As Lebanon marked the centenary of its creation last week, it was not state-orchestrated ceremonies or mass demonstrations that marked the occasion, but rather the media circus surrounding the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron’s visit came with Lebanon mired in an unprecedented crisis that has plunged to new depths following last month’s devastating explosion at Beirut’s port, caused by 2,750 tons of the chemical compound ammonium nitrate.
The impact of the explosion is hard to understate. Its sound and force stretched for miles, releasing a huge mushroom cloud that killed close to two hundred people, and scarred thousands both physically and mentally; destroyed countless homes, and leaving once vibrant streets desolate. The immediate aftermath was dystopian: “It was like a movie. People moving slowly, covered in blood, glass shattered everywhere. Leaving a whole city riddled with PTSD,” recalled one witness.
To many the sheer negligence of allowing such a dangerous chemical to sit in a warehouse for six years demonstrated the extent of state authorities’ incompetence. In contrast, Lebanese civil society rose to the challenge, with community clean-up teams, armed with sweeping brushes and hard-hats, appearing across the city following the blast.
Volunteer groups walk through a damaged street in the Gemmayzeh area two days following the Aug. 4 explosion. (Luke FitzHerbert)
The explosion also shined light on the state’s glaring absence from such efforts. State authorities, led by the army, were derided for their perceived failure to provide leadership in the aftermath of such devastation. “State, what state?” many were asking.
Indeed, the army only tended to draw attention to themselves by obstructing non-state efforts; such as holding up a Dutch rescue mission’s access to the port for hours. Moreover, a published army circular demanded non-existent documentation from volunteer groups working on the ground, prompting objections from UN officials.
People have been complaining bitterly about soldiers idly standing by, while private citizens roll up their sleeves, and the erection of seemingly pointless checkpoints that only interfered with volunteers trying to move between damaged areas.
Political leaders have also been vilified, verbally abused or even assaulted. When the former education minister tried to join cleanup efforts, he was chased away by angry residents. Another minister was harangued by a large crowd throwing water at her. A third had his convoy attacked.
Speaking ahead of protests on the Saturday, four days after the explosion, one activist told me he anticipated violence, as “the reaction to terror and murder. We were bombed by our own government.” In downtown Beirut, protesters’ rhetoric against political leaders took on a darker tone, with banners reading “The verdict has been issued. You are all murderers. Hang the nooses,” in the main square.
Nooses are seen in Beirut’s Martyr’s Square, as protesters gather demanding leaders be held accountable following the Aug.4 explosion, 8th August, 2020. (Luke FitzHerbert)
Perhaps in normal times, it would be an overreaction to denounce one’s leaders as murderers. But Lebanon is not going through normal times. The anger on the street generated by the explosion was layered with the raw emotional trauma the affair has induced, and also showed the pent-up rage that has built up against the governing elite.
On Saturday August 8th, central Beirut descended into chaos, with running street battles developing between protesters and security forces. By mid- afternoon, a large area of central Beirut had become clouded in tear-gas, as rubber bullets flew through the air, and buildings caught fire; with protesters storming and ransacking state-affiliated buildings, while a number of government ministries were occupied, and hundreds of people were injured over the course of the day.
But despite these highly anticipated protests, public demonstrations have failed to replicate the mass movement of last October, where huge and largely peaceful crowds managed to topple the then government. Instead of attracting huge numbers as happened then, recent gatherings have tended to quickly disintegrate into general mayhem.
Almost a year on from the thawra (revolution) last October, civil unrest no longer generates the same energetic response. Tear gas and confrontation with police are now predictable outcomes, and almost mundane occurrences. “I’m so over this,” said my colleague, as we sat watching protests from the office.
Protesters in Martyr’s Square as tear gas rises in the distance from running battles with security forces, Aug. 8, 2020 (Luke FitzHerbert)
Even the resignation of the government, announced live on TV while protesters occupied government buildings didn’t seem like a victory. “It means nothing. He was just a puppet,” said one demonstrator moments after the announcement. Instead of being seen as a step forward in the direction of acquiescing to popular demands, the government’s resignation only showed that real control belongs to the sectarian power-brokers, in whose string-pulling hands lie the power to appoint a new government of their choosing.
Having reached this impasse, Lebanon’s thawra activists do not know which way to turn, having been unable to overturn the sectarian power-sharing system that the previous government was merely the public face of. As one activist put it: “we are locked in a dark room and can’t find the key to get out.”
Instead it is Emmanuel Macron who has set the agenda. He visited Beirut two days after the explosion, lapping up the despairing crowd’s demands for change and promising a new political pact for Lebanon. Since that visit, he has returned a second time, organized an international emergency aid conference for Lebanon, with another set for next month, and has promised a third visit in December.
Anticipation of these dates reflect how Lebanon’s political trajectory is now being set by foreign powers, and not through an internal struggle between reformists and representatives of the status quo. “They have seized the debate,” explained a Lebanese academic of the international response, “as being for or against the Macron plan.”
That plan is very similar to previous ones: requiring the state to undertake robust structural reforms against corruption and mismanagement that will release the promised billions of dollars in international assistance.
Lebanon’s sectarian power brokers have already put in place a new Prime Minister, Mustapha Adib, a little-known former ambassador to Germany. At a dinner hosted by Macron at France’s stately embassy in Beirut last week, the power brokers promised there a government would be formed in two weeks. Macron left, saying this was Lebanon’s last chance. The next six weeks are thus critical.
But despite Macron’s public expressions of compassion and solidarity with Lebanon, there are many disinclined to swallow it. When French jets flew over Beirut last week, spraying the sky with the colours of the national flag, many rejected the gesture, instead remarking on how unwelcome the sound of roaring jets was to a traumatised city.
Nor are Macron’s efforts solely motivated by France’s long-held ties to Lebanon. Macron is engaged in a battle for influence against Turkey in the East Mediterranean, linked to energy exploration. The power play stretches from Libya to Greece and Cyprus, with Lebanon the latest territory to get involved. Turkey’s soft power in Lebanon is quietly growing, with Turkish President Raycip Tayyep Erdogan’s Sunni Islam credentials holding appeal in the country’s north.
With the prospect looming of an IMF deal opening Lebanon up to more foreign investment and the expansionist tendencies of regional powers Turkey and Iran, Macron’s manoeuvres can be interpreted as pre-emptive step to prevent other powers from exploiting Lebanon’s difficulties.
While foreign states eye the spoils, many ordinary Lebanese have given up on their country progressing altogether. The explosion has accelerated a brain-drain that was already well under way. The country’s economic collapse and political paralysis point to a grim future, holding no appeal to Lebanon’s dynamic and ambitious youth.
A Beirut research group, Information International claims there has been a 36% increase in the daily number of people departing the country since the explosion. As one local who plans to leave put it: “It’s time to leave and not look back. I used to be filled with romantic thoughts about Beirut whenever I considered leaving. But these died with the explosion.”
It will take Beirut at least a year to recover from the explosion. In the meantime it remains to be seen whether French-led efforts will have any success in forcing the regime to change its ways. Previous efforts have ended in failure, with Lebanon’s leaders building a reputation for grand declarations leading to nothing new.
Political leaders now openly talk about changing the system; about creating a truly civil society and ending corruption. But while the rhetoric reflects local and international demands, the old guard shows no sign of departing the stage. This is despite unprecedented calls by many – who consider them a collection of thieves, criminals, former warlords, liars, gangsters, or murderers – to stand aside at last. Hatred of the power brokers has reached endemic proportions, but the means of removing them is not obvious.
All photography by Luke FitzHerbert for Cassandra Voices.
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The jailing in June of thirteen rappers for ‘glorifying terrorism’ in their lyrics has once again thrown the spotlight on Spain’s use of draconian legislation to stifle free speech and dissent.
But the sentences of up to nine months meted out to Pablo Hasel and twelve members of La Insurgencia collective pale in comparison with the ordeal suffered by vegan activist Juan Manuel Bustamante, who spent sixteen months in jail on trumped-up terrorist crimes.
Known to friends and family as Nahuel, the softly spoken twenty-nine-year-old from Madrid was arrested in a dawn raid in November 2015. It was the beginning of a Kafkaesque nightmare that saw him pass through five of Spain’s most notorious prisons, often locked up in solitary confinement and denied a vegan diet by his captors, who also beat him. It ruined his family’s finances and led him to attempt to take his life after his release.
For the first time, Peru-born Nahuel has spoken to a foreign medium about his experiences and how they have scarred him. He speaks of the mental trauma, the beatings, the sense of loss but also of his profound gratitude to his mother for never giving up on him.
Nahuel had been a vegan since the age of thirteen. He and five of his friends, Francisco Martínez, Borja Marquerie, Candela Betancort, David Budziszewski and Diego Hernández, were part of a small vegan anarchist group called Straight Edge Madrid. They went to concerts, they handed out propaganda at flea markets,marched for animal rights and posted slogans on social media.
It was to be the latter that caught the eye of police and would be presented in court as evidence that they were ‘glorifying terrorism’. Often, these slogans accompanied images of graffitied bank branches. Among the subversive messages were: “Your ATMs will burn”, “Death to capitalism”, “Hate Spain, hate tobacco”, “Resistance is not violence. It’s self-defence” and “Goku lives, the struggle continues”. (Goku is a Japanese manga character with a cult following in Spain.)
But the ‘glorifying terrorism’ charge was, in fact, a last roll of the dice by the authorities, who had initially hoped to convict Nahuel and his friends on full-blown terrorism charges. That sounds too far-fetched, but thanks to Spain’s anti-terrorism laws, their case was just the latest example.
As Eduardo Gómez, Nahuel’s lawyer, said: “The persecution and jailing of anarchists is a recurring theme. It has never ceased.” He listed four big police operations of this type in Spain between 2012 and 2015: ‘Pandora’, ‘Piñata’, ‘Pandora II’ and ‘Ice’ There were thirty-three arrests across all four, which resulted in not a single conviction. Nahuel was one of twelve to be jailed without bail on ‘terrorism’ charges.
‘Ice’ was the operation against Nahuel and his friends.
Liberal Democracy?
Such abusive behaviour by the police and the judiciary is at odds with the image of Spain as a modern and consolidated liberal democracy. As the former Spanish foreign minister – and now EU high commissioner for external affairs – Josep Borrell is fond of saying, “No one is in prison in Spain for their opinions, only their acts”. The reality, however, isn’t consistent with such a claim as in recent years tweeters, puppeteers and rappers are among those who’ve being prosecuted and even jailed for political content.
Spain is often associated with having a good time. As well as the hedonistic attractions of sun, sand, sea and sangria, it boasts almost unrivalled heritage and cultural portfolios. It’s a country that wields a lot of soft power. Perhaps because of these factors, a string of unsavoury cases violating civil liberties have been shrugged off by the EU and human rights NGOs.
Nahuel spoke to Cassandra Voices about his ordeal and how it has affected him.
Each prison marked him in its own way. “I was in Soto for a short time,” he said. “But what little I saw in solitary confinement was horrible. Especially when interacting with officers. Navalcarnero was old and dirty, like some South American prisons. In Estremera, I had to deal with openly fascist officers.
“Morón was more violent in every way, and that was when I came out of solitary, so I was sent to the conflictive prisoner modules. Aranjuez was totally horrible and they did anything to screw my life.”
What’s more, Nahuel had to deal with indifference and hostility to his vegan lifestyle, even though the central prison administration recognises a prisoner’s right to a vegan diet. He recounted how in Estremera his diet “was either not respected or was acknowledged in the most absurd ways such as giving me a plate of rice with three tomatoes or a boiled potato, or a plate of rice with another plate of rice”.
He added: “Being vegan in prison is very limited since they do not give you that option and what you can buy on your own is not usually vegan, almost everything contained milk or milk protein. For [the prison authorities] it seemed stupid for me to continue with my position.”
Nahuel’s ordeal began in the early hours of November 4, 2015 at the home of a friend. He and his pals had just finished watching Into the Wild and playing Smash Bros when police stormed in. They later took him home and removed a laptop and hard drives.
The arrest baffled Nahuel. “You never expect that your small group is important enough for the police to follow you for months,” he said. “In the end, all they saw was that I did concerts, sold merchandising and fundraised through events attended by at most twenty-five people.”
Despite the tenuous nature of the charges, the police announced the breakup of a major terrorist organisation. The press dutifully reported the arrests with damning headlines.[iii]El País, considered Spain’s paper of record, reported that Nahuel “is known to the police. He has been arrested on multiple occasions, always for violent acts. In the ‘Surround Congress’ demonstrations, in riots after so-called Dignity Marches, in rallies supporting detainees, in squatting attempts… José Manuel is this group’s main protagonist”.
Judge Lamela argued[vi] in the indictment that the accused “constitute and behave as a criminal organisation with a terrorist purpose” with links to other terrorist organisations such as GRAPO (a far-left group active in the 70s and 80s) or the ‘Coordinated Anarchist Group’, whose existence has yet to be proven. Nahuel says of the judge: “It didn’t matter what was said or shown. She had the police version and it didn’t matter when we presented evidence [to the contrary].”
Furthermore, prosecutors argued that the social media memes shared by the young activists constituted “a glorification of violent subversion of the state’s political and social structures and of the struggle against all established powers by various terrorist groups with an anarchist or insurrectionist profile both in Spain and abroad”.
And police claimed[vii] that the six had participated in the occupation of buildings to carry out anarchist propaganda, in the burning of bank branches and in the violent riots and public disorder caused after the so-called ‘March of Dignity’ in March 2015.
Nahuel and his friends weren’t helped by the – intentionally – very loose definition of terrorism in Spain’s criminal code. Article 573 of the code[viii] defines it as anything that “gravely alters the peace” and “subverts constitutional order”. Worryingly from a human rights perspective, it requires no link to armed activity.
Explosive Substances?
But what exactly were the explosive substances found in the group’s possession? Among the evidence presented by police were bangers, matchsticks, red cabbage soup, orange juice, bleach and bicarbonate of soda. The only actual weapon displayed by police after the raids was a baseball bat.[ix] If it wasn’t so serious, you’d laugh.
Yet, when it came to trial, all six were absolved, with the judge ruled that there was “insufficient proof to indicate their concrete participation in a violent act of a criminal nature, nor sufficient evidence that irrefutably demonstrates that they have influenced others to commit such acts”.
But in Spain, with its appalling record of judicial persecution of non-conformist dissidents, such flimsy ‘evidence’ was enough for police and prosecutors to build a case. In the meantime, Nahuel had rotted away in solitary confinement.
Aside from being denied a vegan diet, Nahuel encountered other problems in jail, including beatings from guards and prisoners. But he also suffered psychological and health problems. Inevitably, considering the harsh regime under which he was detained.
“The FIES regime is applied to those accused of terrorism and drug trafficking,” he explains. “I spent more than a year in solitary confinement. All my interactions were observed, including conversations. What I could read was also restricted.
“After a few months, I began to have muscle pains in the stomach, neck and shoulders. I was recently diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome and cervical radiculopathy.”
But perhaps the real damage was to his prospects. “When I came out of prison, my life had been ruined. All my career plans and savings had disappeared, so my priority became getting a job. So, I’ve had loads of low-grade jobs without contracts. I was always an anarcho-syndicalist, and now I’m even more so.”
FIES Regime
One of the aspects of the FIES regime was that he was constantly moved around. One transfer from Madrid to Seville[x] was particularly arduous – the journey is usually five hours by road. “It was the worst transfer,” he said. “It took four days. The policeman handcuffed me in a small cubicle because he thought I was a Basque terrorist.”
During his time in solitary confinement, Nahuel found comfort in the knowledge that his mother, María Goretty, was fighting tooth and nail for his freedom. Maria was in no doubt as to why her son was jailed. At the time, she said: “He is in prison for having a conscience, for thinking.”
She organised weekly protests in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol. Watching footage of dozens marching in the autumnal rain demanding his release is both moving and inspiring.
Nahuel says of his mother’s efforts: “I was genuinely surprised by my mother’s strength. After my arrest, she got into debt and our savings disappeared in a matter of weeks. She had to carry the emotional burden of being ignored and questioned by those who are unaware of the situation in prisons. I can’t possibly thank my her enough for everything she did for me and the people who were with her giving their all.”
Natalia Bosch, the mother of Candela Betancort[xi], also campaigned and gave interviews to raise awareness of the case. She said at the time: “It’s madness. There’s absolutely nothing, not one shred of evidence. It’s just about what they posted on social media.”
Nahuel explains the police’s strategy. “They speculated about unrelated events. Later, they intentionally traduced conversations or tweets to distort their meaning. It was a disgrace.”
Does he think they were being stitched up? “The police knew what they were doing,” he says. “And this became clearer the longer the investigation went on.
“More than a set-up, it was a belligerent action against certain political positions and, at the risk of sounding self-centred, me. I say this because in their report they highlighted my ethnic origin, that I was against the Spanish banks and that I was the most dangerous anarchist in Madrid. And the press did the rest by destroying my future opportunities in Spain with its descriptions.”
Latent Xenophobia
Nahuel is not alone in thinking latent xenophobia played a role in the harsher treatment meted out to him. His lawyer, Eduardo Gómez, suspects that he was denied bail because he was of Peruvian origin.
And like the vegans’ mothers, he also believes that the accusations[xiii] “prove yet again that these sort of [police] operations only look to break up dissident collectives”. He added[xiv]: “It’s the so-called criminal law of the enemy – you are accused more for who you are than for what you have done.” For Gómez, what Nahuel endured in jail was “genuine torture.”[xv]
Speaking about Nahuel’s case on Catalan TV, Basque human rights lawyer Endika Zulueta said that “People are afraid when they go to a demonstration that they will be beaten, fined, detained and imprisoned. And what that fear does is neutralise people exercising their fundamental rights… and in this case, the criminalisation of thought.”
Silencing or cowing dissent appears to be the aim of the Spanish authorities, and it the case of the vegan activists, it appears to have worked. Between July 14th and November 2nd, 2015, Straight Edge Madrid’s Twitter profile posted just over 2,000 tweets. It has remained silent since their arrests. Nahuel explains: “I rarely used Twitter as I didn’t like it. I never had the password. I used YouTube in conjunction with the others but after our arrests, the password was changed, and I saw no need to post anything. My priorities had changed.”
Mental Scars
It’s clear the mental scars of his time in jail have taken their toll on Nahuel. Right from the start, the authorities targeted him for harsher treatment.[xvi] Of the six vegans, four were granted bail after two day, while Borja was eventually granted bail after eighteen days on remand. But Nahuel’s ordeal behind bars lasted from November 4th, 2015, when he was arrested until March 8th, 2017 – 489 days. And the six weren’t acquitted until July 26, 2018.
Nahuel speaks of the trauma he has suffered since his acquittal: “I’ve gone to therapy on and off,” he says. “In 2018, I had severe bouts of clinical depression and tried to commit suicide. I feel better now but I can’t say I’m stable. I’ll go back to therapy when I’ve got economic stability. I haven’t received any compensation from the state.”
He’s also had to go into exile and suffers from a ‘Google problem’ as searches bring up headlines labelling him a ‘terrorist’. “It was impossible for me to get a job in Spain, even in the black economy, because of the information publicised by the police.” he says. “I got work in Germany, then the Netherlands and Belgium. Now, I’m in Estonia working for a while. Even so, I’ve had to explain my situation in Spain.”
The worrying thing is that Nahuel’s ordeal was not an isolated incident. The Spanish state is obsessed with subversives[xvii] who “want to destroy Spain”. These are the internal enemies[xviii] vilified by the right-wing media: Basque and Catalan nationalists as well as supporters of Podemos, the junior partner in the coalition government.
Recently, ordinary Catalan nationalists have been charged with ‘terrorism’ on the flimsiest of evidence. As with Nahuel, a compliant media published a series of ‘leaks’ aimed at establishing their guilt before any judicial proceedings had begun. One paper even went so far as to link them to the 9/11 attacks.[xix] As with Nahuel’s case, a fictitious terrorist organisation, the GAAR (Fast Action Group[xx]) was fabricated by the authorities. Another low-level Catalan nationalist, Tamara Carrasco[xxi], was accused of ‘terrorism’ and ‘rebellion’ for blocking a motorway and staging a sit-in in a toll both.
It’s all part of a tried and tested formula.[xxii] Yes, it often ends with innocent people jailed or, at best, in exile, their futures destroyed. And it often ends with Spain on the receiving end of humiliating rebuke from the European Court of Human Rights. But it’s a price worth paying to save the unity of Spain – especially if the state has no intention of compensating those wrongly accused.
[xiii] Inigo Dominguez, ‘Piden dos años de cárcel por sus tuits para seis miembros de un grupo anarquista vegano’, El Pais, May 19th, 2018, https://elpais.com/politica/2018/05/17/actualidad/1526584732_803262.html
[xv] Eduardo Gómez Cuadrado, ‘Sentencia Straight Edge Madrid: Cuando mostrar posiciones de rebeldía no es apología del terrorismo’, September 10th, 2018, Rights International Spain, http://www.rightsinternationalspain.org/es/blog/137/sentencia-straight-edge-madrid:-cuando-mostrar-posiciones-de-rebeldia-no-es-apologia-del-terrorismo
[xvi] ‘El castigo ejemplarizante de Nahuel’, Contexto y Action, May 11th, 2016, https://ctxt.es/es/20160511/Politica/5953/regimen-FIES-abuso-judicial-prision-preventiva-Straight-Edge-Espa%C3%B1a.htm
[xvii] Connor Blennerhasset, ‘Spain on Trial’, May 1st, 2018, Cassandra Voices, https://cassandravoices.com/politics/spain-on-trial/
[xviii] Conor Blennerhassett, ‘nemies of the People’ Cassandra Voices, February 1st, 2018, https://cassandravoices.com/current-affairs/global/enemies-of-the-people/
[xx] Ignasi Jurro, ‘Los independentistas radicales crean los GAAR para “parar Cataluna’’, Cronical Global, December 8th, 2018, https://cronicaglobal.elespanol.com/politica/gaar-gaar-independentistas-radicales_205563_102.html
[xxi] Tamara Carrasco: “He vivido un destierro, un exilio y un confinamiento a la vez” October 2nd, 2019, LM, https://www.lamarea.com/2019/10/02/tamara-carrasco-he-vivido-un-destierro-un-exilio-y-un-confinamiento-a-la-vez/
[xxii] Connor Blennerhassett, ‘Hate Crimes in Spain not as they Seem’, Cassandra Voices, October 1st, 2019, https://cassandravoices.com/current-affairs/global/hate-crimes-in-spain-not-as-they-seem/
Photographer Daniele Idini travelled from North to South of Italy and discovered a country in severe economic crisis desperate to resume the good life.
On July 8th I landed in Malpensa (Milan) on a half-empty Ryanair flight from Dublin. It is the largest airport in Italy, located about forty kilometres from the city of Milan.
I’ve known this airport since its inception, having grown up just two kilometres away. Over the past few years, while living abroad, more often than not it has been the first destination on my visits home. I was not surprised to see it so empty considering the circumstances, but still, I cannot deny the unease I felt walking along its silent corridors.
On a Ryanair flight
At the passport control there was a table in the middle of the exit corridor filled with mandatory forms that all passengers are obliged to fill in. These certify that you are currently not under a mandatory quarantine due to Covid19, and ask for reasons for your travel.
After a temperature scan, a border guard asked where I was flying from.
“Dublin,” I replied.
“And before that?” he replied.
“Dublin” I asserted
“Ok move along,” he said.
And that was that.
Milan, Malpensa Airport, July 2020
Across Italy face masks are mandatory in all indoor public spaces, as well as some outdoor locations where social distancing is difficult to practice such as outdoor markets, busy city centres and the like. Compliance is generally high throughout the country, with many wearing them even where it is not mandated, but clearly in the north – in the regions that have borne the brunt of the pandemic – compliance is more evident.
Tuesday’s market in Arona, northern Italy on July 2020.
Wearing a mask – which is compulsory in many parts of the world at this stage – is widely regarded as a symbol of solidarity or just to communicate that you care. In Italy it is often to be seen hanging off a person’s chin, or only covering the mouth but not the nose. It is commonly worn above the elbow, ready for use when the need arises. It is hard to see how it is really providing much protection against contagion, apart from in clinical settings where it is worn by trained professionals.
Rome bus, on July 2020.
The widespread message is that if you care you wear one as much as you can. Alas, if you care you cannot have close contact with your grandparents either, even after months of living at a distance.
Morning in Bologna, on July 2020.
On the Road
After spending time in the north I moved south towards the mezzogiorno, driving all the way to the tip of Italy from where I took a ferry to Sicily, stopping briefly along the route in Bologna, Orvieto, Naples, Pizzo Calabro and on the way back in Rome.
While crossing the Strait of Messina, Southern Italy, on July 2020.
The pictures that are featured in this article are nothing more than snapshots, offering a view of the ripples on the surface of a new reality, in which we are all involved, in some way or another, in trying to come to terms with.
While crossing the Strait of Messina, Southern Italy, on July 2020.
A few hours is obviously insufficient to grasp the actual situation in each place: definitely not in a country like Italy where variety and internal differences are determining characteristics. Nor is it easy to convey how the many people facing different realities that I encountered are coping in different ways with the obvious trauma of a very strict lockdown, and the unprecedented economic uncertainty that lies head.
Vicolungo Outlet Village, Piedmont, Northern Italy, on July 2020.Monthly Market in the small town of Giarratana, Southern Sicily, on July 2020.
Nonetheless, I noticed common traits running through both north and south, region by region. One thing was definitely apparent: in addition to the collective trauma and the aftermath of the lockdown, I found a country struggling to cope, on the one hand with a lack of clarity about the present and the experience of the last few months; and on the other an absolute inability to forecast anything any longer. Our hard won, mainly technologically induced ability to predict the future, has gone out the window at every level of society, of our economy, and right down to the basic level of our lives.
Infinity Café, Bologna, on July 2020.
How many employees should one medium-sized factory rehire after the lockdown to recover? What will the demand be for certain local products over the next few months? Will tourism recover next year, or ever? What about Christmas this year? How long will the redundancy package last for, and when will the actual payment arrive.
Bologna’s city center, on July 2020.
The majority of laid-off workers I spoke to, or know, by the month of July had only just received the emergency payment for the months of March or April. How long are personal savings supposed to last in those households that are lucky enough to hold them? What about the hundreds of thousands that are working in the so-called black economy for which no safety net exists at all? They are now dependent on what savings they have, if any; meanwhile charities are overwhelmed by requests for help, as loan sharks circle.
Rome, on July 2020.
The impossibility of forecasting demand stretches into a future strewn with unforeseeable and seemingly insurmountable challenges. This disproportionately affects (as always) small and medium-sized businesses, which live under the constant threat of another lockdown; an eventuality that many fear will be the final nail in their coffins.
Street market of Porta Portese in Rome, on July 2020.
The resultant anxiety and irrational behaviours seem like withdrawal symptoms from our contemporary addiction to predictability. The whole ‘Surveillance Capitalist System’, of which Italy can be considered a fully paid up member is precisely built on this. Economic activities rely on the forecasting of natural phenomenon and human behaviours. The delusion lies in believing the two are not linked. The more random Nature seems be to, the less rational the human reaction to it is.
Bologna,on July 2020.
The Mechanic
Along the trail a mechanic repaired my faulty tyre. While doing so, he was more than happy to give a brief account of his experience of the lockdown.
For the months of March, April and parts of May his repair shop was forced to close altogether. State support was supposed to be €600 per month, but only two months of payments arrived, and after a considerable delay. State-backed loans for small businesses were difficult to obtain due to a misunderstanding between banks and the government about eligibility criteria and missing procedures. It is July, and the monthly electricity bill for the shop remains at €300 per month.
It would be interesting to find out the number of businesses that have already folded across Italy, especially with tourism at a small fraction of its usual level, with international tourists in particular staying at home.
Souvenir shop in the small town of Scicli, southern Sicily, on July 2020.
According to another source, it is increasingly common to close down businesses at least on paper, but for them to continue trading to make ends meet. The choice between punishment for tax evasion and actual survival has been effectively settled for many, across numerous sectors.
Café in Arona, northern Italy, on July 2020.
The distance between Rome’s national politics and what is happening on the ground is greater than ever. The paradox here lies in the fact that that social/political gap has increased at a time where the central state has usurped powers from local authorities to implement the nationwide lockdown.
Morning in Orvieto, center of Italy, on July 2020.
We can now certainly expect cash-rich mafioisi to expand into the legitimate economy by bailing out ailing businesses. Serious discounts are available, and they will also earn loyalty from many communities that feel abandoned by the State. This issue requires serious investigation, as the Italian State cannot afford to be undermined any further.
Grand Hotel et des Iles Borromees closed for business in Stresa, Northern Italy, on July 2020.
The collapsed tourism sector is the de-facto lifeblood of the economy in many if not most rural areas across Italy, where not much else goes on during the off season. The rediscovery of Italian locations by Italian holiday makers is insufficient for the current system to survive. We seem to be witnessing the end of mass tourism as we know it, at least for the foreseeable future, but I haven’t heard much discussion about the economic alternatives for these areas.
While crossing the Strait of Messina with a view of a Caronte & Tourist ferry, the main private navigation company operating in the Strait, Southern Italy, on July 2020.
The crowds of people that come out at night in Naples, Rome and that are flooding into popular seaside resorts are an expression of a desire for the restrictions to come an end. I sense the calculus of risk versus safety has shifted decisively for many towards a willingness to take more risks. Even the economic decision for many families to spend a few days on vacation despite their real financial uncertainties is a sign that there is real hope of an imminent recovery.
Saturday Night in Pizzo Calabro, on July 2020.
But the truth is that mixed government messaging that shift between doomsday scenarios saying ‘Be Careful or we will go into lockdown again,’ alternating with ‘Everything will be fine,’ is creating an increasingly divisive society. Already alt-right political parties like La Liga led by Matteo Salvini or Brothers of Italy led by Giorgia Meloni are taking advantage of the divisions. The opposition are frantically attempting to come up with alternative solutions amid the usual propaganda touchstones of immigration and unemployment.
Salvini’s traces in Bologna, on July 2020.
What is not being said is that the current government is dealing with this particular situation with the bureaucratic, legal and health infrastructures that were undermined as result of decades of mismanagement and corruption, which members of that same political class in power are responsible for and in some cases complicit, having occupied key decision-making positions in previous administrations, both locally and in Rome, over the previous decades.
On the banks of the River Tevere overlooking the Aventino’s hill, Rome, on July 2020.
The erosion of the middle class and ever-widening wealth inequality was not caused by this pandemic. The massive defunding of the public health system, followed by privatisations was a process that was more pronounced in Lombardy and Piedmont. It so happens that these two regions were disproportionately hit by Covid-19. This is the bitter fruit of economic policies that emerged in the early days of Berlusconi’s twenty year dominance, and which were accelerated by the dysfunctional political class that emerged in this culture.
Bologna, on the July 2020.
Maybe, that is the reason why no significant discussions are taking place around possible reforms of the public health care system so the threat of another lockdown hangs overhead. Again, especially in Lombardy and Piedmont.
Tuesday’s market in Arona, northern Italy on July 2020.
Sadly, another lockdown could be the only antidote to the possible overwhelming of ICUs in a system that stopped hiring staff after retirements over the past ten years, and therefore lack not only physical infrastructures but especially well trained personnel to confront the possibility of a spike in infections.
The grip of the pandemic having loosened, Frank Armstrong travelled over land and sea from Rome to Athens, and on to the Dodecanese Islands. Although Greece’s Covid-19 death toll has been among the lowest per capita in Europe, it now contends with severely diminished tourist earnings, and the worrying prospect of another war with Turkey. Contemporary Greece draws on an unparalleled history that inculcates moderation and an appreciation of nuance, but the pandemic has also triggered a more belligerent posture towards outsiders.
from google.com/maps
Hellas of the North
The Greeks are among the great sea-faring nations of the world. Indeed, from the sixth century BC Greek sailors voyaged as far as what the Greco-Egyptian geographer Ptolemy described as the islands of Alwion (Albion), Iwernia (Hibernia), and Mona (the Isle of Man).[i]
Despite the challenge of geography, Greek culture has an enduring presence in Ireland. In particular, during the early Christian period Irish monks sought seclusion in the wild places, inspired by Early Church Fathers, who came from the extensive Hellenic world of the eastern Mediterranean. James Joyce once mused of Ireland: ‘Is this country destined some day to resume its ancient position as the Hellas of the north? Is the Celtic spirit … destined in the future to enrich the consciousness of civilisation with new discoveries and institutions?’[ii]
In Book Five of Homer’s Odyssey we first meet the eponymous hero. Cursed by the sea god Poseidon for blinding his son the Cyclops Polyphemus – a feat he may have got away with had it not been for a hero complex inducing him to goad his victim – a shipwrecked Odysseus is spending an unhappy exile on the nymph Calypso’s verdant island of Ogygia. According to Plutarch this is ‘far out at sea, distant five days’ sail from Britain, going westward.’[iii] In my mind’s eye, Odysseus’s place of exile is this windswept Emerald Isle, with Joyce’s Leopold Bloom his literary incarnation.
Departing by ferry from Brindisi, we sailed down the Adriatic through the Straits of Otranto towards the Ionian Sea. After a few hours of blissful isolation, from out of the mist the rugged coastline of Albania hove into view. The sheer mountains rising out of the sea recall a steep political trajectory; from the last monarchy under the cartoonishly named King Zog (1922-39); to the post-war Communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. This terrain, now parched by August sun, was the last redoubt of Communism in Europe.
Out on deck I struck up a conversation with Christos, a street musician from Thessalonika now living in Athens, where he earns a crust playing the songs of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, alongside more traditional tunes, in which the bouzouki figures prominently. This instrument, which entered Irish traditional music in the 1960s, is associated with the 1.6 million Greeks who fled Turkey after the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-22.
Christos had just spent two weeks in an agricultural commune in Puglia that is developing a self-sustaining way of life at a remove from both state and corporations. The experiment had imbued him with great enthusiasm, although he cautioned that non-hierarchical structures are not necessarily conducive to harmonious relations: therein lies the challenge of independence.
Ancient Greek thought from Heraclitus, who said ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man,’ embraced nuance and avoided moral absolutism. Plato’s utopian ideas in TheRepublic are an outlier that have inspired totalitarian regimes through history. His heir Aristotle’s golden mean between extremes of excess and deficiency holds a more enduring appeal.
Albert Camus in The Rebel (1951), identified an enduring tension between a Caesarian Marxist project that permits all manner of atrocity on the journey to earthly paradise, and an approach he identifies with Ancient Greece, characterised by moderation, incrementalism and respect for tradition. He suggests:
The profound conflict of this century is, perhaps, not so much between the German ideologies of history and Christian political concepts, which in a certain way are accomplices, as between German dreams and Mediterranean traditions … in other words, between history and nature.[iv]
This tension is evident again today during the pandemic, with many governments adopting a Caesarian, command-and-control approach with the utopian objective of eliminating the virus altogether; rather than a proportionate response relying on community solidarity and individual responsibility.
Corfu
Approaching the Greek island of Corfu a plump moon rose in the east, while to the west a red sun lingered along the horizon in a last gasp of effervescence. The cosmos seemed aligned as the first stars twinkled overhead, although a nagging worry had afflicted me throughout the journey. Anyone entering Greece must complete an online form declaring they had not tested positive for Covid-19, or been in close proximity to anyone who had.
Unfortunately I only discovered a requirement at the port to fill in the form at least one day before departure, compelling me to make it out for the following day.
Christos was in a similar pickle, but less concerned. He assured me that in Greece such a minor discrepancy was unlikely to be problematic, and advised that when I disembarked to wait at the back of the queue. This stratagem was designed to make departure from protocol easier for the border guard, with no other passengers around to witness any flexibility.
Following Christos’s instructions (he was getting off at the next port on the mainland), I finally presented my passport and an email confirming I had completed the form for the following day, which was a few short hours away. A barrel-chested guard with a black face mask obscuring all but a pair of glowering eyes barred my path. For all their history of philosophy and the arts, one should recall that the Greeks are a people forged in the crucible of warfare.
His response was decisive: “you don’t have the form. Get back on the ship.” I pleaded that it would be valid in a few hours, but I was met with no sympathy, and had no alternative but to return to the ship. At least, unlike hundreds of refugees now landing in Greece who are pushed back to sea in breach of the principle of non-refoulement, I would have another opportunity to enter Greece through the port of Igoumenitsa on the mainland.
I returned on deck and met Christos who was now worried that he too would be denied entry. An eight-hour return journey back to Brindisi would be a bitter pill for either of us to swallow. He began furiously calling various people, engaging in animated conversations that yielded little certainty as to what would ensue. He assessed our chances 50/50 as the ship entered the port; I was more hopeful given I now had a Greek accomplice.
The Port of Brindisi.
In a period where every case of Covid-19 is a blow to Greece’s ailing tourist economy that relies on keeping its case numbers low, even a Greek returning home has cause for concern if the box-ticking exercise has not been completed on time. Our predicament hardly merits comparison with a refugee on an improvised life raft being pushed back out to sea, but at least one can empathize.
The ferry shuddered into its berth in a port veiled in darkness. Descending the ramp we braced ourselves for another unwelcoming committee, and the negotiations that would ensue. Unlike in Corfu, however, there were no border guards on hand to meet us – the only foot passengers. Alone in the terminal at some remove from the passport control, we considered waiting until midnight when our forms would be valid, before concluding that loitering for another hour-and-a-half among the trucks might land us in worse trouble. Better to brazen it out we agreed.
Leaving ourselves in the hands of fate, we set off for the passport control. Christos went first, offering his passport. The guard lazily surveyed it, barely raising his head to match the photo with the face beneath the mask, before waiving him through with no mention of the form. Thankfully he repeated the same drill with mine. A few metres on I let out a little whoop. “Quiet now,” said Christos but I felt sure he was smiling under the mask.
Athens from the Hill of the Muses.
Towards Athens
Such are the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that avoiding Corfu seems to have been a blessing in disguise, as the island of Corfu was assailed by severe storms and flooding a few days late.
Parting company with Christos, who was returning straight to the capital to resume his troubadour career – in the straitened circumstances of the pandemic – I chose a route through the mountainous north to Athens. I arrived the following day in the city of Ioannina situated at an altitude of five hundred metres along the shores of Lake Pamvotida. The difficulty of negotiating this region as a solo travel without a car soon became apparent however. Organised tours to historic sites are prohibitively expensive and buses rare. I resolved to head straight to Athens the following day.
Arriving by bus in the sprawling metropolis of over three-and-a-half million one is instantly struck by the volume of traffic chug-a-chugging over misplaced manholes along wide highways; but at least the pollution seemed to have dissipated since my previous visit as a schoolboy over two decades ago.
It was, nonetheless, cloyingly hot, a thermal layer that lingers all night over the city throughout the month of August. The advantage of this climate, however, is that outdoor congregation outside tavernas and bars is possible throughout much of the year. This may be another reason why the pandemic has had a limited impact on Greece to date, as social distancing is not scrupulously observed and masks were only made compulsory for indoor public spaces at the end of July.
My first stop was the Hill of the Muses facing the Acropolis. A muse is a source of inspiration, and it is a sign of Greek humility to attribute any genius to an external agency. I gave a prayer to Clio, the muse of history, and in a few accounts the muse of lyre playing.
When I later texted a friend to say I was surveying the Parthenon that sits atop the Acropolis he sent me a passage from St Paul’s Acts of the Apostles, which begins: ‘Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.’
Paul discusses the resurrection with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, and condemns Athenians for their superstitions.
32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.
33 So Paul departed from among them.
34 Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.[v]
The Acropolis from the Hill of the Muses.
Adherence to Orthodox Christianity remains a powerful source of identity and community in Greece. Moreover, the Christian philosophical tradition relies heavily on Plato. This has often brought moral absolutism and a lack of tolerance. Indeed, Plato stands accused of bequeathing to Christianity: ‘the best form of political control imaginable: hell’ He also excluded those agents of creative disorder from his Republic – the poets!
I discovered a tension in Greece between a more militant approach to religion, and one that embraces a transcendence reconciled to science and reason.
Although Christianity displaced most Greek pagan beliefs – that lively universe of immoral gods who steal into one another’s rooms for illicit congress – a playful irreverence is still evident in Greece today, albeit tempered by the abnormal social rituals of the pandemic.
Island Hopping
After melting in Athens for a few days I took a ferry to the island of Icaria; named after Icarus the son of Daedulus (after whom Joyce named the autobiographical Stephen Daedulus), who created wings from wax and feathers to escape the island of Crete. Daedulus warns Icarus against either complacency or hubris, advising him neither to fly too low nor too high – a golden mean – thereby avoiding the sea’s dampness that would clog his wings, and the sun’s melting heat. Alas, Icarus flew too close to the sun and crashed to his death.
Icaria.
Present-day Icaria was designated among the Blue Zones of the world where people live far longer than average, according to Dan Buettner. I am prepared to believe that the clear blue Aegean Sea is indeed a source of eternal youth; such as that sought by the sea nymph Thetis for her son Achilles, the leading Greek warrior in Homer’s other epic the Iliad. Alas, she failed to submerge him fully, and years later a well-placed arrow to the heel beneath the gates of Troy laid low that most warlike of Greek heroes.
A timeless conflict between Trojan and Greeks (or Argives as they referred to in the Iliad) appears to be still raging three millennia later in the long-standing enmity between Greece and Turkey. In July Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s provocative decision to convert the Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul into a mosque generated heated passions in Greece. There is now a real possibility of warfare erupting over the small island of Kastellorizo that would give Turkey drilling rights over natural gas fields nearby.
Icaria.
In Icaria, the legacy of constant battles is evident in crumbling fortifications along the cliffs approaching the capital Agios Kirykos. This was the scene of one of the last German victories of World War II – the Dodecanese Campaign of late 1943.
The island is known throughout Greece as the ‘red rock’ on account of its long-standing Communist sympathies, which appear to coexist comfortably with religious devotion. Indeed, the Blue Zone study attributes favourable health outcomes to a community congregating in worship.
Curiously, despite the pandemic, and the susceptibility of the older population who disproportionately attend church, many consider it disrespectful to wear a mask during services. More worryingly, the shared-spoon ritual when taking the Eucharist remains sacrosanct. This is now leading to friction within families.
Alas, due to pandemic restrictions the festivals that form an integral part of traditional life did not occur this year. In an era of expanding government interference in all things Bacchanalian, it is worth considering the health benefits of festivity.
I was able to avail of accommodation at historically low prices in the month of August. This is bound to create shortfalls in an economy highly dependent on external income: “We will have no money in the winter,” my landlady cheerfully stated, “but we will have the food from our gardens and hopefully the tourists will come back next year.”
Icaria seems likely to welcome more tourists next year, but any warfare with Turkey could put this and many other islands out of reach for the foreseeable future, compelling the native population to fall back on their resources.
The Mask Slips
My last stop was the island of Kalymnos, one of the Dodecanese chain a few hours south of Icaria, closer still to the Turkish mainland. From Agios Kyrikos I caught a high-speed ferry that bumped along at a furious rate, passing a succession of sunburnt islands rising obstinately from the sea.
Kalymnos.
Buffeted by sea winds, I marveled at the scene as I stood out on deck, when a pair of coast guards suddenly loomed in front me. I then realised my mask had slipped onto my chin, and braced myself for a hefty fine. Thankfully they restricted themselves to a ticking off, to which I responded with utmost obsequiousness.
Further along the deck two Germans were not so lucky. Despite being about ten metres from anyone else – and brothers seemingly too – they were each issued with €200 fines for failing to have their masks in place.
Perhaps those two fine Teutonic specimens, one clad in garish Ralph Lauren attire, the other more understated but still standing out from the crowd, were a sore reminder of ancient and modern foes: the occupying Nazis of the 1940s, and that more recent imposition of crippling austerity after the economic crash; a policy still identified with the former German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.
Kalymnos.
The capriciousness of the measures seemed obvious when the guard completely ignored a Greek lady nonchalantly smoking a cigarette as they re-entered the cabin. Piracy at sea has long antecedents in this region, and the Covid-19-era appears to be opening up new opportunities.
Kalymnos is an altogether busier and more prosperous island than Icaria, renowned for its sponge diving. The capital Pothia is a large port that would ordinarily enjoy throngs of visitors in the middle of August. Now there were mostly mournful restaurateurs sullenly sitting outside their kitchens, while innumerable cats lingered inquisitively in doorways.
I chose to stay at the furthest remove from Pothia at the isolated resort of Emporios, with a permanent residence of just twenty souls, and accessible by a bus that only operates three times a week.
On the return journey a few days later I became keenly aware of the precipitous drop to the sea below from a road snaking along the cliff face. One false turn and we would crash to our doom. I grasped the hand rail tightly, wondering how that last moment of life would feel before an overwhelming concussive impact that would give way to an eternity of silence. Thus reconciled to my own mortality, and with an enhanced awareness of how all life hangs on a thread, I was ready to end my own short exile.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
From Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson
[i] Philip Freeman, Ireland and the classical world. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2001. p. 65.
[ii] James Joyce, Occasional Critical and Political Writings, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, p.124
[iii] Plutarch, Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/The_Face_in_the_Moon*/D.html
[iv] Albert Camus, The Rebel (translated by Anthony Bower), Penguin, London, 2000, p.240
Editor’s Note: On Monday 26th of July the luxury 5-star Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin removed four bronze statues depicting two Nubian princesses from the lower Nile with slave girls holding torches. The statues had stood outside the five-star hotel since 1867. Billy O Hanluain reflects on the decision.
Further to reports and in the interests of clarity, the IGS was not consulted about the removal of statues from The Shelbourne Hotel. Such works require planning permission which we believe was not sought. The IGS has contacted DCC Planning urging them to address the matter. pic.twitter.com/2cftDLbffr
— Irish Georgian Society (@IrishGeorgian) July 28, 2020
If the owners of the Shelbourne Hotel were genuinely concerned with slavery and social justice they might consider a tangible gesture addressing its current practices in Ireland and elsewhere rather than tweaking its exterior in an act of ‘woke aesthetics’.
Imagine if they decided to host a conference on human trafficking and offered reduced rates to the organisers and attendees, perhaps even flanking the exterior with banners promoting the event? Imagine they took a stand on homelessness in Dublin, an issue that is literally on its doorstep? Imagine they took a stand on abolishing zero-hour contracts in their industry?
These statues do not neatly fit in to the modern narrative of slavery in the Americas, they refer to a period nearly a thousand years ago, depicting Nubian Princesses with their slaves. So, by implication they portray the enslavement of black people by other more privileged black people. The African continent had slavery of its own long before the Atlantic slave trade began in sixteenth century, culminating in the brutal colonization of most of the continent by European states.
If we are to go back four thousand years and posthumously ‘correct’ the sins of that past, I would fear for many heritage sites around the world tainted by practices and beliefs very much at odds with current ‘enlightened’ standards. In any therapeutic practice, acknowledgment of the past is critical but the difficult work in healing is always how we manage the present, the now, which is after all, the only thing we have.
Remove the Pyramids?
An exhausting and myopic focus on the past can become a virtuous smoke screen for not dealing with present injustices. It is so much easy to bicker about past injustices rather than root out their practices in contemporary society.
Moreover, while we are at: if the hotel is pursuing a ‘woke’ agenda maybe they should consider changing the name of the hotel itself?
It was named after William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, Lord Shelbourne (1737-1805), the first Irish-born British Prime Minister (1782-82), responsible for granting the United States its independence at the Treaty of Paris in 1783. This newly independent state became a slave-owning state until Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation in 1862.
A devotee of laissez faire, Lord Shelbourne did nothing discernible to improve the conditions in Ireland that would lead to rebellion and ultimately the Great Famine.
Lord Shelbourne
Correcting the past is an impossibility, the real challenge is dealing with the present. One doesn’t need to spend time on a Buddhist retreat or on a therapist’s couch to know that the only thing we can actually change is the present moment.
We can seek to understand the present better by having a fuller understanding of the past, but the past remains, unchangeable. A far greater challenge is the existential one of living an ethical life in the present moment rather than attempting the impossible task of rectifying the crimes of the past.
The removal of statues seems to have been opportunistic. It’s as if the owners are trying to gain kudos in the zeitgeist. But it is far easier to make a cosmetic change to the exterior of a building and lay claim to an enlightened agenda than actually take a political and ethical stance on live issues of social and political justice.
Imagine the socially sensitive and woke Shelbourne, discretely provided a few rooms for free to the homeless, or to those fleeing domestic violence, or even to refugees? Then it would be putting its money where its mouth is.
I feel that Europe, in its state of degeneracy has passed its own death sentence.
Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, (1942)
The Best Lose All Conviction…
This piece revisits aspects of The Limits of Multiculturalism– a piece I wrote last year warning of a reversion to the 1930s in terms of austerity, extremism and declining intellectual standards. Now in the wake of a pandemic accelerating these trends, this article draws intellectual inspiration from heirs of the Enlightenment, especially Albert Camus, and also Frantz Fanon.
First published in 1918, and translated into English in 1926, Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West was perhaps the most influential text of the 1930s.[i] He blamed what he saw as a declining European civilisation on the dilution of a mythical Aryan race – whether Germanic or Anglo Saxon. Spengler influenced Hitler, although he disliked the biological determinism of the Nazis, but still provided an ideological impetus for the extermination of undesirable races in the Holocaust or Shoah.
In the heady days of the post-Cold War 1990s, when Francis Fukuyama was announcing The End of History and Bill Clinton was feeling your pain, mythical and biological views on race seemed an anachronism, increasingly confined to the dustbin of history. But sadly today a variant on Social Darwinism – underpinning an incipient corporate fascism and acting as the handmaiden to racism in another guise – has found a new suit and tie.
We face an economic depression that is likely to be of even greater scope than the Great Depression of the 1930s, as various categories of workers are furloughed – the new word du jour – indefinitely, and SMEs are moped up by multinational giants that are assuming Blue Whale proportions, if not their unfortunate plight in nature. This coincides with impending environmental meltdown that could generate further pandemics. Moreover, social isolation over the course of the pandemic is limiting associational ties, adversely affecting the poor and disadvantaged.
Alongside a long-term intellectual decline in journalism, mainly brought about by the arrival of the Internet which has turned much of it into glorified PR – or churnalism[ii] to adopt Nick Davies’s expression – with even the global The Guardian now shedding jobs at the height of the pandemic[iii] – and debilitating academic over-specialization, linked to the funding of universities through philanthrocapitalism. In this barren landscape Spengler’s archaic notions thrive.
Moreover, an age of chaos and uncertainty allows strongmen like Putin, Erdogan and Orban to assert domination. Spengler’s demonization of the other – now reimagined in the silhouette of a contagious disease – is right back in focus. Listen carefully and you will recognise that the Social Darwinism of another age is the rallying cry of neo-liberalism, as an age of cartels and select groups brings exclusion and enforced conformity.
Given our intellectual and scholastic deficits, it hardly matters that there is zero empirical evidence for the concept of race, as geneticists have worked out that every person on Earth can trace a lineage back to a single common female ancestor, who lived around 200,000 years ago[iv] Spengler may be a bastardised intellectualism but this is irrelevant if it gains traction in the dark recesses of social media.
‘Guest Workers’
The far-right revives the old ghost, but the centre-right – which is in power across most of Europe and claims to oppose racism – has maintain it in societal structures, such as Direct Provision in Ireland. We also ‘welcome’ guest workers – guestarbeiter – from the Global South as students in wealthy countries such as Ireland, but only to the extent they remain useful. Thus, the number of new international students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) pursuing higher education in Ireland jumped by 45% between 2013 and 2017 according to a recently released study from the European Migration Network to 18,500.[v]
Yet it doesn’t make a difference to a citizenship or residency application that a person has been resident in Ireland for years on end; while shelling out exorbitant fees to mickey mouse institutions, and ideally housed in a so-called co-living space. In contrast, anyone with an Irish grandfather has an automatic, ‘racial’[vi], entitlement to an Irish passport, and the benefits of citizenship.
Ireland’s societal drift is not an isolated case, as state authorities around the world use the present crisis to adopt authoritarian methods, either through direct elevation of fascists, or through more sophisticated methods of control playing on innate fears of contagious disease, in cahoots with Internet platforms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter that increasingly deny freedom of expression.
There are few safe havens available to migrants any longer, no matter what their status, as seemingly there now exists a permanent state of health emergency[vii] that is likely to be used to exclude ‘undesirable’ entrants. However, at least the pandemic has brought a rupture to an environmentally destructive globalisation that has been working to the benefit of the top 1% for some time.
Image (c) Daniele Idini
Western Intellectual Imperialism
The Meursault Investigation (Other Press 2015) written by the Algerian writer Daoud is a rebuke and a critique of the greatest Algerian, and indeed French, writer of the last century, Albert Camus, in particular his iconic book The Outsider (Hamish Hamilton 1946). Daoud’s criticises Camus’s putative racism or imperialism, or simply a lack of empathy for the murdered Arab. Yet given that the author has been the subject of a religious fatwa in Algeria himself, he is presumably sympathetic to Camus’s rejection of extremism. Daoud’s book concludes with a reflection on an idea that Camus himself would approve of, namely how we should hold on to the precious commodity of truth.
Daoud’s attribution of racism to Camus for accepting continued French control over Algeria, was also made by Edward Said in his Culture and Imperialism (1993). Both are wrong. As a Pied Noirs – a member of the French community in Algeria that emigrated to the French mainland after independence – Camus was doubly despised as an outsider. Having himself experienced racism, or at least xenophobia, his texts should remain formative to our understanding of the challenge of multiculturalism.
It should be stressed that Camus promoted peaceful co-existence between the transplanted French and the native Islamic population, and condemned the torture and death penalty inflicted on the indigenous rebels by the French authorities, memorably depicted in Gillo Pontecovro’s 1966 film The Battle of Algiers. But he also recognised there was going to be a bloodletting in Algeria in the aftermath of independence arising from extremism.
Above all Camus was a product of the Enlightenment and the French tradition of letters and reason. Throughout his novels that encompass his native Algeria along with the French Revolutionary period (The Rebel, 1951), we find a distaste for fundamentalism, whether secular or religious. This should be taken to include extreme advocates of multiculturalism that deny the significance of a country’s cultural inheritance, or diminish the value of common values and norms of behaviour in a polity, while assuming that any state can easily absorb an infinite number of new arrivals.
Today an influential voice, such as Camus’s, is sorely lacking to courageously espouse universal human rights and the rule of law, against the barbarity of relativism.
Albert Camus in 1957 by Robert Edwards
Edward Said
In works such as Culture and Imperialism (1994) and Orientalism (1978) Edward Said – who I argue unfairly criticised Camus – emphasises the role of literature in the imperialist project of civilising ‘inferior’ races In his analysis of texts such as Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (1955) and Naipaul’s Bend in the River (1979) Said demonstrates how agents of imperialism operate, and how this morphs into murder and subversion, thereby destabilising so-called primitive post-colonial societies.
In dispassionate fashion, Said also attacks virulent nationalism and an often unstated tribalism – the ideologically indistinguishable Fine Gael and Fianna Failparties from Ireland are good examples – increasingly evident in our time. He asserts ‘Patriotism, chauvinism, ethnic, religious and racial hatreds can lead to mass destructiveness.’[viii] Said also cites Conor Cruise O’Brien to the effect that imagined communities of identity are hijacked by the petty dictators of state nationalism. I fear we are heading in that direction without the reassertion of universal Enlightenment values.
Joseph Conrad’s Hearts of Darkness (1899) about the deranged Colonel Kurtz is perhaps the classic text of colonialism,. Set in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold’s genocidal regime of plunder, we see how the civilising mission has mutated into barbarism and murder. Francis Ford Copolla would later recycle the tale into an indictment of the American civilising mission in Vietnam, with Marlon Brando playing Kurz, with utterly contrived insanity.
Colonialism was a variation, or perhaps a precursor, to the theme of Spengler, often caricaturing the lazy and sensual native, set in contrast to the disciplined, and sexually uptight, coloniser. This required and justified the imposition of jackbooted domination to force submission on the shiftless and degenerate other – a necessary psychological tool conditioning the humanity of both sides.
Yet the coloniser often serves as a role model for the colonised, as we have seen in the unhappy drift of many post-colonial states towards dictatorship around the world; or as Homi Bhabha puts it: ‘Although colonised subjects endeavour to imitate or mimic the behaviour of the coloniser, the mimicry is always imperfect – almost the same but never quite.’[ix] This best explains racially motivated homicide, such as we saw in the brutal murder of the English soldier Lee Rigby, and in the beheading of foreigners by ISIS – almost the same but never quite.
New Corporate Colonialism
Frantz Fanon’s provided a profound insight into how colonised peoples – The Wretched of the Earth – are required to pay the debts of the occupying powers. This has been reproduced in our own societies in the form of austerity. The occupying powers are now the corporatocracy, or those with inherited wealth. The only difference from the colonial period is they are no longer all from the same ethnic group. In fact a veneer of diversity is achieved with the promotion of a few specimens with varied pigmentation, and an embrace of safe, politically correct policies that ignores structural racism.
Nonetheless, allegations of racism are used by the corporate vectors of public opinion in a similar way to gender politics: as a mask for self-advancement and the elimination of competition. But we also see attacks against the left through a conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. This was clearly evident in the stitch up of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who failed to grasp how he, a long-time anti-rascist campaigner, could be accused of being racist, and was too nice, or loyal, to comrades who had fallen over the edge into outright expressions of it.
Vast sectors of the developed world are now easy picking for a corporate colonialism facilitated by transnational law firms, and endorsed by governmental and inter-governmental agencies, including the E.U.. Fanon’s warning echoes across time: ‘The people’s property and the people’s sovereignty are to be stripped from them.’[x]
Fanon also pointed to how mental illness, neurosis and de-rationalisation are responses to post-colonial subjugation. This is being revisited under conditions of austerity, which the Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating. It perhaps explains why so many on the far-right seem unhinged. In my own professional practice as a London barrister I have seen a decided increase in unreal vantage points, with some people feeling like spectators in a film of their existence.
So what conclusions can we to draw on multiculturalism from the vantage of post-Brexit-post-Covid-limbo-in-London, and with Euro-wide fascism and racism on the rise, as fixed borders return and semi-permanent exclusion zones are put in place?
Intimations of Decline
Historically, pandemics have inflamed existing xenophobia and led to racial scapegoating. When the incomparably more devastating Black Death arrived in Europe in the 14th century, cities and towns shut themselves off from outsiders, assaulting, banishing and killing ‘undesirables’ – mostly Jews. Through a combination of state propaganda and media hysteria the contagion of fear has reached medieval levels. Racism is on the rise across Europe, even in the U.K. where the legal status of non-nationals is increasingly precarious.
We are fighting a two-front war: one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the corona virus. There is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement.
Meanwhile President Trump has called the virus a Chinese conspiracy, or Kung-Flu
Here I propose three tentative responses, which may not make for easy reading:
The liberal multicultural consensus based on the rule of law, humanism, tolerance, the promotion of excellence irrespective of race, and a measure of affirmative action to compensation for historic discrimination has broken down. In an age of extremes, even some on the left are demonising the diseased other, but intellectually impoverished commentators refuse to recognise the extent of this. Extremism looks set to get worse even in multicultural Britain, particularly if the economic depression accelerates. This requires a reassertion of intellectualism, Enlightenment values, and interdisciplinary exchange.
An open door policy, or really one designed to drive down labour costs, promoted by Angela Merkel and others cannot be maintained. Focus should now shift, if it all possible to addressing the underlying challenges of post-colonial states, especially in Africa, through debt relief and an end to the exploitation driving many conflicts. A New Deal for Africa is required. Italy cannot be expected to accommodate the millions that are seeking refuge there each year under the Dublin Regulation. If the European Union is worth anything, the existing refugee burden has to be shared more equally, and those states such as Hungary that refuse to participate should be sanctioned or excluded from the Union altogether.
The U.K. extradition courts look set to be flooded with the deportation of the undesirable through revivified warrants. Racially motivated crimes and targeting will continue apace and seem likely to be unchecked by functioning state authorities. This demands a response, challenging the nonsense of racism, but in a way that does not consolidate stereotypes, as I fear the Black Lives Matters movement does. Iconoclasm and statue-breaking have a role to play, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Churchill was in many ways a barbarous imperialist but without him Europe would have succumbed to Nazism. There are civilized institutions and literary canons worth upholding.
It might come as a surprise that I am more optimistic about the U.K. than elsewhere in Europe; even Boris Johnson for all his buffoonery during the pandemic is not a savage by comparison with the Mussolini-lite characters that are increasingly evident in European governments.
Look familiar?
Relativism and Human Rights
The dominant conception of human rights among legal scholars around the world – including David Deng, An Naim, Yash Pah Ghai, Upednra Baxi, and Richard Rorty – is of a universality adapted to the practices and norms of a given society. So if multiculturalism is to regain traction it must acknowledge universal human rights, and not blithely accept archaic tribal practices or religious extremism; yet at the same time we should retain what is enduringly decent in a particular society.
Fanon and Said provided an insight into the destructive effect of post-colonial racism. Under neo-liberalism we now see an overt far-right fascism, but also a structural form under the centre-right, which is overseeing the impoverishment of all but the super-rich, while maintaining a veneer of inclusivity. Now with an economic and environmental meltdown on the horizon it is time to assert universal Enlightenment values, and fairly allocate the resources of the Earth, while leaving room for diversity and even eccentricity.
Featured Image is of Frantz Fanon 1925-1961.
[i] Richard Thurlow, ‘Destiny and Doom: Spengler, Hitler and ‘British’ Fascism, Patterns of Prejudice, Vol 15, no. 4, 1981, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0031322X.1981.9969635?needAccess=true&journalCode=rpop20
[ii] Collins Online Dictionary defines this as: ‘a type of journalism that relies on reusing existing material such as press releases and wire service reports instead of original research, esp as a result of an increased demand for news content’, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/churnalism.
[iii] Jim Waterson, ‘Guardian announces plans to cut 180 jobs’, July 15th, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/15/guardian-announces-plans-to-cut-180-jobs
[iv] Josh Clarke, ‘Are we all descended from a common female ancestor?’ How Stuff Works, https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/female-ancestor.htm
[v] Untitled, ‘Ireland Number of Non-EEA Students in Higher Education Jumps by 45% Over Five Years’, ICEF Monitor, June 11th, 2019, https://monitor.icef.com/2019/06/ireland-number-of-non-eea-students-in-higher-education-jumps-by-45-over-five-years/
[vi] Ronan McCrea, ‘Covid-19 laces granting of Irish citizenship with danger’ July 14th, 2020, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/covid-19-laces-granting-of-irish-citizenship-with-danger-1.4303461
[vii] Kitty Holland, ‘Restrictions on Travelling Abroad May Last Several Years Expert Warns’, Irish Times, July 12th, 2020. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/covid-19-restrictions-on-travelling-abroad-may-last-several-years-expert-warns-1.4302672?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&fbclid=IwAR0UPREs1c4aZPlKnVL3ZtC5ZUh5nruoD-5m54MUyf-HvVdP31IXcJVvRFE&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fhealth%2Fcovid-19-restrictions-on-travelling-abroad-may-remain-up-to-10-years-expert-warns-1.4302672
[ix] Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture. Routledge, London ; New York, 1994, pp.85-92, https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bhabha/mimicry.html
[x] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), p.152
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the United States has inflicted various forms of punishment upon the island nation in order to affect regime change. Policies have included a devastating economic embargo, attempts at international isolation, military invasion and a little-known history of terrorism, which has claimed thousands of Cuban civilian lives.
One of the longest-standing expressions of this antagonism derives from an institution usually perceived to be independent of the state in modern liberal democracies – the press. In fact, the mass media has enthusiastically justified Washington’s determination to end the Revolution and re-establish American control. Mainstream media’s role has been to the fore in painting Cuba in a negative light and developing a critical narrative, which does not stand up to honest scrutiny.
Misinformation has been responsible for the preponderance of negative myths around Fidel Castro’s Revolution. But when myth displaces history, facts become immaterial to rational discussion. This is the means by which the worst charges against Cuban society come to be believed, while attempts at authentic examination are denied.
Cuba’s Response to COVID-19
Criticizing Cuba’s many shortcomings throughout the decades has been an easy endeavour for corporate media. Yet the press has studiously ignored positive aspects of the Revolution. This was seen recently in negative coverage of Havana’s decision to send medical teams to some of the countries hardest hit by COVID-19. Indeed, Cuba was the only nation to provide medical assistance to Italy at the height of the crisis there.
A team of Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Italy to help in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak, as the death toll from the virus in the country surpassed that of China https://t.co/XvXL35q8Axpic.twitter.com/0v6izllYXB
In attempting to convince its readers that sending medical staff abroad to help fight the pandemic should be equated with ‘human trafficking’, the Miami Herald ran a one-sided piece on February 28th. It was written by Cuban-American Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a former Republican member of Congress well known for her unyielding anti-Revolutionary stance.[i]
The article made an unsubstantiated claim that Cuban doctors had been forced to participate under threat of punishment, with the government arbitrarily confiscating the majority of their salaries. What the piece failed to reveal was that the doctors had volunteered out of a sense of personal duty, receiving far more than their domestic wages under the programme, and used the proceeds to support the government’s efforts to sustain the country’s universal health care system. This came from a desire to give something back to the system that trained them.
To provide that counterpoint would offer rationality and balance, something the U.S. press does not generally permit in supporting Washington’s objectives in Cuba. This is why the media rarely mentions the damage done by the U.S. embargo when reporting on Cuba’s substantial economic difficulties.
While this episode during the COVID-19 crisis is but the latest instance of media bias, it is not an isolated case. One of the most egregious occurred after a number of national journalists were paid by the U.S. government to publish misinformation regarding the Cuban Five – intelligence agents sent to Florida in the 1990s to infiltrate violent anti-Revolutionary organizations with a history of employing terrorist methods.[ii]
The Five were sentenced to lengthy jail terms based in large part on intentionally misleading reporting of journalists. It was a remarkable case of a ‘free press’ blatantly submitting to the directives of their government’s foreign policy dictates.
Other examples include that of American contractor Alan Gross, convicted of bringing illegal military grade communication equipment into the island nation. His case engendered considerable national media coverage, mostly propagating the distortion that he was simply carrying standard telephonic equipment.
Long History
Even before the Revolution, mainstream media was fully behind Washington’s designs on the island nation, helping to generate the fiction that the Maine battleship was intentionally blown up in Havana harbour in 1898. This generated the public support for U.S. entry into Cuba’s War of Independence against Spain that culminated in decades of American hegemony.
Washington’s hostility to the Revolution has been wholeheartedly supported by corporate media. This should come as no surprise as, with few exceptions, historically the mainstream U.S. press has endorsed or vilified the government’s designated allies or enemies. This is regardless of a media outlet’s ideological bent on domestic issues. So whether it’s the left-leaning New York Times or the conservative Washington Post, when it comes to Cuba reporting has been overwhelmingly anti-Revolutionary.
This stance against Cuba is really what a ‘free press’ is designed for; a generally reliable information outlet is utilized to generate support for the government’s foreign policy goals, most often based on capitalist considerations. Indeed, corporate media’s primary consideration, now more than ever, is to be a profitable business. That means a basic tenet of journalistic integrity — fairness – is thrown to the wayside to appease shareholder wealth and advertiser expectations. Thus, the media’s economic imperatives harmonise with the U.S. government’s strategic goals.
Media critic website Project Censored succinctly describes the relationship: ‘Corporate media have become a monolithic power structure that serves the interests of empire, war, and capitalism.’[iii]
Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media – no less of a capitalist institution than the stock market – cannot tolerate Cuba’s socialist values and efforts at egalitarianism being presented as any sort of positive model for other developing nations to follow.
The one-sided perspective, based on the control of information, is particularly effective as most Americans still find it extremely complicated to visit the country due to restriction on travel. As the average person is unable to see for themselves what is good, bad and indifferent about Cuba, media is the only conduit for the message about a country long designated anti-American.
The foot soldiers in corporate media’s propaganda war have been the journalists. While most are not intentionally biased, any mainstream media reporter – experts in foreign affairs or otherwise – writing about Cuba usually approaches the subject with predetermined values based on rigid capitalist understandings of democracy.
Most journalists instinctively cover Cuba from that perspective, regurgitating ingrained biases and misinformation about the Revolution.
Cuba does not conform to Western neo-liberal standards, so by default the mainstream press looks for negative indicators, compared to the supposedly superior capitalist system. The result is that journalism unsympathetic to capitalist values is not published. Instead reporters are selected who perceive Cuba’s system to be inferior, and approach the subject with a set of preconceived prejudices. This lack of any real understanding of a revolutionary society or Cuba’s history only exacerbates those established ideas.
Warren Hinkle, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner described it as a journalistic axiom about Cuba that ‘if it’s negative, it must be true.’[iv]
Media Consolidation
Mainstream media, now increasingly under the thumb of billionaires, is generally in complete accord with the political and economic views of ruling classes and their foreign policy objectives. The parameters of discussion in the media come under state control through a conjunction in the financial aims of owners and national policy goals.
Under unspoken U.S. rules of proprietorship, the media’s voluntary compliance in disseminating government propaganda is more effective than state-controlled news organisations found under overt dictatorships. There is a perception that privately operated media equates to independence and is a democratic barrier to state authoritarianism. In fact, when mainstream media ownership is under the control of the billionaire class, you don’t need government pressure to ensure compliance, it comes willingly.
Whether supporting American allies – no matter how distasteful — or denigrating those perceived to be anti-American – no matter how undeserving – the mass media can be counted on to adhere to the official agenda of the state. Thus, among the countries that are rarely criticizes in the media are human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt. On the other hand, the propaganda machine has reached epic proportions in its depiction of Venezuela. Cuba, of course, has never left the anti-American ledger.
The difference in how media covers pro- and anti-American nations has been described by Alternet writer Adam Johnson as the ‘North Korea Law of Journalism’, which states that journalistic standards ‘are inversely proportional to a country’s enemy status.’[v]
The North Korea Law of Journalism states: "editorial standards are inversely proportional to a countys enemy status" pic.twitter.com/u0alUnXeQ9
As a result, the more antagonistic the U.S. is to a particular country, the more lackadaisical a journalist can be in truthfully depicting events there. That approach has long characterized coverage of Cuba.
Further Recent Examples
Another recent example of the adverse reporting on Cuba’s efforts to fight COVID-19 arrived in a CNN report written by Patrick Oppmann in late March, with the headline: ‘Coronavirus-hit countries are asking Cuba for medical help. Why is the US opposed?’[vi] Yet the article offered no specific reason why the U.S. government should object.
The wording of the headline implies that the U.S. government has a valid reason for complaining about Cuba sending medical teams around the world. The consumer already has assimilated the false narrative that there is legitimacy in objecting to Cuba’s internationalism. This is before a single word of the article has been read.
The article reports that the U.S. State Department wants countries to refuse any help from Cuban medical brigades, even though they admit that health care systems around the world have been strained to the point of collapse. A spokesperson for the Trump administration then went so far as to call the medical staff ‘slave doctors.’
CNN’s report continued with the standard false narrative about Cuba, laying the blame for the economic shortcomings on: ‘The hyper centralization of the Cuban government, which has been so disastrous for the island’s economy.’
Naturally, there was no discussion of the unrelenting harm that the American embargo imposes. Corporate media reveals its biases as much by what it reports, as by what it ignores. The reporter either had no conception of how Cuba’s economy works or the reforms it has undergone over the past five years to decrease centralization, or simply chose to ignore those facts. Truth and Cuba rarely intersect in corporate media.
International media can be just as biased. A report in The Guardian on May 6th recalled the kind of misinformation disseminated in the early days of the Revolution, rehashing false narratives about medics being exploited by an authoritarian regime seeking political influence. Paul Hare, the British ambassador to Cuba from 2001 to 2004 was quoted as referring to Cuba’s ‘doctor diplomacy’ that began soon after 1959 because Fidel Castro, ‘was very strategic [and] saw a surplus of doctors and he saw it as a way of garnering diplomatic support.’[vii]
This statement from the former ambassador exposes either a shocking lack of knowledge about Cuba or intentional dishonesty. In 1959, Cuba had approximately 6,000 doctors, half of whom fled the country soon after Castro’s triumph. There was no surplus of doctors in the early years of the Revolution. It was only through steady government investment over decades that Cuba’s health care system became universal, despite the economic limitations imposed by the U.S. embargo.
Indeed it wasn’t until 1976 that the pre-Revolutionary ratio of doctors to citizens was restored, but by 2005 Cuba had the highest proportion of doctors to citizens in the world.[viii] Only after fulfilling its commitments to health care nationally did the shift towards medical internationalism occur.
Washington’s latest attack on Cuba’s medical efforts internationally came in June, when Florida’s Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced the Cut Profits to the Cuban Regime Bill. The proposed legislation, according to the Miami Herald, requires the State Department to publish the list of countries that hire Cuban medical missions and for that list to used when deciding countries’ rankings on the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report.[ix] The Bill is the latest attempt to discredit the missions and deprive the Cuban government of much needed resources.
Spanish-American War
Media bias against Cuba did not start with the Revolution. One of the earliest examples originated over one-hundred-and-twenty years ago during the Spanish-American War – referred to in Cuba as the Second War of Independence.
The national media of the day was in full-throated harmony with Washington’s long-standing desire to establish control over the island. The conflict started in 1895 when Cuban rebels rose up to fight for independence against Spain. On the verge of victory in 1898, the Americans came in to help seal the deal and then supposedly to leave – or that’s what the Cubans thought. The pretext for U.S. involvement resulting in sixty years of American hegemony was the blowing up of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbour.
America’s two most influential newspapers whipped up public support for military intervention. At the time of the explosion both William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer, were the leading proponents of the yellow press in fierce competition over national issues. But when it came to foreign affairs, the two papers were often on the same page, cheerleading the country flexing its developing imperial muscles.
The New York Journal offered the enormous sum of $50,000 for the capture of those responsible for the Maine explosion, noting: ‘The physical facts, even in advance of the investigation, indicate that the Maine was blown up by a (Spanish) submarine mine.’[x]
That there was no proof for this contention hardly mattered. The only reasonable response, the editorial board concluded, was for the U.S. to enter the war, defeat the Spanish and liberate Cuba. The final objective, to place the island under U.S. dominion, was left unstated.
Once the war ended the Americans imposed military rule from 1898 to 1902, setting the conditions for U.S. social and economic control over the island for the next fifty years. To justify U.S. control, the press reported that Cubans were simply incapable of managing their own affairs.
As New York Times’ correspondent Stanhope Sams wrote disdainfully of the locals: ‘There is no Cuba. There are no Cuban people. There are not freemen here to whom we could deliver this marvellous island. We have fought for a spectral republic … If we are to save Cuba, we must hold it. If we leave it to the Cubans, we give it over to a reign of terror.’[xi]
From Fidel Castro to Elián Gonzalez
When Fidel Castro ended, once and for all, those false narratives, the mainstream press enthusiastically went to work in support of Washington’s goal of vilifying the Revolution. Now the Cubans were depicted as evil, two-faced, illegitimate and a bunch of unappreciative bandits for being forever ungrateful for U.S. benevolence. And worst of all: they went on to become Communists.
While the media criticized those who supported the Revolution as unwitting fools, the most violent attacks came against Fidel. An editorial cartoon in the Charleston News and Courier on January 1st, 1960, played on the supposed immaturity and temperament of the Latin male. Thus, Fidel was depicted as a spoiled child in a playpen, with the caption reading, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’.
The mainstream media would ensure that the public appreciated just how ungrateful, childish and vindictive these Cubans, who had the temerity to throw the Americans out and end colonial rule, really were.
While the following decades institutionalised the media’s propaganda war against Cuba, one little boy’s tragedy revealed just how far the press was prepared to go in distorting reality.
Elián Gonzalez created an international sensation in 1999 by surviving the dangerous crossing of the Florida Straits on a raft, an attempt to reach the U.S. that cost the lives of his mother and others aboard. Shortly after Elián was taken in by his relatives in Miami, the press created a series of narratives that merged into a characteristic anti-Cuba bias.
This included a report that Elián wouldn’t last six months if he returned to the horrors of Cuba; that his father Juan Miguel really didn’t want to have his son back; and that his mother died in a desperate bid to gain freedom on America’s shore. Yet none of those charges stand up to scrutiny.
One story in the Miami Heraldpromoted the distortion that Elián would face, ‘a tragic life of deprivation if he returns to Cuba.’ The source relied on was a bystander who is supposed to have said: ‘If he goes back, he will starve to death…. It would be a crime to send him back.’[xii]
When Elián’s father, Juan Miguel González, was interviewed, the media expressed skepticism as to whether he wanted his son returned. This led The New York Times to speculate irresponsibly as to whether Juan Miguel was simply, ‘a puppet of the Castro government,’ who ‘not only would allow his son to stay but would seek asylum himself,’ if he ‘had the freedom to speak his mind.’[xiii] The assumption is, of course, that Cubans who want to remain in Cuba have been brainwashed by the regime.
Alan Gross
In 2009 the media turned its attention to the issue of American contractor Alan Gross, arrested after bringing in high tech, illegal communication equipment known as BGAN, designed to set up untraceable satellite communication networks.
This equipment is prohibited internationally unless under the control of a government. Gross was funded by USAID, one of many government agencies dedicated to the overthrow of the Revolution. Predictably, the case generated a host of misrepresentation in the corporate media.
The overwhelming majority of articles claimed Gross was simply carrying low-level communication equipment, similar to a mobile cell phone.
Consistently misrepresenting what he was doing in Cuba, the press constructed the issue as a helpless American only trying to bring, ‘free speech to an oppressed people under the nose of a government that did not want that to happen’, as one report on CBS News put it.[xiv]
The Washington Post spewed the same fallacy with an additional twist a few days after his arrest: ‘The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the US Agency for International Development who was distributing cell phones and laptop computers to Cuban activists.’[xv]
The Cuban Five
Undoubtedly, however, as alluded to earlier, the worst example of media bias occurred when corporate media ensured a completely unjust court decision was delivered against five men who were trying to prevent acts of terrorism.
The case of the Cuban Five revolved around intelligence agents sent to Florida to infiltrate violent anti-revolutionary Cuban-American organizations with a history of terrorism against their former homeland.
The Cuban Five
The arrest and trial of the Five in 1998 was characterized by an unending stream of misinformation, ensuring the Five would have no chance of a fair trial. This resulted in incredibly long sentences for all five, including two life terms, plus fifteen years for Gerardo Hernandez.
This travesty of justice was made possible by a number of journalists on the Miami Herald who were paid by the United States government to write negative stories against the Five, thereby abrogating any semblance of journalistic integrity. It was state run propaganda pure and simple, with the willing connivance of the so-called free press. Corporate media stooped to disseminating the view that the Five were dangerous spies, determined to steal government secrets and attack the United States.
During the trial various reports written to condemn the Five incorporated elements of fantasy. Wilfredo Cancio Isla wrote a remarkable article in El Nuevo Herald on June 4th, 2001, the day the jury began its deliberations, implausibly claiming that: ‘Cuba used hallucinogens to train its spies.’ The article claimed an anonymous Cuban spy deserter had revealed that Cuba gave its agents LSD and other drugs before sending them on missions abroad.
Isla was paid more than $20,000 US to write those stories. Other journalists accused of being paid by the government included El Nuevo Herald reporter Pablo Alfonso, who wrote sixteen negative articles during the trial. Those fictional reports apparently netted him $58,600.[xvi]
Normalizing Relations
A seemingly important split within corporate media’s coverage of Cuba took place in 2014, when President Obama announced a move towards normalizing relations with Cuba. While mainstream media adopted differing views on the value of the process, the underlying allegiance to U.S. foreign policy remained intact.
From the liberal side, the New York Times ran a series of mostly positive articles and editorials, focusing in on the benefits normalization would bring to American business interests, while at the same time helping to convince the locals of the advantages of capitalism. While the Times remained broadly supportive, the conservative Washington Post coverage was predominantly reactionary – with editorials consistently promoting the view that Cuba should not be presented with any gains from the normalization process until they completely renounced the Revolution.
The New York Times support and Washington Post opposition appeared to demonstrate a clearer demarcation in media coverage of Cuba. In fact, the division was over how to realise long-standing state objectives. The objective had not changed.
The Times saw the opening as a new avenue for regime change, in accordance with Washington’s updated perspective. The Post called for the maintenance of the old strategies. Both sides were speaking for the achievement of the same end: the end of the Revolution and re-imposition of American interests. Neither questioned the legality of those policies, the effectiveness of the regime, or the harm caused to the Cuban population by the embargo; just how best to go about achieving regime change.
That has been mainstream media’s prime narrative since the Revolution succeeded. Obama’s updated motive was to offer Cuba a carrot instead of the stick, in the hope that an influx of U.S. tourists, capitalism and culture would finally convince the locals to abandon the dark side of socialism and overthrow their own government.
Symptomatic of the reporting was an editorial in USA Today, apparently endorsing the opening, but bringing together all the biases and ingrained rationalizations for American hostility towards Cuba:
For nearly 60 years, Cuba’s government has done two things exceptionally well: repress its own people and make a mockery of U.S. efforts to compel change through economic sanctions … Without question, U.S. economic sanctions have been an exercise in frustration. They have not prompted a popular uprising or compelled the Cuban regime to open up. If anything, they have been counterproductive, allowing the Castro regime to blame its woeful economic performance on vindictive U.S. policies, rather than on its failed communist ideology.[xvii]
The article admitted the blockade had been a failure as it hadn’t forced the Cuban people into rebellion. So now maybe a new approach – normalization — is needed to compel these stubborn Cubans to get rid of their socialist oppressors? All because a foreign power demands they do.
Under Trump
While the normalization process created greater economic opportunities for the average Cuban, it all ground to a halt when current President Donald Trump took office in 2016.
Since then Trump has rolled back Obama’s initiatives. Surprisingly, much of the media has been upset about the return to a policy of hostility, probably because they regard Obama’s policy as being a better way of forcing regime change.
Thus a majority in the establishment press adopted a broadly negative perspective on Trump’s approach, including the New Yorker, CNN and USA Today, positioning the rollback as harmful to U.S. tourists and business, with little attention placed on the adverse economic impact it would have on the Cuban population. The media’s continued support for the opening remained grounded in the expectation that Obama’s policy would finally bring about regime change, and that Trump was jeopardizing that new strategy by returning to the old approach.
Over the past year Trump’s aggression against Cuba has included permitting Cuban-Americans to sue foreign entities for using so-called ‘confiscated’ properties, as well as restricting flights from the U.S. to Cuba and trying to curtail remittances. The administration also accused Havana of not cooperating with American anti-terrorist efforts.
Trump’s hostility is largely based on Republican Congressman Marco Rubio’s influence. He has convinced the President that his chances of winning Florida in this year’s election will increase if he return to an aggression stance. This forms the backdrop to criticism of Cuba’s current efforts against COVID-19.
Negative coverage of Cuba’s internationalism during the pandemic comes as no surprise. Washington’s policy of regime change will continue to be supported by a compliant corporate media to ensure anti-Revolutionary bias is undiminished, regardless of any crisis the rest of the world is coping with.
[i] Ileana Ros Lehtinen, ‘Cuba exploits its doctors abroad. It’s human trafficking, not ‘charity’’ Miami Herald, February 28th, 2020, https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/Ileana-Ros-Lehtinen/article240740726.html
[ii] Keith Bolender, Voices From other Side: An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba, Pluto Press, London, 2010, pg 219.
[iii] Peter Phillips, ‘How mainstream media evolved into corporate media: A Project Censored History, Project Censored, February 7, 2019.
[iv] Karen Lee Wold, ‘POPES, PROSTITUTES, and PRISONERS’, Canadian Network Cuba, Peace Review, 11:1 (1999), 83-89, https://www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca/Documents/KWald-PPP.shtml
[v] Adam H. Johnson, Twitter, September 10th, 2016, https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonnyc/status/774592061131649026?lang=en
[vi] Patrick Oppmann, ‘Coronavirus-hit countries are asking Cuba for medical help. Why is the US opposed?’, CNN, March 26th, 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/26/world/cuba-coronavirus-medical-help-intl/index.html
[vii] Tom Phillips and Angela Giufridda ‘‘Doctor diplomacy’: Cuba seeks to make its mark in Europe amid Covid-19 crisis’, May 6th, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/doctor-diplomacy-cuba-seeks-to-make-its-mark-in-europe-amid-covid-19-crisis
[ix] Nora Gamez Torres, ‘Scott’s new bill targets countries that hire Cuban doctors through official ‘missions’’, Miami Herald, June 17th, 2020. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nationworld/world/americas/cuba/article243604002.html?link_id=4&can_id=e6cae2bb447cd7abdbe6ce712332042c&source=email-senator-scott-targets-cuban-medical-missions-trump-policy-changes-frighten-cubans-details-on-cubas-reopening&email_referrer=email_837170&email_subject=senator-scott-targets-cuban-medical-missions-trump-policy-changes-frighten-cubans-details-on-cubas-reopening#storylink=cpy
[x] Charles H Brown, The Correspondents War: Journalists in the Spanish American War (New York Charles Scribner’s Son 1967), p. 124
[xi] Luis Perez Jr, The War of 1898, The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography, North Carolina Press, 2000, p.8
[xii] Lisa Tozzi, Castro wants the kid back, FAIR, March 1, 2000, https://fair.org/extra/castro-wants-the-kid-back/
[xiv] Scott Pelley, The last prisoner of the Cold War, CBS 60 minutes November 29th, 2015, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/last-prisoner-cuba-alan-gross-60-minutes/
[xv] Keith Bolender, Cuba Under Siege, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, p. 118
[xvi] Wilfredo Cancio Isla, ‘Reporters for hire’, April 19, 2001. www.reportersforhire.org
[xvii] Editorial Board, ‘Obama’s Historic Trip to Cuba: Our View’, USA Today, March 20th, 2016, www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/20/cuba-president-obama-fidel-castro-raul-castro-editorials-debates/81938512/
The use of opioid-based drugs (heroin, codeine, oxycontin), increased access to opioid synthetics (fentanyl, carfentanyl) and prescription anti-anxiety medication such as benzodiazepines have skyrocketed globally over the past eighteen years.[i] This has led to an alarming rise in opioid-related disorders and deadly overdoses – from respiratory depression and cardiac arrest – worldwide.
The Republic of Ireland has a long history of opioid drug-related deaths. Since 1998, mortalities due to opioids have increased yearly. Indeed, there is now, on average, one drug-related death every day. The majority of these involve users combining two-to-four drugs mainly, heroin, benzodiazepines, methadone and pregabalin.
Harm reduction as a public health strategy, acknowledges that people use drugs and aims to reduce the harms associated with their use. This also involves addressing the social, economic and health drivers motivating drug use.[iv] However, in Ireland it was introduced as a policy goal with a focus on eliminating the harms associated with drug use alone, which in this case was the elimination of the spread of blood borne viruses into the community in 2001.
Over time, harm reduction as a policy goal was weaved into a health-lead approach to drug use and drug-related deaths. Placed under a Health Ireland framework, the Reducing harm Supporting recovery is the latest government approach to reducing drug use.[v]
However, it is designed within a market-based health framework, led, in theory, by shared decision-making between the government and communities affected by drug abuse. The main responsibility for curbing the crisis is supposed to be handed down from the government to community social partnerships. This document has been in effect for over two years yet drug related deaths have not diminished.
— European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) (@EUDrugsAgency) July 11, 2017
Dáil Debates
The model on which the newest drug strategy rests is, in fact, contributing to drug-related deaths. Recent Dáil debates show that the drug services element of the social partnership model set up to reduce drug-related deaths is under threat of closure due to the lack of promised funding.
Moreover, the promised shared decision-making is not being passed on to community groups. Decision-making is instead centralized;[vi] while the promised national overdose strategy has witnessed continual delays since 2011. A recent inquiry as to when its publication would occur was met with an argument relying on interventions already in place.[vii]
When we look at the evaluation of current interventions, and those in the pipeline, we see a pervasive stream of government controls getting ahead of actual health outcomes that can change people’s lives.
Naloxone
In 2015 the first leg of the implementation of the Reducing harm policy strategy to curb opioid overdose began with the introduction of the life-saving drug naloxone. It is a medication used to reverse respiratory distress from poisoning due to opioids. It can be injected into muscle tissue or sprayed through the noise.
In Ireland, naloxone is currently used as an intranasal and intramuscular injection, available on prescription only to people who use drugs. In order for it to work, a drug user must obtain a prescription, and an able-bodied bystander must be able to intervene to save her life.
In 2016 a pilot evaluation study assessing its benefits was grossly under-distributed. The government objective was to have 600 distributions over the course of this project.[viii] Yet it was able to deliver only 95 prescriptions and just one drug user reported using it.[ix]
The success of this intervention is also dependent on an able bystander to intervene. As naloxone can only be obtained by someone who has a prescription, a bystander may not have access to the drug due to legal restrictions.
All factors point to defective policy implementations as, on the one hand, the government is claiming to support the use of naloxone, but on the other the law restricts how it can be used. Additionally, social partnerships designed to implement the intervention are at odds with the idea, while people continue to die every day.
Supervised Injection Rooms
The Supervised Injection Facilities (SIF) Act became law in 2017. Permission was thereby granted for a SIF where drug users could go and safely use drugs bought under medical supervision.
This was to be located near Merchant’s Quay Dublin. However, the business association of Temple Bar opposed the site, using emotive terms such as “drug addicts” in relation to addiction services in the city centres perceived as a threat to business.[x]
This led to a saga whereby the state support for the facility ended up as a bad business deal. The end result is a paltry eighteen-month pilot trial that will take place in a basement facility. The SIF site is illogically sited next to a secondary school. The whole affair reeks of Nimbyism, and brought accusations of drug use harming children.
The retail sector wants to see injection sites pushed out of town, but residential communities do not want these either. The facility has since been delayed a second time in response to efforts by the school to resist it. As with naloxone, although SIF is supported in the national drug strategy in practice it is met with legal and social partnership resistance.
Reducing harm and supporting recovery provides knowledge on how to save the body of the drug user by introducing interventions aimed at reducing drug-related deaths. Yet harm reduction policy goals and interventions are not given a fair opportunity due to pre-existing government legislation.
The document is designed under a market-based framework, wherein the power to curb the crisis, in theory, is passed down into community-based partnerships. But all the evidence shows that the required social partnerships needed to diminish this crisis are not being passed down the chain; communities are at odds over strategies and services are under threat of closure. This creates an environment where central government has too much control. As a result, interventions to curb drug related deaths are not being implemented at the required rate, at the expense of drug users, and the community at large.
Community action
Addressing the problem of overdoses should involve delegating control over conditions that lead to drug overdose to the community itself. This begins with a change in attitudes, recognising the experiences that leads to and perpetuates drug use.
Merchant’s Quay Ireland is a leading harm reduction provider that serves the community in overdose prevention. It supports the user of drugs and enhances their lives by providing social services that alter the conditions in which they live. They recently used the participatory research method of photovoice, a methodology where people living with a health issue use photographs to portray their experiences. This explores the topic of the lived experience of addiction and recovery. The photographs were recently showcased in the Dublin Copper House gallery.
The identity of those who have addiction, those affected and how they recovered, was tangible and real. Images of the River Liffey, the Mourne mountains and wild ivy became the essence of the recovery experience. Themes of freedom from the bondage of recovery, the conditions that influence it, and the growing expression of their identity loudly proclaimed: “I am alive”.
The use of photovoice by MQI gave a bird’s eye view on what it is like to have an addiction and be at risk of overdose. This in turn humanized the person who uses drugs – for them to become not just a body, but an independent spirit.
As Michel Foucault shows us in his body/power essay, the state provides knowledge to society – in this case medical knowledge – about the type of body that is valued in order to maintain power and control. The body of the user does not conform to this ideal, leading to a risk environment for drug-related deaths and vicious circles of self-loathing.
Starting from the ground up, empowering people who use drugs, and those at risk of overdose by supporting their voices, provides feasible alternatives to government-controlled health. Otherwise bodies will continue to lie motionless on streets, as the government hums and haws about how life-saving interventions should be delivered.
[i] Center for Disease control and Prevention. (2019). Understanding the epidemic. Retrieved from: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html
[ii] Building on Experience: National Drugs Strategy 2001 – 2008., https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/5187/1/799-750.pdf
[iv] Riley, D., Sawka, E., Conley, P., Hewitt, D., Mitic, W., Poulin, C., … & Topp, J. (1999). Harm reduction: Concepts and practice. A policy discussion paper. Substance use & misuse, 34(1), 9-24.
Doctors save lives today. It’s part of their oath and ethics. Unsurprisingly, most doctors faced with the Covid-19 pandemic recommended the drastic measure of mandatory confinement orders, or lockdowns. The main objective was to ‘flatten the curve’ of new infections so that it did not lead to overcrowding in hospitals.
Ireland had an extremely limited capacity to treat seriously ill Covid-19 patients: 6.0 ICU beds per 100,000 population at an occupancy rate of 88%. This is compared to an average of 11.6 per 100,000 across Europe. In the absence of measures the hospital system would have been quickly overwhelmed through widespread contagion of the disease, and many people would have died, including health workers.
On the other hand, governments should not only care about the lives of its citizens today, but also be concerned with the longer term health and wellbeing of the nation. To mitigate the next crisis and guide future investment, the government should first consider how many, and which, lives confinement saved, and which it destroyed.
Lives however are never really saved. In any given month, about 2,500 people die in Ireland to the relative indifference of the media. The mortality rate of humans has been and will ever be 100%. Death can only be temporally avoided. This is important as it transforms the notion of ‘saving lives’ into the more accurate calculation of prolonging years of life.
Life expectancy in Ireland is 82, so dying after that age means living longer than expected. In the case of Covid-19, 90% of people dying from the virus were above the age of 65 at an average age of 82, and a median age of 84. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the number of years of life lost (YLL) due to Covid-19 is relatively small. Consequently, confinement primarily benefited the population that would have otherwise been lethally affected by the virus, i.e. citizens over the age of 65.
Which lives are and will be affected by the lockdown?
While all of us were affected by the confinement, vulnerable children have been the most exposed and the effect of the lockdown on mental health, the education deficit, and domestic abuse has to be accounted for.
Many adults’ lives are and will be dramatically affected by the economic recession. According to the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), the Irish economy could contract by 17% in 2020; in comparison, the Irish GDP “only” contracted by 7.1% in 2009 and worldwide GDP contracted by 15% between 1929 and 1932.
The relationship between economy and heath/lives is more subtle and sacrificing one for the other does not make sense. The two are intrinsically linked. For example, in 1997, life expectancy in pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland was 76, a full year less than more developed Germany. From the mid-90’s, Ireland’s GDP grew rapidly, allowing governments to gradually increase their health spending from €3.6bn in 1997 to €15.6bn in 2017.
Ireland now has a longer life expectancy than Germany, standing at 82.35 versus 81.41 for the latter. What this indicates is that governments can prolong the lives of citizens by investing in hospitals, but may only do so thanks to a healthy economy.
Africa has not been dramatically affected by Covid-19, but lockdowns in advanced economies have created economic chaos. Poverty and malnutrition already kill 9 million people every year. This is set to kill substantially more very soon as the chief of the UN’s food relief agency is now predicting a hunger pandemic of ‘biblical proportions.’
Hence, there may be a domino effect at play. An extreme scenario – yet likely to occur over the next five to ten years – could look like this: a public health crisis triggering an economic crisis, which triggers financial and monetary crises (avoided for now), triggering a hunger pandemic, triggering mass immigration, triggering a ‘Populist’ far-right reaction, triggering a geopolitical crisis. This is of course speculative. Yet everyone should be in a position to judge whether saving the lives of our parents justified taking such risks for the future of our children.
Thinking Ahead
Just as choosing health at the expense of the future of the economy may prove counter-productive, choosing the old economy now over our future health and wellbeing is a lost opportunity. Hence this Irish government or the next should consider the following proactive options.
The severity and length of the confinement in Ireland can be directly attributed to a lack of ICU capacity. To mitigate public health crises in the future, the government needs to invest massively in public health infrastructure and reduce the gap with our European partners.
The government should also invest in infrastructure that will directly benefit future generations. Investment in public transport infrastructure and energy efficient housing will not only reboot the economy, but will also offer some long term societal and environmental benefits. Equally, investment in education, which has long been recognised to offer the best return for the welfare of any nation, should also be a top priority. This will help Ireland to sustain its position as a knowledge-based economy.
Whatever Irish government comes to power should already be considering how to finance these investments. The opportunity is there to revise Ireland’s business model and redefine a more sustainable tax system. This may help Ireland avoid tensions with economic partners, as the current low corporate taxation model may not be tolerated by American and European counterparts for much longer.
In sum, it is now time for the government to be proactive and invest in the future of our children: Young lives count too.
Twenty years ago the UN General Assembly made the 20th of June World Refugee Day in order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Convention of 1951, the international treaty giving rights to people to seek asylum from persecution in other countries. Every year around this date myriads articles about refugees and their stories are published all over the world. Most of them are well-intentioned, but they can sometimes still be harmful and damaging for the people in need of international protection.
For thousands of years of human culture and history, personal and collective stories have been the most influential sources of information that ensured societal changes and development. More recently, people who have had a chance to voice their life histories made real change through familiarising various audiences with their unusual or – on the contrary – trivial, but nevertheless important, narratives. The same is true for the stories of different communities shared under a common umbrella.
For centuries only certain people could share their stories. They were those occupying positions of power: men, for example, as opposed to women. Feminist methodologies made it very clear that having one’s voice heard is essential to having a societal impact. Since women’s voices were counted, our societies have changed. Following this logic, other communities made their voices heard through various forms of storytelling: they were LGBTQI communities, disabled people, ethnic and racial minorities, working class people and many other groups. Hearing each and every one of these stories has brought our societies closer to real equality.
This storytelling comes in different forms: from mythological chronicles that depict experiences in starry-eyed fashion (like in the Bible), to fiction that is based on real people’s concerns (as in Joyce’s Ulysses), to video and photo images that talk to their viewers through visual means using new tools provided by technologies and social media. So the mediums of storytelling may vary, but it is the stories themselves that make the difference. Personal stories help audiences to relate their own experiences to those shared in the media landscape. No de-humanised statistical data can do better than storytelling.
In the current environment, big numbers through the prism of Big Data are taken to signify important societal impact. We tend to see statistical calculations as evidence of interest. However, only qualitative data such as life histories, observations and biographies actually make sense of any calculations. Interpretations of statistical data always depend on understanding people, but understanding is the task of qualitative methodologies in social science. Statistical data comes only as a set of distant numbers that register something that needs qualitative interpretation. This is why storytelling is so important for gaining an appreciation of what is actually going on.
Stories may also generate quantifiable impact: the number of people exposed to a particular story is visible in the numbers of website visitors where that story is published or the size of an audience of a particular media. Even though these numbers are identifiable, they still speak very little about empathy that viewers and readership may develop in response or about the emotional circulation that results. It is important to learn about such an interest, but the real measure of impact is still located in the hearts of people exposed to storytelling narratives – a quantity that stays invisible, but that is so important for societal solidarity.
Storytelling is an essential form that drives societal transformations. From the ancient ages when people told their stories in person to our current age when people share their stories via digital mediums, stories have always had an impact. Sometimes one’s face tells a story and makes that impact. The important thing is to find the means of communication to deliver the stories straight to people’s hearts.
Considering how powerful storytelling is, we cannot pretend that the infrastructure built around it by media and researchers is always ethical and respectful towards those who constitute those stories. As an LGBT person who has been granted international protection in Ireland and a quite visible activist, I have been asked for interviews and other types of storytelling. I tend to agree but it’s getting harder all the time.
One journalist told me that I was wearing a good shirt and didn’t look like as an asylum seeker. Another asked how much I paid to smugglers to get me out. Quite recently another journalist was looking for someone ‘from Direct Provision’ at a conference. She approached me and started to ask questions. But once she heard that I had already moved out of Direct Provision, she interrupted me and said that she wanted someone who was currently there, otherwise she was not interested. What a devaluation of my life experience.
In other words, journalists were rude to me, disrespectful and abusive. Using my words or ideas without quotes, giving erroneous interpretations and false promises. Trans and non-binary people, homeless people, other migrants, people of colour, people with disabilities and a lot of others who I shared my concerns with, told me that they often experienced similar treatment from journalists, but also from artists, researchers and other ‘supporters’. It is called ‘cognitive exploitation’, and this is exactly the opposite to the idea of the empowerment of the community through storytelling.
The problem is that after such an interaction most people retreat into their closet and don’t want to tell their stories anymore, despite those stories being so important to tell, as I pointed out. I want us to keep telling our stories as long we have the energy and courage to do so. I also want to encourage everyone to keep trying to use their own voices, to write using available media to tell the stories so that cynical intermediaries cannot intervene. As for the journalists, they perhaps need to discuss professional ethics regarding dealing with precarious groups.
Hence, what is really needed is an open critical discussion with the affected people about what we feel as unacceptable when sharing our stories with others. Let new ethical standards be dictated by unwritten concerns around the precariousness and not by outdated rules and norms. These unwritten rules should come about through debate and generate a deeper understanding of people’s experiences. This seems to be another role for comprehensive storytelling.
