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They call him Marshal Tweeto.

Janez Jansa, the right-wing prime minister of Slovenia, used Twitter to declare Donald J. Trump the winner of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 4, saying, Its pretty clear that American people have elected @realDonaldTrump @Mike_Pence for #4moreyears.

Alas, this turned out to be, as Jansas hero likes to say, fake newsalthough Jansa has doubled down on it since. But the tweet was nothing new for the Slovenian prime minister. Jansa has moved from left to far-right over the years. He was once one of the founders of an independent Slovenia who had made his name in the 1980s as a journalist, writing for the left-leaning magazine Mladina. In 1988, he was arrested by the Yugoslavian authorities for publishing a stream of military leaks. After popular protests for his release, he joined the political movement that won the first democratic elections in Slovenia in 1990.

In 1993 he became the president of the right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), and he still holds the title to this day. He is also a three-time prime ministerbut after a vote of no confidence in 2013, he was sentenced to two years in prison on corruption charges. The sentence was confirmed by the Higher Court in Ljubljana in April 2014, but subsequently unanimously overturned by the Constitutional Court of Slovenia a year later.

Jansa is a avid Twitter user, using social media to insult journalists, political opponents, the general public, and anybody who does not agree with him. Peddling misinformation on his Twitter profile is pretty usual for the prime minister. In July, he retweeted a video from the QAnon series The Fall of Cabal, which details an ugly conspiracy theory, and invited people to join him on the Parler social network, where he follows far-right figures such as Paul Joseph Watson, Katie Hopkins, Jack Posobiec, and Alex Jones conspiracy network Infowars.

He also likes to attack journalists and public figures, insulting them and spreading falsehoods about them. According to the SparkToro Fake Followers Audit, nearly 75 percent of his Twitter followers are fake, but his tweets are regularly picked up by mainstream media outlets in Slovenia, extending their reach.

Jansa has a two-prong approach to media relations, said Andraz Zorko, a public opinion expert, where he uses Twitter to form outrageous statements that agitate the general public and his opponents, and at the same time appears perfectly rational in traditional media outlets.

In the summer of 2015, Jansa and his colleagues from the SDS funded and launched a media outlet called Nova24TV. Its slogan is First in the service of truth, but the reality is anything but. The party-linked propaganda outlet spews regular falsehoods on the refugee crisis, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community, spinning and twisting the truth in order to fit the right-wing party agenda. Left-wing parties have labeled it a hate factory.

Like Trump, Jansa ended up with nothing but yes men around himself, effectively starting to drink his own Kool-Aid, dispensed by the very media apparatus he created in order to disrupt the liberal democratic consensus, explained Aljaz Bitenc Pengov, a political analyst.

I am not surprised that the prime minister running a fake-news government would publicly endorse the fake-news electoral victory of incumbent Donald Trump, said Anuska Delic, editor in chief at Ostro, a center for investigative journalism in the Adriatic region. In a year and a half since the launch of Ostros media fact-checking project, the media controlled by the SDS and majority-owned by members of the inner circle of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have been the main sources of fake news, disinformation, and misinformation in Slovenia.

Our findings indicate a symbiotic relationship between the party, its policies and goals, and the content that is being churned out by this media, Delic explained. At publication, the content is usually disseminated on social media by the partys members (many of them current public officials), its sympathizers, and possibly trolls to exert pressure on opponents and skew the public debate. The same methods are also used on unruly journalists who receive questions from one of these media which usually concern their professional or personal activities, or those of their family members. That content is further used to smear, harass, and attack reporters online.

In 2016, Hungarian investors joined the Nova24TV media venture with an investment of 800,000 euros that turned out to be connected to the Orban regime. They invested again in 2018, bringing a total sum of Hungarian investments into the SDS-related propaganda outlets to more than 3.5 million euros.

Nova24TVs other income is sourced from advertising contracts with partially state-owned companies such as Telekom Slovenije, insurance company Triglav, the Petrol Group, and others which, when publicly called out, could not explain the market reasoning behind them. Critics say they fund the channel to suck up to the party in power.

According to Primoz Cirman, editor of media outlet necenzurirano.si, The Orban-Jansa alliance formed after the so-called migrant crisis in 2015. Bothsaw the opportunity to establish themselves as defenders of Christian Europe. Jansas motives were logical. In 2014, the SDS lost a parliamentary election while he was in jail. As a result, the party needed a new platform, and Jansa found one in anti-globalism. There was only one problem: SDS needed channels for spreading its new ideas, so it started to establish its own media outlets. Since 2017, a huge influx of Hungarian capital has come into media companies, established by prominent SDS members or the party itself.

Nova24TVs website and TV station of the same name are just the central parts of Jansas propaganda empire in Slovenia. His party is also connected to more than 20 local online media outlets that are used to anneal the messages of party propaganda, which are further distributed by a network of Twitter and Facebook accounts.

By analyzing his Twitter behavior, we can note that the prime minister is spending more and more time on Twitter, said Maja Cimerman of Today Is a New Day, a Slovenian nongovernmental organization. During the U.S. elections, we calculate he spent at least three full hours a day on Twitter, with tweets appearing even at 4:30 in the morning. His behavior often indicates a form of escapism from the actual issues in the country, connected with the second pandemic wave where government policies are sorely lacking effectiveness, she adds.

Jansa owes more than just his media network to the neighboring Hungarian autocrat. He won the general election in the summer of 2018 but was unable to form a coalition, since other major parties denounced his hard-right stance. A New York Times article from June 2018 drew connections between Orban and Jansa, claiming that Jansa was following Orbans footsteps. Orban praised Jansa on Nova24TV during the election campaign in 2018, saying, Jansa is exactly the kind of leader Slovenia needs.

From 2018 until the spring of 2020, Jansas party was busy developing a relationship with Orban and other leaders of countries in the Visegrad Group. The COVID-19 pandemic offered a new window of opportunity.

In March, the countrys center-left coalition fell apart, and Jansa was able to form a center-right coalition with him at the helm and other right-wing and centrist parties playing second fiddle to his regime. He immediately went to work, proposing legislation to gut the public media outlet RTV Slovenija, shift more public money into funding his propaganda outlets, and repress NGOs.

At the same time, Orban and Jansa started forging long-term strategic cooperation, including efforts to tie the two countries power grids together and potentially build a new joint oil pipeline. Also in the talks were military contracts between the two countries, since the Slovenian government recently approved a military investment budget of a staggering 780 million euros over the next six years.

The alliance grew stronger and expanded to North Macedonia, where the same Hungarian proxies bought several media outlets that support right-wing party VMRO-DPMNE, Cirman explained. SDS and [Orbans party] Fidesz are virtually synchronized in European Parliament voting. Jansa was one of the few European leaders that opposed the rule of law as a condition for any EU member to be eligible for EU coronavirus funds. The alliance presents a new challenge for Slovenia, as Hungary has strong economic, cultural, and political interests in our country, especially in the field of infrastructure, energy, and banking.

Beyond Orban, Jansa favors the global alt-right. Jansa is no stranger to retweeting other outlets such as the Daily Caller, Project Veritas, Breitbart, PragerU, and other far-right Twitter accounts. Media outlets connected with Jansa and the SDS feature interviews with controversial guests from the global alt-right universe such as Kevin MacDonald, Daniel Friberg, Martin Sellner, and Renaud Camus, all of whom Jansa regularly retweets.

Jansas affection for the global neo-Nazi movement is simply an extension of his right-wing politics,explained Boris Vezjak, a philosopher and professor at the University of Maribor. These [shared] feelings are then reflected in the connections of the SDS party with the Generation Identity movement or in supporting local neo-Nazi groups to break up anti-government protests, he added.

As with Slovenian paramilitary units, Serbia has also seen the formation of anti-migration self-organized groups, said Katja Lihtenvalner, a researcher at the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. In Bosnia we followed the formation of vigilantes and groups who were increasingly taking matters in their own hands, under the pretext of protecting the safety of others and public order. Generally, the impression is that authorities themselves are not able or willing to prevent the formation of such groups, the most radical of which are in Slovenia, where self-appointed ultranationalist groups were patrolling the border with fake guns and military uniforms.

Jansa has many political enemies, but his politics are a grim reminder of the turn things have taken in Slovenia.

Barbara Rajgelj, an assistant professor of law at the University of Ljubljana, explained: For the past 30 years, we were convinced Slovenian society was autocracy-resistant, but we are now seeing that isnt true. Part of this irresponsible public media tolerance was that Jansa was never confronted about his statements made on Twitter, even though his attacks towards the public media are well documented.

The future, however, looks bright for Jansa right now.

With a parliamentary majority in which Jansas party is calling the shots, while weaker coalition partners tremble in silence , the pandemic allows him to repress anti-government protests, a general culture of fear which makes people afraid to speak out because of fear of retribution, Slovenians are walking down the path of failed states. Despite Jansas having promoted far-right figures and built a propaganda network funded by a foreign regime, many Slovenians are still attracted to his maverick way of constructing his own reality, which is slowly sucking the air out of Sloveniaone tweet at a time.

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Slovenia's Prime Minister Is a Far-Right Conspiracy Theorist and Twitter Addict Who Won't Admit Trump Lost - Foreign Policy

A new social media platform that keeps censorship to a bare minimum has taken off in the wake of Donald Trumps election loss.

So what is this thing?

Youve quite possibly never heard of Parler, the new app taking the free speech world by storm. But in the United States its top of the app store charts and bringing in thousands of new users every second.

Parler French for to speak is a new-ish social media site that looks a little bit like Twitter. You can comment, echo (retweet) and upvote (like) posts about whatever topic you so choose.

While it was founded in mid-2018, the site has recently experienced a major surge in uptake due to its extremely laissez-faire policy around censorship and misinformation.

Unlike mainstream social media like Facebook and Twitter, Parler does not fact check any of the content published by its users and will only remove very limited types of content, including pornography or anything likely to incite terrorism.

The companys about page says Parler is built upon a foundation of respect for privacy and personal data, free speech, free markets, and ethical, transparent corporate policy.

On the Apple app store, it describes itself as an unbiased social media site right above its 2.5 star rating.

Unbiased? (Image : App store)

What does Parler look like?

Under the username Woke Pixie Dust,I peeked behind enemy lines. Upon logging in for the first time, Im greeted by the option to personalise my Parler experience, with suggested follows including Republican senator Ted Cruz and pro-Trump broadcasters Sean Hannity and Mark Levin. Of course, I tick follow on all of them.

The invite list to a party I dont want to be at (Image : Parler)

Making it to my feed, its not long before I see a large promoted post declaring STOP THE BIDEN STEAL, posted by a Republican congresswoman-elect. There are numerous posts criticising the mainstream media, a video instructing people how to build on the MAGA movement and several with the hashtag Democrats are corrupt.

The user experience is a lot like a rudimentary Twitter but with a more customisable colour scheme.

I have no followers yet though so if youre on Parler, go on and do the honourable thing.

Who is on it?

As noted above, much of Parlers user base appears to be people from the right of politics, including Trump backers, Republicans, members of the alt-right, and free speech activists.

Twitter has come under fire from Republicans over the past six months for flagging misleading or inaccurate posts as misleading or inaccurate. Parler does no such thing, and prominent US politicians like Ted Cruz have been using Twitter to invite their supporters to follow them on the new platform. While President Trump does not yet have an account on there, many of his most ardent followers do.

Yesterday, former presidential hopeful Rand Paul suggested Twitter may soon silence debate and asked his three million followers to join him on Parler. It was in response to Twitter flagging one of his tweets as disputed when he implied dead people may have been voting for Joe Biden a claim that has been disproven.

Why is Parler experiencing a boom right now?

Unless youve been living under a rock, a place I wish I was too, you will know the US presidential election happened last week and that the president is refusing to acknowledge he has lost. Shockingly, a number of his followers (including elected officials) are also refusing to recognise the will of the American people.

Parler appears to be a home for people who may buy into misinformation around the election being stolen from Trump, mail-in ballots being a fraud, and the idea that thousands of dead people voted in Philadelphia.

According to reports, several Facebook groups with thousands of supporters are encouraging an exodus to Parler tomorrow November 13. As the BBC reports, this will be the second mass migration of right-wing users from Facebook and Twitter to Parler, following a move in June when a number of accounts were banned for spreading lies during the George Floyd protests and at the height of the first Covid-19 wave.

One prominent hashtag that Twitter has been attempting to shut down Stop the Steal had almost 60,000 posts on Parler on Monday alone, with no flagging.

So just how popular is it?

Even in New Zealand, Parler is gaining popularity. At the time of writing, the Apple app store shows Parler cracking the top 100 free apps hitting number 91. But in the United States, its been top of the charts this week following the presidential election being called for Joe Biden. That makes it even more popular than TikTok, YouTube, Zoom and, of course, Facebook and Twitter.

At number four on the US charts is Newsmax, the alternative, right wing news source that has become one of Trumps most devoted propagandists.

According to early November statistics, four million people were active on Parler. In the last week alone, that figure has risen to about eight million. Parlers chief operating officer Jeffrey Wernick said the site is a breath of fresh air for people wary of the way theyve been treated on Twitter.

And now that many of their friends are already on Parler, theyve decided its worth their investment of time to give us a try, said Wernick. We plan to earn their continued business.

The Spinoff Weekly compiles the best stories of the week an essential guide to modern life in New Zealand, emailed out on Monday evenings.

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What is Parler? All you need to know about the right wing alternative to Twitter - The Spinoff

The controversy over the People of Colour exhibition at Mercy Pictures shows how alt-right ideas can thrive in irony-steeped artistic environments, writes Amal Samaha.

On Saturday, a gallery show in Auckland ended. The exhibition featured rows upon rows of flags, each on a relatively uniform rectangular frame, set in neat rows.

All apparently normal, except for something that became increasingly obvious.

All photos: Tash van Schaardenburg

There seemed to be a lot of swastikas.

Really, a lot of swastikas. Of 150 or so flags, 20 were Nazi symbols, and others represented more obscure hateful ideologies. Each wall had at least a few swastikas, many positioned provocatively as if to ask are these not the same as the flags beside them?

In each case, I hope the audiences answer was no, one of these is a fucking swastika.

The People of Colour show created by artists Jerome Ngan-Kee, Jonny Prasad and Teghan Burt, also the co-directors of Mercy Pictures, the gallery where it was shown was clearly out to court controversy. And they got it: on the first night the show was vandalised, and the Mercy Pictures Instagram was quickly inundated with criticism.

Ngan-Kee issued an apology soon after the exhibition ended, only for the other gallery staff to turn on him and ridicule the apology in a now-deleted post.

On Tuesday, Mercy Pictures other directors issued a statement which stopped short of an apology. It noted that Mercy Pictures wider family contains many people of marginalised identities, and called allegations of fascism offensive and untrue.

So what caused such outrage? Lets go back to the exhibition itself, where among the many, many swastikas were other far right symbols: some obvious, such as a sign saying its okay to be white, and others more obscure, such as the Sonnenkreuz, Sonnenrad, Vichy French and Spanish Falangist flags. In fact, it was hard to think of a fascist flag that wasnt there. Worse, these were displayed alongside the tino rangatiratanga flag, the United Tribes flag and Thoes mana motuhake, all apparently without permission from tangata whenua.

But such easy shocks are a dime a dozen for gallery shows. A swastika is a guarantee of controversy, though usually audience fears are allayed by an artist statement or write-up making some banal point about how nationalism is bad.

This, however, wasnt the case, with People of Colour. The shows artistic statement was anything but banal, since it was supplied by one Nina Power.

Power is a UK philosopher and former academic, and a bizarre figure in the wider ecology of the alt-right, being something of a convert from the post-modern, leftist intellectualism that the alt-right often derides. Once a committed feminist activist and scholar of philosophers like Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, it seems that by gradually becoming involved in anti-transgender feminist activism, she found herself associating with progressively more right-wing figures.

Former friend and fellow academic Linda Stupart says that these days, Nina Power is openly aligning herself with violent edgelord alt-right men [and] transphobes, and has definitively divested herself of contemporary feminist thought.

Many took Powers exhibition text to mean she was directly involved in the project, but this isnt necessarily the case. Ngan-Kee, Prasad and Burt are graduates of the University of Aucklands Elam Art School and have no apparent relationship with Power; its unclear exactly how much she knew about the content of the show.

But Power is only a small part of this story. Perhaps the more interesting aspect is what the show revealed about the contemporary art world.

With their obsession with shock value, censorship and political correctness, some of the cool kids of art can be surprisingly reactionary. Before knowing the back story, it would have been easy to assume the whole People of Colour drama was a case of a clueless gallery accidentally giving space to the alt-right. In fact it was actually a case of edgy gallery kids flirting with fascistic concepts from the start, with little help needed from their associates in the UK.

Its in this environment of plausible deniability that alt-right ideas and flirtations with fascism can thrive. The People of Colour story shows how fascism can creep into academia and the art world alike, simply because both allow for extreme detachment between an author and their body of work, and convoluted, wordy justifications are par for the course.

Its normal practice in academia to quote the works of people who were Nazis (for example, philosopher Martin Heidegger or jurist Carl Schmitt) despite their Nazism. Its considered perfectly fine to appreciate their ideas, so long as that appreciation of their ideas doesnt stray into admiration for their Nazism.

Similarly, in the art world it is normal to be fascinated by fascist iconography, to find its visual language useful, to use it to shock or provoke dialogue (for example, see the art of NZ-Tongan artist Benjamin Work). Too easily, though, this interest in the visual signifiers of fascism can stray into admiration often without opposition, so long as the artist can provide a sufficiently long-winded justification. Had Mercy Pictures just done this and not made the mistake of drawing attention to themselves further by involving Power, they might well have gotten away with the whole thing.

Because fascist ideas creep into public life under a veil of plausible deniability, and because they often preempt and provoke controversy, it is very easy to characterise the outrage over events like the People of Colour show as overblown, conspiratorial or out of touch. After all, it is just art. Theyre just flags. Theyre just colours and shapes.

The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin once suggested that fascism is partly about making politics into an artform: rendering politics as simply a game of colours and symbols. Modern internet fascists do this extremely well, from turning Pepe the frog into a Nazi meme, to flooding the internet with StoneToss comics, to making ironic use of alt-right hand gestures.

It seems Mercy Pictures did this by taking the most intensely political images on earth and putting them all together, as if to say theyre just colours and symbols, do you cucks really care about this?

Perhaps the best way to counteract situations in which fascist ideas hide behind art world bullshit is to put the politics back into art.

By challenging artworks like these we take what is held to be apolitical and re-politicise it. In doing so, we remove the plausible deniability that allows fascists to find a footing.

In 2020, it might not be good enough for edgy art to explore concepts: your art might actually have to say something worthwhile about them. It might not be enough to provoke dialogue you might have to contribute to it.

The Bulletin is The Spinoffs acclaimed daily digest of New Zealands most important stories, delivered directly to your inbox each morning.

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Swastikas off K Road: How the worst art show in New Zealand came to be - The Spinoff

Spontaneous celebrations broke out across Madison this weekend as Joe Biden was announced the projected winner in the 2020 presidential race. Not everyone, of course, was excited about those results. Hundreds of Donald Trump supporters turned out for a pair of Stop the Steal rallies at the state Capitol. Included among the attendees were supporters of far-right movements, extremist media, and militia groups.

Were gonna recount, were gonna revote. I think thats what were fighting for here, is a revote, Alex Bruesewitz, a political consultant from Washington, D.C., told several hundred people gathered in front of the Capitol doors on Saturday.

I do organizing work, most recently with For Our Future, a super PAC that focuses on environmental and educational issues and that did electoral work in support of Joe Biden's campaign for president. My specialty is in relational organizing in rural areas, meaning that I spend time training people on how to have conversations with family members who disagree with them politically. It's what drew me to the state Capitol this weekend, where a Biden celebration and Trump rally were happening at the same time on opposite corners of the Square.

Though the pro-Trump rally was somewhat dwarfed by the thousands of Biden's supporters celebrating their victory just down the street, the energy among the Trump crowd remained high. Protesters flew a variety of pro-Trump flags and brought cardboard cutouts of Pelosi and Biden, the latter with the word Pedo written across its forehead a nod to the QAnon conspiracy that high-ranking Democrats are involved in a satanic, secretive pedophile ring that Trump is actively fighting to expose.

On the edges of the Stop the Steal rally where protesters and counter-protesters argued, those signs and flags drew the most attention. Easier to miss were flags that hinted at further extremism. On the western edge of the protest, a woman stood holding a flag with a large Roman numeral three, the year 1776, and the motto When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.

This flag represents the Three Percenters, sometimes referred to as 3%ers or Threepers online. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists Three Percenters as an anti-government militia movement. Theyve been connected with several domestic terror plots in recent years, most notably the plot to kidnap and execute Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The second in command of Wisconsins Three Percenter chapter provided space and training to several of the people who were arrested in October for being involved in the plot, though he claims he had no knowledge of their plans at the time.

Bruesewitz was adamant that there were no militia members present. So the medias gonna twist it... ...theyre gonna see some great guys out here with guns, right? Theyre gonna go Oh my God thats a militia, taking on the [Capitol]. Thats not a militia. Were all peaceful protesters out here fighting for the country we love.

Undercutting this message was the tropical shirt worn by one of the men openly carrying a firearm at the protest; the shirt is a well-known sign in activist spaces for members of the Boogaloo movement.

The Anti-Defamation League calls the boogaloo movement an anti-government extremist movement. Its adherents, referred to as boogaloo boys or boogaloo bois, identify themselves with tropical shirts under military fatigues or by the use of igloo patches (big luau and big igloo sound similar to boogaloo and can help avoid social media keyword-based crackdowns). Boogaloo bois desire a second civil war and seek to apply pressure where they can to help start it. Over 31 members of the movement have been arrested in the past two years for crimes ranging from possession of unregistered firearms to murder. The movement is linked to at least five deaths and was also connected to the failed plot to kidnap and execute Whitmer.

After Bruesewitz finished speaking, he handed the megaphone to Ashley St. Clair, a social media personality based in New York who flew down for the occasion. In the midst of the crowd, a large flag prominently featuring the letters AF was present. Though perhaps unfamiliar to the average Madison resident, it has significant connections to St. Clair.

The AF logo is from the America First podcast, a white nationalist production of Nick Fuentes. Fuentes attended the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and frames his followers (referred to as the Groyper Army) as Christian conservatives concerned with multiculturalism. The Anti-Defamation League maintains an exhaustive list of racist and anti-Semitic statements by Fuentes, as well as his followers, and their connections to openly white supremacist groups.

St. Clair was fired as a brand ambassador for Turning Point USA in 2019 after photos surfaced of her at a dinner event with Fuentes and other alt-right figureheads. Though she has never voiced support for Fuentes or the America First podcast on the record, she also made no comment about the flag being present at this weeks event.

The Stop the Steal rally featured many familiar alt-right talking points demonization of the media and claims that Democrats hate conservative voters. Republicans were not free from their ire, either.

Paul Ryans basically a Democrat, Bruesewitz lamented about the former U.S. House speaker from Wisconsin. If youre a Paul Ryan Republican and youre watching this? Screw you on behalf of the American people. Politicians were also warned that if they dont demonstrate loyalty and show up to rallies to publicly stand by the president, well vote them out.

This rally was part of a larger organizing effort in several swing states across the country, all of which centered around similar grievances. Black Lives Matter activists in Madison responded to the presence of the pro-Trump rally by creating a car barricade around the Biden celebration which at one point was manned by armed activists openly carrying firearms of their own.

While militias and anti-government extremist groups are not new in America, their rapid expansion and increasing levels of activity in the past few years is cause for concern. We all knew that no matter who won the election, there would be protests. Clashes between protesters seem almost inevitable, although Madison was spared the violence seen in other cities. A fist fight at the Biden celebration and a pro-Trump UW employee driving his motorcycle through protesters were the only widely reported confrontations.

In a year of escalated civil unrest, where cars running through protesters is so frequent it rarely tops national news and people are hospitalized or killed during clashes, its become more important than ever that we recognize the signs of extremism when they come to town. The flags and symbols that were at this Trump rally are easy to miss, especially for your everyday conservative or liberal voter. But like an iceberg, they hint at something much larger and more dangerous below.

No one can predict what comes next. One thing has been stated very clearly: Regardless of the election results, these militias and extremist movements arent going anywhere. The least we can do now is enter the new year with our eyes wide open.

Bryan Boland is a Madison-based organizer and writer. He can be found on Twitter @RedheadBryan.

Continued here:
Proceed with eyes open - Isthmus

The US presidential election result called over the weekend has been met with typical lack of decorum on the incumbents part a spectacle onlookers have grown used to. What could be in prospect going forward? The answer that anything is better anything at all has left some idealists dissatisfied. Quite understandably, such observers have been left underwhelmed, in policy terms, by the allegedly rudimentary package on offer, and equally non-enthused by the failure of the Democratic party to capture the Senate. But, in the immediate aftermath, perhaps it is worth focusing for a moment on the promise of decency. Decency was mentioned in many assessments of Biden's appeal in journalistic coverage in the run-up. For the American electorate (so both opinion pieces and news reports in this country told us), Joe Biden was asking for a return to decency, was emphasising decency in a battle for the national soul, was being perceived personally as fundamentally decent, and would return it to both political and global discourse.

Bidens decency stands at sharp odds with what we might call with a nod to Susan Sontag Donald Trumps alt-Right-influenced inverted camp. In other words, the message by tweet, by announcement, and occasionally by alleged physical act is thoroughly indecent; but surely he cant mean it, can he? The attraction lies in the transgression the permission to act out (in the place of dress-up) with the get-out clause that nobody, not really, is being serious. And yet, all the while, the centre of political gravity moves has moved ever farther away from what is amiable and congenial.

Decency, in attribution to Biden, has another edge, too. Bidens nomination to the Democratic presidential candidacy was acrimonious. He was fought closely by more radical candidates, including Bernie Sanders, who had amassed behind him a vocal and fervent army of supporters. Decency, from this angle, is Bidens offer to the electorate from the centre as opposed to from the putative radical left (slightly histrionic in view of the national political culture): decency as sober; decency as pragmatic; decency that wont have anybody raising up the barricades.

However, the promise of decency on the left is far richer than this simple split suggests. Partly the richness is in the covert history. Partly it is in the words ambiguity.

In the period after the Second World War and with its lessons in mind an influential strand of American political philosophy, following Judith Shklar, proposed that an elemental choice was decent politics versus deadly politics. That is decency in a first sense of the word: in essence, as an indicator of sufficiency (with a hint of the scary bogeyman thrown in). This works in application to Bidens presumed edge over Sanders, i.e. Sanders vision might be more to ones liking because it is more reformist, but Bidens politics will do (meaning: is up to reasonable standards). Some thesaurus synonyms point to this meaning too: adequate, acceptable.

But it could be suggested that there is a second important sense of the word decency for politics. This is where the centre or soft left has something to recommend itself by positively (and not by the default of what is and isnt feasible): it knows, as it were, a secret that the hard or ultra- left doesn't know. But this is the catch. If so, decency in the positive sense is the standard to which Biden in office should now expect to be held, both by his own citizens and the watching world.

Thorough investigation of ideological history would likely show that decencys covert history is on the social democratic left: in the twentieth century, poised between the far left and the Anglo-American liberalism of those resembling Shklar; and passing in notable encomiums through George Orwell, Albert Camus, and Michael Walzer.

But, pushing partisanship aside, the key point is what it might do at the present moment. Decency is not only refraining from the unconscionable (Trump and Trump supporters under the cover of camp). Nor is it just pragmatic sufficiency. Decency can also be compatible with a wide range of positive acts (acts of the kind that ethicists tend to call supererogatory). The most ambitious thought would be that decency is generative: that is, capable of passing from person to person, of being reproduced by example, emulation and reciprocity, in an ever-expanding circle. At this point, the meaning borders on the meanings of kindness and generosity: concern for the well-being of others in senses both material and otherwise.

If we are to move out of an era of bigoted reactionary authoritarianism, then decency is important to re-capture because what, in Britain, seemed like the start of this era was marked by so-called national populists claiming it for their own. Nigel Farage, on the day after the Brexit referendum, made a victory speech celebrating the triumph of real people, ordinary people, decent people. Decency needs claiming back. It relates to what is best in people; it deserves better than misappropriation by who would practice politics without the kind of human warmth that matters. However, where the populists were right was in supposing that political language needs to freshen up its egalitarianism. Decency is readily intelligible. That is why newspapers converged on it as a descriptor of Bidens offer.

Richard Shorten has just finished writing a book on the reactionary right provisionally titled The Ideology of Political Reactionaries. In 2019-20 he was Leverhulme Research Fellow. His latest article on reactionaries is Why bad books matter and his new project investigates aspects of voice partly in relation to decency in the political writings of George Orwell, Albert Camus and Hannah Arendt.

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Joe Biden and the promise of decency - University of Birmingham