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Through the Looking-Glass

I started this journal one year ago today in the hopes of looking deeper into the world around us, and how it parallels to history. The first - and to this date only - post came in the wake of the Brexit referendum, and with the United States Presidential election looming. Unfortunately, after the first post, a lot changed, throughout the world and personally, and I no longer desired to write down my thoughts. I had recently decided to look back at my only post on Peace For Our Time, and realized that I was coming up on the one year anniversary of its posting. So, one year later, I have decided to look back at the broad topics I had discussed in my introduction post, and see where we stand now.

A year after Brexit, life in the United Kingdom has changed significantly. Understandably there has been economic uncertainty, as the UK has not yet left the European Union, and the markets do not know how the British economy will fare once it has fully jettisoned itself from the EU. Politically, there has been a historic shift towards the more left-wing Labour Party, spearheaded by Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn, once a Euroskeptic himself, has more recently changed his stance on Britain’s inclusion in the European Union. In a speech last June, Corbyn said “We, the Labour Party, are overwhelmingly for staying in, because we believe the European Union has brought investment, jobs and protection for workers, consumers and the environment,”[1]. Following the Brexit results, Corbyn faced harsh criticism from his own party members who believed that he did not do enough in the lead-up to the EU referendum to convince citizens to vote Remain, and it seemed as though his position as the party’s leader was at risk. Jeremy Corbyn managed to defeat Owen Smith - the only member of the party contending against him - and solidified his position as Labour leader. His victory over Owen Smith would be the prelude to a much greater challenge.

On April 18th, Prime Minister Theresa May of the Conservative Party (The Tories), called for a snap election, which May believed would result in a stronger majority for the Tories. The crux of the election was based on how to manage Brexit negotiations, but also the security of the nation. National security became a hot topic in the United Kingdom when the nation was rocked by two separate terrorist attacks in Manchester and in London. These attacks cast a spotlight over May’s cuts to police and anti-terrorism units, with former Met chief inspector Peter Kirkham calling May "criminally negligent with the safety of the public,"[2]. The damage was done, and on June 8th, British voters granted Labour its biggest victory since 1945 - gaining 30 seats in the House of Commons to give them 262 seats - and the Tories losing 13 seats, forcing them to seek support from the nationalist Democratic Unionist Party. Though Theresa May remains Prime Minister, it was a crushing blow for a party that believed the election would provide greater returns. Instead, Jeremy Corbyn’s dynamic personality and promises to strengthen public services, security, and industry energized supporters and swayed those on the fence to come out in support of the Labour Party.

Last year, the United States presidential election was heating up, with Republican nominee Donald Trump squaring off against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The populist fervor in this country grew significantly from candidates such as Donald Trump and Clinton’s main challenger in the Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders. Trump campaigned on radical reforms to the US government - claiming that, if elected, he would “drain the swamp” in Washington of lobbyists and insiders, leave NATO, and repeal all of Obama’s reforms, among other things. Trump was able to channel conservative anger at Obama’s policies, paranoia towards immigrants, refugees, and even fellow Americans into a frenzy, feeling almost like the polar opposite of Obama’s ‘HOPE’ slogan that he ran on originally in 2008. Clinton - a former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State - was seen as the “insider” in the election, which did not bode well for her campaign.

Clinton maintained a slight advantage in opinion polls in the weeks leading up to the election, even though both candidates were regarded rather negatively by Americans. Clinton’s lead would be damaged just eleven days before the election, as then-FBI Director James Comey came out and said that they had obtained additional emails pertaining to Hillary Clinton from a different case, which reignited discussions on Secretary Clinton’s private email server. On November 6th, only two days before the election, Comey came out and said that there was nothing on the emails that changed the FBI’s results from their initial Clinton investigation, but the damage had been done, and on November 8th, Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States.

Though Trump lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes, the Trump campaign worked several battleground states like Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, and Michigan harder than Clinton, and flipped them to his side, helping him to secure the Electoral votes necessary to defeat his Democratic opponent. Since becoming President, Trump has been criticized for a variety of reasons - claiming he would ‘drain the swamp’ while filling his cabinet with Washington insiders, lobbyists, and Goldman Sachs executives, reneging on his promise to reveal his tax returns after the election was over, his immigration policies, tweetstorms in which he rails against political opponents, celebrities, foreign leaders, the media, and even his own intelligence committees, firing FBI Director Comey and then threatening to reveal recordings of their conversations before Comey testified before the Senate, for taking advice from men such as Steve Bannon and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and most importantly the relationship between Trump, his cabinet, and Russia.

The details of the Trump presidency would require a separate post to get into greater detail, but what is more important is the reverberations felt in this country and around the world following Trump’s victory. In the United States, there have been significant protests from different groups - from citizens opposing Trump’s travel ban, to the scientific community, those against the proposed Healthcare plan being pushed by the GOP which stands to “increase the number of people without health insurance by 22 million by 2026,“[3], and those angry with Trump’s words inciting hate crimes across the nation.

With Trump’s victory, white nationalist groups have continued infecting sections of the internet and “redpilling” them. Websites such as Reddit’s r/The_Donald and 4chan’s /pol/ section have been havens for these groups to grow their influence and rail against a variety of boogeymen - SJWs, Islam, Communists, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, etc. Clashes between these groups have become more commonplace, and the divide in this country becomes deeper. Hate crimes have become more commonplace since Trump’s victory, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a report this year describing how in 2016 there was a “57 percent increase in anti-Muslim bias incidents over 2015. This was accompanied by a 44 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the same period,”[4]. While American citizens fight an ideological battle in the streets of major cities to silence from Trump, his administration begins to cut back on education spending, the EPA, and plans to slash Medicaid spending “by $834 billion over 10 years,“[5], all in the name of Making America Great Again.

Internationally, Trump’s election became a specter to countries with their own elections coming up. In The Netherlands, far-right candidate Geert Wilders of the nationalist Party for Freedom (PVV) sought to become the next Prime Minister. With Trump’s support, Geert Wilders was eager to follow up on his victory in the US election, but failed to unseat Mark Rutte as PM. Despite the loss, Wilders and the PVV’s anti-Islam, anti-immigration, Euroskeptic stance resonated with Dutch voters, as they gained five seats from the election and will still be a challenger to Rutte’s majority in the future.

In France, Marine Le Pen, daughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, also sought to ride the wave of populism and right-wing anger from Trump’s victory and become President of France. Marine had changed the face of the National Front, which was once seen as too radical, and made it more “friendly” to French voters. Le Pen had the backing of both Trump and Russia, who saw her hard stance on the refugee crisis as a way of stemming the perceived tides of violence and terrorism, but ultimately could not defeat the young, charismatic Emmanuel Macron, a centrist banker who formed his own party - En Marche! and brought a message of hope and unification. Macron is seen by the far-right as a radical who will open up the borders to more refugees and further destroy the fabric of French society, while some on the left see Macron as someone who will not uphold progressive policies and will be more on the side of corporate interests. While Macron has criticisms from both sides, his victory was another blow to the far-right populist movements growing around Europe.

We have gazed into the looking-glass and seen a world changed by far-right nationalism, populism, and extremism. White nationalist sentiment continues to grow in spaces on the internet where anonymity is king, but all is not lost. The reaction from those who wish to fight back against the tides of populism and white nationalism has invigorated people who felt hopeless in the face of Trump’s victory. During the interwar period, fascism grew from the ashes of war. Nations such as Italy, Germany, Spain, and Hungary fell under its enticing power, but ultimately fascism crumbled after World War II. We live in a time where fascism’s dark specter has been revived under the code word of “nationalism” and seeks to grab hold of the people once again and entice them with nationalism, populism, and hatred of the “other”. It is up to us to ensure that fascism does not return to prominence, as it does not lead to peace. Peace for our time has once again not been achieved and that is why the fight continues.

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“I believe it is peace for our time”

I created this page as an outlet for me to write about current events around the globe from a historical point of view. The late George Santayana famously wrote, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,”. Watching current events unfold, I can’t help but think that Santayana was on to something. History teaches us about the past, but it can be the key to understanding our present. I am not a professional by any means, nor am I looking to incite emotionally-charged arguments. I am simply a young adult who studied and has a deep passion for history.

I chose my Tumblr name from the famous statement made by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on September 30th, 1938. Chamberlain, who had traveled to Germany to meet with Adolf Hitler, accepted what is known as the Munich Agreement, which would allow Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland that were home to a primarily German population. When Chamberlain returned home, he made this now famous statement:

“My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”

The Munich Agreement is considered to be another failure of appeasement towards Germany. Just as the British and French had failed to stop the Germans from remilitarizing the Rhineland, or from annexing Austria during the Anschluss - the belief was that if they gave concessions to Hitler, it would avoid another costly war with Germany. “Peace for our time” has become an ironic statement, as the German Reich would invade Poland on the 1st of September, 1939 alongside the Soviet Union, beginning the war in Europe. The policy of appeasement had failed, and the world was embroiled in another war two decades after the conclusion of World War I.

I have decided to apply “peace for our time” to the present day. While the world has not seen a global conflict like World War II in seventy years, we still do not truly know what peace is. From the ashes of the second Great War, we witnessed the recession of concepts like nationalism and jingoism in the western world and the rise of globalism. The concept of a “United States of Europe” became more attainable after the conclusion of World War II with the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, establishing the European Economic Community. This treaty, and the formation of the EEC, were the precursor to what would become the European Union, an organization that today includes 28 nations and wields considerable influence in the world.

The European Union has become an incredible example of Europe coming together under one unified banner, as old rivals mended relations and became global partners. Now, in 2016, nationalism has risen to the surface once more, and has cast its shadow over Europe. On the 23rd of June, the people of the United Kingdom voted by a little over one million votes to leave the European Union, casting aside the idea of a unified Europe to forge their own path alone. This has been the first shot fired against the EU, but it certainly will not be the last. In the aftermath of the UK’s EU referendum, Marine Le Pen, who is the head of France’s National Front party, praised the UK’s decision and has called for their own referendum. The Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy could also follow with their own referendums, but it remains to be seen if these nations would actually vote to leave. Euroscepticism and nationalism have continued to grow in conjunction with one another and could threaten to tear apart all the progress made since World War II’s end.

But Europe is just one continent. The world still faces many issues - from the highest number of refugees ever seen (65.3 million)[1], the roughly “795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine... suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2014-2016″[2], the “1 in 3 people, or 2.4 billion,... still without sanitation facilities – including 946 million people who defecate in the open,”[3] civil wars in Yemen, South Sudan, and Syria, conflicts in Ukraine, Nigeria, Turkey, and Israel-Palestine, humanitarian crises in Mynamar, Somalia, and Central African Republic, and countless territorial disputes between nations.

The United States faces its own issues as well. The current presidential election has only highlighted this country’s deep divide on many issues like equality, gun rights, reproductive rights, political and corporate corruption, the broken two party system and its obstructionism, healthcare, immigration, and national security. Nationalism has started to resurface in the States as well, with the Republican Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”, at its forefront. Trump has rejected the idea of globalism, which has energized a portion of the country who have a distrust of immigrants, refugees, and Muslims. Fear and marginalization of immigrants is a concept that has existed since the first immigrant stepped foot on American soil. Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, and Vietnamese are among those who earned the scorn of “true” Americans throughout history. Today, it is the Latinx and Muslim communities who are used as boogeymen to scare Americans into voting for politicians who seek to close up America’s borders.

Americans also face a nation with a crumbling infrastructure, as per the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Report Card, a nation that continues to ignore the effects of pollution on our climate, a nation that has a youth population crippled by debt, a failing healthcare system, and the possibility of engaging in another conflict among other issues. Most of all, it faces a nation whose elected officials ignore the will of the constituents, and vote in step with their party and lobbyists regardless of its benefits to the American people.

Just as Chamberlain’s words rang hollow in 1938, they again ring hollow in 2016. Those who fought and died in World War II to protect the world from the specter of fascism should not have died in vain. We have not yet secured peace for our time, but we still have time to change course.