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What the West gets wrong on Stalin and Putin

CNN – Opinion

Opinion: What the West gets wrong on Stalin and Putin

Opinion by Jade McGlynn – January 20, 2024

Editor’s Note: Jade McGlynn is a non-resident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of two books, “Russia’s War” and ”Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more CNN opinion here.

Last month, a new ‘Stalin Center’ was opened in Barnaul, Siberia. Its aim, like its predecessors’ in the Russian cities of Penza and Bor, is to glorify the Communist dictator.

Jade McGlynn - Jade McGlynn — Jade McGlynn – Jade McGlynn

Alongside a marked increase in Stalin statues across Russia — more than 100 since 2012 — the Stalin centers appear to affirm a simplistic story: The Kremlin is rehabilitating the ‘Vozhd,’ or great leader.

But deeper inspection complicates the story. The first Stalin cultural center opened in 2016, in the western Russian city of Penza, with the support of local Communists — but not Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.

The second such center, which opened in 2021 in Bor, also in the west of the country, was originally a private initiative by a local Communist businessman. It began with a statue of Stalin looming over the Volga River. The mayor of Bor even petitioned for its removal, albeit unsuccessfully.

And now the most recent center, in Barnaul. It was established by the Communists of Russia, a radical and marginal Stalinist party that is separate to the much larger pro-Kremlin Russian Communist Party.

In other words, these centers, like many of the new Stalin monuments, are not Kremlin-imposed but rather grassroots or at least non-state initiatives. Perhaps this should not be surprising. According to the independent Levada Center, Stalin has taken first place in their ‘who is the greatest figure of all times and all people’ survey since 2012.

Students of a military-sponsored school attend the opening of a series of busts of Russian leaders, including Josef Stalin (center), in Moscow, on September 22, 2017. - Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP — Students of a military-sponsored school attend the opening of a series of busts of Russian leaders, including Josef Stalin (center), in Moscow, on September 22, 2017. – Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Putin’s pro- and anti-Stalin balancing act

Of course, this favorable view is not uncontested. The Russian human rights organization Memorial worked tirelessly for over 30 years to document Soviet crimes, which were widely discussed during the Gorbachev and post-Soviet era.

More recently, Russian journalist and YouTube star Yury Dud powerfully depicted the horrors and legacy of Stalinist Gulag forced labor camps in his 2019 documentary “Kolyma: Birthplace of Our Fear.” The YouTube video has over 29 million views.

Putin’s treatment of Stalin takes both of these stances into consideration. Rather than a glorification of the Communist dictator, he offers a somewhat equivocating view that strives to placate both pro- and anti-Stalin constituencies within Russian society.

To do so, he glosses over but does not deny the large scale of the Communist dictator’s terror and repressions. In 2017, Putin unveiled Russia’s first monument to the victims of Stalin’s repressions in Moscow: the “Wall of Grief.” During the opening, he asserted: “We must never again push society to the dangerous precipice of division.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) at a ceremony unveiling the country's first national memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions called: "The Wall of Grief" in Moscow, October 30, 2017. - Alexander Nemenov/Reuters — Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) at a ceremony unveiling the country’s first national memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions called: “The Wall of Grief” in Moscow, October 30, 2017. – Alexander Nemenov/Reuters

Over his 24 years in power, Putin’s rhetoric on Stalin has remained reasonably consistent. He does not deny Stalin’s crimes but rather tries to divert attention away from them, admitting the horror of the Gulag and mass repressions but insisting that the memory of these crimes should not overshadow Stalinism’s achievements. In his view, efforts to overly ‘demonize’ Stalin are part of an attack on Russia.

Silencing Stalin’s victims

While Putin has shown little enthusiasm for glorifying Stalin, his government has worked methodically to silence, or at least render abstract, the memory of the Gulag’s victims.

For example, the “Perm-36” memorial complex, Russia’s only remaining intact Gulag, was taken over by local authorities in 2015. When it reopened, individual stories of the prisoners’ lives were replaced by content celebrating the prison guards and the camp’s contribution to timber production during World War II.

Elsewhere, the 2021 shutdown of Memorial — which documented Soviet human rights abuses especially during the Great Terror — and the recent removal of ‘last address’ plaques marking victims sent to the Gulag, were almost certainly state-directed initiatives that seek to erase reminders of the human cost of Stalinist repressions.

Gulag forced laborers of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, are pictured in their living quarters in the 1930s. Thousands of laborers died during the construction of the canal. - Laski Diffusion/Hulton Archive/Getty Images — Gulag forced laborers of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, are pictured in their living quarters in the 1930s. Thousands of laborers died during the construction of the canal. – Laski Diffusion/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

However, their removal cannot be reduced to the question of Stalin’s legacy alone — it can also be seen as an attempt to eliminate evidence of the crimes of the security services, in which Putin’s career and power base are rooted.

After all, thinking about the individual victims leads to thinking about the individual perpetrators.

The Putinist regime

The erasure of personalized reminders of the Gulag and Terror must be contextualized within the Kremlin’s use of history and myth to legitimate the Putinist regime, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the country’s great power status. As the prosecutor at Memorial’s liquidation trial in 2021 argued: “Memorial besmirches our history. It forces us — a generation of victors and the heirs of victors — to justify our history.”

The prosecutor’s comments reveal not an ignorance of the dark spots of history but a desire to ignore them. There are obvious parallels with the present day, when many Russians are trying hard to ignore the devastating war their country is waging on neighboring Ukraine.

Certainly, this is a more pertinent point of comparison than the notion that Putin’s regime in any way approximates Stalin’s. The estimated imprisonment of between 628 and 1,011 political prisoners in today’s Russia is a horrific reminder of the brutal authoritarianism with which the Kremlin rules. But to compare it to the millions worked to death in Siberian labor camps or executed in KGB basements is hyperbolic.

What the West gets wrong about Stalin and Putin

Moreover, these comparisons divert attention from important differences between the Stalin and Putin regimes. Beyond the drastically different scales of repression, the most obvious one is that Stalinism was a deeply mobilizing ideology that sought to remake man and undertook industrialisation with unprecedented scale and speed. That is abundantly not the case in Putin’s Russia, where the government instead encourages a ritualistic patriotism and political apathy.

Such conclusions point to intractable policy and security issues for the West. If Putin was in power solely thanks to the machinery of repressions, then it is not Russia that is a security threat, but his regime. In such a case, the problems posed by his regime would cease to exist when he does.

Likewise, if one argues that Putin is the only driving force behind Stalin’s rehabilitation, then one can also continue the fantasy that, if it weren’t for Putin, Russians would embrace Westernized liberal democracy and stop justifying the sacrifice of thousands of lives for the whims of the state.

These assumptions are flawed and lacking in nuance, no matter how comforting such a shallow understanding of Russian society might be.

The Western tendency to reduce mass-scale crime to an omnipotent leader has always been a misleading one. Even Stalinism was not the work of one man, but of the security services and individuals willing to denounce their fellow neighbors for housing rights or petty grievances, as the Kyiv-born Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov so mercilessly satires in his short stories of the time.

Likewise, efforts to pretend that Putinism is just the work of one man will lead to myopic thinking and poor analytical predictions regarding Russia’s future. The question of Putin’s position on Stalinism suggests he is far from the all-powerful instigator of a Stalin cult and rather a manipulative manager of divergent, pro- and anti-Stalin societal attitudes, which he tries to balance and fuse into a workable and unifying national narrative.

That a notable section of Russian society exudes nostalgia for a leader who repressed millions illuminates pervasive and troubling issues that should inform predictions and planning for a post-Putin Russia.

The problem is not just one strongman — it is that so many people wanted a strongman in the first place.

The Trials Won’t Stop Donald Trump From Becoming President Again. Here’s What Might.

Slate

The Trials Won’t Stop Donald Trump From Becoming President Again. Here’s What Might.

Dahlia Lithwick – January 19, 2024

Any conversation currently happening around legal accountability for Donald Trump is quickly caught up in the riptide of a very different sort of conversation about electoral strategy: Should states be allowed to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, as the plain meaning of the 14^th Amendment suggests that it was designed to do? Or will that drive his supporters to commit further acts of vigilante justice in response to being disenfranchised? Should we run our democracy based on such potential threats, and more abstractly: Should judges presiding over the myriad Trump trials that the former president uses to incite stochastic terror and demean the judicial system allow him to speak freely? Or should they make every effort to limit his use of their courtrooms as campaign stops and hate rallies? Should prosecutors in these cases make every effort to have them done and dusted before the presidential election? Or is there something unseemly in the haste to bring about accountability timed to some external political event? Should the judicial system proceed at its own pace, or should it find a way to move faster, with the recognition that it might (only might) be able to do what the other branches of government have chosen not to do, in glacial legal units of time?

The biggest brains in both the legal and political spheres are currently engaged in a near-daily exploration of questions that posit law and the rule of law not so much as ends in themselves, but as tactics—often Hail Mary, last-ditch, desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures tactics in a presidential contest. We are in an existential battle to save democracy from the single most profound threat it has faced since at least the Civil War. And Americans who have become all too familiar with opening arguments and jury selection and civil fraud and conspiracy law have somehow convinced themselves that the justice system alone can somehow be deployed—or, in the parlance of the insurrectionists, “weaponized”—into becoming the shiny entity that could preserve democracy as we know it. Principally, because nothing else seems positioned to do the trick.

The asymmetry here is that of course the American legal system is not a tactic, or a strategy, or a party trick, although, sure, any one trial is built on tactical decisions. The American legal system, indeed any legal system, is a search for truth, facticity, conclusion, and resolution. When legal systems are working, they are largely backward-looking excavations of what happened and why. One of the reasons Donald J. Trump has managed to evade legal accountability throughout his lifetime is that this is not his objective: He doesn’t allow the legal system to look backward at facts—indeed, he disputes facts literally as they are happening, and even adjudicated facts, including his sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, are perpetually reopened for public appeal. His objective is to use the mechanisms of the legal process as tactics toward a larger end—to make himself richer or more famous, or to vanquish his opponents. And we all know that should he get himself elected as president in 10 months, he will use the law to prosecute Joe Biden, stay in office indefinitely, strip non-Americans of their rights, and do almost anything he wishes to remain in power. For Trump, law isn’t the endgame—it’s just the ladder that gets him somewhere better.

Here is the problem: When we engage in tactical intramural debates about about how best to deploy the American legal system to stop Trump, we are in a sense engaging in a mirror image of that same Trumpist project. We say we want accountability and findings of fact and conclusions of law and injunctions and gag orders and, ultimately, convictions. But above all, what we want is for him to go away, to stop, to unravel all the harm he has done to the myriad institutions and principles upon which the rule of law once relied. The purists among us argue that in so doing, we will at least have given it a shot. The worriers fret that in so doing, we further rip the country asunder because, uh, what if it doesn’t work out the way the purists had hoped?

For my part, I worry that we have imported far too much force into the idea that the law itself and law alone will curb Trump’s lawlessness, because no amount of gag orders and conclusions of law and even criminal convictions can stop someone hellbent on using those things as tactics on a tear toward fascism. As Jeff Sharlet put it on last week’s Amicus podcast, “The one thing Trump has made clear is we don’t know yet how to stop Trumpism.” The rule of law may be a component in the war against Trumpism, but if it isn’t plain by now, I will say it here: The rule of law exists not to stop Trumpism. It exists to promote the rule of law.

For those who note that Trump has the ability to delay, drag out, undermine, and even capitalize on his legal troubles but can’t escape the voting booth, the very existence of the Colorado 14^th Amendment appeal at the Supreme Court shows the extent to which the law and the voting both are bound up together, and the degree to which both may be profoundly incapacitated when we expect either to create Cold, Hard Facts in a world that has fundamentally put truth out with the recyclables. Trump’s supporters in the conservative legal movement have been using the law to suppress and subvert elections for years, and they have already amassed literally billions of dollars to do so again. Subverting the vote is a tactic. It is also the single most effective way to subvert the rule of law.

This is by no means a call to abandon the pursuit of legal accountability for Trump and his supporters in every single forum possible. Of course the law should attempt to impose every last consequence this man deserves, and of course the fact that this makes his cultists angry is never a reason to stop. It is simply a caution to those who have convinced themselves that the law exists to keep Trump from winning the 2024 election. Because the law alone may not suffice.

Paradoxically, to the extent the law can be usefully deployed as a tactic, the 14th Amendment itself is a tactical enterprise that exists to protect us from tyranny. But we tie ourselves in knots deploring how slow and technical and mincing legal accountability can be. (Consider emoluments! It took eight years to get those numbers reported out! But there is still no accountability!) The challenge isn’t exclusively that law takes too long. The challenge is that, unfortunately for all current citizens of America and quite frankly the world, the law can’t be boiled down to a distillate, reconstituted as a vitamin, then chugged down with a Gatorade to save us from an authoritarian strongman.

Donald Trump is nothing but an amalgam of tactics with hair. Purposive lying is a tactic, distraction is a tactic, bullying is a tactic, threats of violence is a tactic, running out the clock is a tactic, all with the incredibly simple objective of amassing power. And Trump’s promise to use the law to terrorize and jail political adversaries, to further immiserate those he dislikes, to suppress speech and protest? All of this is about using the law to further an authoritarian agenda.

Ensuring that Trump is driven from public life requires tactical thinking and execution that involves so much more than the tactical use of legal remedies. It involves structural election reform, expanded voting rights, democracy building, rethinking the way the media covers elections, and a thousand other tactics that protect constitutional democracy and free and fair elections. Law can be weaponized to do all of these things, by the way. But this would require the work of millions of people for thousands of days, pushing every lever. It cannot be readily swapped out for a single victory in a civil fraud trial, as important as such victories may be toward the greater end.

If the rise of authoritarian strongmen around the planet in recent years proves anything, it’s that the law alone was not designed to restrain authoritarian strongmen. What we grouse about as the slowness of the law is in fact the absence of the fast fix to fascism.

The relevant legal question in the coming months cannot be limited to How do we best use the law to hold Donald Trump to account? Even holding Donald Trump to account will not necessarily save us from electing Donald Trump the dictator—it could be too slow, or too unpersuasive, or totally steamrolled by his own destruction tactics. The relevant question is: Whether we realize in time that the law alone cannot save us, are we directing all our efforts, right now, to doing everything and anything else that will?

Thousands without heating as Russian infrastructure buckles amid winter freeze

The Telegraph

Thousands without heating as Russian infrastructure buckles amid winter freeze

James Kilner – January 20, 2024

People gather round a mobile kitchen after dozens of residential buildings were left without central heating due to a housing service accident caused by a cold snap in the town of Klimovsk near Moscow – Reuters/EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA

Thousands of Russians are living without heating through a freezing winter that is breaking the country’s fragile Soviet-era infrastructure.

Hot water pipes are bursting, electricity is failing and radiators are freezing across Russia, triggering complaints from angry locals who have accused officials of incompetence two months before a presidential election.

In videos posted this week from Nizhny Novgorod, 265 miles east of Moscow, residents were evacuating apartments flooded with steaming boiling water.

“The apartment is completely destroyed. The apartment is uninhabitable,” said one man as he filmed water pouring through the ceiling.

In Novosibirsk, Siberia, a major pipe burst on Wednesday, projecting a spout of boiling water high into the air which burnt 13 people and left entire apartment blocks without heating during one of Russia’s coldest winters for decades.

A resident of Novosibirsk said she was upset but was not surprised.

“Of course people are upset. They have been in the cold, with children, since January 11,” she said, declining to give her name. “I wasn’t surprised at all. It would have happened at some point because the pipes that burst were laid back in 1973 and 1963.”

Municipal officials have admitted that the burst pipe in Novosibirsk was laid in 1963 and was last repaired in 1990, a year before the Soviet Union collapsed.

In Khimki, a suburb of Moscow, freezing residents have taken to huddling around a fire on the street to keep warm in temperatures of -25C.

“We haven’t had any heating since January 2. The authorities are aware of the problem,” said a woman in a video of several people holding up ‘SOS’ signs. “Please help us, we are desperate.”

A municipal worker removes snow during snowfall and cold weather in Moscow – YURI KOCHETKOV/EPA

Campaigners have said that chronic underfunding has undermined civilian infrastructure in Russia.

Russia’s centrally controlled hot water systems were built in the Soviet Union and struggle under extreme temperature changes which have been harsh this year.

Analysts said that with an election in mid-March, these failures undermine the Kremlin’s message that Vladimir Putin is the tough and competent leader that ordinary Russians need, although he is still guaranteed to win.

“The heating emergencies around Russia, the result of long-term underinvestment in public utilities infrastructure, complicate that narrative,” said Ben Noble, assistant professor of Russian Politics at UCL.

And civilians’ gripes are unlikely to be smoothed out any time soon.

A couple stands on the Komendantskaya pier of the Peter and Paul Fortress and looks at the frozen Neva River during abnormal frosts in St. Petersburg – Zuma Press / eyevine/Artem Priakhin

Putin has prioritised his army over civilian demands, approving a massive boost in military funding and co-opting everything from shopping malls to bakeries to produce weapons for the war effort in Ukraine.

But fracturing infrastructure is not the only internal problem facing Putin. Although protests are effectively banned, demonstrations in Bashkortostan, a region with a large Muslim population that lies south of the Ural Mountains, against mobilisation have been growing.

People in Dagestan, in southern Russia on the Caspian Sea, have also been protesting since the summer about failing infrastructure and the wives and mothers of mobilized men have been campaigning for the return of their men from frontlines in Ukraine.

Russia’s elite paratroopers and marines are refusing orders to launch ‘human wave attacks,’ Ukraine official says

Business Insider

Russia’s elite paratroopers and marines are refusing orders to launch ‘human wave attacks,’ Ukraine official says

Nathan Rennolds – January 20, 2024

Elite Russian troops are refusing to launch “human-wave attacks,” a Ukrainian official said.
Nataliya Humenyuk said marines and paratroopers are concerned over huge losses in the assaults.
She said former prisoners and poorly trained reservists typically carry out costly frontal assaults.

Russian marines and paratroopers are refusing to launch certain types of assaults due to concerns over the huge losses other troops are suffering, a Ukrainian official said, the Kyiv Post reported.

Nataliya Humenyuk, a press secretary for the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s Joint Command South, said that the soldiers considered “themselves ‘elite troops'” and did not “want to go into frontal assaults” that former felons and reservists typically carry out, the outlet reported.

Throughout the Russian invasion, Russia has become increasingly reliant on high-risk frontal assaults involving waves of attacks that probe Ukrainian positions and seize small portions of territory at the cost of substantial casualties.

The leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash last August after leading a failed mutiny in June, described the tactic as a “meat grinder.”

Humenyuk cited Russian attacks on Krynky in the Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine, saying that Russian troops assaulting Ukrainian marine positions there were being hit with losses of more than 50%.

“At present in our sector the number of units of the type ‘Shtorm-Z’ [low-grade Russian units made of up older reservists and former felons, often committed to carry out human wave attacks] is falling and we are seeing more naval infantry and paratroopers,” Humenyuk said.

“But they consider themselves ‘elite troops,’ and they don’t want to go into frontal assaults like that,” she added.

One of Russia’s newly formed paratrooper units, the 104th Guards Airborne Division, appeared to be hit particularly hard in its combat debut in the Kherson region late last year, the UK Ministry of Defence said in an update on the conflict in December.

It said the unit “highly likely suffered exceptionally heavy losses and failed to achieve its objectives during its combat debut in Kherson Oblast,” aimed at dislodging Ukrainian positions near Krynky.

Krynky has been the scene of heavy fighting over the past few months as Ukrainian forces have attempted to recapture ground across the Dnipro River.

A group of Ukrainian marines sail from the riverbank of Dnipro at the frontline near Kherson, Ukraine, Saturday, Oct. 14, 2023. — A group of Ukrainian marines sail from the riverbank of Dnipro at the frontline near Kherson, Ukraine, in 2023.AP Photo/Alex Babenko

Conditions in the region have made fighting difficult for both sides, with marshes, water-filled bomb craters, and mud making it almost impossible for troops to dig in, The New York Times reported.

Despite Ukrainian officials’ claims that the country’s marines had gained ground on the eastern side of the river, soldiers and marines told The Times that this was an exaggeration.

“There are no positions. There is no such thing as an observation post or position,” Oleksiy, a soldier who fought in Krynky and only gave his first name, said. “It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It’s impossible to move equipment there.”

“It’s not even a fight for survival,” he added. “It’s a suicide mission.”

But its success in the skies above the Dnipro bolstered Ukraine’s difficult position on the ground.

Russia appears to be struggling to defend against Ukraine’s drone attacks because of a shortage of electronic-warfare capability in the area, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said.

Ukraine’s forces have been using first-person-view drones to strike Russian vehicles, the UK Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update.

The ministry said that a Russian military blogger estimated that 90% of Russian military equipment deployed around Krynky has been destroyed.

Send Channel migrant boats to Ukraine to help war effort, Government urged

The Telegraph

Send Channel migrant boats to Ukraine to help war effort, Government urged

Danielle Sheridan – January 19, 2024

Boats used by migrants to cross the Channel to the UK should be sent to Ukraine to help the war effort, a volunteer organisation has told the Government.

Since October, British and Ukrainian volunteers have delivered 15 inflatable dinghies and rigid inflatable boats to soldiers fighting along the Dnipro River.

The small boats, which were in relatively poor condition, were driven from the UK to the south of Ukraine, where they were refurbished. This included the installation of new engines and painting the vessels khaki.

They have provided a lifeline to the Ukrainian soldiers holding three established bridgeheads on the occupied eastern side of the river, by carrying vital supplies and evacuating wounded soldiers.

When MissionUkraine, the organisation leading the small boats initiative, initially appealed to the Government for boats used by migrants to cross the Channel to be sent to Ukraine, it was informed by Border Force that this would not be possible.

Officials said: “The majority of boats are not fit for re-sale or to ever go to sea again, because they arrive in very poor condition. These boats also deteriorate and perish over the period, and are therefore often destined for recycling.

“The boat engines might also be sold at auction, but again, over time, they are no longer operational, or require additional funds to bring their condition back to normal.”

A small boat that was taken from the UK to Ukraine, repaired and then delivered to the front line – Alex Kruglyak/MissionUkraine UK

A government spokesman told The Telegraph that while it was “committed to supporting Ukraine” it “cannot donate unsafe and dangerous small boats which will put more lives at risk”.

However, Alex Kruglyak, one of the leaders of MissionUkraine, said poor quality boats were still useful to troops because marine engineers in Ukraine were able to refurbish them to a decent operating standard, meaning they were seaworthy again.

“All of the boats we deliver go through a boat maintenance procedure which is done by marine experts and all the engines go through an engine testing and maintenance procedure done by guys with decades of experience,” he told The Telegraph. “We will pay for all transport and maintenance costs – we are not asking for a penny.”

In June last year, the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine was breached, causing widespread flooding that stopped Ukrainian troops advancing via the Dnipro River.

By October, troops had started to cross the Dnipro, but were using rowing boats in order not to attract attention from the Russians.

There are now three established bridgeheads on the occupied eastern side of the river, with the Ukrainian troops at those secured areas dependent on small boats.https://www.youtube.com/embed/viYOh8tkwJY?enablejsapi=1&modestbranding=1&origin=http://www.telegraph.co.uk&rel=0

To date, MissionUkraine has delivered second hand boats to Kharkiv, Zaporizha, and Dnipro, which have then been transported to soldiers on the frontlines.

Mr Kruglyak, 35, originally from Odesa but living in London, added that it “made sense” for the Government to donate the boats confiscated from migrants, which are currently in a pound in Dover.

His calls were echoed by Paul Watson, 69, from Bridgend, Wales, who has driven to Ukraine’s front line numerous times with his friend Martin Blackwell, 70, to deliver both 4x4s and small boats.

Mr Watson said that the rigid inflatable boats they had transported so far were purchased from private owners for prices ranging between £1,500 and £4,000, with money raised through their local church.

Some of them were “in a very bad state when we first took them out,” he said, adding: “In any time of crisis, people can be very versatile and alter things to become usable. If one boat saved one life it was worth it.”

The US is struggling to handle an immigration surge – here’s how Europe is dealing with its own influx

The Conversation

The US is struggling to handle an immigration surge – here’s how Europe is dealing with its own influx

Tara Sonenshine, Tufts University – January 19, 2024

Workers from the Spanish nonprofit Open Waters rescue 178 migrants from different countries, off the coast of Italy in September 2023. <a href= — Workers from the Spanish nonprofit Open Waters rescue 178 migrants from different countries, off the coast of Italy in September 2023. Jose Colon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

As record-high numbers of undocumented migrants cross the United States-Mexico border illegally, one key question is how the U.S. got into this situation, and what lessons can be learned from how other countries respond to border security and immigration problems.

Having worked both inside the U.S. government and in the private sector, I have observed the growing importance of welcoming foreign citizens to one’s country for improving economic growth, scientific advancement, labor supply and cultural awareness.

But migrants entering and staying in the U.S. without visas or proper documentation can create problems – for the migrants themselves, and for overtaxed governments that lack the ability to quickly process asylum cases in immigration courts, for example, or to provide temporary shelter and other basic services for large numbers of arriving migrants. These strains are happening now in many places in the U.S.

Immigrants arrive at Ellis Island in 1923, one year before Congress reformed immigration laws in the U.S., making it harder to enter the country. <a href= — Immigrants arrive at Ellis Island in 1923, one year before Congress reformed immigration laws in the U.S., making it harder to enter the country. Underwood & Underwood/Underwood Archives/Getty Images

U.S. immigration trends

In 1924, after decades of the U.S. welcoming foreign-born citizens to its shores, Congress passed the Immigration Act, restricting the numbers and types of people who could legally enter and stay in the U.S.

That legislation ushered in even more xenophobia and division in the U.S. over the ethnic origins of immigrants – cutting off large-scale immigration, especially from Europe and Asia, until jobs needed to be filled – and there weren’t enough people in the U.S. to fill them.

In the 1960s, immigration laws were reformed again, ushering in waves of immigration from Asia because the U.S. needed people to work at unfilled jobs.

Today, once again, some U.S. politicians are pushing for new ways to restrict immigration. Much of their work focuses on making it harder for migrants to get asylum – meaning legal permission to remain in the U.S. if they have a legitimate fear of persecution in their home countries.

Overall, U.S. border officials encountered more than 1.1 million people illegally crossing the U.S. border from April 2022 through March 2023 – a sharp rise from previous years, when the number of people illegally crossing each year hovered at less than 300,000.

U.S. authorities are now stepping up deportations, quickly sending more undocumented people back to their home countries.

A shifting response to immigration

Globally, international migration to rich countries reached an all-time high in 2022.

So, how do other countries, including Canada and Germany, respond to migrants crossing their borders without a visa or proper documentation?

One answer has been to reform their immigration systems to make deportation easier.

Germany, for example, has been wrestling with increases in undocumented immigration.

Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced at the end of 2023 that he supports large-scale deportations for migrants who are rejected for asylum.

Germany deported close to 8,000 people, many of them fleeing the war in Ukraine, in the first part of 2023. In total, an estimated 92,119 immigrants entered Germany illegally from January through September 2023.

New German government reforms will increase that figure and no longer require officials to announce deportations in advance.

Italy, which is also battling a huge influx of undocumented migrants from North Africa, recently doubled the amount of time that it can detain undocumented migrants, rising from three months to at least six months. This decision is seen as an effort to deter more migrants from illegally entering Italy.

In November 2023, Italy signed an agreement to build two new immigration detention centers across the Adriatic Sea in Albania.

This allows Italy to skirt a European Union policy that requires its member countries to consider and process all asylum applicants’ requests within a year of their arrival. Since Albania is not part of the European Union, it could quickly deport the migrants that Italy sends there.

In December 2023, the European Union’s 27 countries also voted on a major overhaul of asylum laws. These changes will make it easier for countries to deport migrants who fail to get asylum. They also direct the European Union to give money to countries that allow more asylum seekers to stay in those countries.

Other approaches

Right now, Italy and Greece bear much of the brunt of migration in the EU.

More than 31,000 undocumented migrants, mainly from Syria, crossed into Greece in 2023, up from 18,000 undocumented people who entered the country in 2022.

The parliament in Greece is considering new laws that would enable the country to issue tens of thousands of undocumented migrants residence and work permits to address labor shortages.

Greece is also pushing the European Union to slap economic sanctions on countries, like Pakistan, that refuse to take back the undocumented migrants that Greece deports to their home countries.

Closer to home, Canada is also experiencing a surge of undocumented migration into Quebec and other places, prompting some Canadians to feel growing anxiety, in part because of perceptions that the sudden population growth is also raising the country’s already-high housing costs. Canada deported 7,232 undocumented people in the first six months of 2023 – a rise compared to the 7,635 deportations Canada carried out in the entire year of 2021.

Canada also announced in December 2023 that it is planning to allow people who entered the country with valid, short-term visas, and who continue living in Canada after these visas expire, to apply for permanent residency. This would mainly affect foreign students and temporary workers.

A Canadian officer speaks to migrants as they arrive in Quebec in March 2023. <a href= — A Canadian officer speaks to migrants as they arrive in Quebec in March 2023. Sebastien St-Jean/AFP via Getty Images

An uncertain way ahead

Back in the U.S., the fight over immigration continues, with Republicans eager to crack down and Democrats who generally want to avoid harsh new standards that could lead to more deportations and mass roundups of undocumented immigrants.

Traditionally, Democrats have been supportive of immigration and the rights of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

But the wave of migrants who arrive in cities like New York and Chicago without any money, jobs or places to live is severely straining city governments’ capacity and budgets. Local leaders like New York Mayor Eric Adams are pleading with the federal government to help with a crisis that, as Adams said in September 2023, has no clear end in sight.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

It was written by: Tara Sonenshine, Tufts University.

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Tara Sonenshine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Pastor Mock: In 2024, democracy is on the ballot, choose the democracy candidate – Biden

Erie Times News – Opinion

Pastor Mock: In 2024, democracy is on the ballot, choose the democracy candidate – Biden

Charles Mock – January 17, 2024

According to The Washington Post, and I quote, “A Post-University of Maryland poll published this week shows a sizable share of Americans accept lies about the 2020 election and the insurrection that followed on Jan. 6, 2021. Only 62 percent say Joe Biden‘s victory was legitimate, down from 69 percent two years ago, and far lower than after the contested 2000 election. One-third of U.S. adults say they believe there’s ‘solid evidence’ of ‘widespread voter fraud’ in the 2020 election. Regarding Jan. 6 itself, 28 percent say former president Donald Trump bears no responsibility, 21 percent say the people who stormed the Capitol were ‘mostly peaceful’ and 25 percent say the FBI probably or definitely instigated the attack.”

With each presidential election, comes opportunities to vote for the person whose policies best represent the best values, principles, processes and practices of a constitutional democracy. If we are not careful as citizens, we will be voting for a person’s policies rather than voting for democracy.

Democracy is far more important than the policies that constitute it. It is not policies that sustain democracy. It is democracy that sustain policies.

If we do not like a president whose personal policies are pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-transgender, etc., we can always use our vote to vote him or her out of office because the power of democracy rests on the freedom to vote and freedom of choice.

It has become obvious there is no pure democracy. Democracy is always an experimental work in progress. Some decades require much more work than others. For example, we read of present egregious challenges such as growing disparities of wealth and autocratic tendencies within our democracy. These autocratic tendencies are driven by multinational corporations that continue placing democracy at risk.

Insurrections loyal to President Donald Trump try to break through a police barrier, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington. The Department of Justice is prosecuting those who violently stormed the Capitol.

If we want to kill the democracy that makes autocratic, financially oppressive mega-corporations normalize greed, all we have to do is change our form of government from a democracy to pure dictatorship or a king-centered monarchy. In dictatorships the dictator determines the means of corporate capitalism. I pray we choose otherwise.

In a real sense, democracy is being voted for or against in 2024. We cannot afford to vote for candidates based on three or four particular policies we might find immoral. We must vote for candidates who will be governed by a constitution that upholds and sustains democracy as the chosen form of governance. For better or for worse, democracy is still the best form of governance. I have heard it said and believe it true that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest.

Without democracy there’s no genuine freedom to vote or freedom to choose.

Choose today which government you will serve. As for me and my house, I choose democracy. The Rev. Dr. Charles Mock is the interim pastor at Second Baptist Church in Erie.

These voters will pick the next president. They’re frightened about American democracy.

Politico

These voters will pick the next president. They’re frightened about American democracy.

Zach Montellaro – January 17, 2024

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 12: Members of the U.S. National Guard arrive at the U.S. Capitol on January 12, 2021 in Washington, DC. The Pentagon is deploying as many as 15,000 National Guard troops to protect President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, amid fears of new violence. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

NAZARETH, Pennsylvania — Earlier this month, 15 voters in this closely contested area of Pennsylvania convened to discuss the state of American democracy.

To say they were discouraged as the 2024 election gets underway would be an understatement.

Three years after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, half of the voters in the focus group immediately started nodding when asked about the possibility of violence around the election.

Sitting around folding tables in an arts center just off of the small town’s Rockwell-esque Main Street, the voters painted a bleak picture over the next hour: A largely negative view on everything from trusting that their votes and their neighbors’ votes will be fairly counted, the speed it takes to get results and that those results will be accepted by the losers.

“I almost feel numb to it,” Jackie, a younger voter in the focus group, said of the violence on Jan. 6. “We’re going to have another election, could that happen again? I probably won’t even react the same, because I’m like ‘this is what happens.’ … Something’s probably going to happen.”

The focus group was brought together by Keep Our Republic, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that seeks to educate the public about strengthening the democratic system. It was convened in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, a swing county in one of the most important swing states in the nation.

The participants’ pessimism encapsulates one of the most pressing challenges in American politics right now — the loss of public trust in democracy itself and the electoral infrastructure that supports it. It is a problem that stretches far beyond just Nazareth; a Gallup poll released the day after the focus group found that a record low 28 percent of American adults are satisfied with the way democracy is working in this country.

Their distrust comes at a moment of intense polarization in America — and after former President Donald Trump has spread constant lies about the security of American elections in the three years since the Capitol riot.

“Everybody agreed on one thing: That there’s a very good chance there’s gonna be violence in the next election,” said former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who sits on the state advisory board of Keep Our Republic. “There’s a heightened sense of, or concern about, civil disorder in the next election.”

The voters in the focus group are, in a literal sense, the mythological “Main Street” swing voters that politicians talk about in their stump speeches. Christopher Borick, a pollster and professor at nearby Muhlenberg College, selected them from his neighbors who lived on or near the town’s Main Street.

The group was overwhelmingly white, like both the town of Nazareth and Northampton County more broadly, but was otherwise emblematic of the voters who will decide 2024. They were all registered voters — and those who said how they voted in 2020 during the focus group seemed evenly divided between Trump and President Joe Biden.

Borick asked them to participate because he never saw a political sign pop up on their front lawns. POLITICO observed the focus group under the condition that voters would be identified by their first names only.

The focus group came just a day before Biden gave a speech near Valley Forge, about an hour’s drive away, on the state of the country’s democracy. There, the president cast the 2024 election as a referendum that will decide “whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause.”

But the focus group made clear that much of the distrust in the democratic system is rooted in the broader political polarization of the moment.

Borick often tried to steer the conversation away from the politics of the 2024 election to the mechanics of it, but participants consistently returned to their displeasure in another Biden-Trump rematch.

Almost to a person there was a wariness — and in some cases an outright distrust— of the democratic process in the county. Two voters, distinctly in the minority, repeated conspiracy theories popularized by Trump about mail ballots being used to steal the election from him. And roughly a third of participants said they believed unregistered people were casting ballots.

But more broadly, the participants were confused by the process, with complaints especially about the time it takes to know the winner. Pennsylvania did not allow for election officials to pre-process mail ballots in 2020 — a significant cause of the state’s elongated vote count — and is now an outlier state that hasn’t updated its laws to allow for it in 2024.

“America’s Got Talent can tally 50 million votes in 15 minutes,” Mike, a middle-aged engineer, joked during the focus group. “How can we not elect officials effectively, and not feel confident? Across the board, I don’t feel a lot of confidence here that all of our votes are getting counted properly.”

Northampton voters’ suspicions are fueled by a string of recent election administration failures. In recent municipal elections, election machines have faltered twice: In 2019, initial vote totals showed a candidate who would go on to narrowly win their contest only initially get less than 200 votes across some 55,000 ballots. And just last year, the printout of a person’s ballot would in some cases display the wrong selection on judicial retention elections.

In both cases, election officials stressed that the final outcomes were correct. A paper trail backup was used to count the votes in 2019, and election officials said last year’s erroneous printouts were due to human error when programming the machines and that they were able to correctly tally the final count as voters intended.

“If they tell me they’re working, I am hoping they’re working,” Jimmy, another participant in the group, said of the voting machines. “I try to be optimistic.”

But election officials and groups like Keep Our Republic face a tough climb ahead, even in counties that did not have demonstrable problems like Northampton did.

Keep Our Republic’s theory is that the group can reverse — or at least slow — the declining trust in the democratic process by working with local leaders in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The group has hosted legal education classes for attorneys in Pennsylvania about the state’s election laws, and meetings with local election officials and their community in Wisconsin. The goal of the group, in the words of the group’s executive director Ari Mittleman, is to educate the local “chattering class” — local attorneys, community leaders and regular voters.

“If you look at the climate, I think we should assume that it’s going to be incredibly, incredibly tumultuous,” Mittleman said in an interview over a plate of pierogi and beer at a local brewery. “All we can do is put up speed bumps. And our hypothesis is … who is turned to in these communities in purple America, in these three states? It’s not the president. It’s not the politicians.”

The hope, he said, is that instead of turning to national pundits or politicians, voters turn inward to their community with questions. The theory is that another parent on a child’s Little League team or a church elder would be a more effective messenger about the democratic process than a prominent politician or expert parachuting into the community. And when there are questions over things like election litigation, or problems that do occur, community leaders would be inherently more trustworthy.

“I’ll be the first to say, it’s a total hypothesis that might be proven wrong. People might tune into national news, talking heads and experts who’ve never been to Northampton County or Kent County, Michigan, or whatever,” Mittleman said. “But I have a feeling they’re going to go and say to people in their community, ‘What’s this all about?’”

George Washington’s Farewell Address provides stark warning for Americans Today

Portsmouth Hereld – Opinion

Opinion: George Washington’s Farewell Address provides stark warning for Americans Today

Jeff Frenkiewich – January 17, 2024

On September 19, 1796, George Washington published his Farewell Address. In it, America’s “founding father” announced his retirement and explained his reasons for not seeking a third term as president. Nervous about the upcoming election that threatened to tear apart the country he loved, Washington also offered his fellow citizens, “some sentiments which are the result of much reflection.” With New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary less than a week away, and a divisive general election later this year, we would be wise to consider George Washington’s advice, as it is just as relevant today as it was 228 years ago.

Washington’s America, much like today, was a nation divided by regional differences and sectional interests. Our first president could have predicted a time when politicians openly call for a “national divorce” based on regional differences, and state legislatures would feel empowered to debate the idea of secession.

Rebutting those who look to divide America, Washington argues that a unified country brings us, “greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value!” He states, “your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.”

Washington acknowledges that regional differences exist between the North and South, East and West, but he is urging us to consider that the whole is greater than the sum of our parts; a break up of our union will only damage the liberty and prosperity that we have worked so hard to secure.

Washington is not shy in identifying the cause of animosity between regions of the United States – political parties. Washington states, “One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts.” Foreshadowing a media saturated with disinformation, Washington says, “You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.” Again, our unity provides us strength, and only those who wish to weaken the United States look to exploit the perceived differences amongst our people.

For Washington, the end result of political parties stoking regional divisions is despotism – a dictatorship. He states, “The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty… It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.” In this election cycle, we have one candidate who actively created jealousies and false alarms when he tried to overturn the last presidential election with lies. He kindled animosity urging his followers to march on the Capitol as lawmakers were certifying that election, and he fomented an insurrection, watching idle as his followers attempted to overthrow our democracy. That same candidate, when asked if he would be a dictator if elected president, replied, “No, no, no, other than day one.” Most recently, this candidate endorsed the claim that a president, “could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.” We must take these threats to our democracy seriously.

In his Farewell Address, a letter that runs just over 6,000 words, George Washington uses the pronouns “you” or “your” 75 times (he used “yourselves” twice). Washington is speaking directly to us, the American people, making clear that despite the cult of personality that surrounded him, he was only one of many responsible for the nation’s welfare; it is “We the People” who are the stewards of our republic.

Washington knew that we would be challenged in preserving our Union; he knew that sectional divisions would promote a spirit of party and that these factions would produce a want-to-be despot surrounded by his own cult of personality. We the people are the only guards against such a dictatorship; we must heed Washington’s warning and do everything we can to preserve our union. We must protect our democracy from those who wish to put their own self-interests above the interests of our Union. Please vote in this upcoming election.

Jeff Frenkiewich teaches social studies at Milford Middle School and he is an adjunct professor of education at the University of New Hampshire. (The views expressed here represent those of the author, not Milford School District or UNH.)

Tax Us, Daddy?

Reason

Tax Us, Daddy?

Liz Wolfe – January 18, 2024

Taxes are the only way to get rid of excess money? “We ask you to tax us, the very richest in society,” reads an open letter to the world leaders assembled in Davos, Switzerland, penned by 250 millionaires and billionaires who seem to be gluttons for punishment.

“We’d be proud to pay more,” declares their website, which is thusly named. “This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.” Signatories include Disney and Rockefeller heiresses, as well as actor Brian Cox.

Currently, nobody is forcing them to keep their earnings. They have full freedom to do whatever they’d like with their money—including giving it away to charity or coordinating with other similarly rich people to pool money together to tackle specific issues that might be too large for just one billionaire to handle.

“Inequality has reached a tipping point, and its cost to our economic, societal and ecological stability risk is severe—and growing every day,” reads the letter, which in no way substantiates how “inequality” has reached this “tipping point” or what exactly happens if inequality continues to grow. (Absolute wealth is infrequently mentioned in these types of calls to action. It’s always relative wealth, which allows signatories to ignore the vast standard-of-living gains that have been made over the last century.)

“If our elected officials refuse to address this concentration of money and power, the consequences will be dire,” warned Cox.

Speaking of concentrations of power: The impetus for the open letter is the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, which is happening now and drawing leaders from across the globe—frequently arriving on their private jets. (“Private jet emissions quadrupled during Davos 2022,” reads a Guardian headline from last year, which put the total number of private jet flights at 1,040. Fascinating that those who are so concerned with climate change still feel comfortable flying private.)

The bright spot, amid the calls for coercive wealth redistribution, was undoubtedly the speech given by newly elected Argentine President Javier Milei, who is so full of fiery takes that he might just singe your eyebrows off.

“Today I am here to tell you that the Western world is in danger, and it’s in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty,” said Milei. “Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well-meaning individuals willing to help others, and others motivated by the desire to belong to a privileged class, the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism.”

But Argentina knows firsthand, he warned, just how bad of an economic situation can arise from state intervention: “We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world, rather they are the root cause.”

“Today’s states don’t need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the life of individuals,” he continued. “With tools like printing money, debt, subsidies, control of the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct the so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals.”

And, later on: “They say that capitalism is evil because it’s individualistic and that collectivism is good because it’s altruistic, of course with the money of others.”

You couldn’t engineer a better response to the taxation-hungry billionaires mentioned above if you tried. People are always free to give their own money away, but it takes a special breed to favor coercion.

“Do not be intimidated either by the political caste nor by parasites who live off the state. Do not surrender yourself to a political class that only wants to perpetuate itself in power and keep their privileges,” Milei added, closing with a forceful defense of value creators: “You [entrepreneurs] are social benefactors, you are heroes, you are the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we have ever seen. Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral.”

After all, “the state is not the solution, the state is the problem itself.”

It’s about time someone went into the lion’s den and forcefully defended free market capitalism.

Oh, and Milei? He flew commercial, saving taxpayers an estimated $392,000.