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Taking The Fight To The Right

Writer's picture: Jan DehnJan Dehn

Updated: Jan 26


Time to stand up to the Far-Right, but how? Read on...


Donald Trump’s victory in the recent US election was a major setback for the mainstream political Left. The Left can also expect to take losses in Europe as Far-Right politicians look set to rack up wins in upcoming elections in France and Germany.


It has never been more urgent to stop the fascist tide and inject fresh ideas into the political Left.

 

Sadly, the Left appears to be lost somewhere in the weeds as far as the big. new ideas are concerned. Over the past few decades, it has betrayed most of its core values chasing Far-Right ideas on asylum, taxation, and the provision of public services.

 

By now, it is clear that the Left’s adoption of Far-Right policies has back-fired spectacularly. Ordinary voters, especially lower-income and working-class voters, traditional supporters of the Left, feel abandoned and have shifted their loyalties to the Far-Right. This is very bad news for the Left. In a race where winning boils down to who can be most right-wing, the Far-Right will always win. It is more ruthless and more credible in delivering right-wing policies that the Left can ever be.

 

The Left will never claw back power unless it breaks decisively with the policies of the Right. It must shape new policies based on its own values, while at the same time maintaining relevance with voters.

 

The good news, in my opinion, is that the Left can regain relevance without an entirely new political doctrine. By now, the problems in many Western societies are so many and so dire that simply recognising them and putting forward bold, but credible solutions should enable the Left to quickly regain the initiative.

 

Below, I will list twelve political issues on which the political Left currently lacks ideas, vision, and leadership. I explain the nature of each issue and put forward my favourite solutions. It is particularly important that the political Left adopts an evidence-based and technocratic approach to addressing the issues. An evidence-based approach will set the Left apart from the populist Far-Right, and should, over time, because populist policies invariably fail over time. Only technically sound solutions – devoid of bullshit – produce genuinely sustainable improvements.

 

Although this may be a step too far for many mainstream Left-leaning politicians, my personal preference would be for the Left to get truly radical in promoting technocratic solutions. Now is the perfect time to break decisively with the era of deceptive and corrupt politicians and usher in a new era in which politicians are genuinely competent and effective managers. The way to do this is to reform the entire political incentive system. Recognising that politicians are the most powerful people in the world, they must be made to adhere to the highest standards of accountability and probity. To bring this about, a new political incentive system should be introduced, which rewards and punishes politicians commensurate with their power.


Specifically, politicians should given big bonuses – think CEO bonus size – when they deliver on election promises, but face severe penalties – fines or even prison terms – when they make false promises and hoodwink voters. Election ballots should be legally binding contracts upon which performance is assessed and an Ombudsman should be established with specific powers to oversee and reward/punish politicians according to their performance vis-à-vis election promises (for more on this, see here).

 

A combination of political reform to sharpen incentives for politicians and a platform with explicit solutions to long-neglected issues of great importance to voters would, in my view, entirely transform politics in the West. New ideas would inject fresh momentum into the political Left and at the same time expose the Far-Right for what it really is, namely a bunch of self-serving, ineffective, and scapegoat-peddling charlatans.

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Here, then, is my list of twelve unresolved policy issues and proposals for how to resolve them:


1.     Form a European Defence Alliance. It is always insightful to speak to people from developing countries, because they rarely share the blind deference Europeans have for the United States. Unlike most Europeans, people from developing countries often have painful personal experiences of US-sponsored wars and coups, especially from the Cold War period, although many Middle Easterners have more recent traumas. Europeans are now, for the first time since World War II, coming face to face with a less than benign United States. Even before he assumed office, Donald Trump threatened to use military force to gain control of Canada, Panama, and Greenland. To many, not least Canadians and Danes, this was genuinely shocking. After all, both countries are founding members of NATO, a US-led defence alliance established specifically to prevent naked aggression by larger states against weaker ones. Canada, Denmark, and other NATO member states are unprepared for, let alone able to mitigate, the risks now emanating from the United States.


Take the case of Denmark, co-governor of Greenland. All Denmark’s systems of defence, banking, finance, commerce, energy, and foreign policy rely on the United States as a friendly partner. Most of the systems would collapse instantly without explicit US coalescence. Strategists in the Danish government have completely failed to recognise the risks such extreme dependence on the United States confers.


Of course, the problem is not confined to Denmark. Canada and most EU member states, and indeed many other countries in the rest of the world, have made the similar mistakes in basing their security and prosperity on the assumption of a benign USA.


Yet, so far, there has only been deafening silence on the matter from European nations, who are probably in still in denial or desperately trying to come up with ways to not look like complete morons in the public eye.


My view is that this shambles represents an opportunity for the political Left. The Left should push strongly for a European defence alliance to replace NATO. The European defence alliance should coordinate Europe’s substantial military assets and defence strategies so that Europe may defend itself not only against further Russian aggression, but also against whatever moronic schemes Trump concocts, such as annexing Greenland.


To ensure the defence alliance’s effectiveness, it is critical it is initially established outside the framework of the European Union (EU), at least until such a time the EU has reformed its stifling unanimity rules, which render timely decision-making impossible.


Further down the road, once EU has replaced its unanimity rules with majority voting, the responsibility for foreign and defence policy should move from individual EU nation states to the European Union at which point the defence alliance can be subsumed within the broader EU governance framework.

 

2.     Break Ties With The Israeli Terror State. For many people, even those who have been highly critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the past, Israel was the revelation of 2024. Through its actions in Gaza, Israel has placed itself firmly among the world’s most evil and depraved regimes. Genocidal and immoral, Netanyahu’s Israel has displayed a complete lack of even the most basic civility and human compassion in Gaza, Lebanon, and other parts of the Middle East. My view of Israel – and no doubt the views of countless others – has been forever and radically altered. While Israel’s treatment of Palestinians over many decades has been considerably worse than anything Apartheid ever inflicted on non-whites in South Africa, the deliberate, systematic, and extreme savagery perpetrated the Israeli Defence Forces against Palestinian civilians – including women and children – in relentless and repeated attacks on civilian targets in Gaza over a whole year has truly defined the term ‘atrocity’.


The Lancet, a credible medical journal, puts the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza at more than 64,000 of which 60% are women, children, and men over the age of 65 (see here). Israel has murdered more than 35 Palestinians for every Israeli killed in the initial Hamas attack and the number of injured must be running into the hundreds of thousands. More than 300,000 Palestinians are homeless and 80% of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed.


The most obvious comparison of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto. The public calls by Zionists within the Israeli government for annexation of parts of Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon have direct parallels with Hitler’s demand for German ‘Lebensraum’ in Eastern Europe. Not since Serbia’s massacre of Muslims in Bosnia and Franco’s mass-killing of democrats in Spain in the 1930s has Europe experienced such bestiality on its borders.


And yet, Western politicians across the political spectrum have spectacularly failed to act. Many, in fact, have overtly continued to support Israel. This must now change. The gruesome facts from Gaza cannot be ignored. Polls show voters recognise Israel’s barbarism and are prepared to shift their support to parties that apply humanitarian principles equally to all perpetrators of human rights abuses. A new political Left should pledge to support for and work with the International Criminal Court to bring Israel's war criminals and war criminals from other terror states to justice.  

 

3.     Adopt A Harder Stance Against Fascism. Fascists have assumed power in the United States and in several European nations. The Far-Right is likely to make further gains in Germany and France in the coming months, as noted previously. Yet, the mainstream political opposition to the Far-Right has been surprisingly muted, including an odd reluctance to use the term ‘fascism’ to describe the movement even as Elon Musk openly makes a Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration.


In my view, it is both wrong and extremely dangerous to placate fascists. Fascists thrive on timidity. They do not respect human rights, democracy, or the rule of law. They stop at nothing in their desire to accumulate power. They target the most vulnerable to gain easy victories, then more on to the next target, gaining strength with each victory until eventually they have crushed all opposition. Unless they are stopped, that is.


Yet, democrats in most Western countries continue to lack the conviction, vision, persuasive leadership, and strategies to counter the Far-Right, a timidity that probably owes much to the fact that many voters in the West are too young to have personal experience of living under fascism. All the more reason why a new Left political agenda should highlight the dangers of fascism and make the fight against fascism its most urgent project. Take the gloves off.


There is an urgent need for courage to state the truth, to state clearly and loudly that Far-Right movements today pose a far greater threat to peace, stability, and prosperity in Western democracies than terrorism, Islam, immigration, or any of the other forces emphasised by the Far-Right.


Unless the Far-Right is stopped, it is only a matter of time before the fascists attack the very fabric of democracy itself. Their ultimately aim is to shift as much power to the Executive from the Legislature and the Judiciary as possible, and, once this shift has been accomplished they want to use the full force of the State to crush all democratic opposition. By the time things have gotten that far, the only way back to democracy will be through violent and bloody resistance. We want to avoid this, so we must act now.

 

4.     Get Real About China. Let us start with a bit of economic history. Western economies and the United States benefitted hugely from engaging constructively with China in the decades following Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s market-based reforms in the 1980s. The West obtained low-cost and increasingly sophisticated consumer and intermediate goods from China, which helped to usher in an extraordinary period of low inflation and rising real wages in the West. The West was able to maintain full employment during this period as the productivity of Western workers rose in line with lower-productivity jobs moving to Asia.


In exchange for these benefits, China was able to grow rapidly and accumulate trade surpluses, which were recycled in Western financial markets, pushing up demand for stocks and bonds and driving down the cost of borrowing. All this supported investment, consumption, and growth.


During its spectacular rise, which, among other things, led to the largest decline in poverty in world history, China’s global influence was overwhelmingly economic and benign. China took the lead in environmental matters and engaged constructively with the West to solve sensitive political issues, such as the handover of Hong Kong.


Sadly, this mutually beneficial state of affairs ended abruptly when Donald Trump in his first term decided to use China as an external scapegoat for rising domestic discontent within the US. Soon, in their usual sycophantic manner, Western governments jumped on the anti-China bandwagon so as not to be caught on the wrong side of their main ally. Today, every Western government, including the European Union, maintains an overly anti-China stance, whose rhetoric is so strong and pervasive that most voters in the West have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.


China has been forced into a somewhat more defensive stance towards the West, which, unless reversed, will eventually have serious negative consequences for our growth, inflation rates, and financial conditions. The other by-product of Trump’s Sinophobia has to push China into the arms of Russia, which is clearly diametrically opposed to European interests.


Indeed, anti-China policies almost exclusively serve the interests of Right-wing politicians, while they are contrary to the interest of the majority of voters in the West for whom China simply does not pose a serious threat. It is worth remembering that unlike Russia or the West China has never harboured serious global imperialistic or military ambitions, neither against the West nor anywhere else in the world. Its economic reach has been overwhelmingly positive, especially for the poorest economies, who are still to this day largely excluded from Western financial markets. A new Left should place a mature and constructive relationship with China at the centre of its policy agenda.  

 

5.     Get Real About Russia. To many people who grew up during the Cold War, it is still a bit surreal to observe alliances being struck between Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin and Far-Right politicians in Europe and the United States, including Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Slovakia’s Peter Pellegrini, and Georgia’s Mikheil Kavelashvili.


Yet, these alliances make perfect sense in the present context. Russia is no longer the communist country as it was during the Cold War. There is no longer a big ideological battle over economic systems. Russia is as capitalist as any Western power and it just happens to be led by a fascist. Just like the United States, Hungary, Slovakia, and Georgia.


The good news, from the perspective of the political Left, is that the vast majority of voters in the Western world do not trust Putin and side strongly with Ukraine in its existential war against Russia. A new revitalised Left should do the same, only more vociferously than is currently the case. It should be quite unequivocal in its opposition to Russia and it should be prepared to back Ukraine to a far greater extent than we have seen so far.


In fact, I am not aware of a clearer case in modern history, where the Left can demonstrate both moral leadership and combat-willingness, while at the same time be on the right side of popular opinion. A new Left strategy to counter Russia should also target Russian energy exports, not least by banning insurance cover for the Russian shadow fleet of tankers and cutting out imports of Russian gas and oil arriving via third countries. The campaign against Russia should also go hand in hand with a much more decisive Europe-wide effort to invest in renewable energy.   

 

6.     Act On Public Inquiries. This proposal is particularly relevant in the British context. Britain is obsessed with public inquiries, which are statutory or non-statutory investigations established by government ministers to investigate specific issues, controversial events, or policy proposals. British politicians 'sell' public inquiries to the public in order to appear to want to fix problems, but in reality they do exactly the opposite. Public inquiries are vehicles for politicians to kick sensitive issues into the long grass in the hope they will get lost and never give rise to real change.


To understand this twisted dynamic, remember that almost all British politicians hail from the same class. Britain is effectively run by two political parties, which take turns at running the country. Due to the clever workings of the first-past-the-post electoral system, new parties never manage to shatter the political duopoly, ensuring zero political renewal. For this reason, it is extremely cushy to be a British politician and no British politician is his or her right mind will ever do anything to rock the boat.


Unfortunately, life keeps throwing up surprises. Britain regularly gets rocked by major political crises as its inept and corrupt politicians engage in one outrage after another. Each time an outrage occurs voters understandably get very angry in response to which politicians feel compelled to appear to act.


Enter public inquiries. Whether the outrage is mad cow disease, mishandling of the covid-19 response, abuse at the post office, illegal killings by British forces in Afghanistan, gross breaches of press standards, child sexual abuse in churches and in public institutions like the BBC, infected NHS blood, or catastrophic failures in building standards (the Grenfell fire), politicians will immediately put forward a call for a public inquiry. The idea is to convey the impression that someone is finally going to get to the truth, that culprits will be identified and punished, that remedies will be put in place, and that justice will be served.


In reality, none of that ever happens. Public inquiries take years to complete and by the time the conclusions are ready the issue has usually been forgotten or lost its urgency, enabling sitting governments to ignore the findings and simply do nothing. 


In a particularly ludicrous recent example, a major brouhaha recently erupted over so-called grooming gangs (groups of men who sexually abuse young or under-age girls). Elon Musk, yes, the racist Far-Right billionaire, decided to stir the hornet’s nest of British politics by bringing up abuses carried out by Pakistani gangs in particular (there are plenty of white abuses too, but they did not suit Musk’s purposes). It just so happens that a full national inquiry has just been completed on the subject of grooming gangs, complete with policy recommendations, so one would have thought a response was likely to be immediate. Yet, what did the British government do? Rather than implementing any recommendations from the newly minted national inquiry, it opted instead to kick the ball further into the long grass by announcing, yes, you guessed it, a new set of public inquiries!


In Britain, public inquiries are a joke. British voters are sick of abuses that are never addressed. A low-hanging fruit for a new British Left should surely be to make sure that recommendations from public inquiries are actually implemented.

 

7.     End The Outsized and Damaging Influence of European Agriculture. Agriculture is the single largest source of environmental damage in Europe. In Denmark, for example, agricultural practices have destroyed all marine life in most fjords due to run-off chemicals from farms. In fact, the problem is so pronounced in the public consciousness that the word “fedtemøg’ – colloquial for the mass of dead algae rotting on Danish beaches – was chosen as Word Of The Year in 2024.


As if the destruction waterways is not bad enough, Danish farming is also responsible for some of the cruellest animal husbandry practices anywhere in the world. There are thirteen million pigs in Denmark, twice the number of people, yet you never see a pig, because these intelligent animals are kept inside massive breeding factories in concentration camp-like conditions. The same is true for chickens and other animals in industrial farming.


Mink husbandry, which was abolished during the Covid-19 pandemic, is now staging a comeback too. Mink are kept in cages that are so tiny they cause the animals to go mad, so they run up and down the walls in their tiny prisons until they are finally put out of their misery to supply pelts for fancy coats.


Problems of this kind are common in most of the Europe and in the United States. In my opinion, it is now time for the Left finally to grasp the agriculture nettle. Most people care about animal welfare. Most people strongly object to how farming destroys the environment. The main objection to reforming farming is that it pushes up food prices, but this is actually incorrect. Europeans pay far more for farm products than the cash they hand at the till in the supermarket, because they also pay through their taxes. In fact, farming subsidies account for a whopping 38% of the total European Union budget. These subsides taken directly out of the pockets of European consumers to provide life support for an industry that ought, like any other industry, be subject to conventional market forces. The new Left should be open and honest about the state of European farming and stand up to the farming lobby. We owe it not only to ourselves as consumers, but also to the welfare of the animals, to the health of the environment, and to future generations.

 

8.     Maintain A Healthy Scepticism About Artificial Intelligence (AI). Politicians across the political spectrum are falling over themselves to appear as favourable towards AI as possible. 'AI has limitless potential', they say, and governments must invest accordingly. Yet, contrary to popular perceptions the prospects for AI technology are heavily constrained by data availability, which limits its usefulness in many areas. AI’s greatest potential is in the relatively narrow realm of consumer retail and online entertainment, where a lot of data is already being created every single day. No need for government there.


In more specialised sectors, AI faces major hurdles due to the data problem. Many of these specialised areas are precisely those in which the government is particularly important, such as fundamental research.


My view is that the hype surrounding AI has already pushed the valuation of AI firms into a bubble-territory (see here), which is bound to result in grave losses for investors in the not-so-distant future. It is important that the government does not fall into the same trap.


The new Left should take a big-picture view of the public sector’s role in society and make sure the public sector’s core functions are funded properly and delivered with the greatest possible cost-efficiency. AI can help in the latter by increasing inclusively and efficiency. AI can not replace basic provisions, such as primary healthcare, basic education, road-building, sewage systems, the Judiciary, and basic policing.

 

9.     Be Honest About Immigration – And Why We Need It. Donald Trump’s recent executive order to suspend asylum applications to the United States along with his pledge to throw out millions of unregistered immigrants will, in time, prove a to be a major economic own goal. Europe’s current anti-immigration stance will also backfire. The problem is that the United States and the European Union are both ageing rapidly.


Projections for the ratio of retirees to the people of working age – known as the dependency ratio – is moving up sharply in all Western economies and beyond. A recent study – see a discussion here – shows that the European Union alone will need…wait for it…45 million additional workers by 2040 just to maintain current living standards!


Politicians are not honest about this fact. Instead, they push the demographic time bomb under the carpet and curry favour with the most ignoble, racist, and xenophobic voters by being really anti-immigrant. The truth, however, is that we need immigrants. Badly.


The good news is that immigrants can easily be acquired. Supply is clearly not the problem, because Latin America and Africa are replete with potential migrants, who would love to offer their services in the United States and Europe. Nor is the price of foreign labour a problem, because poor people will work for far lower wages than locals. Even unemployment is not a problem, because both Europe and US operate at or near full employment.


In short, there is no reason for not getting on with increasing immigration, other than the fear of the wrath of racists. A new Left should rise above the pathetic cohort of xenophobic voters. It should level with people about the need for foreign labour, explain the benefits of immigration, and put in place mechanisms to overcome whatever tensions inevitably arise in the context of bringing populations from different cultural backgrounds together (for more on the dark side of culture see here).

 

10.  Counter Excessive Individualism. Gen Z, the people born between 1997 and 2014, are now approaching or already in their twenties. They grew up with unprecedented prosperity and highly personalised social media. This combination of influences has given them two somewhat paradoxical characteristics. One is far greater tolerance than any previous generation. The other is far greater selfishness and individualism than any generation before them.


In fact, I would argue that individualisation among Gen Zers has become so extreme that this generation has entirely lost its ability to act as a group. Critical issues, such as species depletion, climate change, inequality, and the rise of fascism, which clearly have or will have a major impact on the lives of the Gen Z generation have so far completely failed to produce a collective response. Greta Thunberg is the only member of the Gen Z cohort to have come close to mobilising a mass-movement, but even she now seems to have lost appeal.


There are consequences when generations do not defend their interests. Brexit is a great example. Britain basically ended up leaving the EU because young Brits could not be bothered to vote! Yet, young British people are by far the biggest losers from Brexit.


The young have similarly failed to manifest their interests in the two elections that put Donald Trump into the presidency in the United States. As a result, young Americans will now be lorded-over by a reactionary, degenerate Donald Trump, whose values are diametrically opposed to their own.


In my opinion, the Left must light a fire under the young and propose ways to mobilise their cohort. The reward for doing so will not only be a return to power, but also broader positive changes in society as the progressive values of the young find expression in actual policy. For further discussion of prospects for collective action by the young, see here.

 

11.  End the Faustian Bargain And Confront Monopolies. I have covered these topics at some length elsewhere, so let me be brief. Income inequality has increased sharply across Western economies in recent decades, with the gulf between the very wealthiest and the very poorest widening the most. Income inequality is likely to get even worse with the return of Trump and his billionaire backers.


Addressing income inequality should be front and centre in any new political strategy on the Left. The cause of rising income inequality is not immigration. Instead, it has two other very distinct causes. One is the failure of regulators to address monopoly power in the tech sector (see here). The other is the so-called Faustian Bargain in which Western governments cut public services to pay for tax cuts to the rich, corporates, and parts of the middle class (see here).


The political Left has been as guilty of these trespasses as the political Right, but the Left has paid the political price as the poor have turned to the Far-Right. A new Left political agenda must address both problems. It must call for reversing tax cuts for the rich and spending more on social safety nets. It must counter the rhetorical scapegoating of China, asylum seekers, and ‘the woke’ as causes of the plight of the poor. It must apply already existing legislation to break up tech monopolies and apply new technology to foster competition in online services.


There will be huge societal benefits from reducing inequality. A society with more equal opportunities will not only usher in more harmony, but it will also lead to better economic performance as everyone in society can realise their true potential. Indeed, this was the lesson of the 1960s, whose economic success was directly attributable to progressive spending policies implemented after World War 2.

 

12.  Legalise Drugs and Sex Work. There are still major blind spots in most Western societies and many developing countries as far as drug addiction and sex work are concerned. With some notable exceptions, the markets for sexual services and drugs are still characterised by high levels of criminality and great asymmetry within the industries. Specifically, there tends to be extremely vulnerable people in the downstream sections of these industries (addicts and prostitutes), while the upstream bits are controlled by extremely powerful, violent, and ruthless organisations (typically large multinational mafia-style drug cartels and organised people-traffickers).


Western societies have made good advances in how we treat women and homosexuals, but our treatment of drug addicts and sex workers remains woeful. Drug taking and sex work are still proscribed activities in many countries and we still do not face up to the fact that most drug addicts and sex workers are extremely vulnerable people. Addiction is an illness. Sex work often involves trafficked men and women.


A new Left policy agenda should raise awareness of these problems. It should stand up for these people. It should oppose the classification of drug taking and prostitution as illegal activities, not least because we know that prohibition does not work.


Drug taking and prostitution will happen regardless of any laws, so the only thing prohibition achieves is to drive these activities underground, thereby criminalising some of the most vulnerable people in the world and increasing the business potential of crime syndicates.


Criminalisation of drug addiction also happens to be hugely costly for society, because drug addicts are forced to steal and rob multiple times a day to feed their habit.


The best solution is for the state to provide drugs to addicts as well as treatment and support, while sex workers must be given all the same rights and protections as workers in any other industry. By legalising and regulating drugs and sex work, we can protect participants and tax them to make sure they contribute to society instead of criminal gangs.

 

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Big picture: Cut the ideology, focus on the problems. Still, there are important themes that cut across all twelve proposals. First, governments should first and foremost exist to look after the weakest and the most vulnerable members of society. The well-to-do and businesses do not need government hand-outs; they can largely take care of themselves.


Second, governments should use their formidable powers to clamp down on those who seek to gain advantage at the expense of others, such as monopolies at home and dictators abroad.


Third, governments need to become far more efficient and more effective, which can only be achieved by altering the entire culture in politics in a more technocratic direction.


Fourth, it is time to push back against individualism in favour of greater solidarity with others. This is not just because it is the right and moral thing to do, but also because it benefits society at large.


Finally, we need to push for far greater international cooperation. Europe needs to kick-start its further integration and barriers to capital and labour flowing across borders need to come down. It is imperative that the trend towards nationalism is reversed (see here). The biggest problems in the world – be they cross-border migration, climate change, terrorism, or economic contagion – are all global in nature and simply cannot be solved by individual states (see here). We work together – or we perish.

 

The End

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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