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Fifteen years ago, nations from around the world came together to declare an International Day of Democracya day to reflect on our collective support for representative, transparent governance; equality; respect for human rights and dignity; and the rule of law. In the years since, democracy the world over has experienced significant challenges, with autocrats and illiberal forces increasing the pressure on those who fight for human rights and fundamental freedoms. We see it in Russias brutal and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine. And here at home, we are called to renew our commitment to defend and protect the core tenets of American democracy.Our founders established a government of, by, and for the people, built on the unique idea that all people are created equal. They recognized that the strength of a democracy rests in the ability of its people to make their voices heard. And today, Im proud to be hosting at the White House the United We Stand Summit to counter hate-fueled violence, reaffirming that we all have a role to play in fostering a safe, inclusive, and democratic society. In recent months, weve also demonstrated that our democracy can still deliver for the American people. Working together with Congress, Ive been proud to sign into law transformative legislation that will grow the American economy and create more good-paying jobs for American workers, invest in infrastructure, reduce gun violence, improve access to health care, and protect our climate.The United States is also working closely with fellow democracies around the world to tackle the greatest global challenges of our time, and I look forward to building on the progress next year at the second Summit for Democracy. This second gathering of world leaders from governments, civil society, labor, and the private sector will be an opportunity to demonstrate how democracies are working to make life better for people everywhere, and to redouble to our efforts to defend against authoritarianism, combat corruption, and advance human rights.

On this International Day of Democracy, we pause to reflect on the power that we hold in our in our hands and our sacred charge to preserve the soul of our Nation. To preserve that idea of America. To respect the rule of law, and defend free and fair elections. And we renew our dedication to uphold and strengthen our precious democracy and to keep faith with future generations.

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Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on the International Day of Democracy - The White House

In the run-up to the midterm elections, liberal America is starting to realize how much danger its in. The right has been openly, defiantly stoking the fires of civil war since at least 2008 openly promoting secession, political violence and the overturning of electoral outcomes. Now the left, slowly, probably too late, is having some of the same discussions about the catastrophic failure of American political institutions. Bidens speech in Philadelphia, his attempt to set the agenda for the midterms, mattered in this respect if in no other. The Democratic leader has finally, against all instinct, acknowledged the risk of national collapse.

As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault, the president declared. We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise. He even allowed himself to be specific, going so far as to call the Republican party under Trump a threat to democracy. Biden has a gift for stating what has been obvious to everyone as if he were thinking it for the first time. Still, his diagnosis was accurate, which is what made his proposed solution to the threat so frighteningly shallow: Im asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology.

Thats not good enough. Its nowhere even close to good enough. If the president of the United States declares that democracy in his country is under assault, then he needs to announce in the next breath what hes doing about it, not try to exploit it for temporary political gain in a single election cycle.

A recent poll found that more than 40% of Americans believe that a civil war is likely with the next decade. The past two years have seen the rot of American government accelerate, even as Biden has made real legislative progress. Thats the irony of these midterms. Biden has made hugely significant strides on matters of policy, on climate crisis, on infrastructure, on education during his first two years. At the same time, the forces tearing America apart are more intense than they were during the Trump years.

Since the Dobbs decision, American women have come to exist in a patchwork of legal statuses, not only between states but even on county level. Just as before the first civil war, the question of free movement between different jurisdictions is once again unclear. The Mar-a-Lago raid has created a situation in which there are no good options: the government must either arrest an ex-president or allow classified secrets to fill up random closets. Already the fundamental question of civil war is in the air: how do you deal legally with citizens who want to destroy the basis of law? The success of election deniers across American states has created inevitable conflict over 2022 and 2024. The peaceful transition of power is more doubtful now than it has been at any period since the 19th century.

The drift towards disunion is not in Bidens control if, indeed, it is in anyones control at this point. Hyper-partisanship is increasing and increasingly violent. Trust in institutions continues to decline. The sense of legitimacy in the press and the courts continues its long slide. Bidens approach to the collapse of American institutions is institutionalist, and he is trying to make his faith in institutions the focus of the next election cycle. But the current crisis requires more than politics as usual, and more than Biden is providing.

If you want to take America off the high boil, promote open primaries, not vacuous calls to national unity. Independent redistricting commissions to fight partisan gerrymandering, campaign finance reform to pull America back from the black hole of dark money, and a general overhaul of the Federal Election Commission are, at this point, obviously necessary on the most basic level if American democracy is to survive. They are also against the interests of both parties. They are not on the table in 2022.

A pro-democracy agenda also requires a genuine reckoning with the opponents of democracy. The US supreme court is already dive-bombing into illegitimacy, passing through theocracy on its way to irrelevance. Biden is not preserving the legitimacy of the court by choosing not to stack it. He is only ensuring that an already illegitimate court will be opposed to democracy.

How far Biden can enact a pro-democracy agenda is dubious, of course, and every year, from now on, it will become more dubious. Biden seems to have nothing more to offer than the old soaring rhetoric that somehow still has people who will listen to it: This is where the United States constitution was written and debated. This is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known, he said, flanked by marines. Then he put the onus for defending that experiment on the American people.

Thats an alibi, an abrogation of responsibility. Biden was elected in 2020 to defend US democracy, but the solution to Americas crisis is not political but structural. It doesnt require the American people to vote one way or another in order to enact one or another legislative agenda but to find a different way to govern themselves.

The first portion of the Biden administration has revealed a clandestine tragedy: the president has loved American institutions so much that he cannot bring himself to do whats required to save them.

Go here to see the original:
Biden says US democracy is under threat. Heres what he can do to help fix it - The Guardian

Many works of history are much less about the past than they are about the present. People contemplate past events to understand current problems, and in todays fractured America, the Civil War would surely be a resonant topic for an eminent documentarian to explore. But Ken Burns has been there and done that. Instead, in our bifurcated country, where the past is relitigated daily in state legislatures and school-board meetings, Burns and his longtime co-producers, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, will return to PBS this Sunday with a six-hour, three-part miniseries. Theyre taking on the one history lesson that all but the most repugnant Americans can still agree on: Nazis are bad.

Its rather dismal that this lesson bears repeating, but apparently it doesespecially now, when fascist-leaning rhetoric from both everyday losers and world leaders is often treated as just another edgy meme. Burns and his colleagues, however, remind us of the true stakes of that discourse. Their excellent project, which should be required viewing for all Americans, is about not just the Holocaust, but the U.S. and the Holocaustan apt title for a series that looks squarely at this countrys record of apathy at best, and malevolence at worst, toward the victims of genocide. It confronts a topic that many Americans of every political stripe prefer to avoid: responsibility.

The question of American bystanderism during the Holocaust is well-trod territory among historians, dating at least to Arthur Morses 1968 book, While Six Million Died, and likely heartily debated even earlier. Whats new in recent years is the death of several baseline public assumptions that once guided postwar American life: that America is invariably a force for good, that anti-Semitism died in the Holocaust, and that democracy always wins. With the erosion of those ideas, The U.S. and the Holocaust reveals a dark perspective on democracys limitsperhaps even darker than the producers intended.

The series presents extensive footage of corpses, juxtaposing those heaps with the Statue of Libertya monument that becomes the MacGuffin for the group of Jewish refugees the documentary discusses over its six-hour stretch. Most of those individuals were German Jews who had resources and robust networks, and who were therefore atypical Holocaust victims. Perhaps thats the point: 1930s America did not want more Jews, and even fancy, rich ones could barely buy their way in through the golden door blocked by red tape. Among them was Anne Franks father. He begged for help from a personal connectiona Macys co-owner, Nathan Strausbut was defeated by draconian American visa limits. We also meet several living refugees who, in recent interviews, relate their harrowing journeys to the U.S. as children, during which many of them were separated from their parents. I spoil nothing by sharing that there are few happy endings here.

Is it Americas responsibility to welcome all immigrants, or at least those in obvious danger? This moral question animates the series until it abruptly becomes irrelevant. After detailing how the outbreak of war shut down U.S. embassies and consulates in Nazi-controlled territory, the film moves on to other failures: the failure of the government to publicize the massacres (which were rigorously verified by late 1942), the failure to support underground rescue operations (the State Department even recalled the American journalist Varian Fry when his mission became diplomatically inconvenient), and later, the failure to bomb Auschwitz or otherwise directly target the Nazi murder apparatus. The series summons several American villains to account, in particular Assistant Secretary of State Samuel Breckinridge Long, a notorious anti-Semite who fought hard against Jewish immigration, tightened immigration restrictions, buried reports on the killings, shelved approvals for rescue plans, and blocked funding to relief groups, all while publicly denying those actions. This obstruction mattered: The U.S. had established important connections with people in Europe who could covertly extricate Jews from behind enemy lines, and those contacts were simply waiting for federal support for their work.

The films hero in that situation is a young Treasury Department lawyer and whistleblower named John Pehle, along with his Jewish boss, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., who authorized a scathing report that painted the State Department as an accessory to mass murder. Morgenthaus father had been the ambassador to the Ottoman empire during the Armenian genocide, and had tried and failed to get President Woodrow Wilson to intervene. Morgenthau reminded President Franklin D. Roosevelt of this, making early use of the phrase Never again. His efforts, were told, led Roosevelt to create the War Refugee Board in 1944, which provided material support to partisan fighters and European rescuers. This arc plays on-screen as a redemptive Hollywood moment, the fulfillment of what could have happened three years earlier, when the large-scale violence first started. Unfortunately, this underfunded effort began only after nearly 5 million Jews were already dead.

Read: Auschwitz is not a metaphor

The question of Roosevelts role in all of this has been fertile ground for historians for decades. Burns has a soft spot for Franklin and Eleanor, the subjects of one of his prior films, and here he treats them with kid gloves, blaming most of the missteps on State Department antagonists. The series makes a point of establishing the bigoted, racist atmosphere of the U.S. at the time, showing Nazi rallies in New York, clips of the popular anti-Semitic broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin, and colorized footage of a Nazi-themed summer camp in New Jersey. But the film goes out of its way to outline the pros and cons of Roosevelts decisions, leaving his reputation intact. To be clear, Roosevelt is an American icon and deserves to remain one. The problem with this approach is less about Roosevelt (there are plenty of convincing arguments in his favor, not least that he won the war) than about how it contradicts the rest of the films premise. The goal of the series is seemingly to reset Americas moral compass, using hindsight to expose the costs of being a bystander. But every bystander, including Roosevelt, can explain his choices. The films refusal to judge the commander in chief plays into a larger political pattern: offering generosity only toward those we admire.

The series covers one event in particular that illustrates the outcome of this sort of equivocation. In July 1938, delegates from 32 countries met at vian-les-Bains, in France, to discuss what to do about the hundreds of thousands of Jews attempting to leave Germany and Austria. The conference was Roosevelts idea, to his credit. But in lieu of a real government delegation, he sent a single special envoy, one of his businessman friends. The event was meant to display the worlds humanitarianism. Instead, nearly every country, including the U.S., proclaimed how sad they were about the Jewsand then explained why they wouldnt take any more refugees. One could interpret this as diplomats balancing competing interests, but the Nazis discerned no ambiguity: The vian Conference was carte blanche to kill. They couldnt have asked for a clearer announcement that the world did not care what happened to the Jews.

Watching the rapid collapse of democracies in Adolf Hitlers path on-screen in 2022 is hard to stomach, given the shellacking that democratic norms have endured in recent years both in the U.S. and elsewhere. Whats even more disturbing, though, is a realization that I arrived at only around the fourth hour of this slow-burn series, and which the filmmakers, whose patriotic optimism is obvious here, probably didnt have in mind: Democracies, for all their strengths, are ill-equipped for identifying and responding to evil.

Democracies are designed to encourage debate and to ensure that the publics wishes are expressed and enacted. Decisions are made only after information is vetted, different perspectives are weighed, and compromises are reached. As Winston Churchill put it, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. The reluctance of the U.S. to confront Nazi atrocity may have been a moral abdication, but that reluctance actually demonstrated the values of American democracy at work. The electorate thoroughly discussed immigration, with all sides having their say and no ones views repressed, and decided that a country barely emerging from the worst economic crisis in modern history could not absorb penniless Jews whose assets had been seized. When information emerged about genocide, elected officials took time to confirm that it was not, to use a latter-day term, fake news. Later, military strategies to avoid bombing Auschwitz were made exactly as dictatorships would not make themwith concern for soldiers lives.

Thats the nice version of this story, and its already not pretty. But a much darker side of democracy was also at work. Tyranny of the majority, while preferable to other types of tyranny, is nonetheless consequential. Immigration restrictions, for instance, were not a democratic failure; on the contrary, they were what voters wanted. Once war broke out, saving Jews in Europe, even in the limited ways possible, wasnt merely a low priority; it was not what voters wanted. As one historian in the film notes, The War Department doesnt want the soldiers to know much about the persecution of the Jews, because theyre worried they wont fight hard if they think theyre secretly being sent to save the Jews. That omission was not a delicate balancing of policy goals. It was an elected government respecting majority sentiment. The failure to even try to save more Jews wasnt because of some memo concealed by the State Department (despite Breckinridge Longs efforts, everyone knew) or because it would have derailed the war effort (it wouldnt have). It was, very clearly, because no one wanted to. None of this means that democracy isnt our absolute best hope. It is. But something big is missing from the way our democracy envisions responsibility and respectnamely, to whom we think those values apply.

Not Idly By, an hour-long work by the filmmaker Pierre Sauvage, addresses a similar subject as The U.S. and the Holocaust, but with a very different style. Its about, and almost entirely narrated by, Peter Bergson, a Jewish activist from British-occupied Palestine who came to the U.S. during World War II to shout himself hoarse about the Holocaust. The U.S. and the Holocaust includes Bergsons story toohis dozens of full-page ads in major newspapers highlighting massacres that those papers buried in inside pages; his star-studded, stadium-filling pageants; his 400-rabbi march on Washington. But The U.S. and the Holocaust is sad, whereas Not Idly By is angry. Bergson, interviewed in 1978, rages with a Hebrew prophets fury. Nobody rages in The U.S. and the Holocaust, because nobody rages on PBS. A subtle condescension is built into melancholic discussions of what might have been done to save more Jews, because in the final analysis, America saving more Jews was an optional, high-minded choice that would have been made only out of charity.

The Allies defeat of Hitler supposedly lets us off the moral hook for all this. One of the reasons that World War II films have such broad appeal is because many follow a Hollywood trajectory: Good triumphs over evil. Unfortunately, this version of events is false. As one of the historians in Burnss series puts it, We do rally as a nation to defeat fascism. We just dont rally as a nation to rescue the victims of fascism. The Nazis lost their war against the Allies, but they won their war against the Jews.

As unfathomable as 6 million murders are, the murder of that many human beings is a grotesquely inadequate description of the losses of the Holocaust. Imagine, for instance, the deliberate murders of 6 million French civilians, including 1.5 million French childrennot merely killed in war, but slaughtered in mass executions, elderly people and babies gassed to death or burned alive. If this had happened, it would have been horrific. But out of tens of millions of French people, survivors would have outnumbered victims, and with them, France itself would have endured. In effect, the story would have been the grim-but-triumphant one we tell about the Allied victory. The same cannot be said of European Jews, who once populated up to a third of many European towns and cities, and whose ancient and complex civilization within Europe predated Christianity by centuries. This civilization, which included its own languages, school systems, libraries, theaters, and publishing and film industries, was all but burned out of the world. Judaism survived Nazism, just as it outlived its many other oppressors. But Jewish life in Europe never recovered and almost certainly never will. That is the meaning of genocide.

Humanitarian impulses are unreliable because they depend not on dignity but on pity. Preventing genocide requires more than feeling sorry for others: We have to value people who are not us precisely because they are not us.

The failure to honor actual differences, the failure to recognize that not everyone has to be just like us for us to respect them, the failure to admit that the majority may not always be rightthese failures are at the root of anti-Semitism, a mental virus that continues to plague our world. A sense of benevolence is necessary but insufficient to destroy it. Defeating it would demand an entirely different level of moral imagination, a collective commitment to replacing pity with respect.

That level of imagination, if we ever attain it, could actually overcome the weak points of democracy. It would open the door to honoring not just people in danger and people in need, but people, both at home and abroad, who arent just like us. It might even bring new meaning to Never again.

See the original post here:
Ken Burnss The U.S. and the Holocaust Reveals the Limits of Democracy - The Atlantic

We are seeking to fill two positions on our editorial team: Aneditor/researcherand amembership editor. Apply by Oct. 2, 2022.

Sovereignty is an abstract concept. License plates are not. In late July, the Kosovo government demanded its Serbian citizens replace the plates on their cars, prompting protests among those who continue to reject Pristinas sovereignty. International intervention helped postpone the issue, but it threatens to erupt again on Nov. 1 when the governments new regulations are scheduled to go into effect.

Kosovos latest crisis is another reminder of what Europe has gotten wrong in the Balkans. For the last 15 years, Western leaders and organizations have worked to ease tensions between Kosovo and Serbia by throwing their support behind the corrupt stabilocrats who perpetuate them. To preserve peace and stability in the region, Western countries have backed officials in Belgrade and Pristina who promised to settle their disputes through dialogue and choose European integration over alignment with Russia. In return, these stabilocrats were granted international legitimacy and a free hand in running their countries. This has led to real progress, such as the integration of predominantly Serbian northern Kosovo into the countrys legal and political system. However, leaders in Belgrade and Pristina have also instrumentalized this progress to consolidate their international image as peacemakers and escape criticism for undemocratic behavior. This has enabled them to amass power while fuelling nationalism and further undermining human rights and the rule of law actions that will make real and lasting peace impossible. The result is that after 11 years of negotiations, Serbian and Kosovar leaders have not normalized relations, brought their countries closer to the European Union, or limited Russias influence in the Balkans. Instead, they continue to provoke numerous low-intensity crises to ensure they remain irreplaceable as dialogue partners and peacemakers.

Rather than blame Russia for the regions troubles or double down on failed strategies, Western leaders should prioritize the democratization of Kosovo and Serbia. Among other things, this would entail democratizing the E.U.-led dialogue process between the two countries to make it more transparent, accountable, and inclusive. As Kosovo and Serbia are largely dependent on foreign funding, financial support should be conditioned on building democratic and multi-ethnic institutions that will implement the existing and future peace agreements.

The License Plate Crisis

11 years ago, Serbian and Kosovar leaders negotiated an agreement in Brussels to secure freedom of movement for Serbs and Albanians living in Kosovo. Yet Serbia has nonetheless applied discriminatory measures against the owners of cars with Kosovo plates. In response, the Kosovo government banned Kosovo Serbs from travelling south of the Ibar river without getting new national plates. This summer, it again called on residents of Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo to obtain Kosovo license plates and said that Serbian citizens travelling to Kosovo will have to obtain temporary entry documents issued by the Kosovo authorities. In response, Serbs in Kosovo, opposed to Pristinas claims of full sovereignty over their region, blocked the roads leading to two border crossings with Serbia. Thankfully, the crisis was resolved within a few hours. With NATO forces standing by and support from E.U. officials, the U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo asked Prime Minister Albin Kurti to postpone the implementation of the new measures until Sept. 1. When he did, locals took down their barricades.

While Kosovo and Serbia have solved the identity card issue, a license plate showdown still looms. Following another postponement, Kosovo Serbs now allegedly have until Oct. 31 to replace their current license plates. In conversations with the author, some Kosovo Serbs explained that they have decided to boycott the new measures, while others have preregistered their cars with the new plates. A third group is stuck in a bureaucratic dead-end because they cannot get the government-issued identity documents necessary for preregistration. Which is all to say there could be more problems at the end of October.

Back to the Table

Immediately after the Kosovo Serbs blocked the roads, diplomats from the European Union, NATO, and the United States called on officials in Belgrade and Pristina to return to the negotiating table to find a sustainable solution. But the high-level political dialogue facilitated by the European Union has been stuck for the past few years because of the open hostility between Prime Minister Kurti and the Serbian President Aleksandar Vui, as well as the Kosovo governments decision to impose tariffs on goods from Serbia.

This illustrates the limits of what bilateral dialogue can achieve without a more comprehensive approach. Since 2011, Belgrade and Pristina have concluded more than 20 agreements to resolve a number of concrete problems, thus contributing to the normalization of their relations. The biggest breakthrough was achieved through the Brussels Agreement of 2013, which resulted in the dissolution of Serbian institutions in Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, and civil protection corps, along with the integration of Serb-majority municipalities into the countrys legal and political system. Since the Kosovo Serb community resisted these moves, they were only possible as a result of serious pressure from Belgrade, which included both political violence against the local population and guarantees from the government of Serbia. As a consolation prize for accepting integration, Belgrade also promised to establish an Association of Serbian Municipalities, a body that would allow the Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo a higher level of self-governance. To date, politicians in Pristina have refused to implement the part of the Brussels agreement related to the association, claiming that it would lead to the creation of another Republic of Srpska.

All further talks between Belgrade and Pristina have been focused on establishing full sovereignty of Pristina over the entire territory of Kosovo. Ultimately, the dialogue should end with a legally binding comprehensive agreement and Serbias recognition of Kosovos independence. However, Serbian political elites view any such agreement with Pristina as political suicide. As a result, for almost a decade, E.U. mediators have allowed Kosovo Albanian and Serbian political leaders to interpret their agreements differently, thus fostering different expectations on both sides and leaving the two countries citizens unprepared for the compromises a lasting agreement would require. In this way, the E.U.-mediated dialogue enabled Serbian officials to save face and remain in power by presenting their compromises as diplomatic victories.

It will be difficult to further integrate the Serbian community or establish Pristinas full sovereignty without buy-in from Belgrade. Yet in the absence of a more inclusive dialogue process, this would feel like a betrayal to Kosovo Serbs, generating either a local backlash or causing Belgrade to ultimately balk. Serbian politicians often claim that they represent the interests of the Kosovo Serbs in negotiations, but in fact, Vui has sought to deepen his control over the Serbian population in Kosovo. He does this through the Serb List, a party which has 10 seats in the Kosovo parliament and a minister in the government. The Serb List also won the local elections in 2019 with more than 90 percent of the Serbian vote. Certain opinion-makers from Belgrade think that these victories have emboldened Vui to negotiate on behalf of almost all Serbs in Kosovo. But even as Vui seeks to suppress critical voices, dissatisfaction with the concessions that Belgrade has offered in Brussels is growing. Locals claim that the Serb List did nothing to protect the interests of the Serbs or even inform them of the Kosovo governments recent decisions.

What Now?

One of the lessons of the license plate crisis is that in the absence of functional and inclusive dialogue between political leaders, outbreaks of instability and violence will remain all too possible. The current dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina is an elite-driven process that takes place behind closed doors in Brussels with no input from citizens and civil society. So far, none of the leaders involved have shown a true commitment to building a national consensus behind the negotiations. When Albin Kurti came to power for the second time in Feb. 2021, he said that dialogue with Serbia was not a priority for his government. Instead of implementing the agreements that were reached by his predecessors, he pushed for strengthening Kosovos international legitimacy. This has involved lobbying for membership in international organizations and recognition from the five E.U. countries Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia that have not yet granted it.

The European Union remains in the drivers seat, but its mediators come from countries that do not recognize Kosovo and do not enjoy a high level of trust among Albanian citizens and politicians in Kosovo. Despite this, the E.U. Special Representative for the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue expects a final agreement on normalized relations between the two countries to be reached before the European Parliament elections in 2024. E.U. diplomats consider the next two years favorable for concluding a legally binding agreement, as snap elections in Kosovo and Serbia are not expected.

In short, the European Union expects Balkan stabilocrats to deliver on Kosovo once again. This is a potentially dangerous situation. The last time the European Union expected Serbia to make progress on the Kosovo issue, it turned a blind eye to democracy and rule of law. As a result, Serbia moved towards autocracy under Aleksandar Vui, and the state itself became a source of insecurity for its own citizens and an exporter of instability in the Balkans. Following Russias invasion of Ukraine, many Serbian citizens fear that the Wests desire for stability at all costs will lead them to turn a blind eye to authoritarianism again. That would represent a serious blow to civil society, which has spent almost 30 years working to democratize Serbia and improve the rule of law.

Kosovo is currently more democratic than Serbia, and its government is more transparent. But if Kosovo wishes to be considered a fully functioning democracy, it should guarantee security, justice, and basic services to all its citizens, regardless of their ethnicity. It is also essential that Kosovar leaders invest in building trust with the countrys Serbs, address their concerns, and show that they will be treated as equal citizens.

Democracy and rule of law not stabilocrats are the key for maintaining peace and stability in the Balkans. The international community should insist on them as a prerequisite for lasting peace between Serbs and Albanians. Rather than accept the invasion of Ukraine as a reason to compromise on these values, it should instead be seen as a lesson in the dangers that strongman rule can pose to stability. Only by supporting leaders with democratic potential in both Serbia and Kosovo can the West help build accountable institutions capable of implementing future peace agreements.

Maja Bjelos is a senior researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy.

Photo by Milosevo/Wikimedia

Excerpt from:
Only Democracy Can Bring Stability to the Balkans - War on the Rocks

Published

2022-09-16 12:31

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September 16, 2022

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This week, The 19th made history again. Our poll of more than 20,000 Americans across race, age, gender, education, income, and political affiliation, in collaboration with SurveyMonkey, is an Illuminating look at the electorate at a critical time for our democracy.

We asked about lots of core issues, including abortion, caregiving, health care and the election. One topic in particular jumped out at me: the relationship between voters and the media, and what it means for our democracy.

We asked people how much they agreed with the statement, The news media is a critical component of our democracy today and to tell us how often they see news coverage that accurately reflects issues faced by people like them. Taken together, their answers paint a dissonant picture. While the majority see journalism as a key part of democracy, many feel left out of news coverage.

Particularly striking: Half of Republicans and more than 8 in 10 Democrats see journalism as a key part of democracy but that same percentage of Republicans dont see themselves as part of the story, compared with roughly 1 in 10 Democrats.

This disconnect confirmed for me much of what Ive known my whole career as a journalist, including as national race writer for The Associated Press, as a former board member of the National Association of Black Journalists and now, as editor-at-large for The 19th.

An increasingly diverse country does not see itself reflected in the media. Communities of color, LGBTQ+ people and marginalized groups are still underrepresented in both who covers the news and what news is covered. Some White Americans view the countrys diversity and its reflection in the media as a threat to their representation. Audiences are skeptical that we can cover their concerns or communities fully. That concern was seized on, sometimes with violent language, by the former president, who labeled the press an enemy of the people.

The relationship between voters and the media provides a window into the partisan divide and Americans attitudes about the importance of the press to democracy, and is important to understand for those of us whose work tries to bridge the gap. Were part of the Fourth Estate, as critical to the working of the country as the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

While its reassuring that many of us want good information, the party differences in the poll are telling, said Laura Wronski, director of research at SurveyMonkey. This is a big ship were all steering collectively, and the media is one element of that.

The goal of this poll was to understand peoples lived experience and to explore how their different identities factor into their politics, Wronski explained. More than any other identifier, ideological differences trumped all in respondents perceptions about the press.

People are getting their news from different sources, and theres not a lot of overlap, Wronski said. What are the longer-term consequences of these differences?

Earlier this year, I was on a panel with former Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan on whether journalism can safeguard democracy. In her final column for The Post last month, the veteran journalist left the industry some parting advice on how to cover the upcoming election, writing:

The deeper question is whether news organizations can break free of their hidebound practices the love of political conflict, the addiction to elections as a horse race to address those concerns effectively. For the sake of democracy, they must I hope that newsroom leaders are thinking hard about moving outside their long-standing practice as the presidential campaign approaches. This will not be a traditional contest, and the stakes are high. We simply have to get it right.

When I called Sullivan and shared the results of our poll some of which she was able to guess even before I told her she said she was heartened by the idea that many Americans see journalism as critical to democracy.

A lot of times, we in the press frame issues about the media in terms of what it means to us, to our colleagues, to our industry, Sullivan said. Its important to broaden that perspective and say, What does this mean for the way our society functions? Because our government, our culture do not function without an independent press. Our fellow citizens should care and the numbers say they do care, but they want it to be better, they want the quality or the connection to be stronger. But its not that they dont see the value.

The erosion of local journalism, something Sullivan wrote about extensively, informed by her years as editor of the Buffalo News, has also frayed the community fabric, she said.

Local news subscribers may know the reporter whos covering city hall because that reporters child may go to your childs school, Sullivan explained. Theres a close community connection. But as that becomes less frequent, theres less of a chance of that happening. There arent as many journalists for the public to have a connection with.

For those of us who are left, Sullivan said, the damage done in the past few years by President Donald Trumps attempts to disparage and undercut the press were somewhat effective, but not total or irrevocable.

Its something we need to work on every day, Sullivan said. We have to ask ourselves: Are we telling the stories that matter, in a way that people can connect with?

Centering the voices of people too often unseen and unheard in our democracy is key to our mission at The 19th, and one of the main reasons our newsroom exists. Many of our journalists have lived experiences that can also fall outside of what is considered mainstream, including our data visualization reporter, Jasmine Mithani, whose work was crucial in developing our poll.

I talked to Mithani about why we asked voters about their relationship to the press, and she told me that the aim was to better understand how people view news and to look for areas where there might also be friction but also to examine the demographic differences not always available when we seek to tell stories about our democracy.

As someone who personally falls into the other race category, I often feel left out, Mithani said. Many people at The 19th feel like that, so we took a lot of time thinking about the data we often wish we had.

In talking to Mithani, I had an exciting realization: Our poll is an extension of the asterisk in our logo, which is a North Star for our newsroom and a reminder that the purpose of our journalism is to show the fullness of our country and our politics.

This was a chance for us to put that data out into the world, to ask the questions, to get more information about people who are often overlooked, Mithani said. This is something we can do at The 19th, to provide that representation where its missing. One way we can do that is through a poll like this.

Imara Jones, founder of TransLash Media, which uses journalism and personal narrative to tell stories about the lived transgender experience, said the news media does a poor job of covering the LGBTQ+ community broadly and transgender people in particular.

The lack of representation is amplified, the further you get away from who they believe is their primary audience namely, White men, Jones said.

This is why you see a rise in the consumption of alternative media for LGBTQ+ audiences, because thats where they can see themselves reflected, Jones continued. If newsrooms want people to engage, they have to expand the ways they cover these communities.

Our work at The 19th is to expand our countrys imagination about who can, does and should participate in our politics. In doing this poll, we sought to not only inform ourselves, but to inform and serve our audiences and to push other outlets to prove what is possible and to see what they might also be missing.

This work is also about helping our fellow Americans to see and better understand each other, to be a catalyst for civility and a counterweight to the forces that seek to undermine our efforts to leave behind the most honest and accurate record of who we are. This poll is a reminder that despite our differences or disagreements, we are all in this work together.

The path forward for our democracy lies in the details behind the data. May we forge ahead, together and more informed.

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Americans see the media as critical to democracy. Now what are we going to do with that? - The 19th*