from Salines. Having spent over a year unable to speak of his son to anybody, least of all Mouna, who was consumed by grief and shame, finally he had found someone to open up to. 'It's been hard for me to mourn,' says Amimour. 'Because up until now I am always asking, "Why?" I can't figure out why. Maybe I learned from Georges that it was because there was something missing in Samy's flourishing as a person. I feel guilty because I didn't find a solution.'

He adds: 'I was lost when I contacted Georges. I was seeking people who could bring out what was inside me... When I am with Georges, I open myself up completely. There is no sense of unease. There is purely understanding and complicity between us.'

'I feel the same way,' says Salines, nodding.

'What I get from [my connection with Azdyne] is that it is part of my effort for fighting the extremism, the hate, the lack of communication between groups of different cultures within French society. It is my fight and fighting it has helped me a lot to get on my feet again after the attacks. Lola is always with me. Every day I think about her. It is a way to honour Lola's memory.'

Amimour cried when contemplating that Samy could have been the terrorist who killed Lola. Salines, too, was devastated by the manner in which Amimour says that news of Samy's death was broken to him after an interrogation. 'I cannot start to imagine myself in his shoes,' says Salines.

As part of the book, both men wrote letters to the other's dead child. 'Did I fail in my job as a father?' Amimour writes to Lola. 'I thought I was giving my son a good upbringing... I'm so, so sorry Lola... forgive us, forgive them.' And to Samy, Salines writes: 'You're beyond the reach of my wishes. So it's your parents, your sisters, your friends that my wishes are with. May they find reconciliation with your memory and go on their way in peace.'

The two men are very different. Salines is an atheist with Christian roots and is highly educated. Amimour is a Muslim and self-taught. Salines does not go so far as to call him 'a friend': 'We have much in common but also many differences in our ideas, in our world view. I feel warmly towards him. To be able to issue the book and give lectures with him is part of my overall fight against the [religious] hate.'

The project has not been without difficulty. At one point it might have collapsed when Salines discovered Amimour believed 9/11 may have been a conspiracy. 'If you're going to try spreading those half-baked ideas, it'll be hard for me to keep listening to you,' Salines told him. He asked Amimour to read literature on the subject and revise his opinion. They also had differing points of view about Samy's radicalisation. While Salines suggests it may have been a slow burn, dating back at least 10 years before 2015, Amimour views his radicalisation as 'rapid'.

'I think Azdyne is blind on what his son was doing and thinking,' says Salines today. 'I don't blame him, particularly because I think there are many parents who behave exactly as he did. Parenting is a complicated thing. I don't hold him guilty for what happened.

'[Families like the Amimours] lose their child the first time when they realise they are not on the same page about religion, second time when they go to Syria and third time when they learn they are dead. These people suffer a lot.

'I know that I suffer and that I did nothing and that my daughter was perfectly innocent but I am able to sympathise and feel their pain, too. I am probably in the minority but I'm not the only one. I have met other victims who are perfectly able to express the same sentiments as I do.'

Amimour often questions whether he could have done more to prevent Samy's radicalisation: 'Was I too soft on him?' he asks aloud. 'I don't know... I am sure it took someone else to lead him on and sow the seeds of revolt and hatred.'

When Samy first left France for Syria in 2013, it was not illegal. A helpline for parents of people suspected to have been radicalised was set up the following year in France by the Inter-Ministerial Committee for the Prevention of Crime and Radicalisation but even then the Amimours did not report their son, fearing they might lose him completely.

They remain unclear, however, as to why he was admitted back into France before the attack, having been identified as an extremist.

Today, Salines says that writing the book has given him a purpose, as has staying in touch with Lola's friends - including the friend who was with her in the Bataclan that night, and was also shot but survived. There is also the love of his granddaughter, Olivia, now four. 'I would give everything for having Lola with me... But today I concentrate on the happy memories and I don't spend too much time on the regrets.'

Amimour also has a granddaughter of the same age; he has never met her and she lives somewhere in Syria. Amimour is now trying to track down the child and hopes to bring her back to live in Paris.

As Salines says to Amimour at the end of the book: 'We became grandparents almost at the same time. My granddaughter helped me to survive and I try to work every day to leave a better world for her. I hope with all my heart, Azdyne, that you will one day be able to bring your granddaughter back to be by your side.'

'We have moved forward together,' agrees Amimour, 'and we must continue along this path, for our children's sake. And for the sake of life itself.'
We Still Have Words, by Georges Salines and Azdyne Amimour, is out on Thursday (Simon & Schuster, £12.99)

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My daughter was killed in the Bataclan attack - and I made friends with the father of one of the terrorists

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To mark the fifth anniversary of the Bataclan attack, fathers Georges Salines and Azdyne Amimour open up about why they decided to meet On Monday 16 November, 2015, almost 72 hours after the Paris terror attacks, principally on the Bataclan theatre, in which 130 people were killed, Georges Salines was led down the east corridor of the Forensic Institute on the Quai de la Rapée, beside the Seine, to identify the body of his beloved 28-year-old daughter Lola.

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“Liberalism’s wilful limitation on our imagination, combined with the chronic suffering of working people under capitalism, provides the causal backdrop for the diverse and often contradictory populism of our time.” This supports Kalb’s (2009) advocation for the “need to uncover the hidden histories of subalternity that free the particular alienation’s of the resenting classes in their volatile dialectic with the histories of neoliberal transnationalization by which they are shaped” (p.208).

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The term " populism" is used to describe a diverse and even contradictory set of political tendencies. There are left-leaning populists, such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, and right-wing populists, like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. There are pro-globalisation populists, including India's Narendra Modi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and anti-globalisation populists, such as Poland's Andrzej Duda and Viktor Orbán of Hungary. Historical populisms differed too: the Russian Narodniks of the mid-19 th century and the American People's Party, founded in 1892, were movements of the peasantry, whereas Peronism in Argentina sought to further the interests of the urban working class.

It is impossible to give a uniform account of contemporary populisms if we focus on the substance of their political positions. But it is possible to approach them in a broadly unified way if we focus instead on their structural causes.

To take the populism that drove Brexit as an example: while it is true that working-class dissatisfaction, especially in the deindustrialised communities of the Midlands and the north of England, was an underlying cause, this explanation is incomplete. Much ink has been spilt to explain what prompted the larger part of a population within a nation to sever itself from a supra-nation, in the form of the EU. Rather than rehearse that familiar and vexing question, let us ask a deeper one: why would the working people of Britain have wanted to be part of a supra-nation in the first place? What's in it for them?

Suppose a worker in Nottingham or the Thames Estuary were to ask that question by first pondering the social safety nets and humane policies in education, health, housing, etc, adopted by the British government at the end of the Second World War. Suppose they were to ask: at what site were these policies devised and administered? They would have to answer: at the site of the nation. Suppose they were then to ask whether there has been any serious effort to conceive a supra-national site for such policies? What would the mechanisms to dispense welfare at a supra-national site even look like?

If these sorts of questions lie behind the dissatisfactions felt by working people in Britain, then we get a glimpse of the good side of populism, that which dictionaries define as "the rejection by ordinary people of the elites" - in this case the political and financial elites that have set themselves up in Brussels.

Yet this sound instinct led many to quite illogical, xenophobic attitudes towards immigrants, who were perceived as threats to available opportunities and to the "national" culture. This was a failure of inference: sound instincts from which unsound conclusions were made.

But now let's record another - seemingly quite unrelated - lapse in inference, this time by liberal critics of populism who have both disapproved of populist xenophobia, and chastised the irrational populist denial of climate change by Trump and his supporters. As Naomi Klein and a host of other commentators have argued, there is no way to adequately address the climate crisis without introducing changes that will amount to a terminus of capitalism as we know it. But no liberals have drawn this inference from their own worthy criticisms of the climate change deniers. So, a question arises: why is the populist climate change denier more irrational than the liberal? If p (there is a dire environmental crisis) entails q (only a radical revision of capitalism is sufficient to address it), why is it more irrational to deny p than it is to deny that p entails q?

There is something revealing about liberal criticism on these failed inferences. In the first inference, the liberal is highly and rightly critical of the conclusion, the xenophobia, but has no sympathy for the premise, the perfectly sound scepticism of the supra-national ideal. In the second inference, the liberal is highly and rightly critical of those who deny the premise of the man-made climate crisis, but will not embrace the conclusion - the need to transform capitalism. What accounts for this?

The answer should be obvious. In both cases, the liberal's critical responses are limited to the issues that make no fundamental criticism of the globalised finance capitalism of our times. Where there is such criticism, the liberal withholds assent to it.

This is a telling point. I began by saying that one way to find a common element in the disparate populisms we see today is by examining the underlying causal conditions that prompt them, and as many have noted, one of these causes is working-class grievance. But what is less often recognised is that it has become a function of liberalism in both the US and the UK to ensure that there is a drumbeat of hysteria about Donald Trump and right-wing Brexiteers, so that a return to the orthodoxies of Obama or Blairite Labour seem to be the only realistic, electable options for the left.

After the 2016 referendum, there were numerous liberal opinion pieces calling the decision to hold a referendum on Brexit "Cameron's blunder", and declaring plebiscites to be a hyper-democratic reflex, whereas sober democracies would simply leave things to the routine quadrennial or quinquennial electoral clock.

All of this overlooks the fact that liberal elites on both sides of the Atlantic have long ensured that there is no serious possibility of deep social transformation through democratic party politics. This has left working people so disillusioned that many do not bother to vote in general elections - whereas when they saw that the Brexit referendum presented an opportunity to actually make their voices heard, they voted in large numbers (turnout in the 2016 referendum was 72.2 per cent).

[see also: Like most secessionist movements, Brexit shows that breaking up is hard]

This means liberal anxiety about populism is not just about mass politics, but about how to deflect a proper understanding of the discontent that gives rise to populism and of what would be needed to address it. Liberalism's explicit and self-conscious role is to refuse to allow democracies the conceptual wherewithal to even raise fundamental questions about constraining (let alone overturning) capital.

As a result, ordinary working people have no recourse to anything available in the political zeitgeist to express their deeply felt dissatisfactions. It is small wonder that they turn haplessly to what is available to them: grotesque forms of nationalistic, fascistic demagoguery that promise a fabulously different zeitgeist. Since they feel the whole game is rigged, they want to upturn the whole board on which the game is being played.

It would seem, then, that contemporary populism is prompted not just by material desperation due to working-class wage stagnation, chronic unemployment, and broken forms of impermanent and part-time employment. It is also a reaction to the lack of conceptual space in our political culture to criticise and politically oppose the sway of capitalism in its current neoliberal, financially globalised phase.

Fredric Jameson once wrote that "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism". Liberalism's wilful limitation on our imagination, combined with the chronic suffering of working people under capitalism, provides the causal backdrop for the diverse and often contradictory populisms of our time.

Akeel Bilgrami is Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He is the author of Secularism, Identity and Enchantment.

This article is part of the Agora series, a collaboration between the New Statesman and Aaron James Wendland, Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Massey College, Toronto.

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How liberalism paves the way for populism

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The term "populism" is used to describe a diverse and even contradictory set of political tendencies. There are left-leaning populists, such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, and right-wing populists, like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. There are pro-globalisation populists, including India's Narendra Modi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and anti-globalisation populists, such as Poland's Andrzej Duda and Viktor Orbán of Hungary.

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This supports how the “Manichaeans distinctions between friend and foe ... are the hallmarks of populism” (Samet 2019:2) because populism remains undefeated after the 2020 US election did not see a landslide win by Biden.

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Had Biden won in a landslide, as some polls suggested he might, that of course wouldn't have meant an end to populism, in America or elsewhere. The modern phenomenon predates Trump in a number of countries, many of which feature populists at the head of government (Hungary, Brazil, and the Philippines) and in parts of the opposition (Germany, Italy, and France). Still, the U.S. contest was seen as something of a bellwether-one that would indicate whether the world's most visible and powerful populist could eke out a victory running as an antiestablishment candidate despite having spent the past four years reshaping the establishment in his own image. A Trump victory would no doubt buoy like-minded world leaders who see his success as a harbinger of their own, just as it did in 2016. "It makes a big difference if the most powerful country in the world does this," Ruth Wodak, a linguistics professor studying far-right rhetoric at Lancaster University and the University of Vienna and the author of The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, told me ahead of the election. Were Trump to lose by a wide margin, she added, "it would show that this kind of corruption and the undermining of liberal democracy ... that only works for so long."

By prematurely and baselessly declaring victory, the president not only undermined faith in the democratic process, but provided his supporters and fellow populists around the world with a narrative to hold on to: that the election was stolen from him. Implicit in his demands for an early and arbitrary end to ballot counting in some states was an inherently populist idea: Only my supporters, the "real people," deserve to have their voice heard. Though this sentiment was later repudiated by a number of leading Republicans, the message nonetheless spread, even beyond the U.S.'s borders. Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša was the first to preemptively congratulate the president. Other right-wing populist and nationalist leaders, including Italy's Matteo Salvini, Germany's Tino Chrupalla, and France's Marine Le Pen, also voiced their support, though they stopped short of declaring him the winner.
David Frum: The American system is broken
So far, Trump's efforts have failed. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, states are continuing to count ballots as normal. The system . But even without a Trump victory, Trumpism is all but certain to remain in one form or another. The question then for Biden and the anti-populists who supported him is this: What does the decisive defeat of populism in America look like?

If the initial results are anything to go by, it's not by campaigning for a return to a normal, more sensible politics. Though Biden was able to reclaim some states that the former Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, and although beating an incumbent president is a rare achievement in and of itself (the last time this happened was nearly three decades ago, when George H. W. Bush failed to win reelection against Bill Clinton in 1992), his victory might not be considered substantial enough to merit inclusion in the anti-populist playbook.

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Had Biden won in a landslide, as some polls suggested he might, that of course wouldn't have meant an end to populism, in America or elsewhere. The modern phenomenon predates Trump in a number of countries, many of which feature populists at the head of government (Hungary, Brazil, and the Philippines) and in parts of the opposition (Germany, Italy, and France).

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This article talks about how “the last refuge of the populist - the politics of fear” is being deployed by both Priti Patel and Boris Johnson. And shows how “spreading fear is the politics of denial ... a manipulative project to immobilise public debate. It has long lain at the origins of populism.” This relates to the political ontology of threat and how fear can legitimate facts and subsequent actions.

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he home secretary told me this week that I faced a terrorist threat that was "severe" and an incident that was "highly likely". I should be "alert", she said.

What is the difference between likely and highly likely? Should I fear to leave home? Should I run for my life if I see a man with a backpack? Priti Patel also tells me to be "not alarmed". So why does she try to scare me? Is she on the terrorists' side?

If I were able to ask the recent murderers in France and Austria what they hoped to gain, I know what they would say. They would want their blood-curdling killings to spread fear among the French and Austrians, to instil antipathy towards Muslims and inspire more acts of terror. Above all they would want their deeds publicised and politicised, to seem heroic to their kind. President Macron duly obliged. Now Patel has given them a bonus. She has offered to make Britons equally afraid.

There is nothing an ordinary citizen can do about terrorism - except not be terrorised. Patel is just blowing a trumpet for her department and for MI5 which recently boasted of foiling 27 late-stage terrorist attack plots. The implication was that without the Home Office, hundreds would have died. I don't need to know that. I pay the government to make me feel secure, not to be reminded that assassination lurks round every corner. I am left suspecting my fear is merely being exploited by the home secretary to squeeze more cash from the Treasury.

The politics of fear is famously the most cynical politics of all. It is now rampant on both sides of the Atlantic. As the sociologist Frank Furedi has written, spreading fear is the "politics of denial ... a manipulative project to immobilise public debate". It has long lain at the origins of populism.

With Covid-19, Boris Johnson, very reasonably, initially opposed a return to the blanket lockdown policy. But when his scientists had him in a corner last week he had to turn to fear to justify his U-turn. He threatened that "several thousand people a day would die" - 4,000 was widely quoted - if he did not proceed to a lockdown across England. This worst-case scenario figure was subsequently shown to be based on a projection inflated by a factor of more than four. The Oxford professor of evidence-based medicine Carl Heneghan, speaking on the BBC on Monday, as good as called it a lie, since modelling "beyond two weeks carries a huge margin of error". On Tuesday the government chief scientist, Sir Patrick Vallance, retreated and regretted the figure, slashing it by four. He denied he was trying to scare people and drew a distinction between a "reasonable worst case scenario", a model and forecast - a distinction lost on the public when threatened with thousands of dead bodies.

At such times evidence matters. Johnson never revealed figures from the Health Service Journal, confirmed by the BBC, that British hospital bed occupancy is still at or below its seasonal normal.

We are never reminded that three-quarters of deaths in the first wave of the virus were confined to 5% of the population judged to be at the highest risk, since that might argue for a "shielding" rather than a "blanket" lockdown. Certainly there was not the vaguest mention of the stupefying cost of resumed lockdown. Johnson had merely lost patience with localism and had to scare London so as not to seem unfair to Manchester.

These are desperate issues for people on all sides of the argument, but the public is left floundering between unresolved conflicts over figures and politicians pounding away at anyone's natural fear of death. There is no sense of a balance of miseries. As with the earlier neglect of care homes, we have one sector of the welfare state, the NHS, exploiting fear - nightly on BBC television news - to guard its own corner. That is what the security industry does in the case of terrorism.

The reality is that every lobby has a dog in these fights. Specialists are naturally eager to protect their professions and deliver on their chosen targets. That applies as much in the realm of national security as in national health; as much in mental health and family care as in schooling, jobs and trade. In these arguments there are no absolutes, only competing interests.

Johnson's speech announcing a new lockdown on Saturday reminded me of how Tony Blair deployed fear to justify drastic state action over foot and mouth disease, and - warning that Saddam Hussein's arsenal put the UK "45 minutes from doom" - in support of the Iraq war. It is the same blind fear exploited in every debate on immigration, crime and prisons.

There is little sign of evidence calming emotion. We just get Patel on terror and Johnson on Covid, marshalling that last refuge of the populist, the politics of fear.

* Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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Britain's government is exploiting fear to suit its actions, whether on Covid or terrorism | Simon Jenkins

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he home secretary told me this week that I faced a terrorist threat that was "severe" and an incident that was "highly likely". I should be "alert", she said. What is the difference between likely and highly likely? Should I fear to leave home?

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This helps to understand how violence is legitimated. By choosing to act violently because of a perceived fearful threat, the danger of this threat is  “legitimated by the affective fact of fear” (p.54). This is particularly poignant with the events of September 11 as Massumi argues that it was an “excess-threat-generating actual event that has perhaps done more than any other threat-o-genic source to legitimate preemptive politics” (p.50).

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The Future Birth of the Affective Fact: The Political Ontology of Threat

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not for saleReferences"ADM (Aéroports de Montréal) soutient que la sécurité des passagers a été amélioriée." 2005. La Presse (Montreal). May10: A7.Agamben, Geor

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This article supports Stavrakakis’s (2014) paper where he talks about the struggle between alternative narratives to unpopular policies can trigger popular mobilisations that are then denounced as populist (p.505). As such this article argues that “The kind of ‘anti-populism’ put forward by Biden does not represent a lasting response to right wing populism ... the phenomenon by which opponents of populism are drawn together in a temporary alliance to ‘defeat’ populism.” .

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t is tempting to conclude that Donald Trump's defeat -which he still hasn't accepted - is a sign that the "populist wave" that saw many rightwing populists triumph across the 2010s is finally receding. With the populist commander-in-chief losing office, rightwing populists around the world must surely be feeling nervous, wondering if it is all over, and whether they might be next.

We've heard this one before. In 2017, when Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen in France and Mark Rutte defeated Geert Wilders in the Netherlands within the space of a few months, many a thinkpiece was written asking: are populism's days numbered? I think we all know the answer to that, as do the likes of Narendra Modi in India, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Make no mistake: Joe Biden's win over Trump is a monumental and important victory, not only for the Democrats in the US, but for small-d democrats worldwide. There was a collective sigh of relief in liberal democracies across the globe when the news came through that the most prominent and famous case of rightwing populism would soon be packing his bags. But to assume that Biden's win sounds the death knell for populism, or that it provides a clear model for defeating populism that should be imitated in other countries, would be a mistake.

There are three key problems here. The first is assuming that a single election in a single country acts as a bellwether for global trends - even if it is the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. While political scientists often speak about a process of "diffusion" in which political events in one country influence those in others, this is by no means a linear process. While parties and movements across the globe that are opposed to rightwing populism and nativism will undoubtedly take heart from Biden's victory and study what worked, there is no indication nor guarantee that the dominoes will fall for populists in other countries, many of whose success is far more entrenched and longstanding than Trump's. Beyond this, while Trump may (eventually) be gone, that does not mean populism is: populist-right leaders and parties tend to have long institutional legacies, and we can expect the GOP to grapple with its post-Trump future - and the question of whether it wants to continue down the populist path he has set them on - for months and years to come.

The second problem is, strangely enough, overlooking what a singularly and uniquely bizarre, venal and odious character Trump is, even compared with the rogues' gallery that make up the global populist right. While populism is a political style that revolves around the appeal to "the people" versus "the elite", the invocation of crisis, and the use of "bad manners" to demonstrate your closeness to the "real people", Trump took this to an extreme.

His was a populism on steroids. I have spent my professional life studying populism across the globe, so should be inured to these kinds of things, but constantly found myself shaking my head in disbelief at the depths Trump was willing to plumb. Only Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines or perhaps Bolsonaro come close in terms of their ability to court outrage and offend: most rightwing populists at least know when to tone it down and when to play it up, a balance that Trump seemed unwilling or perhaps even unable to achieve.

In this regard, it is probably the case that this election should not be read as a vote for Biden, but as a strong vote against Trump. This is what political scientists refer to as "negative partisanship" - the idea that you vote against candidates and parties, not for them. Trump is such a detestable figure that many people probably held their noses and voted for Biden as there was no other realistic choice if they wanted to save the republic. Now that Biden will take office, those people will probably stop holding their noses.

This relates to the third, perhaps deepest problem: the kind of "anti-populism" put forward by Biden does not represent a lasting response to rightwing populism. By anti-populism, I refer not to a clear ideological disposition or mode of governance, but rather the phenomenon by which opponents of populism are drawn together in a temporary alliance to "defeat" populism. Such anti-populism usually has a centrist and moderate flavour, offering a return to "normal", a privileging of "rationality", and the offer of the grownups being in charge once again: precisely what Biden was offering in comparison with the utter chaos of the Trump administration.

Let us be clear: anti-populism worked here. Biden was able to pull together a loose coalition of disparate groups in the name of defeating Trump - leftists, centrist Democrats, the so-called moderate Republicans of the "Never Trumpers" and Lincoln Project strand. But what now? With Trump (nearly) out of the way, what on earth do these groups have to agree on? "Decency"? "Normalcy"? These are not the basis for a sustainable ideological project or the makings of newly forged political identity. They have served their purpose as part of an electoral strategy, but there is little long-term to grasp on to here, and serious political imagination and courage is needed to forge a way out of this.

As such, while the embrace of centrism may be enticing at present as Biden calls for unity, compromise and consensus, it is important to keep in mind that such a form of politics often ends up eventually feeding into the desire for populism. Indeed, political theorists such as Chantal Mouffe have explicitly blamed such "third wayism", which seeks to steer "not right, nor left", for the rise of right populism in Europe. The American people have every right to demand not "normal", but serious systemic change in a fractured and deeply unequal nation. It is not difficult to imagine how a failure to meet these challenges could create the conditions in which enough of the populace is discontented and alienated from political, economic and social life that they are willing to roll the dice on a right-populist once again.

So, let the anti-populists enjoy a much-deserved electoral victory. The Trump era is over, and, in the end, Biden was the person to deliver them from the misery that Trump had lorded over for the past four years. But let's not be naive: you don't defeat populism in the long run simply by being anti-populist. The longer struggle of what a Biden presidency will mean now begins.

* Benjamin Moffitt is a senior lecturer in politics at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne. His latest book is Populism

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Think Joe Biden's victory marks the end of rightwing populism? Think again | Benjamin Moffitt

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t is tempting to conclude that Donald Trump's defeat -which he still hasn't accepted - is a sign that the "populist wave" that saw many rightwing populists triumph across the 2010s is finally receding. With the populist commander-in-chief losing office, rightwing populists around the world must surely be feeling nervous, wondering if it is all over, and whether they might be next.

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Populism is not a recent phenomenon but “the appearance of populist movements and leaders has multiplied since the moment social networks really took off in the late 90s.” This article argues that this is because of its “simplistic structure of social networks, they reaffirm our beliefs and become an echo chamber, a bubble that filters what we read” that gives ‘to the point’ messages as opposed to long detailed explanatory articles. This means that important details are missed and can gravely misinform people’s understanding. However, Anthropology, with its long ethnographies and thick description can help to rectify this as an alternative.

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There seems to be mounting opinion linking the increase in populism around the world with the popularization of a technology that, within a few years, has come to monopolize a good part of our time, thoughts and even how we consume news: social networks.

The relationship between populism and social networks cover more aspects than are usually considered. The awareness of some politicians that social networks, oriented to marketing and hyper-segmented campaigns, offer the perfect way to spread their message is only one facet. Figures like Donald Trump, suddenly the biggest advertiser on Facebook, were supported by foreign governments, which used mass microtargeting campaigns to spread his inflammatory message among susceptible voter groups. Without question, this tactic would have been impossible before the social networks. But beyond this important direct use, there are other links between populism and social networks that invite reflection.

Firstly, what we might call historical coincidences. Populism is far from a recent phenomenon, but the appearance of populist movements and leaders has multiplied since the moment social networks really took off in the late '90s. Starting with the Arab Spring of 2010, many pundits predicted that social networks, with their capacity for exponential dissemination, would play a fundamental role in political protest. There was a rapid evolution from those first spontaneous grassroots approaches that used the social networks as an alternative to state-controlled media, to others that appeared similar but that were far more sophisticated and carefully designed by analysts employed by opposition candidates.

Secondly, the simplistic structure of social networks: do you like what you are reading? Press "like" and say something positive. If you don't like what you see, or you have a different opinion, then say something vitriolic; don't worry, there'll be no blowback. Since you can't see the person you're attacking, your prefrontal cortex doesn't inhibit aggressive responses, and in addition, the asynchrony of communication eliminates the need for consensus. In this kind of scenario, we're all surrounded by "friends" whose opinions we share, who make us feel good about ourselves, identified, understood and protected. The social networks reaffirm our beliefs and become an echo chamber, a bubble that filters what we read, molding our vision of the world and simplifies the reality of a world we find dizzyingly complex.

As a result, we tend to be attracted to politicians who not only leverage their campaigns on the social networks and whose messages reach us in a seemingly neutral way, often through our friends, but most importantly, offer simple solutions to complex problems. A group of prestigious scientists prove in a report that global warming is much worse than we thought years ago? No problem. It can be dismissed with four words: "I don't believe it", as if science were a matter of opinion.

One "I don't believe it" and several thousand "likes" later, in the collective imagination, the most important challenge ever to face humanity is a non-issue, a conspiracy by pinko scientists allied with foreign powers attacking the interests of the country. Simple black and white, good and bad stories are packaged and delivered with laser precision to those who most appreciate it. I don't want long, difficult articles; give me messages that fit in a tweet, to the point. Give me memes I can share. Better simple solutions and clear and concise messages than gray areas of uncertainty about complex problems I can't be bothered to understand. Good and bad stories: the search for the common enemy. Make me feel good about myself, simplify my problems, and I will vote for you, either actively or reactively.

Are social networks to blame? Not necessarily: like the sorcerer's apprentice, they have simply set in motion a machinery they can no longer control. Even if they could, why would they? Their business model depends on clients like Donald Trump. We are possibly facing the biggest crisis of democracy in its history. Is there a solution? Would the fall of the Facebook empire change things, or would we simply move to the next tool, Instagram, the ownership of which Facebook keeps very quiet about? Is the solution to stop using social networks? Or is the problem just a certain type of social network, which turn us into raw material whose attention is shredded and sold to the highest bidder? Is this simply a process, and that over time we'll learn how to use them? There are many questions, but few answers.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

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There seems to be mounting opinion linking the increase in populism around the world with the popularization of a technology that, within a few years, has come to monopolize a good part of our time, thoughts and even how we consume news: social networks.

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Whilst a previous padlet criticised social media and it’s role in populism and increasing polarisation, this article shows how social media can be beneficial in politics by contributing to voter-turn out.
Patricia Funk, political economist, posits “that one of the reasons people vote is to be seen by neighbours as they perform their civic duty; by contrast, mail-in voting “renders the voting act unobservable,” thereby taking away this social incentive. ... social media gave america a socially distanced opportunity to make voting observable again. And voters could influence their friends to vote too

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The mail-in ballot drop off area at the Clark County Election Department in Las Vegas on Nov. 2. (AP/John Locher)

In the run-up to the 2020 election, mail-in voting was taking a public battering, with allegations of impending fraud from one side of the political aisle and cries of intentional delays by the U.S. Postal Service from the other. Yet at the same time, a much more benign process was playing out in my social media feeds: They were inundated by people's proud announcements that their mail-in ballots had been received and recorded. Americans were voting with their tweet.

Beyond their role as a comforting escape from the horrors of traditional election coverage, there's a case to be made that such posts may have contributed to the election's record turnout. It's one way in which social media - rightly criticized for its part in increasing polarization and spreading disinformation - may have helped democracy.

At first glance, this claim probably seems counterintuitive. The 2020 turnout was undoubtedly bolstered by strong feelings on both sides. One would think that the pandemic-driven expansion of mail-in voting also contributed to turnout by making it easier to vote - a plausible explanation that has nothing to do with social media. The problem with this reasoning is that there's plenty of evidence - for example, from the United States and Switzerland - that mail-in voting has historically had a very limited impact on turnout.

This phenomenon is elucidated in a remarkable 2010 paper by political economist Patricia Funk. Mail-in voting's obviously positive effect of reducing the effort required to vote, she argues, is counteracted by the negative effect of simultaneously reducing the social pressure to vote. Funk posits that one of the reasons people vote is to be seen by neighbors as they perform their civic duty; by contrast, mail-in voting "renders the voting act unobservable," thereby taking away this social incentive.

But how can such a hypothesis be tested? Funk points out that social pressure is known to be strongest in small communities, where people are more likely to gossip about their neighbors' virtues and vices. If the desire to be seen voting did significantly contribute to turnout, we would expect the introduction of mail-in voting to have a less positive impact on turnout the smaller the community is. Funk finds that this is indeed the case by analyzing several decades' worth of federal elections in Switzerland, where different cantons (the Swiss equivalent of states) introduced mail-in voting at different times. In fact, while overall turnout slightly increased with mail-in voting, in certain small communities the option to vote by mail decreased turnout.

Nowadays the online world is home to millions of small communities; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms have become social pressure-cookers. Especially in this pandemic-burdened time of homemade bread, homemade haircuts and homemade ballots (of the legitimate variety), social media gave America a socially distanced opportunity to make voting observable again. And voters could influence their friends to vote too, while they were at it.

In 2020, a time-honored system of democracy may have thrived, against all odds, thanks in part to social media. It would be just another irony in a year that has had more than its fair share.

Jennifer Rubin: We need a commission on voter suppression in 2020

Brad Raffensperger: Georgia's election results are sound

Karen Attiah: How Western media would cover the U.S. election if it happened in another country

Jennifer Rubin: Distinguished persons of the week: Voters who step up and stand in line

Updated December 13, 2020

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Opinion | Social media may have contributed to record voter turnout in the 2020 election

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In the run-up to the 2020 election, mail-in voting was taking a public battering, with allegations of impending fraud from one side of the political aisle and cries of intentional delays by the U.S. Postal Service from the other.

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One of the consequences of violence is more violence. After George Floyd’s death there were many riots and protests in outrage. This article asks, “how do acts of violence call attention to the wrong perpetrated on George Floyd?” And concludes that resorting to violence does not achieve a sustainable and helpful outcome and that only Love can drive out Hate and break “the chain reaction of evil”. This is interesting when thinking about the cyclical nature of violence and preempting violence.

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Violence begets violence: It is time for peace and justice

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That's how long Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and two other officers pinned George Floyd to the ground on May 25, with Chauvin using his knee pushed against Floyd's neck. Early during the scene, Floyd, a 6-foot-6 black man, can be heard saying, "I can't breathe ... I can't breathe."

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This article supports Walley’s (2017) paper about how class demographics Can be hugely reductionist. Walley shows how the “news media’s descriptions of Trump supporters involved a continual slippage from white ‘non-college degree holders’ to ‘working class’.” (P.232). And this article argues that “America’s real working class is increasingly the opposite of Trump’s base - struggling, female and diverse.”

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No matter what the apologists try to tell you, President Donald Trump's fans can be generally described with three words - rich, male and white.

There are still some who love selling America the myth of the overgrown rich Fortunate Son, who probably paid someone to take his SATs and definitely skipped out on Vietnam while some working-class sucker or loser took his place, is a class traitor championing a forgotten working class. Just look at him put on a miner's hat and pretend to dig a shovel into Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool of gold coins. It's so Not-Mitt Romney-ish!

Some insist that Trump's magical ability to sing a sweet Hillbilly Elegy to poor workers was confirmed by exit polls from this year's election that show him winning 50% of voters who don't have a college degree. That the sitting president cut into Democrats' hold in some traditional "working class" strongholds. And that he's even improving with minorities, creating a burgeoning multicultural party of workers that Democrats should envy.

Of course, this roiling centrifuge of deceit requires you to ignore one big thing besides the silent "white" many commentators use when talking about the working class. That one big thing is reality.

Trump has nothing to brag about

Exit polls are notoriously unreliable. They have that in common with most polls these days. But let's accept the premise that these numbers are somewhat reflective of reality. Here's what they tell us about Trump's base.

It's rich. The president won 54% of voters who earn more than $100,000 or more a year while only winning 44% of those who earn under $50,000 and 42% of those who earn $50,000-$99,000.

It's male. Trump only drew 42% of female votes.

And it's white. He won 58% of the white vote and only 12% of the Black vote, 32% of the Latino vote and 34% of the Asian American vote.
Biden's top unification task: Expose Trump team wrongdoing, restore trust in government
Yes, these numbers show some improvement for Trump since 2016, which you can largely credit to the powers of incumbency. We should not forget that sitting presidents usually win and Trump is only the second "elected" Republican to lose reelection since Herbert Hoover.

And though he will end up getting far more votes, Joe Biden only performed better than his former running mate Barack Obama's 2012 numbers in a few demographics -notably women, white voters, and voters earning $50,000-$99,999. And Trump did 6 percentage points better than Mitt Romney or John McCain with voters who earn under $50,000, but that could be partially credited to his success with men in general.

When we get more accurate data, we're likely to see what we saw in 2016 - about two thirds of Trump votes came from " the better-off half of the economy." And while Trump may have slightly diversified an extremely white Republican base in 2020 compared to how McCain and Romney fared against the first Black president, he did far worse with Latinos and Asian-Americans than George W. Bush in 2004.

Let's also pause to note that bragging about winning 12% of the Black vote is even more embarrassing than insisting some of your best friends are " the Blacks" who don't mind that you're a birther who still refuses to apologize for calling to bring back the death penalty two weeks after the arrest of the Central Park Five - five Black and Latino teens who were wrongfully convicted of a brutal 1989 rape and exonerated in 2002.
The people's choice: Trump supporters who voted for $15 minimum wage? Yes, it happened in Florida.
I note this not to excuse Democrats' slippage in appeal to the working class but to note the obvious: When people talk about Trump's appeal to the "working class," there's almost always a silent "white" being inferred. America's actual working class is increasingly the opposite of Trump's base - struggling, female and diverse.

War on workers, cruelty to poor

Democrats absolutely do need to do far more to win over the poorest and hardest working Americans. That includes enacting their agenda that raises wages, strengthens the safety net and elevates workers' power to bargain collectively.

But they also could have done a better job in exposing Donald Trump's strategic racist con game that pits Americans against each other while he ensures that the wealthy elite make out like literal robber barons - even as over a quarter million Americans have died from COVID-19 and we've experienced the worst job losses on record.

The " war on workers" waged by this president has received far too little attention. From making the workplace more dangerous to overseeing the longest period without a minimum wage raise to judges and justices who nearly always side with corporate bosses over workers, Trump's anti-worker agenda is as bad as or worse than the Republican presidents who preceded him. His callous attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act would devastate poor workers if successful while delivering a huge tax cut for the rich Americans who need it least.

Trump's aggressive cruelty to the poor is perhaps best typified by his lust to cut billions from Social Security Disability Insurance in the midst of a pandemic, after spending almost $2 trillion on largely useless tax cuts that unfairly benefited the rich, including the tycoons in his cabinet.

Donald Trump has forged a failed presidency of, by and for the richest Americans. That doesn't make him anything special. That just makes him a Republican.

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Republicans as a multicultural working class party? That's Trump-level delusional thinking.

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No matter what the apologists try to tell you, President Donald Trump's fans can be generally described with three words - rich, male and white. There are still some who love selling America the myth of the overgrown rich Fortunate Son, who probably paid someone to take his SATs and definitely skipped out on Vietnam while some working-class sucker or loser took his place, is a class traitor championing a forgotten working class.