Let's Make the Fearlessness Movement Ning Grow and Strengthen in 2024
Hello All Fearlessness Movement ning members. As the year 2023 winds down and 2024 horizon can be seen now, it is a good time to get honest and speak truths. I have my own biases about what is the most important phenomenon going on globally, which is top position in terms of quick and deadly impacts. I am speaking about the political scene. On behalf of the need to awaken from the paralyzation of most of us from ongoing onslaughts of fear/terror/anxiety, I am convinced we have alternatives, and the path of fearlessness is a viable 'fear' vaccine that can be adopted and nourished. Let's work together to organize and grow this Fearlessness Movement. Pass around to your friends the link of this website, share it on your social media and make your endorsements if you feel called. [contact me to help out: r.michaelfisher52 [at] gmail.com
We can increase our membership and activities here and in your neighborhoods, but we have to attract more members to gain momentum. Currently the 2023 year is ending with 146 FM ning members and this number has remained roughly about the same all year long, with slow increases, and some leaving etc. As founder and host of the FM ning, I pay $330/ year for us to have this online community presence. I'd like help to pay for that and I'd like a whole lot more people to post here and create energy of ideas and actions to make the world a better place using a unique set of frameworks in which to do that--of which, our improved learning about fear and fearlessness is core and central and essential. I am not interested in adding to the Fear Problem by acting in ways that are not based in fearlessness as the objective below and motivating the good changes we want.
Let's Not Ignore the Real Development of World Politics
I thought to copy an excerpt from a very good article on the threats of authoritarian populism (mostly far right wing, but also some left wing) in the political sphere. This excerpt by a reliable source at the organization "Othering & Belonging Institute" out of UC Berkeley, is published by Democracy & Belonging Forum, Dec. 20, 2023. Take a special note of the paragraph summary that speaks of the zeitgeist and potency of fear and anger feeding each other to drive the populism into a frenzy and effective dominant force on this planet. Enjoy reading, and let's talk about this and other topics related in 2024.
by Míriam Juan-Torres (December 20, 2023)
Connecting the Dots #17
The year 2023 has been full of violence. Civilian deaths continue to rise in Gaza and Ukraine. The horrors of the Hamas attacks against Israeli civilians are ongoing. It took a day for Azerbaijan to seize Nagorno-Karabakh and displace thousands of Armenians, while at the same time the humanitarian crisis in Sudan continues to deteriorate under the radar. And these are only a few examples.
Violence does not only come in the form of war though.
And as the year comes to an end and I try to reflect on the months passed, I sometimes wonder if, as I am constantly steeped in research on authoritarian populism, my perspective is too clouded by the negatives. Yet no matter where I look, whether it’s in international news, progressive spaces, or far-right forums, the pervasive sensation I observe is usually a combination of anxiety, fear, and anger. But again, is this new or worse? When has the world been fair? When have we inhabited a planet where all belong?
Yet some dare to dream outrageous dreams and their dreams come true. In November, far-right leader Geert Wilders’ electoral victory in the Netherlands and Javier Milei’s in Argentina caught many by surprise. Wilders is a politician with more than 20 years of political experience who only a few years ago was convicted for hate speech and continues to run an explicitly Islamophobic campaign (for more on the plethora of Dutch populist parties see here). Javier Milei is a political newcomer who runs on an anarchocapitalist platform and applauds the Argentinian dictatorship, idolizes guns, and challenges women’s rights.
Wilders and Milei are not the only authoritarian populists who recently came to power through free and fair elections. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is the most notorious of the bunch and, if I am not mistaken she was the first female authoritarian populist to become prime minister ever (she was elected in late 2022). In Slovakia, far-right politician Robert Fico returned to power by centering anti-Ukrainian sentiment, after having resigned in 2018 during his second term following the murder of Ján Kuciak, an investigative reporter, and his fiancee, Martina Kušnírová. Still, despite how his last term ended, he now intends to restrict media freedom.
All of them and many others believed that their big bets could yield results. And they did.
Dreaming big, however, takes courage. And while authoritarian populists such as Wilders and Milei, Meloni, and Fico seem to have courage aplenty, the lesson that mainstream politicians are drawing is that the only way to combat the surge of authoritarian populism is to adopt their frames. The President of the European People’s Party at the EU Parliament (the EPP is the center-right, pro-European political party which gathers over 83 parties from 44 countries), Manfred Weber, recently made this evident during some of his first remarks on the back of Geert Wilders’ victory by concluding that adopting the far-rights’ postures on immigration is the only way to prevent the rise of the far right. There’s no alternative vision, no inclusive dream.
The constant whitewashing of Meloni’s image by EU leaders and the media also reflects how as long as authoritarian populist leaders keep in line with economics and foreign policy, the rest of Europe can turn a blind eye to whatever happens in “internal politics.”
To me, this mostly demonstrates one of the biggest threats to democracy and human rights in Europe—the collusion, the blending, the normalization, and the incorporation of authoritarian populist ideas and actors into the mainstream. The branding of those ideas as the only solution to complex challenges. The alternative to rejecting authoritarian populism frames is not to say that there are no problems, that migration is not a relevant issue, that people aren't struggling, that fear is unreasonable. Or to delegitimize voters who vote for far-right candidates. But presenting the far-rights’ solutions as the only reasonable options shows at best a failure of imagination and at worst a cynical lack of commitment to justice and human rights.
The year 2024 will be a definitive year on many fronts.
We are less than three months away from Super Tuesday in the United States of America, when Donald Trump will likely win the nomination as the Republican candidate. The November 2024 US general elections could very well yield a victory for Trump, and historical examples show us that a second term by an authoritarian populist is far more dangerous, as they come equipped with lessons from their first term and can double down on their authoritarian practices. Some, like historian Robert Kagan, have been keen to emphasize that a Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. In the meantime, across the US, Republican governors continue to (ab)use preemptive laws to circumscribe what cities and counties can do, targeting abortion, and LGBTQ and voting rights, often in majority-minority localities.
European Parliament elections are scheduled for June 2024. Turnout at EU elections across the continent is notoriously low, yet historically they are the elections where the far right have had some success while failing nationally. Albeit in the past they didn’t have enough representation to wield significant power, their presence at the EU Parliament provided a platform for far-right leaders like British Nigel Farage to deliver attention-grabbing performances. While their national results are clearly shifting, far-right candidates are also projected to have record-high results in the upcoming EU election. The largest group is still projected to be the European People’s Party, which in the past generally adopted a cordon sanitaire approach to far-right parties (a joint agreement to refuse to cooperate with the far right), but now is increasingly coalescing with it.
For the first time, the possibility of a far-right-dominated European Union seems very real.
This would have severe implications for European citizens, as several big reforms will be underway during the new year. While the green transition continues, authoritarian populists and center-right populists are increasingly challenging green policies. Elected officials across Europe aim to conclude a migration pact in 2024, and unfortunately it seems we can only expect further securitization and outsourcing of state violence and border management to third party states that are often authoritarian. And I am also keeping an eye on a new EU Defence of Democracy package. The draft proposal has been advanced with the goal of trumping foreign influence of lobbying groups, but includes provisions affecting civil society organizations as well. According to Transparency International, the “demand for civil society organisations to disclose foreign funding risks designating them as foreign agents, which could expose civil society to unwarranted and perilous stigmatisation.” We have seen in Russia, India, Hungary, and Italy how the targeting of NGOs and attempts to limit their international funding is amongst the first authoritarian practices of elected far-right leaders.
Even though the results are predictable, the coming year will also see presidential elections in Russia, where around 110 million will be able to vote, including, for the first time, parts of Ukraine under the control of Russian forces (it seems like a good time to bring back to memory the statements of the Kremlin’s spokesperson: “Our presidential election is not really democracy, it is costly bureaucracy [...] Mr. Putin will be re-elected next year with more than 90 percent of the vote.”)
India is also expected to celebrate general elections in 2024 and Prime Minister Narendra Modhi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to reign supreme, and thus expected to continue its persecution of journalists and Muslims while cracking down on civil liberties.
That being said, while the playing field is extremely uneven in Russia, in India, PM Modi seems to boast unprecedented levels of approval for prime ministers who are officially elected, raising the question of how – as people committed both to belonging and democracy – we confront the authoritarian lurch of democratically elected and widely supported authoritarian populists leaders, a question that is likely to become more and more important.
Nonetheless, I also have hopes for 2024.
This year will be the year of a new government in Poland. After a long road, Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government was sworn in on December 13. Tusk will be able to govern thanks to a coalition that includes moderate center-right politicians as well as progressives, and has stated that “his government would focus on restoring the rule of law and respect for the constitution.”
I am also hoping that the authoritarian populist victories we have seen in 2023 will be a more definitive wakeup call, and that we will cease to see the far-right surge with surprise. [cont'd]....
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