#Neo-liberal Economic Policies

[indizombie]

India is one of the fastest urbanizing nations in the history of the world. While 28.53% of India was living in urban areas in 2001, by 2011 this figure had gone up to 31.16%. The population of Bangalore has increased from 1.7 million in 1971 to 8.5 million in 2011. Many of the migrants who settle in slums in Bangalore are from rural Karnataka or from other states who have been driven out of their villages due to drought or poverty. A majority of these belong to castes placed lower down in the social hierarchy ordained by the caste system in India. These processes of ‘long transition’ (agrarian to industrial; rural to urban) have been fast forwarded in India in a context of neo-liberal policies where State takes less and less responsibility for the well-being of the citizen.

‘Changes in Social Determinant Following Forced Evictions and Their Health Consequences- Economically Weaker Sections (Ews_ Quarters, Ejipura, Bangalore)’, Samyukta

#India #urbanization #Bangalore #Karnataka #casteism #neo-liberal economic policies #poverty #drought #Samyukta #Sylvia Karpagam #Siddharth Joshi

[odinsblog]

One About The Atmosphere: Want to change minds? Stop trying. Change the atmosphere instead.

Donald Trump in 2016 greets a screaming horde of ecstatic white christian nationalists

Minivan was a nice enough guy. He was easygoing; a happy guy with a frequently deployed smile. I don’t recall much anger from him, nor many strongly held opinions. I wouldn’t call him a philosophical type. No deep late night talks with Stove Minivan is my recollection.

This is the sort of dude I’d hang out with at a party, if there were a party we were both at, but not one with whom I’d maintain a relationship if we both graduated and then moved to different places—which I know for a fact, because that’s what happened. We drifted.

So then what happened is twelve years or so later I got on The Facebook, and Stove Minivan was there, too, and before long, we were friends again, he and I, and so were me and my other college friends, and them with him, and … look, you know the drill. It was The Facebook.

Minivan was no longer a pre-med student at a small northern liberal arts college. He was a doctor—a general care practitioner, if memory serves—in a smallish plains state town, very much like many other towns in the great plains or elsewhere in the country, I imagine.

Anyway, before long I noticed something about Minivan. Even though his feed was full of pictures of him and his lovely family, and he was smiling in them just the same as he always had in college, he was angry.

He was *enraged*

What was he angry about? The Demonrats.

Minivan was absolutely enraged about everything the Demonrats did. He also was out of his mind angry about Killary, and Obummer, the leaders of the Demonrats—or at least they were the front for the real leader of the Demonrats, who even back then I believe was George Soros.

What did the Demonrats do? Oh my heck, what *didn’t* they do? Mostly they hated America and American security and American economic strength, it seems. They engaged in corruption and bowed to foreign powers a lot. They shredded the dignity of the presidency, that’s for sure.

Minivan’s worldview wasn’t particularly coherent, if you want to know the truth.

I couldn’t help to notice that the Demonrats weren’t actually doing many of the things that Minivan thought they were doing.

And I noticed other things.

For example, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the policies Minivan supported were directly *causing* the sorts problems that made Minivan so angry.

And I couldn’t help but notice that well-sourced information enraged him more than pretty much anything else.

There was a lot of linking to sites I’d never heard of, like Breitbart and Newsmax, and of course plenty of Fox News. There were a lot of memes. There were a lot of conspiracy theories (a big birther, was Minivan).

Some of his posts contained subtle bigotry. Most of the rest contained not-subtle bigotry. Several of them contained slogans and statements that were, very simply, neo Nazi and white supremacist memes and shibboleths.

There was a lot of commentary accompanying these posts from Minivan, who was saying shocking stuff for a small-town family doctor … the sorts of things that it seemed to me would make people not want to use this person as a doctor, or or sit next to that person on a bus.

I hadn’t heard of Alex Jones, yet, but Minivan sounded a lot like Alex Jones, word for word and beat for beat. He’d even start his posts like a right-wing radio host: Sorry folks, but you can’t even make stuff like this up—ironically, accompanying things that had been made up.

This was all pretty distressing to those of us who had known Minivan back in the day, before he had become so obsessed with Demonrats.

So, a lot of us, myself included, did exactly what The Facebook wants.

We engaged with him.

At the time my belief was, you defeated bad ideas with better ideas, by confronting the bad ideas directly with the better ideas. Debate was for changing minds. You presented your ideas, they presented theirs, you countered, they countered, eventually everybody saw the truth.

But the intention was that I’d change his mind, with facts presented logically, delivered calmly and patiently.

This was my belief.

What happened confounded me, but perhaps you can predict it.

Minivan escalated any correction, however calmly stated or bloodlessly presented, into scorched earth territory. He rejected all proofs by rejecting the source outright as irrevocably tainted by bias, or he’d spiral into non sequitur, spamming our feeds with more misinformation.

He would claim he never said things he had just said, even though the statements were still there for anybody to read, one comment earlier in the thread.

He’d claim that I said things I'd never said, as anyone foolish enough to read through our conversations could discover.

He demonstrated a complete dedication to his ignorance and anger, and a total disinterest in anything like observable truth that contradicted his grievance.

It was confounding and unfamiliar behavior to me, at the time.

At the time.

All of it was larded with grievance, a sense that people like him had never wronged anybody, and everybody else had done nothing but wrong people like him.

The bigotry and authoritarianism grew.

And all the time, on Facebook, he and his family kept smiling their perfect smiles.

I’ll admit that over time my interactions stopped being polite and bloodless, and I’m not particularly sorry for it. I told him some things about himself he seemed not to know, but which I thought really ought to be said.

I have a bit of a penchant for sarcasm, which you may have noticed.

I employed this skill, and you can feel how you want to about sarcasm, but I think it helped convey the correct posture to take toward someone who says the sorts of things Minivan was saying.

The correct posture being "you have proved yourself to be a person who should not be taken seriously, and your positions do not deserve even a modicum of respect."

I found this a more healthy message to convey about Minivan to anybody watching, and I still do.

Eventually he blocked me, and he was out of my life forever. It was the right choice, and I'm very glad he did that.

I’ve pondered the incident since, as it’s become more and more relevant to “the way things are.”

A few things had become clear over time.

Minivan was not somebody whose intentions could be trusted. He was not operating in good faith, and I believe he well knew it, because many of his favorite sources of information have written instruction books on how to engage with people in bad faith.

Minivan was not debating; he was using debate to inject his counterfactual beliefs into the discourse, which were designed to further marginalize already marginalized people while simultaneously cloaking himself in self-exonerating grievance.

More, he was exerting an active effort to not know things that could be easily known, and to demand to be convinced out of deliberate ignorance, not because he was interested in having his ideas challenged, but because he demanded a world in which he got to decide what was real.

Further still: Minivan *learned* from me. The effect of telling him he was using one or another logical fallacy was not to sharpen his reasoning, but to teach him about the existence of logical fallacies, which let him (incorrectly) accuse others of those same logical fallacies.

So Minivan was deploying the language of logic, in ways that betrayed a total lack of understanding about what those fallacies were, granted, but in ways that likely made him seem more knowledgeable and reasonable to a casual or sympathetic observer.

He learned to ape our phrases and arguments, in much the way he’d learned to ape the style of Alex Jones and all the various Breitbart and Newsmax contributors he used to inform himself.

And these days it occurs to me: I hear a lot about "groomers."

We were not changing him by engaging with him thoughtfully.

We certainly weren’t changing him by engaging with him in kind.

Rather: we were making him better at what he was doing, and we were validating his world view—to himself and others—as one that merited engagement.

And week after week on Facebook, Minivan kept smiling and smiling and getting angrier and angrier, at us and Obummer and all the other Demonrats and liberals and every member of every minority group who dared to fail to ceaselessly assure him that he was right about everything.

I don’t miss Minivan's black-hole-sun smile. I think of it as my first hint of MAGA: politically overrepresented, socially coddled people, often living outwardly happy privileged lives, while seething inwardly that other people might be getting anything, anything at all.

Indeed, soon enough, another figure would come on the scene, whose behavior matched that of Minivan almost exactly, a perfect avatar for this spirit of aggrieved bigotry and supremacy that seemed to be moving through my former friend.

And sure enough, as I saw, there were millions and millions of smiling seething people who loved him.

And that guy became president.

Nobody believed he would. And then he did.

Because Stove Minivan, it turns out, wasn’t some weird outlier.

He was part of a growing new normal, a group of people who had been offered a chance to immigrate from observable reality and enter a dark world of constant hostility, misinformation, and self-loving grievance.

It's an invitation they leapt at, to which they cling even now.

It's a constituency immune to proof, angered by equality, cheered by cruelty, who blame others for the foulness of the shallow puddle of reasoning within which they have demand to be seated, even though we can all see them fouling it themselves, every day.

And afterward, a huge number of those shocked by this development decided the proper reaction was to accommodate it, in the name of unity—a belief, it seems, grounded in the idea that what you choose to get along with isn’t as important as getting along no matter what.

I’ll finish with the question that all of Minivan’s former friends would eventually ask, whenever they gathered together long enough for the subject to arise.

"What the hell happened to Minivan?"

Here’s the answer, I think: nothing.

Nothing happened to Minivan. Nothing at all.

He was always that guy, and he always thought the things he thought.

What changed was that he was given a lot of language with which to express those ideas, and access to enough other people who thought that way too, that it created a critical mass of permission.

The permission allowed him to change his attitudes and actions, and created a lot of other people willing to accommodate and normalize his antisocial anti-reality behavior, rather than reject it out of hand.

In college you could be pretty conservative, honestly. It was a pretty conservative place. But you couldn't behave like Minivan later would.

You’d be understood to be a far-right extremist, and people would then treat you like a far-right extremist.

Which is what you'd be.

I think it just wasn't possible for Minivan to be what he later became, because the atmosphere wasn't conducive to the possibility.

But then the atmosphere changed.

If we want to change it back, it's worth thinking about how atmospheres change.

(source)

#politics #republicans #donald trump #overton window #stove minivan #authoritarianism #deplorables #trumpublicans #maga

[probablyasocialecologist]

Where poverty has declined, it was not capitalism but rather progressive social movements and public policies, arising in the mid-20th century, that freed people from deprivation. While more research is needed to confirm this point, it is worth noting that these findings are consistent with previous studies. Amartya Sen (1981) finds that between 1960 and 1977, the countries that made the strongest achievements in life expectancy and literacy were those that invested in public provisioning. Countries governed by communist parties (Cuba, Vietnam, China, etc.) performed exceptionally well, as did countries with state-led industrial policies (South Korea, Taiwan, etc.). Similarly, Cereseto and Waitzkin (1986) find that in 1980, socialist planned economies performed better on life expectancy, mean years of schooling, and other social indicators than their capitalist counterparts at a similar level of economic development. Navarro (1993) reached similar conclusions: when it comes to life expectancy and mortality, Cuba performed considerably better than the capitalist states of Latin America, and China performs better than India. Navarro also found that, amongst the developed capitalist countries, the social democracies with generous welfare states (i.e., Scandinavia) have superior health outcomes to neo-liberal states like the US. Poverty alleviation and gains in human health have historically been linked to socialist political movements and public action, not to capitalism.

Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel, Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century

#capitalism #poverty #socialism

[mariacallous]

BERLIN – Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, changed everything for Ukraine, for Europe, and for global politics. The world entered a new era of great-power rivalry in which war could no longer be excluded. Apart from the immediate victims, Russia’s aggression most concerned Europe. A great power seeking to extinguish an independent smaller country by force challenges the core principles upon which the European order of states has organized itself for decades.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war stands in stark contrast to the self-dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, which occurred in a largely non-violent manner. Since the “Gorbachev miracle” – when the Soviet Union started pursuing liberalizing reforms in the 1980s – Europeans had begun to imagine that Immanuel Kant’s vision of perpetual peace on the continent might be possible. It was not.

The problem was that many Russian elites’ interpretation of the globally significant events of the late 1980s could not be more opposed to Kant’s idea. They saw the demise of the great Russian empire (which the Soviets had recreated) as a devastating defeat. Though they had no choice but to accept the humiliation, they told themselves they would do so only temporarily until the balance of power had changed. Then the great historical revision could begin.

Thus, the 2022 attack on Ukraine should be viewed as merely the most ambitious of the revisionist wars Russia has waged since Putin came to power. We can expect many more, especially if Donald Trump returns to the White House and effectively withdraws the United States from NATO.

But Putin’s latest war not only changed the rules of co-existence on the European continent; it also changed the global order. By triggering a sweeping re-militarization of foreign policy, the war has seemingly returned us to a time, deep in the twentieth century, when wars of conquest were a staple of the great-power toolkit. Now, like then, might makes right.

Even during the decades-long Cold War, there was no risk of a “new Sarajevo” – the political fuse that detonated the first World War – because the standoff between two nuclear superpowers subordinated all other interests, ideologies, and political conflicts. What mattered were the superpowers’ own claims to power and stability within the territories they controlled. The risk of another world war had been replaced by the risk of mutual assured destruction, which functioned as an automatic stabilizer within the bipolar system of the Cold War.

Behind Putin’s war on Ukraine is the neo-imperial goal that many Russian elites share: to make Russia great again by reversing the results of the collapse of the Soviet Union. On December 8, 1991, the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine met in Białowieża National Park and agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union, reducing a “superpower” to a regional (albeit still nuclear-armed) power in the form of the Russian Federation.

No, Putin does not want to revive the communist Soviet Union. Today’s Russian elite knows that the Soviet system could not be sustained. Putin has embraced autocracy, oligarchy, and empire to restore Russia’s status as a global power, but he also knows that Russia lacks the economic and technological prerequisites to achieve this on its own.

For its part, Ukraine wants to join the West – meaning the European Union and the transatlantic security community of NATO. Should it succeed, it would probably be lost to Russia for good, and its own embrace of Western values would pose a grave danger to Putin’s regime. Ukraine’s modernization would lead Russians to ask why their political system has consistently failed to achieve similar results. From a “Great Russia” perspective, it would compound the disaster of 1991. That is why the stakes in Ukraine are so high, and why it is so hard to imagine the conflict ending through compromise.

Even in the case of an armistice along the frozen front line, neither Russia nor Ukraine will distance themselves politically from their true war aims. The Kremlin will not give up on the complete conquest and subjugation (if not annexation) of Ukraine, and Ukraine will not abandon its goal of liberating all its territory (including Crimea) and joining the EU and NATO. An armistice thus would be a volatile interim solution involving the defense of a highly dangerous “line of control” on which Ukraine’s freedom and Europe’s security depend.

Since Russia no longer has the economic, military, and technological capabilities to compete for the top spot on the world stage, its only option is to become a permanent junior partner to China, implying quasi-voluntary submission under a kind of second Mongol vassalage. Let us not forget: Russia survived two attacks from the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – by Napoleon and Hitler, respectively. The only invaders who have conquered it were the Mongols in the winter of 1237-38. Throughout Russia’s history, its vulnerability in the east has had far-reaching consequences.

The main geopolitical divide of the twenty-first century will center on the Sino-American rivalry. Though Russia will hold a junior position, it nonetheless will play an important role as a supplier of raw materials and – owing to its dreams of empire – as a permanent security risk. Whether this will be enough to satisfy Russian elites’ self-image is an open question.

[hazardous-waste-containment]

“Nationalist Movements and Fascist Ideology in Chile,” Jean Grugel (1985)

While they are relatively happy with the current personalist system of government built around the figure of Pinochet himself, [nacionalistas] regard this as only an interim solution. They would be happier still to see the formation of a movimiento cívico at base level to lend active popular support to the regime—though clearly, as Pinochet’s popularity steadily wanes, the time for this has past. In this sense the Constitution of 1980 was a disappointment for the nacionalistas, based as it was on the regime’s neo-liberalism. The nationalist magazine, Avanzada, criticized it as being ‘more or less the same as the constitution of 1925, with the addition of the [anti-communist] Ley de defensa de la democracia’. It added, ‘experience has demonstrated that this system has failed’.

Their own preferred project is one of ‘functionalist’ or ‘nationalist’ democracy, i.e. corporatism [..]. As yet, the grandiose constitutional and political model of the nacionalistas has met with as little success as their economic programme, and for the same reason: the military regime is intent, above all on demobilization, and the project of the nacionalistas is one of hierarchical controlled participation. [..]

Currently, while nacionalistas have close contacts with the Pinochet regime, they are as far removed as ever from real influence. As a result of their alienation from power, a few nacionalistas have gone into open opposition, and are attempting to forge links with small agriculturalists from Southern Chile—traditional supporters of nacionalismo—in protest at the government’s economic policies. These include Roberto Thieme, ex-Secretary of Patria y Libertad. Thieme criticizes the bulk of the nacionalistas because

I don’t understand how those hard-line nacionalistas . . . can continue to offer a nationalist alternative to a government serving only the interests of foreigners.

The majority, however, are tied to Pinochet, and to defending the ‘mission’ of the Armed Forces, because, policy differences notwithstanding, their fate is irrevocably bound up with that of the current military regime.

#reading #varieties of fascism #there wasn't a good way to format this #anyways not even all the 70s nacionalistas were exactly fascists

[gsirvitor]

You seem more of a classical liberal in my opinion. I almost dismissed your page when reading your bio stating you are a liberal given the current state of extremism related to the terms liberal and conservative. I like your ideas and many of your comments seem rooted in an understanding of the need for objective reality. This is why I think you should distinguish your particular set of liberal ideologies from the current mainstream ideologies being spread today such as Trans or Gender X is the only root out of being a generational oppressor. https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_ideologies

Classical Liberalism is a branch of Liberalism, however it differs from the base ideological framework I follow.

Today there are four ideological frameworks which claim the label of Liberal, some rightly so, others not so much.

Liberalism is the foundation, it is a political and moral philosophy based on four foundational rights, that of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. 

From these four foundational rights the other rights under liberalism can be derived, those being private property, market economies, individual rights, including civil rights and human rights, liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion and the right to the defense of self and property.

Liberals are committed to individualism, liberty, and equal rights and holds these rights to be intrinsic to the individual, following natural rights philosophy. They believe these goals require a free economy with minimal to no government interference. Some elements of this gave birth to Conservatism and Libertarianism.

Classical Liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech.

However, Classical Liberalism holds that rights are justified by custom rather than as natural rights. While classical liberals aspire to a minimum of state activity, they accept the principle of government intervention in the economy.

Social Liberalism is a political philosophy and a false variety of liberalism that endorses social justice and claims to want the expansion of civil and political rights. It is economically based on the social market economy and views the common good as harmonious with the individual's freedom.

Its socioeconomic model combines a free-market economic system with social policies and enough regulation to establish both fair competition within the market and a welfare state.

Its social model is based on mob rule, instead of what's good for the goose is good for the gander, it's what's good for the gander is good for the goose. If you hadn't guessed by now it's a form of Socialism using Liberalism as a skinsuit.

Neo Liberalism is distinct from liberalism insofar as it does not advocate laissez-faire economic policy but instead is highly constructivist and advocates a strong state to bring about market-like reforms in every aspect of society.

This pseudo"market fundamentalism" has led to a neglect of social goods not captured by economic indicators, erosion of democracy, a promotion of global collectivism, economic inefficiency and the disregard of the individual as nothing more than numbers on a spreadsheet used to inflate GDP.

I know my political ideologies, and appreciate your concern, but it is an unfounded concern, I choose my words and labels wisely, I am a Liberal and surrendering that label to Leftists does nothing but provide an ideological smokescreen beneath which they can hide from criticism.

[radicalurbanista]

tweet thread

it’s wild and infuriating to see how white LGBT people are levering an axis of oppression to justify gentrifying working class neighborhoods and are weaponizing (and misusing) nativist points. The neo-colonial arguments are going to fit perfectly within the normal liberal framework that has no class consciousness, sees identities as a pyramid of oppression, and has no imagination outside capitalist economics.

Reminders for my followers:

YIMBY is a pro-market movement for housing & infrastructure

YIMBY policies are somewhere between right-wing to center

Market development is the cause of most problems with housing and infrastructure, supporting more of it cannot solve the problems

All workforce housing should cost $0 to live in and all land across the Americas should be returned to the indigenous peoples it was stolen from

#urban planning #housing #tweet #LGBT

[loonie-tics]

The Conservatives Are Going to Win the Next Election

Perhaps the most remarkable responses in the Abacus poll were in answer to the question of whether the government had a “good plan, a bad plan, or no plan” to deal with a number of issues. On issue after issue – cost of living, housing, economic growth, immigration – few (25 per cent or less) were confident the government had a good plan. Larger numbers said they had a bad plan. But the largest single group in most cases believed they had no plan.

and

(Even today, while just 17 per cent of respondents told Abacus they believe the Liberals should be re-elected, another 33 per cent believe it’s “time for a change, but there isn’t a good alternative.” Still, 51 per cent believe “it’s time for a change,” whatever the alternative, which is telling enough.)

Barring anything really remarkable happening, the Conservatives are going to win. That's just the long and the short of it. The current housing crisis is just too much to overcome, and to be fair, the Liberals have done nothing at all to help. Jagmeet Singh's plan to help people is to give prospective home buyers more money, further inflating house prices and even further separating haves and have-nots. The left in this country is broken. The NDP isn't leftist, it's leftish at best.

If Poilievre has any sense, he'll ignore the transphobic and conspiracy theorist side of his party and not include the policies they voted on at the party convention. The younger people of the country are already with him, and they could rightfully make the point that while the Conservatives have some bad social policy, the lack of affordable housing affects trans people at least as badly as everyone else. It hits everyone including immigrants, people of colour, students, whatever group you could care to name. Healthcare is increasingly unavailable to everyone, let alone specialized healthcare that affirms one's gender.

It's honestly a nightmare—I don't think Conservatives will make a meaningful difference to housing in this country, but at this point people are willing to give ANYTHING a try in the hopes that things might get better, and I honestly cannot blame them.

When Stephen Harper was PM, it was easy for me to criticize the people voting for him as selfish and uninformed, willing to throw fellow citizens under the bus. But people need places to LIVE. I'm not going to castigate a 25 year old for thinking they deserve a place to rent or buy at a reasonable cost and turning to what seems to be the only port in a storm.

We knew the Liberal party was a busted, Neo-Liberal, corporatist party that threw scraps to the poor and benefitted the rich, but it's truly disappointing to see how lacklustre the NDP has been in the last couple of years.

I think we might be able to get away with a minority Conservative government if we're diligent and vote strategically, but I think that may be the best we can do.

#cpc #pierre poilievre #ndp #lpc #cdnpoli #housing #lgbtq rights #justin trudeau #jagmeet singh

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Random home in France looks like after some foreign enemy invasion, 2023. Source: Daniel Foubert

P.S. Looking at these ruins of French cities, I remembered some of my research work during my studies on the problems of immigrant social integration around 1998, when as a result of my research work it was revealed that the followers of extreme religious ideologies do not integrate well in Western society and the policy of "open" borders will cause: 1) an increase in the risks of terrorism ; 2) the rise of right-wing radical populist movements and right wing extremism as response; 3) the economic stagnation of Western society because it will be forced to waste resources on society control, censorship and repressive institutions and etc...

Basically, in the conclusions of my research already in 1998, I politely said that based on the historical experience of the Baltic states that experienced enforced mass immigration of hostiles, the "policy of integration" practiced in the West is complete bullshit...! It is true that local neo-liberals and leftists after my research work become very upset...! To be fair, it was fun to confront these neo-liberal and leftist fools later, after 9/11, when I was proven right...

Probably, it is likely that Western politicians' fascination with the jihadist import business and lies hidden behind wall of political correctness will cause the collapse of the EU...! Indigenous Europeans ARE NOT HAPPY with their stupid politicians!!!

#France #invasion #useful fools #riots #EU #Europe

[horsesource]

“The most important word in Lippmann’s vocabulary is adaptation.

The agenda of neo-liberalism was guided by the need for constant adaptation of human beings and institutions to an inherently variable economic order, based on general, unrelenting competition. [..]

Lippmann indicated two specifically human aspects of this general policy of adaptation to competition: eugenics and education.

Adaptation required new human beings, equipped with qualities that were not only different from, but superior to, those possessed by previous human beings:

The economy requires not only that the quality of the human stock, the equipment of men for life, shall be maintained at some minimum of efficiency, but that the quality should be progressively improved. To live successfully in a world of the increasing interdependence of specialized work requires a continual increase in adaptability

What was particularly required was a major policy of mass education, which prepared human beings for the specialist economic functions that awaited them:

There is the whole unresolved task of educating great populations, of equipping men for a life in which they must specialize, yet be capable of changing their speciality. The economy of the division of labor requires [..] a population in which these eugenic and education problems are effectively dealt with.

What necessitated this major educational policy for the benefit of the masses, not merely a small cultivated elite, was the fact that people would have to change profession and firm, adapt to new techniques and face generalized competition.” —Dardot and Laval

#‘an inquiry into the principles of the good society’ was published less than 6 years prior to Kanner’s ‘autistic disturbances’

[indizombie]

The birth of the 21st century unleashed the onslaught of neo-liberal economic policies and the religious fundamentalist insurgence changed our concept of nation, nationalism, and politics. The Hindutva politics of cultural nationalism and its violent disposition toward indigenous and minority sections in this country provoked us to ask “Who sings the nation?” (Spivak) and “Whose imagined community?” (Partha Chatterjee). The issues such as the Babri Masjid case, Muthalaq case, Uniform Civil Code, the CAA, anti-conversion laws, and attacks on Dalit/Tribal Christians so and so forth have unveiled the wretched status of minorities in this country. Realizing that Muslims are hard to nationalize/ Hinduise, Christians are now targeted to be  integrated into the pan-Indian Hindu cultural identity. Recently, some of the church leaders are satiated through frequent visits and political offers by the communal forces, and of course, few of them have already preyed on it due to the issues connected with foreign funds or any other personal issues of corruption. However, Christians should not forget the ideological position of Hindutva as it renders Christians, Muslims, and Communists internal threats to the Indian Nation.

Fr. Dr. Y.T Vinayaraj, director, Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society (CISRS)

#CISRS #YT Vinayaraj #India #Hindutva #Babri Masjid case #Triple Talaq case #Uniform Civil Code #CAA #anti-conversion laws #Tribal Christians #Dalit Christians #Hindu cultural identity #Indian Nation

[warwickroyals]

How did World War I and II effect Sutherland? From the Royal family to the everyday man.

Rapid fire because this is an extremely broad question:

World War I - Less emphasis on political unions as a form of diplomacy, development of modern warfare technology and conventions, more isolationist policies, prohibition in the direct aftermath, large scale economic downturn

World War II - Sunderland's recognition as a middle power through it's entry into various global organizations, the Iron Curtain/Red Scare, the early development of neo-liberal policies that would become dominant in the 80s onwards, wide-spread economic growth and development of the modern "middle class"

#warwick.answers #anonymous

[autolenaphilia]

The fact that the recently elected Swedish government is a right-wing one that relies on a neo-/postfascist party, the Sweden democrats, to govern has really radicalized me. Or at least strongly reinforced my conviction that we need to abolish capitalism. I live in Sweden and I’m honestly afraid what might happen. So I started thinking a lot, about what lead up to this point. So here is a history lesson.

The fact this happened in Sweden is illustrative of social democracy’s failure to control capitalism. The Swedish social democratic party governed the country uninterrupted from 1932 to 1976. Sweden stands out even in the social democratic dominated nordic countries because of this. Probably no other state is as thoroughly formed by the idea of social democracy. And social democracy in the modern sense that notion capitalism can be reformed to be more humane. Social democratic parties started as marxist and socialist, but gradually abandoned the idea of abolishing capitalism in favour of reforming it. Instead they turned to Keynesianism. Keynes agreed with Marx that capitalism tended towards crisis, but argued that state intervention could correct for the boom and bust cycle of the free capitalist market. And this enabled social democrats to reject the marxist idea that capitalism was doomed to failure. Instead capitalism should work to provide shared prosperity.

Instead of class struggle, the social democrats advocated class collaboration, between workers and capitalists. And in Sweden this sort of inter-class agreement was literally formalized in the famous Saltsjöbaden agreement of 1938 in which the government created an accord between the association of the major labour unions and the employers association.

Part of the reason Sweden and the other nordic countries became a role model for social democracy was that they started implementing such reforms early in comparison to the rest of Europe. Particularly interesting is that Swedish economists in the Stockholm school had ideas that anticipated Keynes’s 1936 General Theory by several years. This inspired Ernst Wigforss, the social democratic finance minister of Sweden in the 1930s and 40s, to suggest and implement proto-keynesian ideas as early as 1932. He argued that state deficit spending could save Sweden from the great depression. And it worked, up to a point.

The emerging nordic model became a subject of international discussion. Yet Sweden for some reason stood among the other nordic countries, as exemplified by American Journalist Marquis Childs who wrote a book called Sweden: The Middle Way, published in 1936. It was widely read, including by FDR. Childs saw Sweden as presenting an ideal middle way between the laissez-faire capitalism that caused the great depression and soviet-state socialism. Of course his analysis was wrong, Sweden was and is still capitalist, workers don’t control the means of production. Any meaningful definition of socialism isn’t “when the government does stuff”. Yet Childs was a major influence on the foreign and American views of Sweden.

And in the post-war world, the ideals of social democracy and keynesian economics spread far beyond Scandinavia and even the social democratic parties. People had lived through the great depression, the rise of fascism and the resulting world war, and wanted at all cost to avoid repeating that experience. This was fertile ground for keynesian economics and the social democratic welfare state to become dominant ideas. It was thought that with keynesian economic policies and the welfare state, we wouldn’t have major crises causing massive poverty and a collapse into fascism. This view extended far beyond formal social democrats, and these policies were adopted by liberals and conservatives as well. There existed a kind of post-war consensus that this was the best way to govern capitalism.

And during the 1945-1973 boom period for the western world, it seemed to work. The western economy went through a sustained growth period recovering from the Great Depression and WWII. Strong labour unions, full employment, progressive taxation and the welfare state did ensure that the wealth created was shared by the wider population to an unprecedented degree.

Yet that period of recovery growth would eventually naturally exhaust itself. Furthermore, the growth was based on oil, and the 1973 oil crisis brought it to an end. An economic crisis begun. Keynesianism proved unable to prevent this crisis, and the mix of inflation and recession that the 1970s crisis showed seemed to contradict its ideas.

By 1973, the old spectre of class struggle had reasserted itself, from both sides.

As proto-keynesian economist Michal Kalecki had predicted in 1943, the long period of full employment did remove the fear of unemployment among workers, making them more bold in demanding and fighting for higher wages and better conditions. So a new period of labour strife started in the late 1960s, including in Sweden, with the wild miners strike of 1969-70 being the beginning. Capitalism is traditionally dependent on a "reserve army of labour" and the threat of unemployment to keep workers disciplined, to make workers do what capitalists tell them to do. And with full employment that threat is gone, leading to labour making bolder demands.

And capitalists don't like that loss of their power. When the crisis of the 1970s happened, capitalists were no longer content to share their profits with the workers in the same way they had since 1945, since those profits were no longer growing. Capitalists are and were a small part of the population, but despite democracy their wealth enables them to influence society to further their own interests at the disadvantage of the majority. The rich used their wealth to fund and promote media and politicians and think thanks to create a new neoliberal policy regime to replace the keynesian welfare state one. And with modern technology (such as containerization) and loosened capital controls allowing for an unprecedented mobility of capital, capitalists were now able to punish governments who had too high taxes and strict labour laws for their liking by simply moving their capital somewhere else.

So the welfare state in western states were rolled back, and now is a shadow of its old self. The benefits still exist, but degrading means testing and meagre payments make getting on them a kafkaesque nightmare. Employment is often precarious and unemployment is deliberately kept high via monetarist means to keep workers disciplined.

People feel naturally discontent with this situation. And the right-wing is able to exploit by blaming immigrants or other minority groups (like trans people) for these problems, while it’s capitalism and their own neoliberal policies that have created them.

In Sweden specifically, the period of renewed labour struggle starting around 1969 actually led the Social Democratic government of Olof Palme to implement a wave of new reforms in an effort to placate the labour movement. The welfare state was strengthened as were labour rights.

Yet workers grew more radical. And in 1976 the main confederation of trade unions, LO, adopted a plan by social democratic economist Rudolf Meidner for the socialization of the means of production via "wage-earners funds". Basically capitalist profits would be taxed by the governments and put into funds controlled by the trade unions to buy shares of corporations. It was a gradualist means of achieving socialism. These ideas did not come from any outside radical forces, but were deeply rooted in the social democratic movement. LO was staunchly social democratic, the party viewed itself as its political wing and Meidner had designed the social democratic wage policy decades before. They had just moved back to the original idea of social democracy, of a reformist path to socialism.

The wage-earners funds created a massive debate. Even within the social democratic party it was opposed by the party's right-wing. Yet the party felt obligation towards the trade unions which it was meant to represent.

Outside the party, the reaction to the funds idea was even worse. Capitalists, themselves organized in an employers association (SAF), naturally saw the idea as a threat. The capitalists decided to use their wealth to conduct a massive political and advertising campaign against the Meidner funds plan, socialism and trade unions, and instead promote neoliberal ideas. The methods used were basically the same as in the neoliberal reaction in the western world as a whole. They used their money to fund politicians, media and even created a neoliberal think-thank (Timbro), all to promote policies which would be in their interest.

And it worked. The social democrats finally lost power in the 1976 election. While the resulting liberal-conservative government did not reallly do much neoliberal reforming of the economy it meant the end of social democratic political hegemony.

The Social democrats returned to power in 1982, but times had changed, the party was much less radical. They implemented a neutered version of the wage-earners funds that wouldn't socialize the economy. And the general economic policy was set by finance minister Kjell-Olof Feldt, who was on the right of the party and did some deregulations inspired by neoliberal economics.The social democrats lost power again in 1991, and the right-wing government really put the country on the same neoliberal path followed by the rest of the western world. Something that was largely continued by the social democrats when they again ruled in 1994-2006.

And the consequences of neoliberalism again were the same as in the western world. this created the conditions for the recent Swedish election, where the post-fascist party got 20 % of the votes.

Sweden is not alone in this development, but it’s a powerful illustration because it is idealized so often as a role model for social democracy. You can still see echoes of Marquis Childs in the recent rhetoric of Bernie Sanders about the nordic countries. Now it illustrates its failures. The social democratic reformers did meaningfully improve lives, and we should fight for those reforms, but they were not able to tame capitalism as they claimed. The capitalists still had their capital, their wealth and were thus able to strike back against those reforms, as the neoliberal revolutions from the 70s on proved. And while Swedish Social Democrats to their credit tried to move beyond capitalism, the Meidner plan also proves how gradualist and reformist attempt to achieve socialism give capitalists time to organize against them. The 1970-73 Allende Government's attempt in Chile is a darker example, as it lead to a right-wing coup and dictatorship.

Those reforms were only won by class struggle from the workers in the first place. Sweden is a very good example for that. It had a strong and highly organized working class, and labour relations were very volatile prior to the Saltsjöbaden agreement. In fact, the strong 1932 election result for the social democrats was partly due to popular outrage at the 1931 Ådalen shootings, when the military fired on striking demonstrating workers. It was this background of labour struggle that enabled the reforms in the first place. The same thing was true of the 1970s reforms.

Those contradictions in interest between workers and capitalists started to reassert themselves once the 1945-1973 growth period exhausted itself and such contradictions were apparent even before then, with a more militant working class in the years leading up to that moment.

When the old-school marxian economist Paul Mattick wrote in his classic book Marx and Keynes from 1969 that “the Keynesian solution to the economic problems that beset the capitalist world can be of only temporary avail, and that the conditions under which it can be effective are in the process of dissolution.” he was proven completely right only a few years later.

It’s sad that the left has not fully taken that to heart. It’s depressing that even supposed radical socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn ran on mid-century social democratic platform where the basis is keynesian mixed-economy policies. Even the Left Party here in Sweden (that I’m a member of for lack of anything more viable) advocates what is basically mid-century social democracy.

We already know from experience that it doesn’t work, just like we know that soviet-style Stalinist “socialism” doesn’t work. If the flaws of the Soviet model are evident in Stalin and now Putin (and for that matter Mao and Deng), we can similarly judge social democracy by its present day results.

When even the social democratic model country of Sweden is in the beginning stages of a fascist revival, you can no longer argue that it’s a model that fixed capitalism’s problems."The Middle way" has reached its end.

And Sweden is just a particularly telling example. The pattern of neoliberal reversals of social democratic reforms leading to poverty and insecurity particularly in times of economic crisis and in turn inspires fascist revivals is common all over the western world. When your model leads to that kind of results, it’s proven to not work. The modern day social democrat is stuck arguing that we should turn back the clock to a time when their proposed solution hadn’t yet lead to these results.

And our ability to turn the clock back is limited. The material conditions, such as limited mobility of capital, that sustained social democracy’s glory days of 1945-73 doesn’t exist anymore. Why should we with our modern awareness of climate change even want to recreate the oil-driven growth of mid 20th century Europe?

The larger ecological crisis and climate change is further evidence that capitalism is unsustainable. And I think the only realistic solution at this point in time is the radical one: abolishing capitalism.

#my writings

[mariacallous]

Across the globe, a diverse group of nations that view world politics differently from the United States are rising and flexing their diplomatic muscle in ways that are complicating American statecraft. From Africa to Latin America, to the Middle East and Asia, these emerging powers refuse to fit into traditional U.S. thinking about the world order. The successful pursuit of American interests in the mid-21st century calls for a strategy that attracts them toward the United States and its ideals but without expecting them to line up in lockstep with Washington.

“We refuse to be a pawn in a new cold war,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, said in November 2022. His views are shared in some form or another by leaders of Argentina, Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey. All 10 of these nations are either in the G-20 or have economies large enough to warrant membership. A majority of them have populations larger than Germany’s. Collectively, they make up around a third of the world’s population and a fifth of its economic production, while also constituting a major share of the so-called global south’s population and economic production.

In the next two decades, emerging powers like these will climb the ranks of the world’s largest economies and populations, reshaping the structure of world politics in the process. Their diplomacy is increasingly ambitious. And they are taking positions that run counter to those of the United States with growing boldness. Washington and its allies should accept not only that these powers are emerging, but also that as they grow stronger, they will not align with Washington’s preferences on many international issues, especially when it comes to Russia and China.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, most of these powers declined to join the U.S.-led coalition to support Ukraine, refusing to take concrete action with sanctions on Russia or weapons for Kyiv. Some emerging powers, such as India and Turkey, even expanded economic ties with Russia.

Meanwhile, several of them pursued active diplomacy to end the war, challenging the U.S. policy of supporting Ukraine “as long as it takes.” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for example, pitched a plan to assemble a peace club to end the war and urged Washington to “stop encouraging war and start talking about peace.” Separately, Jokowi visited Kyiv and then Moscow, urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to start a dialogue. South Africa led a delegation of African leaders to end the war, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has maintained a working relationship with Putin and sought to keep diplomatic channels open.

Most of these emerging powers also have warm ties with Beijing. They are reluctant to do anything that would endanger their economic relations with China. On a visit to Beijing in 2023, for example, Lula pledged to work with China to “balance world geopolitics”—a phrase that implied upending American global primacy. Even India, which sees China as an adversary and has grown much closer to the United States in recent years, is very unlikely to back the United States militarily in the event of a war over Taiwan.

Washington thus needs to avoid the urge to frame this world historical moment as a neo-Cold War ideological struggle. When the United States appeals to the emerging powers to sacrifice their interests for the liberal world order, they suspect that it is simply trying to woo them for its hard-power struggles with Russia and China. Their officials are quick to cite the 2003 Iraq War as evidence that Washington is not so committed as it claims to the liberal international order. They point to the many cases where the United States has compromised on its high principles and backed autocrats. President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza has only given them another reason to doubt the veracity of American claims to exceptional moral authority.

Most of these emerging powers have limited political headroom anyway for ideological struggles of the kind that so often animate U.S. foreign policy. Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar drove this point home when he pointed out that Europe’s ability to wean itself from Russian energy was a luxury that India did not have. “I have a population at $2,000 [per capita annual income],” he said. “I also need energy, and I am not in a position to pay high prices for oil.”

Given frictions between Washington and so many emerging powers of late, it can be tempting to disregard them and focus solely on countering Beijing and Moscow. But this would be a mistake. The emerging powers don’t pose a threat of the kind that U.S. adversaries can, but they also can’t just be ignored. China and Russia are certainly not going to ignore them—in fact, they are actively courting their leaders for political ties and market access with the hope of building a network of political and economic partners to obviate the need for ties to the West.

The emerging powers are also very open to China’s backing for alternative international institutions, such as the BRICS New Development Bank, that offer the prospect of infusions of capital without the bothersome conditions that accompany Western loans. They are critical of many aspects of the U.S.-led international order, which they see as dominated by former colonial powers and unfairly structured to serve the interests of the world’s wealthiest nations.

The good news for Washington is that the emerging powers don’t want to be vassals of China any more than they want to be vassals of America. They are not swing states ready to pick sides in a neo-Cold War. In fact, they actively seek a more fluid and multipolar world, one in which they believe they will have more leverage and freedom of maneuver. Many, moreover, maintain closer economic ties with the United States than China, especially when it comes to investment and defense cooperation.

Washington can make progress with these powers if it puts aside grand ideological framings about the liberal world order and focuses on developing a positive value proposition that offers meaningful benefit to their economic and political development, sovereignty, and aspirations for an enhanced voice in international affairs.

Although trade agreements have become politically unpopular for Republicans and Democrats alike, market access remains a powerful tool the United States has to this end. Other mutually beneficial economic arrangements are imaginable, focused on specific sectors and packages. So is cooperation on infrastructure investments, technology manufacturing, energy transition initiatives, deforestation, public health, and other areas.

Even when making progress on common interests, the emerging powers will also maintain substantial relationships with U.S. adversaries. Washington should not fall into the trap of judging the quality of its relations with the emerging powers by the strength of their ties to China or Russia.

Ultimately, the best way to engage with these nations is to help them strengthen their sovereignty so that they can resist the influence of U.S. adversaries and gain a real stake in sustaining a peaceful world order. This will take time and a change of approach but is likely to pay long-term benefits to America’s prosperity and continued global leadership.

[beardedmrbean]

Sweden's new foreign minister has ditched its pioneering "feminist foreign policy", saying the label has become more important than its content.

But Tobias Billstrom said "we will always stand for gender equality".

The previous left-wing government launched the policy in 2014, becoming the first in the world to put gender equality at the heart of its dealings with other nations.

The self-labelled "feminist government" had ruffled feathers globally.

Mr Billstrom announced the radical policy shift moments after Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristerrson, presented his new government appointments on Tuesday.

"Gender equality is a core value for Sweden and this government, but we will not conduct a feminist foreign policy," he said.

"Because labels on things have a tendency to cover up the content", he said.

The online web page for the government's former policy was no longer available.

A former foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, launched the policy emphasising the importance of the three 'R's: "rights, representation and resources".

Rights to political participation in civil society, economic emancipation and sexual and reproductive rights were just some of the flagship points of the foreign policy.

But the Swedish Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg, from the Liberal party which has previously supported a "feminist foreign policy", said that "so long" as she remains in post she will "make sure the government's policies are feminist".

The radical foreign policy has resulted in diplomatic disputes around the world.

In 2015, Ms Wallstrom's, remarks about Saudi Arabia's record on women's right and democracy led to the Kingdom to recall its ambassador to Stockholm.

Sweden then swiftly ended a longstanding weapons deal with Saudi Arabia after it blocked a speech by the former foreign minister. Saudi Arabia called the remarks "offensive" and a "blatant interference in its internal affairs".

During Sweden's time on the UN security council in 2017, it worked to include a resolution that sexual and gender-based violence could be grounds for sanctions.

Swedish membership also encouraged women's rights advocates from Somalia and Nigeria to speak at the council.

Sweden also claimed that it helped to contribute to new policies on female political representation in Moldova and Somalia, the inclusion of gender equality issues in Colombia's 2016 peace deal, and also contributed to new legislation in some 20 countries, often related to gender-based violence, female genital mutilation and child marriage.

However the policy was not without its critics. Swedish civil society organisation criticised the former government's arms exports to authoritarian regimes with a record of human rights abuses.

The new government, backed by a far-right party, also named a 26-year-old climate minister, in the home country of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The new appointments come more than a month after Swedes headed to the polls.

On Friday, the country's minority coalition government was announced after Mr Kristersson reached a deal with two smaller parties, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, despite the Social Democrats gaining the largest share of votes. However, the left-wing coalition that the Social Democrats formed with other parties was three seats smaller than the right's.

The biggest winners in the 11 September election were the far-right Sweden Democrats who emerged as the second-largest party behind the Social Democrats - who have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s - taking around one-in-five votes. Born out of a neo-Nazi movement at the end of the 1980s, the anti-immigration party entered parliament with 5.7% of the vote in 2010, increasing this to 17.5% in 2018.

While the Sweden Democrats will remain outside the government, they have pledged to back it in parliament to give it a majority in exchange for policy commitments, notably on immigration and crime.

#nunyas news #this is gonna upset some people

[djuvlipen]

I was going through Angéla Kóczé’s thesis called Gender, ethnicy and class: Romani women’s political activism and social struggles (here) and she explained something I had already noticed: the complete hold neo-liberal, US private organizations have over european roma women organizations.

This control is extremely detrimental to the Roma feminist movement as liberalism is fundamentally hostile to the idea of female liberation, which cannot be achieved without challenging and overthrowing the capitalist system that exploits women. I am gonna explain Angéla Kóczé’s take below

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

Angéla Kóczé is a Hungarian Roma feminist, a sociologist and chair of romani studies (so she is very cool already)

Kóczé links the rise of Roma rights movement to the 1990s: a historical period where liberal ideologies are very widespread and commonly accepted as anticapitalist and socialist movements took a toll following the fall of communism in the East:

“Europe, particularly its post-socialist countries, has connections to global forces that inevitably impinge on the current trajectory of the transnational movement for ‘Roma rights’ (Guilhot 2005; Ost 2005; Trehan 2001). Unlike these other movements, the ‘Roma rights’ movement emerged at a time of overwhelming neo-liberal policy consensus in post-socialist Europe, and one corollary of this development, as I shall demonstrate, was the marketization of human rights through the interventions of human rights entrepreneurs, particularly those affiliated with George Soros’s Open Society Institute.” (emphasis mine)

You will know George Soros and the OSI as the creator and main actor behind the financing of pimp and pro-decrim lobbies, such as the Red Umbrella Fund, “ the first global fund guided by and for sex workers”. I don’t think I need to tell you why having the man financing and creating powerful pimp lobbies as the main investor in Roma rights organizations can be detrimental to the cause.

As Koczé adds: “More than any other single philanthropist, Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros was responsible for the support and promotion of Romani NGO initiatives through the work of the Open Society Institute (OSI), a global network of foundations. The organizations funded and supported by OSI currently form the backbone of the ‘movement’ for the rights of Romani people in post-socialist Europe.”

The Roma, especially women, are one of the most impoverished groups in Europe. Roma women are one of the most sex-trafficked groups in Europe. And here, a billionaire is financing pimp lobbies and Roma rights organizations to help further the neo-liberal agenda, the same ideology keeping Roma (women) impoverished. As Koczé puts it: “In employing the term ‘neo-liberal human rights’, I refer to the phenomenon whereby human rights concerns and campaigning operate within a global capitalist system, and thus become an appendage of the global neo-liberal economic order”.

Radical feminism is anticapitalist in essence. By having a hold over Roma rights organization, male capitalists are 1) preventing a radical questioning of the capitalist system, 2) preventing class consciousness (be it working class or female class consciousness), 3) actively harming Roma activism and feminist roma activism.

Koczé criticizes the neoliberalization of Roma organizations for two reasons:

1) It prevents the formation of feminist organizations that would radically criticize patriarchal societies (aka: addressing the roots of patriarchy): “Mary Kaldor (2003) in her book criticizes the ’New Policy Agenda’, which came after the Cold War, arguing that the ’New Policy Agenda’ combined neoliberal economic strategy with an emphasis on parliamentary democracy. Based on her analysis the NGOs came to be seen as an important mechanism for implementing this agenda. Moreover, she claims that that contemporary NGOs have become ‘tamed’ and turned into the constituencies of the new social movements, having lost their initial radical edge and sharp criticism towards mainstream ideals.”

2) Eastern European (roma) activists are being rendered powerlessness as the political discourse adopts a US framework: “The feeling of powerlessness and lack of agency on the part of eastern European activists, as well as their inability to construct alternative discourses and practices of human rights, resulted in an implicit acceptance of the model of human rights discourses informed by the contemporary neo-liberal ethos (Trehan 2006). Being aware of severe financial dependence on American-based foundations whose political orientations tend to be limited to one particular variant of ‘democratization’––to wit, pro-free market and procedural democratic considerations: constitutional reform, elections, etc.––Eastern European activists seem to be unable to devise more radical means for their human rights advocacy, alternative means and methods that are not reliant on the dominant model of corporatist human rights.”

As a result of all of this, Roma movements are actively disempowered and put aside within their own movement: “This resulted in an interesting collusion of initiatives between the World Bank and the Open Society Institute, with one such initiative being the ongoing ‘Decade of Romani Inclusion: 2005-2015’, which was launched with a donors conference in Budapest in 2004. The politics surrounding this Decade initiative are instructive with Organizers failing to invite many grassroots Romani NGOs and participation being based on selective criteria.” Neoliberalization prevents the creation of radical Roma political groups built by Roma and for Roma. This is the state of the antiracist roma movement and of the feminist roma movement right now. It’s a nightmare. Liberal politics won’t liberate anyone. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house

#Angéla Kóczé #radical feminism #radfems do interact #radfems please interact #terfs do interact #terfs please interact