Who Are the MeK?

In the current discussion regarding the situation in Iran, which is becoming more heated than based on logical, political and strategical arguments - on any sides, the name of the MeK - Mujahedin-e Khalq (in English, the People's Holy Warriors) appears more often that it might be. A controversial movement, with barely any support within Iran, based on a bizarre mixture of Marxism and Islam, with clear cultish orientation, MeK invested an enormous amount of money in being taken from the list of terrorist organisations (during Obama administration) and nowadays, found its voice amplified through Pres. Trump's lawyer, Rudolf Giuliani, or the staunch supporter of bombing Iran, at any price, John Bolton. 

If people like Giuliani and Bolton are far from being naive and their participation to events in support of MeK is handsomely rewarded, there is a certain naive approach among people that all their life lived in democracies regarding who really are the 'freedom fighters'. It happened often during the Cold War, when people escaping communist states presented themselves as 'alternatives' to different dictatorships, told some moving half-truth stories about their persecutions and the role in building up a possible opposition, took the money and lived well ever after. In the case of MeK, less known is the cultish aspects of the ideological commitment. 

A couple of years ago, the prestigious RAND Corporation prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense a report about MeK in Iraq, which covers not only specific details regarding the then presence of MeK in this country -which they supported during the decade war against Iran - but also information about the elements of the cult. A welcomed reading for those who want to understand this group and have a well-informed opinion about this part of the world.
PS: Some of the MeK members were trained in the PLO camps in Jordan and Lebanon.

How Democracies Die. And How We can Resuscitate Them.

The end of the Cold War was such an enthusiastic time for the field of the political science. Obviously, between the good and the ugly, the democracies had won and even the old ugly foe, USSR, was rebranded Russia and pushed towards multi-party system and free elections. For at least a decade later, most of the political scientists, following the enthusiasm shared by Fukuyama in the End of History was expecting a blooming of democratic systems all over the world.

NATO and EU expanded, Saddam and Gaddafi were toppled and even some Middle Eastern traditional dictatorships were giving some joyous signs of getting acquainted with democratic change. It was rather a religious belief in a redemption than a realistic evaluation based on clear facts and figures. The standards used to evaluate democratic systems were the results of the Cold War patterns of thinking and although at a certain extent - free elections, free media and multi-party system - were corresponding to the average projection of the democratic ideal, the concepts were way too generous to correspond to the constantly evolving dynamics of the various political systems all over the world. 

In less than a decade, all over the world, including within the apparent big winner of the Cold War confrontation - USA - the democracies as we knew it are under attack. In How Democracies Dies, Steven Levinsky and Daniel Ziblatt are introspectively researching the causes of the death and how eventually democracies can be kept alive.

There is a plethora of books published lately on the topic of the strange democratic reflux taking place lately. Far right parties and populist politicians are taken seriously by the voters all over the world - again. America is apparently going through the biggest political farce right now. Political allies united by the common respect of democratic values are turning opposite sides of the political spectrum - I am thinking about two noticeable examples that it happens to know a bit much better than the others, Turkey and Hungary.

The populists are climbing high on the peaks of political power in a relatively similar way: attacking their political opponents, the media and the justice which is trying to make them accountable for corruption, tax evasion and other law breaking facts. In the end, they, the populist have won and from the position of their office they continue to keep those institutions under attack. Some of those institutions might suffer, especially the media. Hopefully, in the US the journalists are not -yet - sent to prison and their jobs are not becoming obsolete following obscure economic arrangements of politicians, but the fact that the average American is make believe that the media is its enemy is an obvious failure for the watchdog. The terms of the attacks against political opponents are as bad in terms of human relations as any kind of totalitarian discourse. The communist dictatorships used frequently a retoric which used a vituperating art of neutralizing the enemies, including by taking away any human qualities. And if someone follows with the highest attention the usual terms Trump uses against his opponents - including within his own party, as it was the case of Sen. McCain - he suits very well this category. 

The two Harvard university professors who wrote the book are using an extensive comparative approach - mostly with Hungary, Turkey, Poland, Russia, Nicaragua and Peru - and historical insights into the American political - especially presidential - history. History is an useful tool to catch up with the present, by revealing patterns and possible trends. However, my biggest critic of this book is that it does not acknowledges on one side the lack of adaptation of the political science analysis itself to those new challenges - hence the fixation on the past, the more or less recent history - and on the other side, it ignores the influence of social media and technology on political analysis. In fact, both aspects are part of an old school of thought which is still predominant in the political science circles and that doesn't offer a measure good enough for a further understanding and building up new possible models and concepts.

Also missing from the book is a throughout evaluation of the state-of-arts of the political elites nowadays. Such an analysis might require a special volume - or two - but the current disfunctionalities in the American bipartisan system are dued at a great extent to the unpreparadness of the elites and often their inadequacies. 

I completely agree with one of the assumptions of the book that when democracy is in danger you need more democracy, but how you can build concretely those democratic networks and institutions, formal and informal channels able to face and fight the threats the democratic systems are nowadays under attack for, is a question largely remaining unanswered in How Democracies Die. 

Is Nationalism Still a Solution?

In the last decade, also due to the explosion of social media, the identity politics are more visible and vocal than ever. But was it any different or it is only the power of the media which outlines the rapid and sometimes aggressive changes focused on the national redesigned and reinterpreted values and the exclusion of the other? He hear and read not with pleasure about Orban Viktor and the German AfD, but at what extent it is possible to separate the new from the old nationalist elements from the public discourse?

I personally think that there are always some old layers of mentality concept which lay the basis for new interpretations and evaluations, which are circumstantial and possibly in a decade or two becoming the basis for a new conceptual shift. I avoid to hurry up and say if it is good or not to have such identity politics present into the public discourse, but there are obviously some clear limits about what the public discourse should reject as part of the identity politics. For instance, the insistence of AfD politicians in minimizing the Holocaust or the increasing presence of statues of the pro-Nazi Admiral Horthy during the repeated governments headed by Orban Viktor shall be definitely rejected.

John B. Judis is relatively rapidly overviewing the last century of nationalism and the relative failures of creating and enforcing of a European identity which goes beyond the economic and social advantages as well as the current populist outburst in the time of Trump's America. One of the conclusions is that the revival of nationalism is a move forward from the 'illusions and excesses of globalization'. In his opinion, the 'challenge that will determine the future over the reminder of this century' is a 'new international order' that 'acknowledges and doesn't sidestep or discount historic nationalist sentiments'. 

At a certain extent, it is an easy to reach conclusion because, obviously, nationalism is alive and kicking all over the world, but not necessarily as a reaction to globalization. The Russian nationalism always had a global approach, for instance, and elements of the Polish nationalist discourse reiterates elements which historically are at least 2 centuries old. The Austrian nationalism deserves a study in itself and was completely ignored by the author. The Scottish nationalism - also not mentioned - is going through a new stage, with a European - global - approach a couple of steps ahead of the isolationist Brexit mindset. 

The book uses a minimal theoretical apparatus and is jumping too fast to the conclusion, which is nevertheless vague and non-involving. 

I completely agree that there is necessary a most serious consideration of the nationalist/identity policies, including a revision of the theoretical approach, but it should be done with more consideration for details and elaborated explanations. Otherwise, I am completely interested to figure out more discussions and details both based on events and elaborated new and old theories.

Rating: 3 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review