Foreign Correspondence, Vol 8
The future of populism and what Belarus learned from the rest of the world
Hello and happy Friday! The good folks over at The Bunker podcast invited me back this week to chat about the U.S. presidential election. We debriefed the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention, or what my hosts have since dubbed the Trump Family Telethon.
I can’t bring myself to listen to anything that features the sound of my own voice, but I’d love it if you did! You can tune in via your favorite podcast app or by clicking on the image below👇
What I’ve written
One question I had been hoping to explore since the start of this pandemic is how populists would fare in a crisis that returned a modicum of respect to two of their favorite proverbial punching bags: Experts and global institutions.
In this piece, I got my chance. I wrote about how, despite all the ways in which this pandemic has been undoubtedly bad for populists, it would be wrong to presume that the phenomenon will be killed off by this crisis. To the contrary, populism flourishes in crises. Read more here.
I also returned to one of my favorite subjects: global protest movements. This piece took me to Belarus, where hundreds of thousands of people have spent the last few weeks protesting President Alexander Lukashenko and his violent crackdown on demonstrators in the aftermath of this month’s disputed election.
Though the movement in Belarus is unprecedented, delivering some of the largest protests the country has seen in its history, the strategies being deployed are all too familiar, mirroring tactics we’ve seen in Hong Kong, Catalonia, and elsewhere. Keep reading here.
What I’ve read
I’ve so admired Zeynep Tufekci’s work this year. The NYT’s Ben Smith dedicates his latest column to how she keeps getting all of the big things—including face masks, keeping parks open, and why we need to talk about ventilation—right:
“Ms. Tufekci, a 40-something who speaks a mile a minute with a light Turkish accent, has none of the trappings of the celebrity academic or the professional pundit. … The success of Ms. Tufekci and others like her at seeing clearly in our murky time represents a kind of revenge of the nerds, as outsiders from American politics and from Silicon Valley’s pressure to align money and ideology sometimes see what insiders don’t.”
This long read from POLITICO explores the philosophy underpinning the modern-day Republican Party—or rather, the lack thereof:
“It can now safely be said, as his first term in the White House draws toward closure, that Donald Trump’s party is the very definition of a cult of personality. It stands for no special ideal. It possesses no organizing principle. It represents no detailed vision for governing. Filling the vacuum is a lazy, identity-based populism that draws from that lowest common denominator Sanford alluded to. If it agitates the base, if it lights up a Fox News chyron, if it serves to alienate sturdy real Americans from delicate coastal elites, then it’s got a place in the Grand Old Party.”
Of all the Democratic National Convention speeches, this one delivered by 13-year-old Brayden Harrington was my favorite. My colleague John Hendrickson, who authored this must-read essay on Joe Biden’s stutter earlier this year, wrote about how Brayden’s speech took the air out of American living rooms:
“Purse your lips and say ‘we’ as you read this sentence. Do you feel that tension around your mouth? That contraction of your jaw? Now say the word ‘stutter,’ but hold the ‘s’ for a few seconds before getting to the ‘t.’ Do you feel that pressure? That twinge in your chest? Odds are you’re lucky, and you could finish those words on demand. Now imagine you can’t. Imagine it’s not just ‘w’ and ‘s,’ but ‘j’ and ‘l’ and “m” and at least a dozen more. The ‘h’ sound is notoriously difficult, as in ‘here’—the thing you’re required to say each morning at the start of school. Many stutterers have trouble with ‘b,’ as in Biden. Or Brayden.”
This essential piece by my friend and colleague Elaine Godfrey on the vigilante violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and why things stand to get much worse:
“It wasn’t an agent of the state who shot two Americans dead this week. Instead, an American man turned his weapon on other civilians during a protest—and law enforcement let him walk right by them and out of town. Police and political leaders have failed for years to take the actions necessary to prevent this kind of violence. Without serious, sustained intervention, more bloodshed could soon follow.”
What I’m thinking about
There are only four months left of 2020. Four! Turns out time flies just as fast when you’re not having any fun at all. If you think this dumpster fire of a year has flown by too quickly, though, don’t despair: We still have to contend with The Winter, a global recession, the U.S. election, and the end of the Brexit transition period. Roll on 2021.
Until next time,
Yasmeen
P.S. Did you know that The Atlantic has an ideas festival? Did you also know that it’s free to attend this year?! They’ve got a pretty awesome line-up so far. Go check it out!!