THE SPECTRE OF LE PEN AND THE SHAME OF THE LEFT

The incumbent candidate falters badly. His main opponent fares barely any better. The candidates from so-called ‘fringe’ parties garner more votes than either of the mainstream ones. The far right gains its biggest success. The only thing striking about the first round of the French elections was that there was nothing striking about it.  It followed the pattern of almost every election across Europe over the past few years.

This Sunday Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande will slug it out in the second round.  Missing, however, will be the politician who delivered probably the most significant result in the first round will, and who arguably will wield the greatest influence upon the French politics in the months to come, whatever the result of the second round: the Front National’s Marine Le Pen.

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 12]: HEGEL AND ROUSSEAU, FREEDOM AND HISTORY

In the series of extracts that I am running from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 13, which looks at the moral ideas of Hegel, Rousseau and Marx, and at the historicisation of ideas of human nature and morality. This extract is taken from the section on Hegel, Rousseau and the debate about freedom and ‘self-realization’.

CHEWING OVER THE OLD YEAR, SPITTING OUT THE NEW

Perhaps not since 1989 have we witnessed a year as momentous as the last one. From the occupation of Tahrir Square to the mass protests in Moscow, from the Euro crisis to the calamity of the Japanese tsunami, from the London riots to the Libyan conflict, from the killing of Osama bin Laden to the death of Vaclav Havel, there was constant ferment throughout 2011. But how will the events of 2011 shape those of 2012? Four thoughts:

1 Most of the Arab world will remain undemocratic. But the political landscape has already been transformed.

2011 began with great hopes that the Arab spring could sweep away the Arab regimes. It finished with fears that not much had changed, and that what had changed may not necessarily have been for the better. Regimes in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia clung on to power, Syria brutally repressed demonstrators, the Egyptian army continued its bloody rule from behind the scenes, and Islamists and Salafists swept to victory in elections in both Egypt and Tunisia.

Both the original over-optimism and the current over-pessimism are misplaced. Revolutions happen quickly. The social and political changes they make possible take much longer to work themselves out.

POLITICS WITHOUT DEMOCRACY, DEMOCRACY WITHOUT POLITICS

It’s startling, and not a little worrying, how quickly the claim that ‘All politicians are useless’ has transmuted into the demand that ‘politicians should be replaced by technocrats who know what they are doing’, a demand that we’re increasingly hearing in response to the Eurozone crisis. From the upheaval in the Eurozone to the ‘Occupy’ movement now spreading across the globe, there are two crises shaping contemporary political debate. The first is, obviously, the economic crisis. The second, perhaps more insidious, crisis is that enveloping democracy.  It is insidious because the problem is not the imposition of tyranny or the formal removal of the right to vote. Rather, the relationship between political change and the democratic process has become so strained that the very meaning of both democracy and politics has become skewed. The ease with which people are now demanding the replacement of politicians with technocrats as the way of dealing European instability is one indicator of this.

OFF WITH THEIR (NOT SO) SYMBOLIC HEADS

It is a family of dysfunctional souls and disreputable characters A family that can boast of friendships with some of the world’s most brutal dictators and with any number of convicted criminals. A family that, in an age that places great value upon equality, democracy, and meritocracy, represents by its very existence the claims of inequality, privilege and unearned power. A family that at a time of austerity and hardship is happy to flaunt its wealth and excess.

By any rational account the British royal family should be the BP of the international stage, a toxic brand treated with derision and contempt. And yet, tomorrow, more than a billion people across the globe are expected to watch the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton (twice the TV audience for the marriage in 1981 of William’s parents, Diana and Charles). How has the royal family managed not only to survive but seemingly to thrive? The answer lies, at least in part, in its ability to surf upon two of the key themes of our age: the rise of celebrity culture and the growing disaffection with politics.

NO GOING BACK. THE ARAB REVOLTS AND THE REMAKING OF THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

The brutal, blood-soaked response of Arab rulers, especially those in Bahrain and Libya, to the revolts engulfing their nations exposes the desperation of old tyrants clinging to the past.  But the revolts themselves reveal the extent to which the Arab political landscape has irrevocably changed.

The ‘strong man’ model of rule that has held sway over much of the Arab world for the past half century has rested primarily on two props: the ability to constrain opposition at home, and willingness of a Great Power, America in particular, to shore up dictatorship. Both the internal and external props of autocracy have become fatally weakened.

CAUGHT IN THE POST-MUBARAK WEB

Essays on and analyses of the post-Mubarak world:

Saba Mahmood on the Architects of the Egyptian Revolution

Olivier Roy on why it has not been an Islamic revolution

Juan Cole on how the labour movement drove the protests

This isn’t 1952 but democrats still need to be wary

Eliis Goldberg wonders if it will be a slow motion coup

‘Bread, social justice and freedom. What’s religious about that?‘

Ned Parker on Egypt’s new breed of Islamists

What next for the Muslim Brotherhood after the uprising?

When the Facebook kids met the generals

Nigel Gibson imagines Fanon in Tahrir Square

Jonathan Wright compares Cairo after Mubarak with Cairo after Sadat

Tom Englehardt on the destruction of Pax Americana

Foreign Policy on the winners and losers of the revolution

MORE THOUGHTS ON HATE SPEECH AND THE LAW

More from my interview with Peter Molnar on hate speech regulation, the whole of which will be published in the forthcoming book Regulating Hate Speech: Content, Context, and Remedies (Cambridge University Press):

Peter Molnar: Do you think that violent acts committed by hateful motivation deserve stricter punishments?

Kenan Malik: I accept that intentions are not just morally but also legally relevant, and that different intentions can result in the imposition of different sentences. But when we make a distinction between, say, murder and manslaughter, we are making a distinction based on the kind or degree of harm the perpetrator intended. When it is suggested, however, that a racist murderer should receive a greater punishment than a non-racist murderer, a different kind of distinction is being drawn. The distinction here is not between the degrees of harm intended – in both cases the killer intended to kill – but between the thoughts that were in the minds of the respective killers. The distinction is between someone who might be thinking, ‘I am going to kill you because I hate you because you looked at me the wrong way’ and someone who might be thinking ‘I am going to kill you because I hate you because you are black.’

What is being criminalized here is simply a thought. And I am opposed to the category of thought crimes. Racist thoughts are morally offensive. But they should not be made a criminal offence.

A REVOLT FOR WHOSE BENEFIT?

How can Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak be eased out of office without causing too much turmoil, or without providing a political opportunity for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood? That’s the question with which many Western leaders are now grappling. The growing consensus seems to be that what Egypt needs is, in the words of Hillary Clinton, an ‘ordered transition’ to a post-Mubarak Egypt and that vice-president Omar Suleiman is the man to manage this.

The idea of an ‘ordered transition’ that could depose Mubarak without unnecessary violence and turmoil would seem to be something to be unreservedly welcomed. Yet we should be skeptical about the proposals being drawn up in Washington, London and Brussels  - not least because they are being drawn up in Washington, London and Brussels and not in Cairo.

The question that the idea of ‘ordered transition’ raises is this: for whose benefit is the revolt now taking on the streets of Cairo? For the benefit of Western nations? Or for that of the people of Egypt?