I’ll try not to be too glum but I’m kicking off with something a bit heavy and probably controversial. Oh well.
Across Europe and America politicians and media are applying the ‘fear of the other’ to stoke up anti-immigrant sentiment, purely to get elected or spout editorial bias. They lay claim to the mantle of patriotism with brainless burka-banning policies, dopey slogans and accusations of being ‘weak on terror’. It’s a striking feature of public discourse in the UK, US, France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Turkey – all nations beset by the increasing strain between the liberal and the fearful; the internationalists and the ‘my country firsts’.
We’re witnessing strange and disturbing times where previously unacceptable views become ‘okay’ again. Close friends, communities and countries are finding themselves divided by such painfully opposite views that we could justifiably question if we ever really knew each other in the first place – or are even bothered about wanting to know each other in future. Foreigners are targeted by hate crimes; political groups find currency in bigotry, fear and lies; whole political norms and systems start to shift as woeful, self-interested leaders fail miserably to understand what’s going on and instead focus on the easy, emotionally-charged pickings. In opening the door to such opportunistic and poor leadership, the world becomes a much more dangerous place as countries look inwards and the fundamentals of international stability are eroded. We seem to have forgotten that without international stability everything else apart from weapons manufacturing and the black market in silk stockings fails.
Now let’s say that you didn’t really care much for Western liberalism and /or democracy anyway. In fact, let’s go so far as to imagine that your strategic objective is the downfall of democracy and the political and economic systems that embody it. Maybe you’d even quite like to establish a Caliphate. Although I’ve not had a look at ISIS’s accounts recently I’m guessing they don’t have the resources or personnel to achieve this directly, through military overthrow or mass revolution of some kind. But here’s the thing…they don’t have to.
Planting bombs, shooting policeman and driving trucks in to people would never in themselves achieve their strategic aims. Inevitably and conveniently though, sometimes those truck drivers and shooters are immigrants and for some, immigrant is therefore synonymous with terrorist. Right wing parties draw on this to blame others; nationalism re-branded as patriotism is fuelled; and fear and division within communities and between countries grows: if you’re not anti-immigration you’re probably ‘unpatriotic’; if you’re not sad at Brexit you’re probably a ‘racist’. And we all have no idea who is good to invite around to dinner on a Saturday night any more.
Add to this the ISIS-led war in Syria that is driving millions of refugees into an already fragile EU and into the vitriolic sights of Le Pen, Wilders and Farage – and the strategic picture becomes clearer. You don’t need to defeat the West militarily – you defeat it from within: create enough fear to fuel the bigots; generate enough evil, scrounging, migrating foreigners to keep the fear-fires burning and let the debates burn. Divide and conquer.
With so much fear and division it really isn’t inconceivable that another major country eventually decides to leave the EU and the whole project disintegrates faster than Donald Trump’s self-control at a beauty pageant. And so begins the reversal of decades of unprecedented cooperation that has helped sustain peace between nations that were almost constantly warring for centuries. I’m not saying this will lead to wars – maybe not for a few decades anyway – but it will lead to divided, inward-looking countries getting on with banning burkas while letting struggling countries fester in their own isolated, under-aided mire. The inevitable increased flow of desperate migrants this causes becomes an armada and the cycle continues: foreigners, fear, blame, division. Painfully ironic but I guess that irony is lost on many and it doesn’t make a snappy enough statement to paint on to the side of a bus.
Our social, political and economic division is a victory for our worst enemies and nothing can be less patriotic than playing a part in your opponent’s success. So extremists don’t need many bombs and trucks – just enough to create dividing lines on a ballot paper. Hence, voting wisely has never been more important and we all have a shared responsibility and interest in sidelining those short-short-sighted, insular, divisive relics of 20th century nationalism.
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