Ensuring governance — tribal, monarchical or democratic — is another vocation humans have engaged in. But such is the heady power derived from success in this vocation and so high are the stakes, that when needed, it has led its participants to incite hatred of man against man
When you shout out the same message repeatedly from stage, posters, television — in fact from every spot one turns toward, would you be surprised if someone believed you enough to act upon your wordIJ
When a politician repeatedly asks people to get enraged and hate another community, he may hope to be voted in as the right candidate to protect these people from the perceived danger he has created. Of course he knows well that it is as much likely that someone in his audience is pushed over the edge to pull out the guns and kill the danger himself. The reaction of the audience to his persuasion is decisively out of his control, and yet he knowingly triggered it.
There has been an ugly anti-immigrant tone to the campaign over the June 23 referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union (EU). The leave campaign essentially highlighted that as a great nation Britain will be truly sovereign only away from Brussels.
A poster by Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, which has been strongly anti-Europe and anti-immigration from its inception, showed a long line of Middle Eastern refugees waiting to cross a European border. The text said: “BREAKING POINT. The EU has failed us all. We must break free from the EU and take control of our borders.”
Never mind that the border in Farge’s poster was that between Croatia and Slovenia. And we can also ignore the fact that Britain, as an island country and as a non-signatory to the Schengen treaty, remains largely insulated. Further, we must not mind the gross misinformation of the official and unofficial leave campaigns of Brexit that suggested that Turkey and its 77 million Muslims are soon to join the EU. These deviations from the truth are rampant as long as they can successfully stir up emotions of xenophobia amongst voters.
The lovely Jo Cox, a rising star in the Opposition labour Party who, not coincidentally, was a strong backer of Britain’s remaining inside the EU, was murdered on June 16. The suspect arrested in the killing, Thomas Mair, has a history of mental illness. But he was also reported to have been in contact with far-right groups in the United States and Britain, and to have said, “Britain first!” several times as he attacked Jo.
Britain First is a far-right nationalist group. Such an act of violence is uncommon in Britain and there was a shocking realisation that the Brexit vote had made it socially acceptable to voice anti-immigrant or xenophobic sentiment in a way it wasn’t a decade ago. The Brexit campaign was suspended by both sides for a day of mourning and respect for Jo, shifting the entire focus of the world on to the anti-immigrant tactics of the Brexit vote’s leave campaign.
A vote exercises the right of individual choice, within the framework of a democratic form of governance. Ensuring governance — be it tribal, monarchical, democratic — is yet another vocation that we human beings have historically engaged ourselves in as we wade through our days in the world. But such is the heady power derived from success in this vocation, and so high are the stakes involved, that when needed it has led its participants to incite hatred of man against man.
The campaigns to get votes are out of control. Politicians stir up public sentiments to get votes and then have no control on the reactions they have generated. Conservative movements rooted within a political rhetoric of hatred can especially have dangerous outcomes.
Violence could be deliberately unleashed by the politician, and/or there could be inadvertent bloodshed as a result of an out-of-control emotional hate campaign. In the case of the latter, indeed the perpetrators of hate and the individuals reacting to such political rhetoric are both to blame. Because neither were supposed to take the vocation of governance so seriously.
In the United States, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign has insisted on racial profiling and the need to target specific demographic groups living in the country for extra scrutiny. He bragged of his foresight when just a few days before Jo’s murder this fortnight, a mass shooting occurred inside a gay night club in Orlando, killing 50 people.
The victims included the gunman who was identified as Omar Mateen, an American born to Afghan parents. It was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in the US, and historically the most violent attack on the lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (lGBT) community in the United States.
Trump hopes the incident would improve his poll ratings. He tweeted, “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism...” He argued that the attack justified his earlier proposed ban on Muslims entering the US. He even falsely claimed that Omar Mateen was born in Afghanistan, whereas Mateen was in fact born in New York not far from Trump himself.
In a speech Trump made right after the shootout, he called for suspending immigration “from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe, or allies”. Anything goes for stirring up drama and making politics quite literally a matter of life and death.
How much blood will it take for us to realise that these strategies for winning votes is a game played by a few fellows who have just chosen politics as their vocationIJ Can we snap out of the frenzy and accept politics, religion, corporations as man-made institutions who have now become larger than the cost of our own livesIJ I ask this to all my readers, in tribute to Jo Cox and the fearless defenders of humanity who can never be buried. Because they are seeds.
The writer is Chief Sustainability Officer for the group of companies, Jindal Steel and Power ltd.
She is a Global leadership Alumna of the World Economic Forum. miniya.chatterji@jindalsteel.com