Are we against neoliberalism against racism?

The international condemnation of racist violence by US law enforcement authorities is not new, but the exceptional scale and reach of the response to the murder of George Floyd, who sparked weeks of protests in 60 cities, represents a change.

Protesters of the world unite

The international condemnation of racist violence by US law enforcement is not new, but the exceptional scale and reach of the response to the murder of George Floyd, who sparked weeks of protests in at least 60 cities, represents a change.

In many places crowds turned their attention to their countries' practices. In New Zealand, the indigenous people stressed their vulnerability to racial profiling. In Bristol, England, protesters toppled the statue of Edward Coulston a prominent slave trader and threw him into the harbor. In Belgium, protesters set fire to a statue of King Leopold II. The reaction transcended condemnation of racial injustice. When the Minneapolis police shot foreign journalists with "non-lethal" weapons, this led to criticism from governments for assaulting freedom of the press.

Large-scale protests in Europe, in response to the killing of George Floyd, cast an unprecedented spotlight on the relationship between European countries and their black populations. Crowds in countries as diverse as Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Hungary and the Czech Republic turned to condemn racism not only in the United States, but also in their home countries.

In 2003 we witnessed millions flocking to at least 20 cities to fight the war in Iraq, and Martin Luther King's birth day - the inspiration for the civil rights movement in the United States - was chosen to confirm the historical depth of the peoples ’protracted struggles and connect the world's peace movements with the civil rights movement.

There is a historical symbiosis between the national liberation movements from colonialism after the Second World War and the anti-racism movement in the United States, especially the civil rights movement 1955, with what we can say that the anti-colonialism was fueled by anti-racism.

The relationship between apartheid in the 1960s and early 1990s made Nelson Mandela and other heroes of the ANC in South Africa American heroes of African descent.

Almost a decade ago, the first wave of the Arab Spring erupted from Tunisia to extend to Egypt and then to most Arab countries, even if its strength and continuity varied from one country to another, and this movement was an inspiration for the movement of fields in Europe and Latin America.

From the beginning of the third millennium, we witnessed various struggles and protests. The nature of the waves that escalate sometimes fades at other times, demonstrating their anger at the brutality of the police, corruption, patronage capitalism, the arrogance of those in power, the manipulation of politics, the weakness of political institutions from representing people and their collective marginalization, and exacerbating disparities in wealth Income and opportunity are long, but the list is compounded by a universal human demand for dignity, justice and freedom.

But why should we stop before this global wave of protest against racism that has caused journalist Kim Zetter to write that the global impact of the black life movement in recent weeks seemed to be a "massive shift like the fall of the Berlin Wall", and why should it be understood in the context of two decades of continuous protests? That is, from the beginning of the third millennium, and how do these protests relate to the spread of the Coruna virus?

The state and the systematic discrimination industry

In Iraq, as in the war on terrorism, the war on irregular migration, the war on organized crime, and the war on the epidemic, the contemporary state uses - in those wars - similar mechanisms to achieve victory over an unclear enemy and borders, and it is defined according to the interests of each country despite alliances Between them, and in wars, everything is legitimate or can be legalized to achieve victory that never comes.

The state moves towards the racially, culturally, religiously, terrorist, illegal immigrant, or criminals who differ legally in various paths that begin with dehumanization, ending with the de-citizenship of the target person or groups.

For this purpose, the following mechanisms are used:

1 - Dehumanization: Black Americans, immigrants, and terrorists are deprived of humanity, and therefore those dehumanizing should not be treated with equality because they are considered less valuable, and the lives of these groups are completely assaulted by turning them into stereotypes or meaningless numbers, and then the systematic violence begins Justification or "project". She realized this fact in prison, as the violations of law enforcement institutions cannot continue with their organized violence towards prisoners, and their followers cannot maintain the degree of these violations and their continuation without dehumanizing the opposite side, which turns into an enemy in wars that are not clear-cut and targeted.

2- Criminalization: The criminal is a creature of legal fiction using state tools, and its monopoly on violence comes through law enforcement institutions to ensure the implementation and application of criminalization on specific groups, and it develops through the use of legislative techniques and bureaucratic procedures to manufacture criminal groups, and propaganda, ideologies and ideas to give moral legitimacy to criminalization Legal.

My pretrial detention lasted for 3 and a half years, despite the fact that the maximum period of pretrial detention in accordance with the law that was amended by the same system is only two years, can this be done only by delegitimizing you after dehumanization.

Criminal / non-criminal dualism creates the moral and operational normality of both the public and the private spheres. The state uses the concepts of war, national security, and sovereignty to enhance the scope of substantive and territorial legitimacy, and to identify groups and individuals covered in and out of it, and many legal procedures in the various wars waged by the state are based on exceptional measures of lack of presumption of innocence (the illegal immigrant), or the right to a fair trial (Guantanamo), or police officers are not convicted of racist incidents because they are in a legitimate defense of themselves.

One of the important observations he captured with prison experience is that whoever possesses power in the contemporary state produces legal illegitimacy and includes social, intellectual, political and ethnic marginalization, and despite the ability of those who have the power to define illegitimacy, this usually ends with delegitimization of the groups that fight it. Regulation 3/7 in Egypt has taken all legal measures that guarantee the sanitation of the public sphere, but its commitment to the legitimacy that it produced remains non-existent. In my case, my pretrial detention lasted for 3 and a half years, despite the fact that the maximum period of pre-trial detention according to the law that was amended by the same system is only two years, can this be done only by delegitimizing you after dehumanizing you?

3- Discrimination has evolved to be cultural: the conditions of the poor, vulnerable and black groups in the United States and terrorism are a product of their nature and not a result of the abandonment of the neoliberal state in the United States and the world by the policies of economic and social support to the most vulnerable groups in society, and all Muslims - in the policies of the war on terror - a threat to civilization By virtue of their culture and religion, the poor have become so because they do not want to work, and not because of the structural readjustment policies that have made them more vulnerable.

4- Industry Threat: Immigrants are a threat to jobs and our standard of living, Muslims are a threat to Western civilization with its values, black is a threat to organized structures, the virus is a threat to economy and globalization before humans and their health, terrorism is a threat to the national state, and the poor are a threat to economic growth and political stability ... etc. This is how the modern man lives in constant intimidation to keep the situation as it is when blaming minorities, the poor, terrorist groups and migrant workers, even though they came to fill a gap that provides cheap labor in light of economic transformations.

In the politics of intimidation, one thing is always replaced by another through multiple dualities, the contradiction between which emerges: protection from the virus in exchange for violating privacy and giving up some human rights, and in the war on terrorism preserving the state in exchange for closing the public sphere, and in emigration economic welfare in exchange for preventing immigration ... Etc. The problem is that wars do not end and do not achieve the goal that has been conceded: eliminating the virus or stability, increasing jobs or economic welfare.

5- Classification and removal: the state invests its power in identifying those covered by its citizenship, and creates national exclusion and turns it into institutions. The state creates a unified removal process by extending the crimes that lead to the removal. It uses, for example, fewer legal verification mechanisms for the groups that are waging war, and provides less procedural protection than the ordinary law of these groups. In fighting terrorism, combating illegal immigration and confronting minority violence, there Permanent extension of law enforcement institutions or increase in punishment.

What have we learned from these mechanisms?

1- If the various are wiped out religiously, linguistically, ethnically and socially, no one will remain safe, and he will be the next only target. The dilemma of the contemporary state is its inability to manage diversity at the national and international levels, although it has become the main challenge for all countries, democratic and authoritarian.

2- It should be noted that at every stage of the contemporary state’s struggle with the issue of what is left to this issue to lead and reshape other areas, in the United States new immigration policies were not formulated away from the policies of the war on terror after September 11, as the field was cleared The year in Egypt since 2013 in the context of the war on terror. Immigration policies of the European Union lead its external relations and it is one of the main determinants of support for regimes - the southern Mediterranean - albeit authoritarian.

3- Reducing the rights of those groups who are being waged war by converting them to non-citizens. It is the necessary prelude to violating the rights of citizens themselves. Studies have shown that the rights that are diminished in these times, times of wars and crises, are not recovered, especially as we move from one war to another over the past two decades.

Two decades of struggle against neoliberalism

We know that power structures differ from country to country, as are grievances over which protests move, but the common perception is an important issue:

The protest movements over the past two decades are in essence demands that we be governed by a better and more normative authority promising human dignity and liberation. There is a normative rejection of slavery, racism, inequality, disparities between people and discrimination of any kind, and of war.

1- The main changes led by the popular base are far-reaching and directed towards multiple issues and in various magazines, and therefore they take the form of broad ideological and political fronts, a feature of protesting neoliberalism which is not only a political project but rather a comprehensive project that reshapes the structures of global power and wealth within the state to be For example, it uses multiple tools for this purpose and employs various institutions, the core of which is to create global standards, values, institutional, legal and procedural through market mechanisms.

Neoliberalism appears in every corner of the world because it is a minor practice of governance and wealth, not ideology, and the protest against it is similar to it when it appears in many corners of which there is no link between them.

This deepens the shift in protest from dependence on large institutions such as trade unions, while proceeding to rely on large, non-hierarchical and decentralized networks of temporary actors.

But the important lesson in these struggles is that when a group of people successfully defend their rights, this gives inspiration and confidence to others. This happened in the Arab Spring and now happens in the fight against racism, and it will always happen in the future.

2- There is still a failure so far to face the structural repression of most citizens, from alliances to the elites that have become completely wealthy but separate from their peoples.

So many anti-racism experts believe that its dilemma cannot be solved without radical change in the United States, which has not been achieved for a century and a half until now. Racism in the United States is systematic, systematic, and moves on the deeper structures of inequality, a central and enduring American trait, as one of the race theorists emphasized.

The experience of the two decades says that protesters know what they are protesting, but they are not yet able to present an alternative project that dismantles the structures of power and wealth, and here the question is whether the protest turns into fights in which victories accumulate in successive series, or is neoliberalism - as capitalism has always done - able to Renew itself and fix its mistakes? Will protesters' realization evolve that their struggle today, which relates to the politics of daily life, is part of a regular decade of a perpetual war against harmful neoliberalism?

The pandemic ... reinventing the government while deepening inequalities

The conditions under the virus are characterized by uncertainty, with the inability to perceive future features, and the epidemic accelerates underlying dynamics; It underscores extremism in every matter, as it deepens the lines of separation that cluster around race and class, as it increases disparities in income, wealth, and opportunity.
While the epidemic has failed to stop inter-state violence, it has created and exacerbated the short- and medium-term risks of violence and instability within countries.

Indeed, Covid-19 has reinforced trends that deepen the threat of violence and instability within nations, democratic retreat, economic collapse, and targeting of minorities.

The outbreak has provided new opportunities to target minorities and government repression, and those who have been scapegoats or target violence from marginalized groups have found cover and even new fuel in the pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis. State-sponsored religious discrimination, as well as hate speech and violence against marginalized and religiously or ethnically different groups, have increased.

At the same time, measures to contain and enforce coronavirus have provided cover for state-led repression, which is also likely to increase the grievances of some groups, weaken civil confidence and further disturbances.

Neoliberalism is a complex set of policy tools, institutional arrangements and technical interventions that involve reinventing the government in a way that guarantees its control and power in areas and its withdrawal from others. The virus revealed this fact, despite the exorbitant military spending over the past years and the increasing presence of law enforcement forces in many areas, this arsenal of weapons and police control could not cope with the virus outbreak.

And one of the researchers cleverly snapped that the coronavirus had caused great disruption by revealing the modern state’s deficit in the face of a massive and catastrophic event. "We are forced to see that there is an insurmountable gap between the criteria and agreements of appropriate state administration during routine times and the logic of dealing with the state of emergency." Here lies the problem of the modern state, which is based primarily on the logic of routine and denies the specific differentiation of emergency logic. The more the system excels in sound management under routine conditions, the less prepared it is to deal with an unprecedented emergency scenario.

Consequently, the coronavirus crisis calls for a new study of what can be expected from the modern state, because the demand for help from state institutions is especially large in times of emergency, there is a need to review the structures and structures that the state maintains in routine times and create the necessary balance between the logic of routine And emergency logic.

Another feature of the epidemic is that the near term will lead to a new era of a larger and more interventionist government. Management of the epidemic will require larger governments, as countries rush to create new, expanded tools for disease control, public domain management, and social monitoring in the hope of reducing disease outbreaks in the future. The era of big governments is coming back, but it will emerge in completely different ways from the 1960s and 1970s.

After decades of free market momentum, governments in both developed and emerging markets alike are adopting influential and long-term roles for them in core business.

As the World Trade Organization falters, this is likely just the start of a set of public subsidies, tax exemptions, government purchases, warehousing, local purchase requirements and other plans that many countries will develop to shape production and access to a larger set of goods and services that are essential, for security reasons Nationalism - now defined more broadly than ever before to include the risk of dropping out, overly dependent on China or creating jobs.

Certainly efforts to preserve and expand free trade will not end. But many of these negotiations will assume, and at times stand out, more direct government intervention in the markets.

After 3 decades of wealth creation on a historically unprecedented scale, are we - with the intervention of governments - at the threshold of an unprecedented period of redistribution of wealth in the form of higher taxes to finance the expansion of care and other services?

Some studies suggest otherwise, the distributional characteristics of job losses and incomes are more disturbing. According to a recent survey by the US Federal Reserve, 39% of workers in households with an annual income of less than $ 40,000 have been laid off.

Women were severely affected, as were minorities: Of the 20.5 million jobs that disappeared in April, 55% were women, raising the unemployment rate for women to 15%, the rate for African American women and Hispanic women to 16.4% and 20.2% Respectively. There is no doubt that the epidemic was a catalyst for unequal opportunities.

Long-term damage to people and the economy accumulates over time, and the opposite becomes more without relief and stimulus measures.

Those whose jobs have withstood the Covid-19 shock are disproportionately in relatively high-paying occupations that can accommodate work arrangements from home.

The slower the economic recovery, the greater the loss of jobs and income, and this will increase financial, institutional, social and political instability.

Increasing dependence on automation and digitization will increase the employment problem, so that children of the unemployed may suffer, they are less likely to adapt to online education during the epidemic and less likely to have the equipment and conditions to do so. Educational gaps will continue to widen, perpetuating the cycle of insecurity.

Long-term damage to people and the economy accumulates over time, and the opposite becomes more without relief and stimulus measures.

Even in the best case scenario, income and national losses will not recover immediately. Many individuals and companies will be forced to take on debts that in the long run will prevent spending and investment. But not everyone will be affected equally, and the damage will be disproportionately affected by the poorest households, which in turn will consume less and slow the revival of demand and thus speed the recovery.

A disproportionate part of the health and economic burden falls on those who are least able to bear it. Various departments should support and enhance major emergency interventions to alleviate some of this burden and promote growth. Otherwise, economic problems will worsen over time and inequalities will deepen, increasing the risk of economic, institutional and social instability.

After all this is it recognized that the assessment of economies based on pure GDP is a failure that must be addressed if we are to have the opportunity to create a more equitable world?

The coronavirus crisis, which has led to the sudden interruption of human interaction around the world, provides an opportunity to review the public and secret aspects of the ways in which human life is managed, first and foremost the roles and obligations of the state towards its citizens.