France: French Protests fueled by populists and Russian backed internet bloggers as extremists put centrism to the torch - by Max Boot

France: Extreme Right-Wing Populists cheered on by the Kremlin

Weekend after weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron is dealing with sometimes violent protests from a populist movement known as the gilets jaunes (yellow vests). The protesters were galvanized by a plan to raise gasoline taxes, but they are still out in the streets even though the gas tax increase has been suspended. Now they’re demanding, among other things, default on the public debt, exit from the European Union and NATO, and less immigration. I’m dealing with a piece of the online fallout — and in the process learning a dispiriting lesson about how hard it is for a political leader to pursue a moderate path in an age of extremes.

On Dec. 3, amid pictures of burning cars and tear gas in Paris, I woke up to find incessant Twitter criticism of an article I’d written. This was hardly shocking; I’m attacked online all the time. What surprised me was that I was being attacked for a Commentary article published 18 months earlier, shortly after Macron’s election. I posted it on Twitter on June 15, 2017, with the headline: “To defeat populism, America needs its own Macron — a charismatic leader who can make centrism cool.”

This tweet has now earned me a torrent of online abuse. Sean Davis, the co-founder of a pro-Trump website, tweeted: “This 2017 column is a riot.” The right-wing actor James Woods retweeted the article with the gloating tag line: “Twitter is beautiful.” Left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald apparently thought my article was so ridiculous he retweeted it without any comment at all. Breitbart’s former London editor wrote: “This aged well, didn’t it, @maxboot?”

I asked the information warfare expert Molly McKew what was going on. She replied: “Major Russian info campaign on the Yellow Jackets/Vests protests, so you just kicked the wrong hornets. Over the weekend all the ‘Syria’ accounts were tweeting about how French had snipers on the rooftops to shoot the demonstrators.” The Hamilton 68 website, which tracks Russian disinformation online, confirmed that two of the top Russian hashtags were “giletsjaune” and “France.” Among the Russians cheerleading the protests online is the notorious fascist and pro-Putin ideologue Alexander Dugin. Meanwhile, Russian state media outlets such as RT were hyping chaos in Paris as if it were a “color” revolution.

BuzzFeed reports that the “yellow vests” emerged out of “Anger Groups” that popped up on Facebook to channel the grievances of “fed up” rural, working-class French people — the Gallic version of President Trump’s deplorables or the tea party. Just as in the United States, their online propaganda included a great deal of misinformation. Activists circulated a picture of cars stranded on a highway, claiming it showed German motorists who had abandoned their cars to protest fuel taxes. In fact, the picture was likely of a traffic jam in China. Another popular meme claimed that a 2016 government decree had invalidated the French constitution and that everything that has happened since, including the gas tax, is illegitimate.

There is no evidence that I have seen that Russia social media ignited the protests, but they certainly added fuel to the fire.

But Macron’s desire to curb global warming (the goal of the higher gas tax), his support for the European Union and NATO, his unabashed elitism (he once worked for the Rothschild investment bank, a bogeyman for anti-Semites), and his clashes with Trump have made him a target of the far right, too. Trump himself applauded the protests, falsely claiming they are chanting, “We want Trump.” The right would like to see Marine Le Pen take over; the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The Kremlin would prefer either one to a centrist who will stymie its designs to divide Europe.

Read more: In France and online, extremists put centrism to the torch - The Washington Post

US Two Party System Under Scrutiny: Why America’s 2-party system is on a collision course with our constitutional democracy

There was a time, several decades ago, when America’s two-party system was praised for its moderation. Unlike European parliamentary democracies where “dogmatic ideological parties” of Europe thrived, America’s winner-take-all electoral system seemed to reward and therefore encourage parties and candidates with broad national appeal. No party, it was argued, could simply give up on half of the electorate. Similarly, no party could convincingly win a majority by putting forward extremist anti-system candidates far outside the mainstream.

Obviously something has gone wrong with this theory. Instead of being rejected as outside the mainstream, Donald Trump, an extremist anti-system candidate, simply redefined what “mainstream” is for almost half of the electorate.

 And today, both American parties regularly forsake about half the electorate. Or even more than half, really.

Consider some basic numbers: Trump was the choice of 14 million people who voted in the Republican primaries. But in a nation where 230.6 million Americans are eligible to vote, that’s 6 percent of eligible voters. In the 2017 German election, the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 5.9 million votes. In a nation of 61.5 eligible voters, that’s almost 10 percent. 

In short, when voters in both countries were given the full range of options, Donald Trump was less popular in the United States than the AfD was in Germany. 

But in the German system, AfD can be kept out of power by other parties forming a coalition. In the United States, Trump’s 6 percent support gave him a major party’s nomination, which gave him instant legitimacy. And because he was a Republican candidate and because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton, 63 million Americans cast a vote for him — enough to catapult him to the presidency.

Sixty-three million is a lot. But that’s also just 27 percent of eligible voters nationwide. Likewise, 63 million of Americans voted for to send Republicans to the US House, also just 27 percent of the eligible voters. In many cases, these were not even affirmative votes for Republicans, but votes against Democrats. 

I raise these numbers to point out that, contrary to claims that American political parties have to appeal broadly to win, they only need to win a quarter of the voting-age population to gain unified control of government in Washington, and their presidential nominee needs to win far less than that. Lest you think I’m picking on Republicans, the same was true (roughly) of Democrats in 2008.

Part of this is because unlike in Germany, where voter turnout hovers closer to 80 percent, American voter turnout is usually in the mid-50s in presidential elections, and closer to 40 percent in midterms (an international laggard). Many US voters don’t bother to vote because neither of the two parties appeals to them, or because they live in a safe state where their vote doesn’t matter, or because by comparative standards, there are significant hurdles to voting in the United States (such as more complicated registration, or voting being on a workday instead of on a weekend).

In short, there is nothing structural about a two-party system that guarantees moderate parties that have to appeal broadly. We just got lucky. Well, sort of — the past wasn’t so great either.

The obvious challenge then becomes how to shift the axis of political conflict back away from a battle over the nature of America and its political institutions, and to more of a non-existential “normal politics” argument over public policy and its implementation. The answer has to involve somehow scrambling the current party system, so that being a Democrat or being a Republican is not wrapped up in these fundamental zero-sum questions about the basis of American democracy.

This is why I’m an enthusiastic supporter of efforts to expand ranked-choice voting, which are gaining steam, and of more incipient efforts to move our elections away from zero-sum winner-take-all, single-plurality winner affairs toward proportional, multi-winner elections. This would give us a more fluid party system, more in line with our constitutional design.

This means changing our electoral institutions. I recognize this is a major undertaking, and broad electoral system change is never easy. But at this point, anything less seems like taking buckets to a flood when we know the levees have broken.

There are big, important conversations to have here on the best way forward. But first, we have to admit that we have a problem. And the problem right now is that the two-party system is trapped in a doom loop that it can’t get out of on its own without significant collateral damage.

Read more: Why America’s 2-party system is on a collision course with our constitutional democracy - Vox

Britain: Muslim Council of Britain says government hampering anti-Isis efforts - by Vikram Dodd

The government has hampered the fight against extremism by shunning key Muslim groups, one of Britain’s largest Islamic organisations said today.

Miqdaad Versi, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said his group could have helped combat the appeal of Islamic State to young Britons, if the government had ever talked to them.

His comments came after concerns mounted over Islamic State’s continued ability to lure Britons, amid fears a family of 12 from Bradford may be on their way to join the extremist group.

The last Conservative-led government decided it would not engage with alleged non-violent extremists, and viewed the MCB as one despite it being one of the largest Islamic organisations in Britain.

The policy is being continued now that the Conservatives have a majority The last years of Labour’s rule saw also the government keep the MCB at arms length.

Versi, who speaks for the MCB on terrorism and security issues, said: “It is important government does not talk just to those who agree with it.

Read more: Muslim Council of Britain says government hampering anti-Isis efforts | UK news | The Guardian

Middle East: Syria: Extremists Restricting Women’s Rights

Certain extremist armed opposition groups are imposing strict  discriminatory rules on women and girls that have no basis in Syrian law, Human Rights Watch said today. The harsh rules that some groups area administering in areas under their control in northern and northeastern violate women’s and girls’ human rights and limit their ability to carry out essential daily activities.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 43 refugees from Syria in Iraqi Kurdistan and conducted telephone interviews with two refugees from Syria in Turkey in November and December 2013. The refugees interviewed said that the extremist armed groups Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) have enforced their interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law, by requiring women and girls to wear headscarves (hijabs) and full-length robes , and threatening to punish those who do not comply. In some areas, the groups are imposing discriminatory measures prohibiting women and girls, particularly those who do not abide by the dress code, from moving  freely in public, working, and attending school.

Read more: Syria: Extremists Restricting Women’s Rights | Human Rights Watch