{"id":70918,"date":"2020-11-11T18:00:26","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T23:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=70918"},"modified":"2020-11-11T19:28:57","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T00:28:57","slug":"psychologically-powered-by-trumps-2016-victory-the-gotabaya-regime-came-into-being-as-the-last-victory-of-global-alt-right-ultranationalism-the-parabola-of-which-has-begun-its-descent-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=70918","title":{"rendered":"Psychologically powered by Trump\u2019s 2016 Victory ,the Gotabaya regime came into being as the last victory of global Alt-Right ultranationalism, the parabola of which has begun its descent with Trump\u2019s defeat."},"content":{"rendered":"


\nBy<\/p>\n

Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it\u201d <\/em>\u2013 John (1:5)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let us remember George Floyd. Now the American people can begin to breathe. So can humanity. <\/p>\n

When Obama won, I wrote a piece from Geneva entitled \u2018Barack Obama: History\u2019s High Note\u2019 (https:\/\/groundviews.org\/2008\/11\/06\/barack-obama-historys-high-note\/) Maybe I should call this \u2018Joe Biden: History\u2019s High Noon\u2019. The victory of Joe Biden, Gary Cooper-like cool, calm, yet principled American moral hero, was a triumph for civility and moderation, decency and dignity, humanism and pluralism, social empathy and social fairness, anti-racism and anti-supremacism. <\/p>\n

With Biden begins the end of American decline. Those who think that in the past week, the USA demonstrated its weakness and the debility of democracy as a system of governance, are much mistaken. History will show that this was the turning point, where the world saw democracy alive, in real-time, from the inside; how the values of democracy were fought for, even at this moment of \u2018dual power\u2019 marked by Trump\u2019s institutional obstructionism and polarising incitement of far-right passions. A second American Revolution, this time a replay of the 1960s and \u201970s, may be inevitable.<\/p>\n

If a low-intensity Civil War is waged against the Biden-Harris administration by neofascist militia, drawing support from the \u2018Confederate\u2019 white supremacist constituency, future history will show that this only strengthened American democracy as did the Civil War of the 1860s, enhancing the moral strength of the American idea, ideals and system throughout the world. <\/p>\n

As I entered my teens I read a new book (in 1970) which an American friend had gifted my father, titled \u2018The Greening of America,\u2019 by Charles A Reich. It contemplated the shift of consciousness of the 1960s, dubbing it Consciousness III. The Biden-Harris victory marks the birth of a new American consciousness, with globalised resonance because the USA is more a mirror of the world, of humanity in all its plurality, than is any other country, and its ideals as demonstrated by the vote for Biden-Harris, are more universalist than the message and model of its rivals and competitors. The gravitational centre of global consciousness could shift, creating a new global centre-space, a new democratic consensus, a new middle-ground and Middle Path.<\/p>\n

History will indelibly etch the charismatic Kamala Harris, who is in part, OUR Kamala: not only the first woman Vice-President of the USA, but also the first woman of colour and of \u201cSouth Asian descent\u201d (Biden\u2019s victory speech) to hold that post, who will also be the most powerful woman in the history of the most powerful nation in history. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Lessons for Lanka<\/strong><\/p>\n

The planetary political pandemic of autocratic Alt-Right ultranationalism has just had its curve flattened in its epicentre, the country of its most dramatic height, the USA. Sri Lanka\u2019s likeminded regime will feel secure that this is an ancient, \u2018organic\u2019 hierarchical society unlike the USA, congratulate itself on the \u201cautocratic breakthrough\u201d (Balint Magyar) effected with the 20th Amendment and the grip it has on the institutions and electoral process. Ruthlessness will be its recourse to pre-empt a replay of the fate of its hero President Trump. <\/p>\n

While the Biden-Harris \u2018event\u2019 won\u2019t translate immediately and unmediated, into a decisive impact on Sri Lanka, the change in the global zeitgeist and the world correlation of forces, starting with the overall balance of \u2018soft power\u2019, will transform the regime\u2019s environmental conditions of existence and \u2018overdetermine\u2019 (Althusser) our small island\u2019s political destiny. <\/p>\n

The GR presidential project was socially and psychologically powered by Trump\u2019s 2016 victory. The Gotabaya regime came into being as the last victory of global Alt-Right ultranationalism, the parabola of which has begun its descent with Trump\u2019s defeat. The regime\u2019s external factors of existence constitute a tripod: Trump and Trumpism; Israel\u2019s Netanyahu, Netanyahu\u2019s Israel; and Xi\u2019s China. <\/p>\n

As Ben Rhodes, President Obama\u2019s brilliant Deputy National Security Advisor wrote: \u201cFor the last decade, the political project of an increasingly far-right Republican Party has become enmeshed with other right-wing movements in Brazil\u2026and elsewhere\u2026Right-wing parties share sources of financing, media and disinformation platforms, political strategies, and consultants.\u201d (The Democratic Renewal, Foreign Affairs, Sept\/Oct 2020). The \u2018Late Trumpist\u2019 Lankan regime\u2019s tripod just lost a leg.<\/p>\n

The second leg is Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Israel. Biden is staunchly pro-Israel but he\u2019s also pro- \u2018two state\u2019 peace. Netanyahu will be hoping that a Biden victory will not help his rival-cum-partner Benny Ganz, a more promising peace partner. <\/p>\n

The third leg is President Xi\u2019s China. In a reopened dialogue between the USA (with India in its corner) and China, that leg may prove flexibly retractable, and even if it doesn\u2019t, perching on that particular leg will make the regime more vulnerable in the coming global re-set. <\/p>\n

The Trump\/Biden example shows that Trumpism can be electorally defeated in a single term at a Presidential election. While it was a protracted struggle for the electoral college, culminating in victory, it was a much clearer sweep in the popular vote. Biden-Harris polled the highest number of votes that any presidential ticket did in US history, beating Trump by almost five million votes. <\/p>\n

In a presidential system with a direct popular election, it is perfectly possible to defeat a majoritarian-supremacist autocratic President in a single term. As Bolivia recently showed with the first round 55% win for the Movement for Socialism candidate Luis Arce, this is perfectly possible even against a tougher-than-Trump \u201cde facto dictatorial regime\u2026which killed protestors\u201d (President Arce).<\/p>\n

This would be especially so if, like Trump, the incumbent President has been a success in other fields but has zero-experience of legislation and governance, and faces a progressive democratic candidate who by contrast, has considerable political experience. Sri Lanka\u2019s democratic challenger lost to the incumbent President at the zenith of the latter\u2019s post-Easter\/pre-corona popularity as candidate, by only 10% (52%-42%).<\/p>\n

Sri Lankan democrats and liberal\/neoliberal civil society intelligentsia must abandon their colonial hang-up on the Westminster model and absurd three-decade-long fixation on the abolition of the executive presidency (\u2018contact traceable\u2019 to the abortive anti-Premadasa impeachment and the reactionary DUNF breakaway). What ended up abolished was not the executive presidency, but the UNP which was the project\u2019s vehicle. The executive presidency stands reinforced. <\/p>\n

The USA proves (as does Bolivia) that however autocratic the President, the task of democrats is not to abolish the Presidency, but to WIN the Presidency, defeating that President. <\/p>\n

Former Obama strategist David Axelrod correctly said on CNN after the victory that Biden is \u201ca Centre-Left Democrat\u2026[with] a progressive agenda\u201d. When the neoliberal-globalist Hillary Clinton was his opponent, Trump broke through the \u2018blue wall\u2019 that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had built. Joe Biden rebuilt it. Biden is an authentically caring, empathetic man with an appeal to the blue-collar working people of the white majority (who had deserted the party during the Hillary Clinton candidacy), able to breakthrough in the American heartland which Hillary had lost for the Democrats, while constructing the broadest anti-Trump coalition, especially with the African-American community which voted overwhelmingly for him. <\/p>\n

In a lesson for Sri Lanka\u2019s ethnic\/religious minorities, the Black community didn\u2019t support the ideologically advanced Bernie Sanders (backed by young, college-educated whites) as they did that Democrat who could reassure the white majority and break through to it, giving the best chance of victory.<\/p>\n

The vital energies for the winning Democrat mobilisation came from two sources: the (Bernie Sanders) Democratic Left and Black Lives Matter. The incandescent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (\u2018AOC\u2019, age 31), Joan of Arc of the Democratic Socialists, was re-elected to the House of Representatives with an amazing 68.8% vote. Ilhan Omar and the rest of The Squad, the progressive women\u2019s caucus which includes AOC, were re-elected. <\/p>\n

Chinese wall<\/strong><\/p>\n

It could be \u201cd\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again\u201d: the tale of the two submarines. What could be the wider effect of the optics and the discourse of the SLPP-Chinese Communist Party seminar on Governance, including a banner with the symbols of the CPC in one corner and the Pohottuwa in the other, and the reference to the relationship of \u201cthe ruling parties\u201d? As the newspapers reported: <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Minister Song Tao of the International Department of Central Committee of CPC, Party Secretary Liu Cigui of CPC Provincial Committee of Hainan Province, SLPP Chairman Professor G.L. Peiris, Secretary General Sagara Kariyawasam, SLPP MPs including Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, Namal Rajapaksa and Ramesh Pathirana together with some State Ministers and Mayors from the Western Province participated in the meeting. <\/p>\n

\u2018\u2026Ambassador Qi Zhenhong\u2026emphasised that the experience sharing between the two ruling parties would play an important role in bilateral cooperation in the post-COVID era to come. \u201c\u2026As ruling parties, CPC and SLPP should enhance experience sharing so as to better leading the two Governments and the two peoples for a brighter future.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

(http:\/\/www.ft.lk\/news\/Communist-Party-of-China-and-SLPP-hold-virtual-advanced-seminar-on-governance\/56-708551)<\/p>\n

It was President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who decided, in conversation with President Xi, and later with Politburo member Yang Jiechi, on taking the party-to-party relationship, as distinct from the purely state-to-state or government-to-government relationship, to the next level. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Chinese Embassy Spokesperson Luo Chong said that the meeting was aimed at implementing a consensus reached by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and President Xi Jinping in their telephone conversation as well as the recent high-level visit of top leader Yang Jiechi to Colombo.\u201d<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/island.lk\/china-sri-lanka-expand-political-relations-following-pompeo-visit\/)<\/p>\n

The event was billed as an \u201cOpening Ceremony of CPC-SLPP Advanced Seminar on Governance Experience\u201d. Would the \u201cGovernance Experience\u201d that the SLPP absorbed at this seminar make its way into the new Constitution? The SLPP is not a ruling party in the systemic sense that the CPC is \u2013 unless that transformation is the goal. Does the regime seek to entrench itself behind a Chinese wall of an \u2018Asiatic absolutist\u2019 constitutional\/political order? <\/p>\n

The SLPP-CPC dialogue on Governance took place in the immediate aftermath of Pompeo\u2019s messaging on his Sri Lanka visit, and while a naval exercise of the Quad was underway in the Bay of Bengal. Mike Pompeo was careful to target the Chinese Communist Party more often than China as such, an interesting attempt at an implicit distinction between state-to-state or intergovernmental relations, and the alleged expansionist impulse of the Chinese CP. <\/p>\n

Just as the Trump administration built on Obama\u2019s \u2018Pivot to Asia\u2019 (minus the Trans-Pacific Partnership), the Biden administration will build on elements of Trump\u2019s China policy. Just as the policy of \u2018containment\u2019 of the USSR was essentially bipartisan, albeit with varying emphases, so too will be the policy of the \u2018containment\u2019 of China. <\/p>\n

The US Democrats are even more focused than the Republicans on the issue of democracy vs. the projection of China\u2019s governance model by the CPC. On this, there is a bipartisan consensus. Moreover, if Michelle Flournoy handles China policy, the Biden administration\u2019s approach will be smarter and sharper in both soft and hard power dimensions. <\/p>\n

Tie this into the recently reinforced American relationship with India (billed as a relationship between \u2018the world\u2019s two greatest democracies\u2019) which lies at the cente of the Quad, itself billed as an alliance of democracies. The Quad has a back-office backstop: The Five Eyes, an old (1951) but recently re-energised partnership for intelligence integration, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s the substructure\/infrastructure in place. Add the coming \u2018superstructure\u2019: Biden\u2019s stated commitment (in a landmark Foreign Affairs essay) to what I call \u2018democratic internationalism\u2019 \u2013 a global mobilisation and vigorous offensive, advancing the values of democracy and human rights while explicitly targeting autocracy and ultranationalism.<\/p>\n

There is a politico-corporate-managerial-bureaucratic-institutional conglomerate in Colombo with an economic stake in its vocation as China lobby\/client, but Beijing\u2019s umbrella will not sustainably extend so far south in the Indian Ocean, will be vulnerable to an Indo-US pincer or Quad encirclement, and be rolled up. In the great game in the Indo-Pacific, Sri Lanka may prove a dispensable bargaining chip, traded-in to protect a stake elsewhere. <\/p>\n

International relations 101<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sri Lanka\u2019s rulers must know that in international politics, being within your rights when you choose to do something, is only one factor in the mix, and not the determinant. Nor is being in the right in your own eyes. <\/p>\n

What counts ultimately is whether what you do, best serves your national interest, defined not as the interest of an ethnic\/religious community, ruling party, ruling family or corporate-bureaucratic stratum, but the State and its citizenry. <\/p>\n

In making that calculation it is important to know what the threat perceptions of others are and how your actions or inactions impact on those threat perceptions, what they might do about it, and whether you are capable of deterring, countering or absorbing their actions\/counteractions. <\/p>\n

You have to game it through, and when you do, you must not base yourself on what you think of yourself or of others and their possible intentions, but on objective capabilities. Do others \u2013 and if so who\/which, in what hierarchy \u2013 have the capability either to bend you to their will or inflict unacceptable levels of harm to you and your core interests? Do you have the capability \u2013 not merely the will \u2013 to deter, or resist and survive?<\/p>\n

In the confident speech immediately preceding the Pennsylvania result, Joe Biden staked a global claim, saying there\u2019s no reason that America cannot \u201cown the 21st century\u201d. That riff on TIME\/Life founder Henry Booth Luce\u2019s definition of the 20th century as \u201cThe American Century\u201d may be over-ambitious for the 21st, because China apparently aspires to the same goal, and Russia to multipolarity, with both states entitled to fair and adequate space and status, commensurate with their achievement and power. <\/p>\n

In his victory speech Biden said \u201cat its best, America is a beacon for the globe\u2026we will lead not only by the example of our power but by the power of our example\u201d, adding \u201cit\u2019s always been a bad bet to bet against America.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cLet freedom ring!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

What if the Trump presidency was not, and had not been, constitutionally constrained? With presidential power unchecked and militarism rampant, liberty in Sri Lanka has no safeguards, enjoys no guarantees. The objectively enabling role that any external power assumes in relation to domestic tyrannical tendencies must therefore be externally contained and countervailed. And this is so not only in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Today humanity\u2019s main threat comes from the narrowing and darkening of human consciousness through parochial ultranationalism, racism and supremacism; the retrogression in human and social progress through reversion to tyranny and despotism; the anarchic breakup \u2013 not progressive transformation\u2014of the world system through the irruption of walled-in ultranationalist tyrannies; and the sporadic, opportunistic, enabling and\/or consolidation by rising great powers of these retrogressive trends. The absence of a common, science-driven global response to COVID-19 and the much larger danger of climate change are symptoms of this situation.<\/p>\n

Humanity has to be reunited; the human consciousness broadened and enlightened; internationalism reborn. <\/p>\n

Biden wrote: \u201c\u2026We have to champion liberty and democracy\u2026\u201d (Foreign Affairs, March\/April 2020) <\/p>\n

The ideas and ideals of the Biden-Harris campaign (including those of progressive and left Democrats) must be transferred and transmitted globally, uninterruptedly extended and expanded into an internationalist project of democratic solidarity against tyranny and for freedom, liberty, equality and justice. The new American revolution must be universalised.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:Daily FT<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka \u201cThe light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it\u201d \u2013 John (1:5) Let us remember George Floyd. Now the American people can begin to breathe. So can humanity. When Obama won, I wrote a piece from Geneva entitled \u2018Barack Obama: History\u2019s High Note\u2019 (https:\/\/groundviews.org\/2008\/11\/06\/barack-obama-historys-high-note\/) Maybe I should call …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Psychologically powered by Trump\u2019s 2016 Victory ,the Gotabaya regime came into being as the last victory of global Alt-Right ultranationalism, the parabola of which has begun its descent with Trump\u2019s defeat.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70919,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70918\/revisions\/70919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}