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Minister for Education Lawrence Wong (Wong) was recently criticised for not having publicly dealt with mounting concerns over the potential invasive roll-out of the Device Management Application in the devices of students, the way the Ministry of Education (MOE) has woefully handled how it has dealt with a transgender student, Ashlee, and allegations that MOE had interfered with her hormone replacement therapy.

Ashlee has in fact, recently posted an update on the situation where she was concerned.

It is also noteworthy that Wongs lack of ownership and seeming disregard for the feelings of students on the transgender issue may have contributed to a peaceful protest outside MOE which led to three individuals (some of whom are students) being arrested.

Instead of dealing with criticism directly, Wong has only skirted the issue when answering questions levelled at him in Parliament. In other words, if he was not questioned about it in Parliament, he might not have dealt with it at all.

In responding to The Workers Party (WP) member of parliament (MP) for Sengkang Group Representative Constituency He Ting Rus questions about MOEs policies and guidelines on students with gender dysphoria, and how often such policies and approached are reviewed as well as the level of autonomy schools have over implementing them, Wong had this to say:

Issues of gender identity have become bitterly contested sources of division in the culture wars in some Western countries and societies. We should not import these culture wars into Singapore, or allow issues of gender identity to divide our society.

Not only does this not answer the question, but it is also an attempt to deflect from the issue. The crux of the matter is how a student has been treated. But instead of taking ownership, Wong is going off-piste, muddying the waters with culture wars and the PAPs favourite and boring excuse for everything that of western culture and western values.

As this issue is being played out in Parliament, another key issue is also being fleshed out that of the TraceTogether data.

Just to recap, the Parliamentary sitting in January 2021 generated a firestorm of controversy withrevelations that data collected by the TraceTogether system for COVID-19 contact tracing can be accessed by the police pursuant to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC).

This information caused an uproar because the Government had previously assured Singaporeans that such data could not be used for any other purposes apart from COVID-19 contact tracing. In fact, Minister-in-charge of the smart nation initiative Vivian Balakrishnan (Balakrishnan) and Wong had assured the public of the same in a press conference last year.

As this news broke, a public furore ensued as questions were asked of whether or not the Government had deliberately concealed this information which could, in turn, lead to an erosion of trust. The criticism was so intense that Balakrishnanpublicly admitted to having made a mistake.

Likely as a result of this public outcry, Balakrishnanannounced that the Government would be introducing legislation to set out seven categories of serious offences for which TraceTogether data can be used for criminal investigations which would include offences related to terrorism, drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping, and serious sexual offences such as rape.

This brings us to the Parliamentary sitting this month where the law to formalise this commitment to limit the use of the data will be debated. Prima facie, this appears very positive.

So what we have in Parliament now is a one Minister (Wong) saying that we should not import western culture as an excuse for MOEs handling of Ashlee while another Minister (Vivian Balakrishnan) is saying that he takes full responsibility for his mistake despite not having actually said the words sorry or apologise

Why is this relevant?

It is relevant because the Government cannot have it both ways. If it wants to use the bogey man of western culture as a blanket excuse for errors, it must then be implying that Asian values trump.

However, if Asian values trump, how have our Government implemented or followed such superior Asian values?

As Shawn Lim (Lim), a multimedia reporter at The Drum, posted on Twitter, if Singapore does not want to import western culture, why is it not following Asian examples when it comes to ownership and responsibility?

Lim mentioned two examples that of Mongolians Prime Minister immediately standing down for the countrys handling of a heavily pregnant woman who was COVID-19 positive, and the Industry Minister of Japan resigning over the misspending of political donations.

Balakrishnan has made a colossal error in the TraceTogether data. Why has he not resigned then? By Wongs logic, surely he should? In fact, even Wong should! After all, wasnt he present at the same press conference where the assurances were made?

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'We should not import Western culture wars', says Lawrence Wong in response to MOE's recent transgression; then why is the Govt not following Asian...

After five years covering Brexit, you'd think I'd be used to getting online abuse.

This week felt more sinister though.

I'd been covering a story about Sir Desmond Swayne, a Conservative MP who had given a series of online interviews in which he questioned the severity of the pandemic and the motives lying behind the government response.

The comments were condemned by ministers and opposition politicians alike.

But for many - including Sir Desmond - this was a classic media hatchet job. A smear campaign directed at an MP who was refusing to toe the line.

What was striking about a lot of the criticism (both the abuse and the more measured questioning) was how much it slotted into existing culture wars.

Some framed the story as an under-siege old media striking out at the new media platforms where these interviews were carried.

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Black Lives Matter was brought up as well as Brexit, despite no obvious connection to the issue at hand.

After starting off as a strikingly non-partisan issue (in the UK anyway), the pandemic is now politically red hot.

So what? You may ask. Don't extraordinary times call for extraordinary scrutiny?

Shouldn't there be more contrarian interventions that challenge the received wisdom, rather than fewer?

Yes and yes.

Government taking extreme and unprecedented measures to change the way we all live our lives requires the highest level of attention.

Sir Desmond Swayne and other MPs sceptical of lockdown have played a vital and valid role in that.

Broadcasters and newspapers alike have extensively covered their arguments, alongside the analysis of academics like Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta, scientists who depart from the government view.

But at such a perilous point in the pandemic, with thousands still dying every week, it's incumbent on anyone entering the debate - especially those in positions of power - to think carefully about what they say and the impact it could have.

That is why Sir Desmond's comments warranted interrogation.

Put bluntly, they went beyond reasoned factual analysis and strayed into the realms of unfounded insinuation.

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There were suggestions of nefarious motives behind the COVID restrictions - hidden agendas, manipulated data and social control, as the former minister put it.

There is no hard evidence to back up any of this.

Claims were made that the UK was now a police state and a totalitarian country, with little acknowledgement of the utterly abnormal world we are all living in.

Existing debunked theories were also advanced; such as suggestions that COVID-19 deaths rates were comparable to a "bad flu season" or that hospitals were not as busy as the NHS was making out.

Then consider the dangerous flames of misinformation Sir Desmond was potentially fanning.

His first interview was with Save Our Rights UK, a group that claims the COVID vaccine may be harmful. There is no evidence to back this up.

His second was with Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist, who tweeted last month that the COVID jab could be the "greatest scientific blunder in the history of mankind". Given any remotely reasonable reading, this is not true.

Yes, Sir Desmond did not speak about vaccines in the interviews.

But references to sinister shady motives within the state, made by a former minister and ex-Number 10 aide, are cat nip to the conspiracy theorists and malicious actors that populate these online spaces.

They provide ammunition to those who are trying to tear down public health policy not on the basis of facts, but on the basis of fury.

Sir Desmond Swayne is a fiercely independent voice in Westminster, cut from a non-tribal cloth rarely seen in modern politics.

But old fashioned eccentricity and an unapologetic lust for liberty is no defence when lives are at risk.

The battlefield of the culture war is no place for pandemic policy to play out on.

Over three nights, Sky News will host a series of special programmes examining the UK's response to the pandemic.

Watch COVID Crisis: Learning the Lessons at 8pm on 9, 10 and 11 February.

See the article here:
COVID-19: The culture war battlefield is no place for pandemic policy to play out on - Sky News

Since shortly after the outbreak of Covid-19, two theories about the pandemics likely impact have been circulating. One lets call it the bread thesis maintains that the crisis will reinstate respect for seriousness and competence. It will remind everyone that the nations of the world are interdependent and that the politics of expertise puts food on the table and keeps the diners alive.

The other lets call it the circuses thesis suggests that, with borders tightening, economic and social turmoil exacerbating old inequalities and anger over lockdowns rising and being directed at elites, the pandemic will benefit populists stirring culture wars.

The big political question this decade will be which thesis is more accurate. Enter Michael Burleigh, a British historian and recently the inaugural Engelsberg Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics. From his lectures in that post, Burleigh has composed Populism: Before and After the Pandemic. This slim book ranges across many of the subjects of his previous works 20th-century Germany, decolonisation and the Cold War, the decline of the West, the uses and abuses of history but concludes with reflections on Covid-19 and what comes next.

It sits at the juncture of three current publishing trends: globetrotting think-pieces on Covid-19 (Ivan Krastevs Is It Tomorrow Yet?, Fareed Zakarias Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, Slavoj ieks Pandemic!), populism explainers (Anne Applebaums Twilight of Democracy, Michael Sandels The Tyranny of Merit) and explorations of post-imperial identity (Sathnam Sangheras Empireland, Robert Tombss This Sovereign Isle). Readers looking to understand the transformations brought about by the virus should start with Krastevs effort, but Burleighs book is a spirited, readable and thought-provoking tour through the forces defining our age. Populism only gets to the pandemic in its pessimistic conclusion, a short epilogue that follows three discrete but interlocking essays.

[see also:The fall of the Roman republic is a warning about todays degenerate populists]

Burleigh begins with an account of the recent populist wave and how elite interests have ultimately become the progenitors and beneficiaries of movements purporting to rally the masses against the rich and powerful. The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has written that populism is a thin ideology which can bind itself on to other political traditions (nationalism, socialism, conservatism, even liberalism) and Burleigh examines its many different international forms in that spirit, neither demonising populist support nor wrapping it up in sentimental odes to real people.

The second essay compares the post-imperial experiences of Britain and Russia. While Burleigh does not labour the parallels, he notes an important similarity. In both countries the carapace of empire obscured the nation underneath the Russian Soviet republic had no formal capital nor a communist party of its own, as England today has no parliament of its own and the retreat of empire is prompting new reckonings with that underlying identity.

The third essay takes in Poland, Hungary, China, South Africa, Britain and the US to show how history is being politicised in order to unify populations, or to divide them into rooted patriots wedded to myths versus elite cosmopolitan subversives. All of which resonates in the wake of the statue wars in 2020 and the storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC where the Confederate flag was held aloft within its walls for the first time ever.

Populism displays Burleighs eye for enlivening and memorable aperus, anecdotes and factoids. He compares the similarities between different forms of populism to the Habsburg jaw in portraiture, and Norman Englands supranational, Francophone aristocrats to Davos man in armour. The Chinese Communist Party, he informs us, once produced a boxed DVD set for its cadres on what Mikhail Gorbachev did wrong in the last days of the Soviet Union. By 2007, 20 years after Ronald Reagan abolished balanced reporting rules for broadcasters, 91 per cent of US radio stations had a conservative bias. Emmanuel Macron based his listening tour following the yellow vests protests of 2019 on a similar exercise by Pierre Poujade, the original French populist.

This mastery of the past helps with predicting the future. Burleigh sees Vladimir Putin, who, after a referendum last summer, can now stay in office until 2036, adopting a form of back-seat power akin to that of Deng Xiaoping in 1980s China. In the shortening of global supply chains due to the pandemic he sees similarities to the breakdown of large-scale tile and glass production in the late Roman empire. And in Brexit and the quandaries about Englishness he sees a risk that Britain will follow Russia in resolving its post-imperial identity by forging a new one defined sharply and antagonistically in opposition to Europe. That a bureaucratic dispute over vaccines between the EU and a post-Brexit Britain has so quickly degenerated into a culture war and merged with emotive debates about the future of the union lends weight to that argument.

[see also:The Big Squeeze: How financial populism sent the stock market on a wild ride]

All of which brings him out at the pandemic-era epilogue. Burleigh gives the case for the bread thesis ample space, citing the chaotic scenes after Indias populist prime minister Narendra Modi announced a national curfew with four hours notice, forcing millions of Indians to travel back to their home villages in scenes that resembled the chaos of partition in 1947. Such misgovernment, he notes, naming instances in Italy, Brazil, Britain, Russia and elsewhere, shows the limits of populist rule Donald Trumps election defeat being a prime example.

Yet the books conclusion sides with the circuses thesis. Culture wars are bubbling even during lockdowns. Protracted economic downturns will come when emergency fiscal support is pulled and bankruptcies and unemployment soar. Unlike after the financial crisis of 2008, there will be no popular patience with further austerity, writes Burleigh. Any signs that economic inequalities are not being addressed this time will not be so passively received He cites France, where a combination of previous socio-economic grievances, the economic blow of the pandemic, waning patience with lockdowns and a search for scapegoats could put Marine Le Pen back on track to attack Macron as the incarnated representative of the global rich exploiting the couches populaires. Recent events support this. The storming of the Capitol spoke to the enduring disruptiveness of Trumpism. The vaccine nationalism rising in Europe hardly augurs a new age of enlightened international cooperation. In France, a recent poll put a Macron-Le Pen run-off in next years presidential election at 52 per cent to 48.

The message of Populism is not entirely pessimistic. Burleigh argues for a more robust defence of liberal democracy, a confrontation with the forces of inequality and division, and a scepticism about the notion that we are slaves to historical precedent. But, as his compelling book argues on its detours through time and space, there is also a case for realism about what the coming period of turmoil might bring. Bread does not always beat circuses.

Populism: Before and After the PandemicMichael BurleighHurst, 10.99, 152pp

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Populism in the pandemic age - New Statesman

Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Culture war used to be a term inextricably linked with the maelstrom of US politics. Popularised by American sociologist James Davison Hunter in his 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, it described how socially progressive and conservative coalitions were locked in a seemingly eternal conflict. It could make for surprising alliances, he noted, citing Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergy joining forces in anti-abortion movements during the late 1980s.

The battlegrounds of the US culture war are familiar ones, long regarded with bafflement by patronising and complacent European eyes: God, guns, abortion, gay rights and, of course, race. In a moment that threatened to temporarily derail his 2008 presidential bid, Barack Obama said of working-class rust-belt Americans: They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who arent like them. As the Tea Party movements backlash against his Medicare proposals underlined, culture wars became a highly effective means to mobilise low-income white Americans to vote against their economic interests.

Brexit proved the detonator for the British culture war, which became not so much about our relationship with a trading bloc but about identity: we were no longer Labour or Tory, or working class or middle class, but remainers and leavers. As polling by Lord Ashcroft after the referendum showed, pro- and anti-EU were equally divided about whether capitalism was a force for good or ill. But while leave voters overwhelmingly believed multiculturalism, social liberalism, feminism and the green movement were forces for ill, remain supporters believed the opposite.

This set the basis for a clash of values that proved electorally fatal for Jeremy Corbyn: after all, the basis of any authentic leftwing project is class politics for the many, not the few, as his Labour party put it. Culture wars are the toxic reaction to class politics.

Yet culture wars continue not simply to shape politics on both sides of the Atlantic, but to define it. According to the Financial Times, just as Joe Biden swept the rust-belt states, Keir Starmer believes he can win back Labours lost red wall by copying the US presidents emphasis on family, community and security and avoiding endless arguments about culture war issues such as trans rights and the destruction of historic statues.

Video: 'Perfectly legitimate to make a counter-argument' (Sky News)

'Perfectly legitimate to make a counter-argument'

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Yet this is a curious lesson to draw from the US. It is true that Bidens past record can hardly be described as a beacon of progressive social norms: he backed crime legislation that led to the mass incarceration of Black people; his chosen vice president, Kamala Harris, was among those who assailed him for once working with segregationists, and said she believed the women who had accused him of inappropriate sexual behaviour. But progressive movements have succeeded in shifting the centre of gravity within the Democrats to an extent no nominee can ignore.

Take trans rights, which has become one of todays totemic culture war issues. Harris has her pronouns in her Twitter bio; Biden campaigned promising trans people, We see you, we support you, and we will continue to do everything we can to ensure you are affirmed and accepted just as you are. He became the first president-elect to thank trans people in his victory speech, issued an order expanding LGBTQ protections and repealed the ban on trans military personnel.

There were, of course, howls of outrage: one Republican senator questioned Another unifying move by the new Administration? But according to the polling, it was indeed unifying: more than seven in 10 Americans support trans people serving in the military. Here is an instructive example. Rightwingers often push back at moves to secure rights for minorities on the grounds that they are divisive: yet, though noisy and obsessed, they are also unrepresentative.

As it does in the US, polling in Britain consistently shows women and younger people are most supportive of trans rights, with older men least supportive. There is a complication here: while support for trans rights is a given in US feminist, centrist and progressive circles, transphobia is a permissible prejudice across the political spectrum in Britain. This week the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, condemned transphobia in her partys ranks after it had led to an exodus of younger members. But while anti-trans activists are vocal, for the majority of people its not an issue on their radar. As the Democrats underlined, what is needed is leadership or a vacuum will be filled by increasingly emboldened bigotry.

But there are other lessons too. Rather than treating claims for racial justice as risking the support of white floating voters, the Democrats embraced Black Lives Matter. After the killing of George Floyd this spurred a surge in Black voter registration, and the relationship between grassroots Black organisers and the Democrats played a pivotal role in flipping several states in the presidential race.

As well as working with movements representing the struggles of minorities rather than treating them as unhelpful a progressive political project needs policies that unify working-class people, regardless of background. Take the New Labour period: policies such as tax credits and investment in public services made a considerable difference to millions of lives; yet in its final years, wages began to stagnate or decline for the bottom half, and an escalating housing crisis hit living standards.

The resulting grievances among struggling people can be exploited by savvy rightwing populists claiming progressive politicians only care about minorities rather than people like me.

The answer, then, isnt to swerve the culture war, or stick fingers in our ears and pretend it isnt there. It is to offer political leadership, work closely with minorities to expand the electorate, and stand on a policy platform that uplifts the living standards of the majority, irrespective of their identity. To throw minorities under a bus is not only immoral: its a recipe for electoral defeat.

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Don't swerve the culture war that's the lesson from Joe Biden to UK progressives - MSN UK

Once at the centre of the left turn that began sweeping the region two decade ago, Latin Americas largest country, Brazil, has for the past two years been governed by a far-right president.

Under Jair Bolsonaro, the country has seen many of the gains made during 14 years of Workers Party rule wound back, while social movements have come under increasing attack.

Brazil on Fire is a forthcoming investigative podcast that seeks to explain Brazils authoritarian turn. The 11-part series hosted, recorded and produced by Brazil-based journalist Michael Fox takes a deep look at Bolsonaros rise to power, what drives his support and the communities that are fighting back.

Fox recently launched a new documentary Dismantling Brazil, produced with Brasil Wire co-editor Brian Meir. He spoke to Green Lefts Federico Fuentes about the podcast and the significance of events in Brazil for the left internationally.

***

What is it about the events in Brazil over the past few years that make them of such importance for left and progressive activists around the world?

Brazil was a country where the left-wing Workers Party (PT) had won four consecutive elections between 2002 and 2014. While in government, the PT implemented progressive policies that lifted millions out of poverty and projected the country onto the global stage, swapping dependency on the United States for greater South-South relations. Domestically and internationally, Brazil had begun to chart a different path.

But in just a few years, all of this has been completely gutted and undone as a result of the [2016] congressional coup against PT president Dilma Rousseff. The combination of an anti-corruption investigation led by the biased judge Sergio Moro [later a minister in Bolsonaros cabinet], fake news, culture wars, a parliamentary coup and a media campaign against the left and PT, led to a complete rollback of the tremendous social gains that had been achieved and opened the door to a fascist president: Jair Bolsonaro.

My forthcoming podcast series focuses on the rise of Bolsonaros far-right government that is setting the country ablaze and how the US helped him do it. In the podcast, I try to show the reality of two worlds those of his supporters and the resistance to his government. I try to take the listener on a journey, switching from outside Bolsonaros house the night he wins as I stand alongside his supporters to understand where they're coming from, to the world of the Rural Landless Workers Movement (MST), indigenous communities in the Amazon, traditional Black communities in the countrys north east, and urban movements fighting evictions.

I think one big takeaway from all this is how culture wars have been used to take down the left and, in Brazils case, help lift Bolsonaro to power. That, and the connection between Bolsonaro and the US as we walk through these different worlds, the details of the connection and parallels with the US become clear.

Take for example Bolsonaros philosophical guru, Olavo de Carvalho. Very few people in the US know him, but he lives in Virginia. In the mid-2000s, he started his own online school through which he trained up far-right activists in Brazil. Many of those same people were or are top members in Bolsonaro government. He played a critical role in training up a far-right movement and helping to spread far-right ideology in Brazil.

Then there is the connection between Steve Bannon, Donald Trumps former aide, and Eduardo Bolsonaro, the presidents son, who is now the leader of the Brazil section of Bannon's organisation, The Movement. This is where fake news and culture wars come into it: Bolsonaro was in many ways inspired by Trump some call him the Trump of the Tropics.

There is also the growth of the libertarian movement in Brazil that helped push Dilma from power in 2016; many libertarian student groups were funded by the Atlas Foundation and libertarian groups in the US.

We need to understand these linkages and how the Bolsonaro presidency aligns with fascism and fascist movements abroad. This is really key because we need to understand where these movements come from and how these fascist movements can take off in moments of political crisis that the left is blamed for, which is what we saw here.

There's a very clear media bias that seeks to blame the left, blame the PT for all of Brazil's problems. This was intentional; its aim was to taint the publics opinion of the PT and the left. That's not to say there wasn't corruption, of course there was. But the PT was one of many parties involved in corruption. The Bolsonaro government, which came in with the goal of eliminating corruption, has shown itself to be just as corrupt.

Brazil is one of the largest countries in the world, so it's important to understand the power that Brazil potentially has and its deep connection with the US. This is why it had to be a podcast developed over a long period of time, because there are so many layers to this story.

Could you tell us a bit more about the kind of voices of resistance that we will be able to hear from in the podcast?

The podcast series is an attempt to understand how a fascist could win the presidency and quickly move to sell off the country to multinational corporations and roll back social and even constitutional rights that the country set in place in 1988. It is important to understand how this happened, to understand Bolsonaros supporters and where they're coming from.

But it is equally important to understand the grassroots resistance to his government, whether we are talking about the PT or those involved in land occupations, indigenous communities, traditional Black communities, human rights defenders, the LGBTI community, the Black Lives Matter movement.

There are so many different layers, that is why it needed to be a podcast series to tell the stories of how people are being attacked, how they are having their rights rolled back by the Bolsonaro government, how in many cases they have been left in fear for their lives, but also how they are responding to all this and continuing to resist.

Even in the lead up to the 2018 elections, it was clear that Bolsonaro wanted to launch a war on the left and its base. That is why labour rights have been rolled back and pension reforms have been enacted to attack unions. The idea is to attack unions as much as possible because they formed a major base of left activism and political organising in the country.

We have seen a similar thing with the rollback of the social right to land, whether that's to do with housing in the city or land in the countryside. In Brazil, there has always existed a strong tension over the right to land, over whether land should be viewed as private property or as a social right. These two concepts are delicately balanced in the constitution.

But Bolsonaro has clearly come out in defence of the right to private property, rolling back as much as possible the idea of social property through actions such as evictions. Even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, eviction numbers have continued to rise. The podcast takes a look at housing occupation movements, focusing on how the state has attacked them and how they have been able to organise.

Based on your discussions and interviews, what do you believe are some lessons we can learn from Brazil?

There are many lessons to be learnt from the way grassroots activists have resisted the Bolsonaro government, though many of these lessons are still being developed. I think one lesson is how to remain in resistance, how to remain active, in the face of violent attacks against the left.

In the weeks leading up to Bolsonaros election, grassroots movements made it clear they would resist his government. This did not necessarily mean that they were going to go out onto the streets to protest, because of the danger that entailed, though, of course, they have taken to the streets when necessary. But they made it clear they were going to continue resisting in their housing settlements, encampments, land occupations, to hold onto what they had achieved and continue to organise.

There's a lot of layers to this and I try to peel them back, to understand how organising continues to happen by taking the listener to the events as they unfold. That's what is beautiful about a podcast like this, that you are able to hear the protagonists speak, to be there in the moment when things are happening and really grasp the intensity of what is occurring in Brazil, but also the hope that still exists.

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'Brazil on Fire': How fake news, culture wars and the United States put a fascist in power - Green Left