For years, experts believed
liberal democracy would gradually spread around the world but the system has
eaten itself and the result is a new global populism.
The most obvious factor in the
ongoing conflict between Canada and Saudi Arabia is the grotesque disproportion
between cause and effect. In that a minor diplomatic protest has triggered a
set of measures which almost announce a military conflict.
Here’s what happened. Saudi
Arabia finally allowed women to drive, but at the same time arrested women who campaigned for the right to drive.
Among the arrested peaceful activists was Samar Badawi, who has family in
Canada, and Ottawa demanded her release.
In return, the Saudi
government proclaimed this protest a reprehensible interference in its internal
affairs and immediately launched into sanctions. They included expelling the
Canadian ambassador, canceling the state airline’s flights to and from
Canada, freezing new trade and investment, the sale
of assets in Canada, the withdrawal of students and the
repatriation of patients undergoing treatment in Canada.
And all this under the
guidance of a crown prince who poses as a big reformer.
No Scruples
In reality, what we have is a
clear sign that Saudi Arabia remains what it is, not a real state but a large
mafia corporation run by a family. And a country which quite reprehensibly
interferes in the internal affairs of Yemen, literally ruining the nation.
The message of simultaneously
allowing women to drive and arresting those who demanded it is clear and
unambiguous, there is no contradiction here: If small changes happen, they must
come as an act from above and no protest from below is tolerated.
In the same way, there is
absurd overreaction inherent in Saudi counter-measures to Canada’s protest note
and the message is clear: Canada got it wrong, it acted as if we still in the
period of universal human rights.
Indeed, the fact that Egypt
and Russia supported Saudi Arabia in its measures, and that even the US and
Great Britain, otherwise supposed great protectors of human rights, decided to
stay out of the melee, makes it clear that a new world order is emerging in
which the only alternative to the “clash of civilizations” remains
the peaceful co-existence of civilizations (or of “ways of life,” a
more popular term today).
Thus, forced marriages and
homophobia (or the idea that a woman going alone to a public place is asking to
be raped) are OK, so long as they are limited to another country which is
otherwise fully included into the world market.
Two Faces
At the head of this new trend
is a newly found respect for Islam from the same politicians who warn of the
danger of the islamisation of the Christian West. For instance, they
respectfully congratulated Erdogan on his last electoral victory – because the
authoritarian reign of Islam is OK for Turkey but not for us. The same goes for
Israel with its scandalous new apartheid laws privileging Jewish citizens. This
is the truth of today’s multiculturalism: every imposition of universal
standards is denounced as colonialist.
The new world order that is
emerging is thus no longer the Fukuyamaist NWO of global liberal democracy but
a NWO of the peaceful co-existence of different politico-theological ways of
life – co-existence, of course, against the background of the smooth
functioning of global capitalism.
There will be no contradiction
in imposing in our countries the strictest politically correct feminist rules
and simultaneously rejecting the dark side of Islam as neocolonialist
arrogance.
The obscenity of this process
is that it can present itself as a progress in anti-colonial struggle: the
liberal West will no longer be allowed to impose its standards on others and
all ways of life will be treated as equal.
With this in mind, it’s no
wonder Robert Mugabe showed sympathy for Trump's slogan “America first!” – “America
first!” for you, “Zimbabwe first!” for me, “India first!” or “North
Korea first!” for them and so on.
Back to The Future
Of course, this is how the
British Empire, the first global capitalist empire, functioned: each
ethnic-religious community was allowed to pursue its own way of life, Hindus in
India were safely burning widows, for instance, and these local “customs” were
either criticized as barbaric or praised for their pre-modern wisdom, but
tolerated since what mattered is that they were economically part of the
Empire.
So welcome to the new world
order in which Saudi Arabia leads the anti-colonialist struggle. But,
naturally, there is something hypocritical about the liberals who criticize the
slogan “America first” – as if this is not what more or less every
country is doing, and as if America did not play a global role precisely
because it fits its own interests.
The underlying message
of “America first!” is nonetheless a sad one: The American century is
over, America resigned itself to be just one among the (powerful) countries.
And the supreme irony is that the Leftists who for a long time criticized the
US pretension to be the global policeman may begin to long for the old times
when, with all hypocrisy included, the US imposed democratic standards around
the world.
The sad truth that sustains
this new “tolerance” is that today's global capitalism can no longer
afford a positive vision of emancipated humanity, even as an ideological dream.
Fukuyamaist liberal-democratic universalism failed because of its own immanent
limitations and inconsistencies, and populism is the symptom of this failure,
its Huntington's disease, as it were.
But the solution is not
populist nationalism, whether it is be rightist or leftist. Instead, the only
solution is a new universalism – to confront the problems humanity faces today,
from ecological threats to refugee crises.
