The renaissance of political cruelty

Trump took her child away (Source: here)

In the last few years, Western democracies have begun to place cruelty at the heart of policy-making. Many aspects of government policy now deliberately defund, punish, or expel the weakest and most vulnerable groups in our societies. This is a major change from the past; only a few years ago policy-makers were principally focused on assisting vulnerable groups.

The about-face in political attitudes towards the disadvantaged - victimising them instead of assisting them - has already become so entrenched that we have a phrase to describe it: performative cruelty.

Performative cruelty refers to government policies that specifically aim to incentivise specific groups of people by inflicting pain and suffering. According to the logic of performative cruelty, the greater the cruelty the greater its effectiveness. Politicians want to be seen as tough, not kind. Many politicians, including those in the mainstream, now regard performative cruelty as more effective with voters than solidarity and kindness.

–––––

Performative cruelty now infects multiple aspects of government policy in most Western democracies. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United States. The defining policy so far in Donald Trump's second term has been to dismantle America's social safety net, including food stamps and Medicaid. As a result, we will now all get to witness, starting this year, how hundreds of thousands of extremely vulnerable Americans will be pushed into outright destitution.

What makes the dismantlement of the US social safety net particularly cruel is that it is motivated solely by the desire finance tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America. US government policy now literally assigns the lowest priority to helping the poorest and most vulnerable, while giving paramountcy to policies that promote the power and wealth of those who already have plenty of both. This is the most gratuitous and arrogant display of elite privilege and opulence since the days of Marie Antoinette.

As Trump flaunts his wealth and power, relishing in his ballroom, his gold leaf-covered White House, and fraternises with fawning billionaires, main street America labours under historically high levels of inequality and ever-mounting economic challenges. Trump has not expressed the slightest interest in easing these challenges, leaving millions of marginalised Americans unable to realise their full potential.

If anything, Trump's policies are making it harder for ordinary Americans to prosper. The expulsion of immigrant workers, cuts to key government programmes, blockades of the inflow of foreign talent to US universities and other institutions, and abandonment of America's long-standing commitment to free trade will not Make America Great Again. Rather, they make Many Americans Grovel Again.

–––––

Yet, marginalised Americans are not the worst off in Trump's new reality of political cruelty. Immigrants, whose living standards are far below those of the average American, have so far taken the brunt of Trump's broad-based assault on the 'have-nots'. Trump's focus on immigrants is no accident; he believes that political power is accumulated by inflicting defeats on others, starting with the weakest and gaining strength with each victory. It is only natural that he starts by attacking the most vulnerable of all, immigrants.

In fact, Trump's assault on immigrants already began in his first term, when, in a display of almost unfathomable evil, he forcibly removed thousands of immigrant children from their mothers. Many families were never reunited.

In his second term, Trump has further stepped up his anti-immigrant pogrom using ICE, his Gestapo-like government unit, which daily rounds up immigrants on the streets, in their homes, in public offices, in schools, and in churches and sends them do torture prisons in El Salvador, often without due process.

Unsurprisingly, mainstream America has largely ignored the scapegoating of immigrants. The United States is a nation of selfish people, where the greatest virtue is success; concern for others does ranks very low on the list of priorities of most Americans [culture blog here]. The reluctance to stand up for immigrants will backfire, however. In my view, Trump's purge of immigrants is merely a dress-rehearsals for a much broader witch hunt against his perceived enemies in the American population (see here and here).

­­­­–––––

Performative cruelty has also come to define Trump's foreign policy. Closely mirroring his pro-rich and anti-poor tax and spend agenda at home, Trump's foreign policies glorify dictators overseas and threaten and attack the weak.

Trump consistently reserves his highest praise for genocidal leaders like Putin and Netanyahu. As a dyed-in-the-wood fascist, he admires the sociopathy and abject dearth of moral integrity of these leaders.

At the time, Trump has nothing but derision and coercion for lesser powers and smaller democracies. His blanket ban on entry to the United States for people from dozens of poor countries only makes sense in terms of Trump's deep racial, religious, and class prejudices. Similarly, his threats to annex Greenland are clearly rooted in his belief that Denmark is a small nation with no real capacity to prevent an American invasion.

Trump's view that the strong are good and the weak bad also find expression in his bombing of defenceless boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific. These attacks are designed to demonstrate his ruthlessness, because he wants to be perceived as ruthless, as someone to be feared. In Trump's world, only strength matters, which is why Trump has shown no remorse for the victims many of whom are now known to have been innocent Colombian fishermen.

Trump's most gratuitous display of cruelty in foreign policy so far has been his decision to wind up USAID, the US government's aid programme. While USAID programmes have always left much to be desired in terms of efficacy, they do include life-saving vaccination and medicine programmes in much of the developing world. Naively, it turns out, governments in developing countries trusted America to honour its long-standing commitment to provide essential drugs, but as the US now winds down these programmes hundreds of thousands of people will die from preventable diseases in the poorest countries in the world as it will take months if not years to put replacement programmes in place.

–––––

While Trump's America has 'taken the lead' in re-introducing cruelty into government policies, the US is by no means the only country to do so. The European Union (EU) gone down a similar path as far as treatment of refugees is concerned. Rather than help refugees flee from war, poverty, and persecution, the EU is doing everything it can to keep them out, even to the point of letting them drown in their thousands in the Mediterranean Sea.

With strong backing from almost every EU member state - Spain being the notable exception - EU's external borders are being shut and legal routes to asylum closed down. This will not stop refugees from coming to Europe, but it will force them to use underground routes controlled by criminal gangs and exploitative people-traffickers. Hence, refugees, who are already deeply traumatised and extremely impoverished, now face additional horrors en route to Europe. Many will die as a result of the callousness, which has become a core feature in EU immigration policy.  

If hostility towards immigrants is bad at EU level, it is amplified manyfold at the level of EU member states. Take the example of Denmark, a country that once prided itself on being the poster child for humane policies at home and abroad. These days, Denmark pursues immigration policies that are so vile that experts and international organisations regularly condemn them for violations of basic human rights (see here).

Denmark imposes severe restrictions on immigrants from uniting with their own families. Denmark maintains overtly racist 'ghetto laws', which forcibly displace non-Western immigrants, but not immigrants of other ethnicities. Denmark also came up with the notorious 'Jewellery Law', which required immigration officials to seize cash and other valuables from destitute asylum seekers. The policy was eventually abandoned, not because politicians became remorseful about its cruelty, but because immigration officials - who are not known for their love of foreigners - refused to implement it. The prison-like conditions for rejected asylum are also so bad that they recently shocked members of a visiting mission from the European Commission's Committee for the Prevention of Torture (see here).

The Danish authorities also regularly threaten to outsource asylum-processing to Third World dictators, which creates great anxiety for asylum seekers. Members of the Danish parliament habitually call for Denmark to leave the European Court of Human Rights, which would allow the government to suspend basic protections for refugees that have been in place since Europeans themselves were refugees during and after World War II.

–––––

How should we understand the surge in performative cruelty in Western democracies in recent years? For starters, it is insightful to note that cruelty in politics is nothing new. In fact, performative cruelty has been a feature of politics for as long as historical records exist. Ashurbanipal, the last great Assyrian King, who died in 631 BCE was a great champion of public displays of cruelty. He gained particular notoriety for spectacles in which he brutally killing vanquished enemies. He also stole their gods, by the way, which, at the time, was considered as a kind of ethnic cleansing in the spiritual realm.

Various Roman emperors, including Caligula (12-41 CE), Nero (37-68 CE), Domitian (50-96 CE), Caracalla (188–217 CE), and Elagabalus (204–222 CE) are also remembered for their cruelty. In China, Empress Wu Zetian (690–705 CE) enjoyed tearing out the tongues of her rivals. Oppressive King John of England (1199–1216 CE) imposed heavy taxation on the poor and constantly battled the nobility. Pedro I of Castile (1334-1369 CE) carried out waves of executions, including those of his wife and several of his half-brothers. Timur Tamerlane (1336–1405 CE) wrecked chaos throughout Asia and parts of Europe with extreme barbarism, causing the deaths of upwards of 17 million people. Vlad III of Wallachia (1431-1471 CE) also deserves a passing mention for his favourite method of execution of impalement, while Ivan the Terrible of Russia (1547-1584) ruled with terror, torture, and sadistic executions, including the murder of his own son and heir.

–––––

Given the recurrence of political cruelty throughout history, it is likely that the capacity for cruelty has existed within us since the very earliest stages in human evolution. One hypothesis is that cruelty made it easier, pleasurable even, to kill and consume other living creatures, which improved the chances of survival of early hominids. The capacity for cruelty has resided within us ever since, typically re-emerging as an aid to social control. For example, public torture and executions became an institution in Europe's Middle Ages as a means of deterring crime and attempts to overthrow incumbents.

–––––

It should be stressed that cruelty is not the opposite of empathy. Empathy is a neutral concept, which describes the ability to feel what another person is feeling, regardless of what they are feeling. Cruel and kind people both feel empathy, but differ in that cruel people enjoy the pain experienced by others, while kind people derive pleasure from the joy of others.

It is also worth noting that cruelty appears to exist only in human beings, because other animals apparently do not have the capacity to perceive suffering in other species. Thus, when cats play with mice, they are not actually enjoying the suffering of the mice, because they cannot imagine the consciousness of mice. In other words, our ability to imagine the feelings of others sets us apart from other species; it is only among our own species that we find people who derive psychological pleasure and even sexual arousal from, say, torturing other humans.

–––––

Given that the vast majority of human beings are capable of empathy and that most people are probably capable of being both cruel and kind, the key challenge in understanding political cycles of performative cruelty is to determine which factors cause marginal voters to suddenly switch preferences from policies that prop up the vulnerable to policies that victimise them. Why has performative cruelty become fashionable?

In my opinion, there are three factors that determine when and why societies turn to cruelty. The first is collective memory. Periods of cruelty tend to end in truly horrific humanitarian disasters that give rise to long legacies of trauma. However, memories eventually fade and societies then become inclined to repeat past mistakes, no matter how horrific.

The second factor is social conditions. Economic crises, rising inequality, and neglect of particular groups in society give rise to public anger. When social discontent becomes sufficiently widespread the likelihood of scapegoating of minorities increases sharply.

The third factor is political populism. Populist politicians usually take the lead in scapegoating minorities during crises. They do so in preference to tackling society's real underlying problems. Scapegoating often sets in motion cycles of repression, which tend to get worse until, at some point, they trigger genuine humanitarian catastrophes. When this point is reached, however, societies often wake up and put measures in place to finally address the real underlying grievances, thereby bringing the cycle of political cruelty to a close.

–––––

Analysing Western politics using this framework, it seems to me that the current cycle of political cruelty began some ninety-odd years ago and that Western democracies are now approaching the end-stages of the cycle. If so, we should all be worried.

The last big episode of systemic performative cruelty kicked off with the rise of fascism in Europe and Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. At its height, it was characterised by extreme oppression and genocide, including the killing of millions of Jews in the concentration camps of the Nazi regime. The excesses of the Axis powers eventually prompted the Allies to enter the war. In 1945, after some 85 million people had died, the cycle of political cruelty was finally brought to a halt.

In the next sixty-odd years, cruelty played a much smaller part in policy-making in Western democracies, because the memories of the cruelty of fascism and World War II continued to remain fresh in the minds of votes and policy-makers. The consensus during this period was that deep social divisions within countries and animosity between nations pose major risks, wherefore government policies should aim to avoid both at all costs.

This is why rich countries introduced welfare states and unemployment benefit to support of society's most vulnerable members after World War II. The same rationale was also applied on the international stage with the establishment of the World Bank, which, emboldened by its initial success in implementing the Marshall Plan in Europe, soon saw its mandate extended to include poverty reduction in less developed countries.

Post-war Western governments also recognised that global governance was essential to prevent powerful nations from exploiting weaker ones. EU was formed in the 1950s to prevent a return to war in Europe. The United Nations was established to resolve international conflicts multilaterally, while GATT, later to become the WTO, and IMF were set up to counter predatory economic practices like protectionism and competitive devaluations, which had done so much to undermine trust between nations in the 1930s.

Underpinning all these initiatives - domestic as well as multilateral - was a stone-cold recognition that broad-based discontent, if allowed to fester, would eventually lead to populism and war. Policy-making should be evidence-based, solutions technocratic. Realism, not kindness, was the reason for pursuing policies of solidarity with vulnerable groups.

By most standards, the period from 1945 to 2008/2009 was successful. Governments mostly sought to help 'have-nots' rather than victimise them. This approach ushered in the longest period of peace in European history. Huge strides were made in alleviating poverty. Health care and education improved. While social discontent was never eradicated entirely, especially in poor countries, which were constantly destabilised by the Cold war tensions, within Western economies at least the policies prevented a return of fascism.

–––––

What, then, triggered the change from evidence-based interventions to support marginalised groups toward to the cruelty-based scapegoating, which has now come to define much of public policy? The catalyst was the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008/2009, although signs of polarisation were already evident in most Western economies before the crisis. The GFC was important, however, because it sharply increased the polarisation in the course of a very short period of time. The asset-poor got a lot poorer due to the economic downturn, while the asset-rich were suddenly a lot better off after central banks adopted Quantitative Easing policies, which pushed asset prices up very sharply.

As mentioned, Western societies had already been getting more polarised prior to the GFC. For several years before the crisis, Western democracies had been pursuing what I call Faustian Bargains in which taxes were steadily reduced for businesses and the middle class, paid for by hollowing out public welfare programmes, which were particularly important to most vulnerable in society. Faustian Bargains are, in my view, the single most important reason underclasses re-emerged in Western societies for the first time since the 1930s (see here).

Another factor that contributed to the change in politics was the deliberate failure on the part of Western governments to apply anti-trust legislation to tech monopolies, whose stranglehold over Western economies has only continued to grow. By allowing a very small number of companies to achieve enormous monopoly power, governments contributed to the cost-of-living crises for lower-income groups, while at the same time enabling the very top end of the income distribution to become insanely rich. The failure to regulate tech monopolies has driven up wealth inequality, which has further worsened grievances for large sections of society (see here).

These developments meant that mistrust of mainstream politicians was already quite elevated by the time the GFC struck. Weak and unprepared, politicians soon abandoned all hope of addressing society's deeper fundamental economic problems, opting instead to jump on Far-Right populist bandwagons, which sought to exploit public anger by blaming the economic problems on foreigners - immigrants at home and the Chinese overseas.

The anti-immigrant narrative proved extremely easy to sell. Fear-mongering was highly effective, particularly among the less-educated and lower-income groups, who know very little about foreign cultures. Each year since the GFC, the persecution of immigrants has steadily gained more traction and become more draconian. Western democracies now seem locked into an escalating spiral of xenophobia, which could well end in a major humanitarian catastrophe.

The situation is so bad, in my opinion, that it is not hyperbole to say that attitudes towards immigrants in Western democracies, notably Muslims, now resemble how Jews in Germany were viewed in the early stages of Hitler's regime.

The widespread xenophobia is also having ramifications for other areas of government policy in the West. There has been a collapse in foreign aid to poorer countries, for example, and a near-total neutering, defunding, and side-lining of the United Nations in international diplomacy. Refugee protections have been rolled back in most Western democracies, in some cases even replaced with programs to expel them.

Populists have also found it useful to 'farm' scapegoats in the foreign policy arena. The United States took the lead by launching a blistering attack on China shortly after Donald Trump first took office in 2016. Soon afterwards, Europe, always the lap dog, jumped on Trump's China Trade War band wagon.

Unlike the vilification of immigrants in Western democracies, which mainly draws support from low-income groups, the scapegoating of China is backed by well-educated Western analysts and politicians. The fact that China is demonstrably the least imperialistic of all super-powers appears to carry no weight. Indeed, any Western analysist and politicians still voice greater concern over China than Russia and Israel, which are both prosecuting actual illegal wars and genocides as I type these words. Nothing, in my view, illustrates better how far evidence-based policy-making has been shunted into the background.  

By now, protectionism has spread to the whole globe in a worrisome echo of the rise of protectionism in the 1930s. Economic nationalism has created deep cracks in the once-strong economic and military alliance between the US and Western Europe.

–––––

These developments make it impossible, in my view, to escape the conclusion that the Western world is now in the grip of a vicious cycle of political cruelty unlike anything we have seen since the rise of fascism of the 1930s.

We have arrived at this point, because we have allowed our memories of past episodes of cruelty to fade. We have neglected or entirely eliminated our social programs to protect the most vulnerable. We have allowed a new generation of Far-Right politicians to take advantage of our grievances (and our souls) to scapegoat vulnerable minorities upon whom we now bring the full force of our governments to bear, regardless of how cruel.

We know from painful experiences of past that cycles of political cruelty rarely end well. Unfortunately, there is so far no sign of significant pushback to performative cruelty from within mainstream political circles. As such, we must conclude that Western democracies are still hurtling towards some kind of humanitarian disaster.

Whether the disaster materialises or not depends on whether we wake up in time to realise the errors of our ways. Even if we do wake up, however, there is still a mountain to climb. Our global governance system is destroyed. Respect for the rule of law is broken. Bullies are doing all the running and almost everyone else is cowering. It will therefore take exceptional political courage and vision to avoid disaster. This is a time for heroes, but are there any left?

The End