Globalization: Will The Coronavirus End Globalization? - by Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp

Narratives provide the storylines through which people make sense of the world. Actors strategically deploy narratives to advance agendas, telling stories about what or who is to blame and what should be done. When it comes to the coronavirus, multiple narratives are emerging. Instead of adopting a common frame to understand this threat, actors are doubling down on their existing critiques of globalization and neoliberalism, using the coronavirus to show how right they were all along.

Instead of trying to advance a dominant narrative about what the pandemic means for globalization, we think it is time to start developing mental models to understand what the different perspectives are, how they can be integrated and what trade-offs this might involve. This approach permits us to provide a more three-dimensional understanding of the problem. We’ve identified at least seven major storylines that are competing for attention in explaining what the virus means for economic globalization.

For right-wing populists like President Donald Trump, the coronavirus vindicates concerns about the need to protect the country’s borders and to keep foreigners—and their diseases—out. The threat is portrayed as foreign, and the response is to build walls and stop flights. According to this narrative, globalization accelerates the threat. As Aurélia Beigneux, a politician from France’s right-wing National Rally, warns: “The free circulation of goods and people, immigration policies and weak controls at the borders obviously allow the exponential spread of this type of virus.” Hyperconnected global cities might be towering forces economically, but they are also entry ports for infection. Living in a “flyover states” is, for once, an enviable position.

For left-wing populists like U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the crisis has made it abundantly clear that the country needs free health care and paid sick leave for everyone, right now. They focus less on the foreign threat—how the virus arrived in the country—and more on domestic problems—how inequality in shared social and economic structures means that people are not properly treated, permitting the disease to spread. Lack of health care, high insurance premiums, and minimal sick-leave entitlements mean that it is harder to get people to self-isolate and get tested, which will hamper containment and increase fatalities. Perhaps universal healthcare is a national security issue.

o security actors who have long been worried about America’s overreliance on Chinese imports, the coronavirus reinforces concerns about the fact that over 80% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in U.S. medicines are produced abroad, mainly in China and India, including over 97% of antibiotics. According to this geoeconomic perspective, the pandemic demonstrates why America needs to be more self-reliant when it comes to making essential products like penicillin. The hit Australia has taken with respect to its top services exports—education and tourism—also raises concerns about concentrated dependence. When Chinese students comprise 70–80% of the international student body of some universities, making up over 20% of some university budgets, grounding planes from China has significant economic effects.

Capitalist reformers criticize the myopic focus of multinational corporations on bolstering shareholder value in a way that has led many to focus on short-term efficiencies over long-term economic resilience. The “just-in-time” approach to manufacturing, in which manufacturers do not keep a large inventories of materials but instead order them to arrive shortly in advance of assembly, is highly vulnerable to supply chain shocks. Automakers globally have had to stall production after supplies of components from China were disrupted. This crisis therefore proves the need to shorten supply chains and build in more redundancy into manufacturing processes to ensure greater resilience.

Political observers view the coronavirus as a perfect illustration of the advantages or flaws of authoritarianism or democracy—pick your poison. Those inclined to criticize Chinese authoritarianism point to that government’s early attempt to silence doctors who were raising the alarm about the virus. Others point to the advantage that the Communist Party enjoyed in dealing with the virus, when the government used lockdown orders and technological surveillance to rapidly contain the virus’s spread. Conversely, while some celebrate the West’s freedom of speech, others point to the dillydallying of Western democracies in effectively curtailing these risks—with Italy and now the United States being cases in point. The coronavirus will have longer term implications for debates about liberal versus authoritarian capitalism.

Globalists view the coronavirus as a global threat that shows the common plight of humanity and the need to work together. Viruses don’t discriminate; nor should we. Instead of hoarding medical masks through export controls, countries should work together to ensure that all states have sufficient medical supplies. This is a time for global action and for all people and countries to come together. Countries should encourage scientists from around the world to work together to find a vaccine, rather than resorting to “sicken-thy-neighbor” export bans on medical supplies. Here, the goal is global cooperation to enable the continued flow of people, goods and ideas.

Read more at: Will The Coronavirus End Globalization? - Barron's

EU-USA: Cult of Personality: How Trump Uses the Playbook of Europe's Far Right - by Emily Cade

For months, pundits dismissed Trump’s candidacy, arguing that once voters started paying attention, his lack of substance would crater his support.

Now that he’s the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, it’s clear the early naysayers sorely miscalculated. The lesson from th

is race: A strong cult of personality can trump ideology. And that’s been proved by generations of demagogues. The support behind Italy’s Benito Mussolini was “more about the leader than...about the party or the ideology,” bypassing or even upending the traditional party structures, says Arfon Rees, a specialist in Soviet and Russian history at the U.K.’s University of Birmingham.

There are other parallels, says Joseph Sassoon, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. When Trump says he’s his own best adviser and has no speechwriters, “this is really a prototype of Saddam or Qaddafi or Nasser...the wanting to control the language of their speeches,” says Sassoon, referencing former leaders of Iraq, Libya and Egypt. “ An essential component of the cult of personality is it cannot be shared with anyone.”

German philosopher Max Weber coined the term charismatic authority to describe leaders whose power is built on their “exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character,” as opposed to the rule of law or simply brute force.

Many may not regard Trump the candidate in an admirable light, but to his followers, his business success and his personal wealth — which freed him from the unseemly campaign fundraising dance of his primary rivals — make him inviolable. American politicians are “all bought and paid for by somebody,” 62-year-old Trump supporter Nick Glaub said outside the suburban Cincinnati Trump rally.

“The only person that isn’t is that man right there,” said Glaub, gesturing to the community center where the real estate mogul had just spoken.

Trump’s charismatic authority stems from this belief that he is above politics-as-usual, says Roger Eatwell, a politics professor at Britain’s University of Bath. And it goes beyond his reality-TV fame. “Celebrity...tends to be a fairly passing phenomenon, and it doesn’t tend to be a very emotional phenomenon,” Eatwell explains. But Trump’s campaign offers something deeper: “a sense of identification.”

There is, however, one glaring difference between the Republican front-runner and Europe’s right-wing leaders in 2016: Trump’s conspicuous wealth. While he flaunts his billionaire lifestyle, Europe’s populists play up their everyman credentials. Nigel Farage, head of the right-wing U.K. Independence Party, “loves to be photographed in an English pub” having a beer, says Eatwell.

It’s a show of solidarity that’s important on a continent where class remains a salient divide and austerity’s bite is deep. Americans, in contrast, embrace capitalism far more openly and aren’t necessarily turned off by Trump’s gilded excess.

Note EU-Digest: It is interesting to see that many voters in the US and the EU have not learned from the past .....in politics and economics, nationalism has always turned into a disaster when it was applied by politicians in power as a national state policy

Instead, politicians seeking unity and cooperation among political parties and nations have usually succeeded in creating peace and prosperity at home and abroad.

The rise to the top of far-right politicians in Europe and the US  is a guaranteed recipe for political and economic turmoil.

 Cult of Personality: How Trump Uses the Playbook of Europe's Far Right

Far-Right Danger After Brussels, far-right Islamophobes are doing exactly what ISIS wants them to do: threatening the “gray zone” - by Ben Norton

ISIS took credit for a horrific series of bombings in Brussels, Beligum on Monday which killed at least 30 people.

Even before the extremist group claimed responsibility, anti-Muslim sentiment exploded. The hashtag #StopIslam was trending globally on Twitter.

Far-right politicians peddled Islamophobic rancor and tapped into xenophobic bigotry, exploiting the tragedy as a political opportunity. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump reaffirmed his support for torture and called for closing up the U.S.’s borders. Fellow GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz likewise maintained that police should even more aggressively “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.”

As has become painfully customary, the double standards in the discussion of the attacks were immediately apparent. When white right-wing extremists massacre people at a women’s health clinic, bomb a federal government building in Oklahoma City or fly a plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, white right-wingers are not immediately blamed. But when Islamic extremists kill people, not only are the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims collectively blamed, their 1,500-year-old religion is too.

What is even more insidious — and dangerous — about this predictable anti-Muslim, racist, xenophobic response, however, is not just how hateful and destructive it is. The fact of the matter is that Islamophobes are directly playing into ISIS’ hands.

Read more: After Brussels, far-right Islamophobes are doing exactly what ISIS wants them to do: threatening the “gray zone” - Salon.com

Far Right Dangers in Britain: Ukip support surges in run-up to Britain's European elections - by Ellen Mauro

The UK Independence Party (Ukip), once dismissed as a group of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" by British Prime Minister David Cameron, appears set to trounce the country's mainstream political parties in Britain’s elections for the European Parliament later this month.

According to the latest opinion poll, published in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper and conducted by UK statistics firm YouGov, far-right Ukip - a relative new kid on the block of British politics - would score 31 per cent of the vote among the respondents if the European elections were held when the poll was taken.

The poll showed Ukip would come in three points ahead of the Labour Party, while Cameron's Conservatives would trail in third place with 19 per cent of the vote.

Citizens of European Union member states head to the polls every five years to elect members of the European Parliament. The body’s main role is to approve new EU laws, which override national laws of member states.

The stakes are particularly high this year as it’s the first time in many countries that far-right, anti-EU parties are likely to pose a major challenge to traditional parties.

Given that trend, Ukip’s impressive result in the YouGov poll isn’t a shock. What is perhaps surprising, though, is that the party still managed to finish in first place after a slew of bad press in recent weeks.

Read more: Ukip support surges in run-up to Britain's European elections - World - CBC News

Germans stage nation-wide vigils for victims of far-right terror group

Activists staged vigils in dozens of German cities Sunday to commemorate the victims of a far-right terror group, one year after its existence came to light.

The revelation that a small band of neo-Nazis had likely been responsible for a seven-year murder spree sent shock waves through Germany's security establishment last year.

The group, which called itself National Socialist Underground, is suspected of killing at least nine men and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007. The male victims all belonged to ethnic minorities and for years German authorities attributed the murders to immigrant gangs.

The investigation took a dramatic turn when two fugitive neo-Nazis, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boenhardt, were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide on Nov. 4, 2011. The third alleged core member of the group, Beate Zschaepe, is in custody pending trial.

Read more: Germans stage nation-wide vigils for victims of far-right terror group | CTV News