Categories
Featured Politics

On Sovereignty

The Euros start this week, so I wanted to talk a bit about football, and what it means to the people who support it. Let me start with a sweeping and possibly controversial statement—I genuinely believe that one of humanity’s greatest achievements is the Football World Cup.

It’s a phenomenon that you can’t really put your finger on; for a month or so in the middle of the year, this electric atmosphere buzzes around everyday life as the whole world becomes enthralled in this high-skill, high-stakes stage of a game so simple that almost anyone could play it. The differences between countries are both intensified and nigh-on forgotten as our heroic foot-warriors jostle with, shoot at, dive from, leap over, and blatantly foul each other to the shouts, jumps and cries of the millions watching, proudly bearing the same jerseys as the ones plastered on the big screens. The competitive yet unifying energy of it is something genuinely like no other, and is an incredible feat. I think human progress is at its best when it brings us all together; when done right, that is exactly what the World Cup (and, by extension, the Euros) is about—appreciating and embracing diversity.

But why is this so different to normal club games? After all, it’s the same sport, just with different jerseys, new teams, and a fancy, if sometimes utterly irrational, location (I’m looking at you, Qatar). What changes in the World Cup, though, is this element of national identity; those odd labels that merely represent the place that you’re from, yet somehow have the ability to turn a game of football into a worldwide spectacle. The thing is, nationality isn’t just a passport, or a flag in your Instagram bio; much of the time it is an indicator that we use as the very definition of who we are. There is serious power to that. This sense of identity and belonging is what drives that World Cup fever, I think; rather than looking at any football game and thinking that we could probably do it ourselves, having these players represent our country, and by extension us, on this global stage makes us feel that we really are somehow involved in it—that we are more than mere spectators. This connection is uplifting, captivating and inspiring; international sports simply wouldn’t be the same without it.

Fans at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Moscow, July 2018.

The extent that nationality matters to people bleeds pretty heavily into many aspects of life; from sports to immigrant communities down to the very lines along which our country’s borders are drawn. It’s more or less this last aspect that I want to focus on—nationality, and its importance, is something that I think is blindingly obvious yet not appreciated nearly enough in political conversation. Ultimately, it holds a compelling power over people that, when properly harnessed, is almost impossible to convince them away from. This has the power to turn politics from a rational debate to an all-out clash of ideology and identity, with the power to cause war, break apart countries, or both. This has been specifically evident in the UK, with the division of Ireland some hundred years ago and the now hot-button topic of Scottish independence. Nationality plays a central role, I think, in why Scotland wants to be independent in the first place, and why the UK government’s attempts to get rid of the debate won’t work.

People who know me will know full well that I never stop going on about being Scottish; my dad’s family is originally from here, and my parents met in Edinburgh (I qualify for SAAS, alright?). But despite how much I jokingly go on about it, I really am Scottish in name only; my dad’s job has meant I have never actually lived here, and I grew up in the South of England, far away from even the faintest whisper of bagpipes or a trace of Haggis on supermarket shelves. What this distance means is that while I’m “Scottish”, I lack the Scottish experience; that intimate relationship with this country, gained from growing up and spending one’s life in it, that makes it an irreversible element of your identity. At the end of the day, no amount of ranting about education fees can provide that. It’s taken coming to university here, though, and actually interacting with people who do have this experience for me to realise its importance and how much I’m lying to myself when I call myself “Scottish”; if we’re honest, I don’t really have the full picture. I think that this means that I fail to properly understand the issue of Scottish independence, because like my Scottishness itself, I view it as much more of a title and less of a part of who I am; for someone truly Scottish, though, it is all about the latter.

Edinburgh, from Arthur’s Seat. 14th May, 2021.

I think that democratic politics is, in a way, a lot like football: people have this desire to see a reflection of themselves when looking at their representatives on the political stage. But much like the difference between club games and the World Cup, this reflection is not just about looking at government and thinking we could take over and make it better ourselves (which, let’s be honest, most of us do), but it’s about feeling that we are already doing so through the people we elect. And though that sense of involvement isn’t displayed as clearly as by those matching national uniforms, it’s every bit as important to the people’s participation in the process.
This is directly relevant to independence; ultimately, for a large part of the Scottish population, British politics is no longer a game they want to play. They don’t feel that the people they are watching truly represent them; Westminster for them is full of people who, much like me, claim to understand Scotland but have no real conception of the true Scottish experience. And though these people should be easily democratically replaced with better ones, Scotland is currently still a (relatively small) part of the UK—they can’t just vote in a whole new Westminster Parliament by themselves. Now, if the Scottish people were still fully invested in preserving the Union as a whole, this would be fine by them—but the point is that they’ve had enough. Scots have found that who they are no longer matches up with the rest of Britain; their left-wing, internationalist yet distinctly Scottish outlook is ever more starkly contrasted with England’s Brexit-fuelled separatist Tory government (even if a cabinet more similar to Scotland’s won a general election, though, I think that the damage has been done). The current system denies them the chance for that sovereignty that they so desperately want—breaking free of that is what independence is fundamentally about. I don’t think that such a dramatic ideological rift can be easily closed once it has formed, and the one between Scotland and England is widening at an alarming rate.

Those in power at Westminster, though, appear to have taken an interesting strategy to tackle the problem—namely, just ignoring it entirely. Obviously, Covid has thrown domestic politics into disarray, providing a convenient excuse to dance around the issue, but the Scottish elections in May especially has driven it right to the forefront; all the while, the UK government has barely spoken out on it at all. This refusal to directly address independence head-on has been going on for years now—from devolution, to the “once-in-a-lifetime vote” rhetoric from 2014’s referendum, to this year suggesting the SNP would require an outright majority at Holyrood before another referendum is even considered. When they do mention it, they proffer flimsy narratives in response of impracticality and economic instability that only seem to delay a vote rather than truly convincing anyone away from independence as a concept. But this childish plan of debate-dodging won’t last; issues of identity, especially those as deep-rooted as this, only grow stronger if not dealt with. If anything, it only proves how out of touch the English government truly is; if they don’t face this argument that has gripped Scottish politics for over a decade, how can they hope to truly represent it? It either shows a lack of understanding or a lack of democratic competence—honestly, I’m not sure which is worse.

Party leaders debate ahead of the May 2021 Scottish Parliamentary election. Edinburgh, 4th May, 2021.

A lot of this was playing on my mind last month as I voted for the first time ever in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, and watched the SNP narrowly fall short of that essential majority at Holyrood. Boris Johnson, yet again, will surely take this as a sign that he can continue to reject Nicola Sturgeon’s requests for another independence referendum. But Westminster has already been trying that for too long, and I can promise that it won’t work much longer. To be fair, much unlike the World Cup, I don’t think anybody wants a referendum every four years—by now, we’re all pretty tired of this worn-out debate. But what I’m arguing is that another vote is inevitable. People’s identity, and genuinely feeling that they have sovereignty over their own affairs, rather than being controlled by a government from a distant English metropolis who doesn’t understand them, matters. That feeling of fundamental disconnection is not one that any amount of delaying and sidelining can have any long-term effect on—the argument of Scottish independence is as prevalent as it is permanent, no matter how much Westminster may pray that it might disappear if they ignore it enough.

Much like the beautiful game, Politics’ value comes from the fact that anyone can get involved and make a difference on the pitch. Remove that appeal, though, and people stop wanting to play—it ends up becoming a bit more like polo than football. If the people don’t believe in Britain, British politics simply won’t work anymore; even if it means trading the money and security of a stadium for the familiarity and chaos of a playpark, people would rather play a game they have control of. Scotland may have decided that the UK simply doesn’t provide that; no matter how much you deny, delay, or argue against it, we may have come too far for that schism ever to be healed. After all, football has never been about how many trophies the team wins, but about their genuine connection with the fans; for that, I know which match I’ll be watching on Monday.

The Scotland Football team beat Serbia to qualify for the Euros for the first time in 23 years. Belgrade, 12th November, 2020.

References
Most of this one was done from my own experiences having spent a year (already!!) at university in Scotland. This article is a sort of tribute to that. I’d like to take this chance to thank everyone I’ve met along the way; I’ve learnt a lot, not just about Scottish independence, from the people I’ve met and the interactions I’ve had.
However, I picked up George Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism for £1 from Lighthouse lately, which was incredibly interesting and quite influential towards my writing of this piece (even if he takes a very different view on Nationalism and even sports throughout). You can pick it up in-store or from here (for a quid):
https://lighthousebookshop.com/book/9780241339565

Image references (in order of use):
https://www.mos.ru/en/news/item/58750073/
Taken and owned by me
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56986718
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/54853402

Categories
Featured Politics

On Equality

Almost one year ago, a 46-year old man walked into a store in Minneapolis and, while attempting to pay, was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill. The police were called, and the man was arrested; 8 minutes and 46 seconds later, a full two minutes after he had become unresponsive, he was dead. Last week, the person who was kneeling on his neck faced trial.

Meanwhile, the UK has been ripped apart by the fallout from the release of the Sewell report on racial disparity; in case you (somehow) missed it, it controversially concluded that “we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”. To many, this was an affirmation of what they’d believed for a long time; that structural racial discrimination in the UK no longer exists, and that those who claim it does are selfishly inventing an issue where one doesn’t exist. To me, though, this report was the most direct possible highlight of everything that I think people fail to understand about the structural and institutional racism that pervades our lives.

Contrary to the investigation’s suggestions, I believe that in the West, racial equality is a myth—structural racism penetrates deep into our society and continues to have huge effects today, regardless of how far we’ve come in alleviating it. This piece is my attempt to back up that idea (from the point of view of a white guy who has benefited from the exact systems it outlines).

Tony Sewell, chair of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. London, April 1st, 2021.

Institutional racism is a deeply multifaceted issue, and getting into its full extent would take somebody who knows a lot more than me a lot more time than just one article. So, in the interest of brevity and providing an example of where the report goes wrong, let’s talk about one issue the investigation brings up: education and success.

Over summer, a friend of mine recommended a book to me called “Outliers”, by Malcolm Gladwell; it’s a book that aims to explore the factors behind successful people, well, becoming successful. I really recommend reading it, but I’ll save you the time by cutting to its main finding: that success is about opportunity. More specifically, the only way that anybody ends up good at anything is by getting the opportunity to practice and become good at it. Across the book, Gladwell uses examples from Canadian ice hockey players to Bill Gates himself to show that the success of all of them was not determined by talent, but the opportunities they were provided from a young age. As he states in the conclusion to the book, success is “is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky”. The truth is that we don’t live in an egalitarian society; life is made incredibly easy for some (myself included) and incredibly difficult for others based on factors over which they have absolutely no control. This is a principle that I think can be applied across the human experience—the truth is, many of the things that you’ll be able to achieve are predetermined long before the day you are born.

Most of the people who maintain the idea that racial inequalities do not exist seem to parrot the exact same alternative narrative—that success is solely a result of hard work, and that if anyone works hard enough, their dreams are guaranteed. They laud figures such as Denzel Washington, who preaches that “hard work, works”*. They then extrapolate this to suggest that just because one person from a particular background can make it out and achieve amazing things, so can every single person from that background—and, according to them, those who fail to “make it” do so because they simply aren’t working hard enough.

  • Malcolm Gladwell gives a speech at an OZY Fest in Central Park. New York, NY, July 23rd, 2016.
  • Denzel Washington gives the Dillard University graduation commencement speech. New Orleans, LA, May 9th, 2015.

Listen: in a lot of ways, this isn’t incorrect. Success definitively requires hard work; nobody with any number of ideal opportunities is going to get anywhere without putting pretty significant effort in. But how much work you actually have to put in, and how conducive that work is going to be to actual achievement, varies heavily depending on your individual situation. To harness that hard work, you need the right opportunities—who gets which opportunities, then, depends majorly on your background. It is true that in today’s UK, you’d be lying if you suggested that it were absolutely impossible for someone to do anything based upon their ethnicity (though we’re still waiting on a non-white Prime Minster; we’ll get there.) But think of it like a running race, in which some contestants start 50 metres ahead while others start behind, with hurdles and obstacles in their way—those who start behind could win, say, if those in front walk really slowly, but it’s going to be tough work. No matter how much you grind, life is still more or less a game of luck—succeeding isn’t guaranteed. And what is important is that for a middle-class white kid like me, the amount of better-quality advantages you receive in life (which you can harness to eventually become successful) is going to be so much more than the average kid from an ethnic minority background**—we start out in front, and the course is much more clear. For others, the opportunities they receive are more likely to be fewer and further between; this means they can still do well, sure, but the odds are much more heavily stacked against them.

“But isn’t all of this more or less determined by class, not race?”, you might, pretty fairly, ask. Class definitely comes into it; indeed, regardless of race, the more money you have, the better your schooling, tech, extracurricular help, and even basic food provision can afford to be. Indeed, I reckon that most of the differences that I’ve outlined above can be put down to variation in class, not race (though other more subtle racial ones definitely do exist). But even if you ignore the other factors that affect education and futures and assume (pretty tenuously) that disparities in eventual affluence are totally explained by your socioeconomic position growing up, the blaring issue still stands that race is not accurately represented across classes. In the UK, white British people are easily the least likely ethnic group of all to be in the poorest income brackets, while the most likely to be in the richest:

UK Income distribution by ethnicity (after housing costs), April 2016-March 2019. Source: UK Government https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/pay-and-income/income-distribution/latest#by-ethnicity-after-housing-costs

People of colour are far more likely to be in those lower income brackets, receiving worse opportunities and therefore being set up to do less well than their white counterparts**. White people are more likely to live in richer areas with better schools (or just be able to pay for better schools), to have affluent parents with powerful contacts, and to get tutoring, internships, extracurricular funding, summer schools, textbooks, and everything in between. This social, economic and cultural safety net consists of the exact advantages that Gladwell is on about (and many of the ones that I have benefited from myself)—sure, you can be absolutely fine without them, but you’re going to need a hell of a lot of luck. I think that many people fail to recognise this key difference between the possibility and probability of success; just because we could, in theory, all achieve something, doesn’t make us all equally likely of being able to achieve it, and doesn’t make it fair (think back to my running race analogy from before).

Being poorer, as ethnic minorities are more likely to be, doesn’t make success impossible, just as being rich doesn’t guarantee it; we’ve all heard stories of rags to riches and spectacular falls from grace. But just because one person bucks the trend created by this disparity doesn’t mean that all of them can—the truth is, most of them don’t. And as the gaps between socioeconomic classes increase due to this biased system (which they definitively are; inequality is not getting any lesser in the UK), so do the gaps between races as disadvantaged people fight harder to get less far. This is just one single, very focused example of how our society is ruthlessly rigged against ethnic minorities; I haven’t even touched on other broad issues like policing, health, or even employment (though the latter is very linked to what I have explored). Nor have I gotten into how discrimination expresses itself within classes and schools, through indirect biases such as how students of ethnic minority backgrounds can be hit with disproportionate rates of disciplinary punishment—these are incredibly pressing issues that the government’s “landmark” investigation fails to properly investigate.

For its part, the Sewell report acknowledges the issues that affect educational achievement, including parental income levels and education, geography, and family structure, while asserting that socioeconomic status by far correlates the most strongly with attainment. I more or less agree with this breakdown of the issue; what the report then suggests to solve this, though, is simply the improvement of early-age state schooling. I think that this could definitely make up a lot of ground, but at the end of the day equalising your first few years of school simply isn’t enough to deal with structural societal inequalities. This solution only addresses what happens within the classroom, and ignores the fact that most of the difference expresses itself without, through background, extra support, etc. It also doesn’t get into the massive advantage that mostly-white private schools provide.

They’ve pretty much admitted that the root of the problem is socioeconomic status, and the misrepresentation of races in this respect. So, why aren’t we dealing with that? Why are we focusing on early-age education while upholding this inadequate hierarchy when we could be working to change that system as a whole? This rationale is more or less, I think, reflected across the entire report; though in many cases, it identifies the problems we’re facing with surprising lucidity, its recommendations of solutions repeatedly fall short of what is necessary. The thing is, until we start addressing the deep racial disparities that are actually behind all of the issues we’re debating, those issues will never really go away. Many hoped that the Sewell report would start addressing that by actually beginning to confront these problems; I, for one, was incredibly disappointed to see that it didn’t.

Students at Eton College. Eton, Windsor, February 7th, 2012.

For me, the death of George Floyd was a wake-up call to facing issues that, as a privileged white kid, I had never been privy to in the past—more than anything, it was a reminder of just how different others’ lives are to mine, and just how much I have left to learn and to understand. That’s what I’ve spent the last year attempting to do, and I’m still trying. I’m nowhere near fully getting it now (and I never will be), but I know that I’m a lot closer than I was. What worries me, though, is that there are still so many people who don’t try: who are happy to be complacent and deny just how rigged our society is, to pretend that the reason that individuals pass or fail, work the trading floor or the streets, and receive a warning or a knee to the neck is because of their own faults, and not because of a system that is structurally stacked against them.

Though the conviction of Floyd’s murderer might bring his family peace, it won’t truly bring him justice; he won’t receive that until we finally create a world in which no innocent person like him dies in the first place. What pains me is that with the way things seem right now, that reality is still a long way off.

A memorial pays its respects to George Floyd, one week after his murder at the hands of a police officer. Minneapolis, MN, May 31st, 2020.


* I don’t at all think that Denzel doesn’t understand the issue, but I think that he is often misquoted and his ideas bent to fit a certain agenda.

** I am grouping all ethnic minorities together here as they are all at a disadvantage, but I want to make it clear that the difficulties that ethnic groups face are by no means homogenous and should not be unnecessarily generalised. Every individual’s, and every group’s, experience is complex and unique and should be treated entirely as such.

References
A lot of this one was again fuelled by my own thought, along with hours of conversations on the issue with people in-person and over the internet; this piece is my best attempt to put my point of view on it forwards in the most comprehensive way possible. This is the article I wish I could have read aged sixteen (when I really didn’t get it at all).
However, here are a couple books I’ve read that really influenced my thinking here (from Edinburgh-based independent bookstores, of course):
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell:
https://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/books/malcolm-gladwell/outliers/9780141036250/
(This is also a good criticism of Gladwell’s writing that is important to bear in mind: https://medium.com/@tomnew/how-malcolm-gladwell-writes-12960d83575c)
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge (a really important read even if you disagree with me and everything this book stands for, as it explains this side of the argument really well):
https://lighthousebookshop.com/products/9781408870587?_pos=1&_sid=7ce713792&_ss=r
I’ll also repost the UK Government statistics page from which I took the graph above:
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/pay-and-income/income-distribution/latest#by-ethnicity-after-housing-costs

Image sources (in order of use):
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anger-slave-claims-race-review-bame-equality-wlpsk6hgv
https://medium.com/@tomnew/how-malcolm-gladwell-writes-12960d83575c
https://www.fearlessmotivation.com/2018/09/23/denzel-washington-speech/
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/pay-and-income/income-distribution/latest#by-ethnicity-after-housing-costs
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-poshest-school-eton-paying-147911
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadjasayej/2020/06/04/the-story-behind-the-mural-at-the-george-floyd-memorial/?sh=1ed3976827f1
None of these images are owned by me, and I make no financial gain from their use. All credit goes to their original owners.

Categories
Alex Archive

Archive: Life After King’s

A few months ago, my school got in touch with me asking me to write a piece for their newsletter about what I’d been up to since leaving last June; this is what I came up with. There’s a bit of life updating and a lot of reflection on how Covid has (somewhat) changed my life trajectory, similar to earlier pieces I wrote while I was still at school. If you’re reading this when it drops, make sure read my new piece too; otherwise, enjoy, I guess.
–AB

A lot can change in a year.

I am sat writing this on a cold Edinburgh evening, watching the snow melt outside the window of my university accommodation. I am eternally envious of my friends on the floors above me, who get views of city rooftops on one side and the familiar silhouette of Arthur’s Seat on the other, while I spend my nights looking out into the street and the block of flats opposite. Even though it’s not quite as idyllic as my friends’, or even as Bruton, it’s something that, for the time being, has quickly become home; if nothing else, watching the vast array of random passers-by on the street is an everyday reminder that I’m not alone.

A year ago, I left King’s for the February half-term having had a whirlwind of a month, from the House Music to the rapidly-approaching debate final to my 18th birthday just a few days before. Covid-19 was still confined to the backs of minds and jokes on the Internet. Unbeknownst to most, it was about to send most of our lives upside down—mine especially since I was about to be taking my A levels and leaving school. As far as I was aware at the time, I was headed for a pretty normal future. I was still waiting on my offer from Edinburgh, where I already had my heart set on going to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and was anxious to do as well as I could in my exams to ensure that I met the requirements. I was terrified by but looking forward to my last term at school and the chance to conclusively close five years of dedication to its community. What I did not happen to expect at the time was that that all would disappear within a number of weeks.

March 18th, the day A levels and GCSEs were cancelled, remains clear in my head; I remember watching the press conference in the Lyon House common room and feeling the whole room be struck by a wave of uncertainty (on top of our admitted elation). The subsequent months of the first lockdown are, I think, going to be ones we reflect on a lot in years to come. What struck me most about them was how they granted the world a time to press pause, and reflect on where we all were, what we were doing, and where we were going. Perhaps, as someone caught between two such important points, this effect was more prevalent for me; despite its obvious major impacts on me in that light, I was anxious to see that those whose livelihoods had been seriously adversely affected were supported through it all. Otherwise, I spent my copious amounts of new-found free time over summer playing American Football with my brother, reading to prepare for my university course, and writing articles for my blog. I also got a buzzcut, which I am sure would’ve been to Mrs Grant’s utter dismay (she will be relieved to know that my normal hair has subsequently grown back, however).

My experience at university so far has obviously been pretty different than your usual. My room is my new library, my computer screen my lecture hall, and my kitchen my nightclub. I think it would be pretty easy to get bogged down in the negatives of how impacted and changed my life has been by this new world we’re living in, but I have tried my utmost not to; honestly, I am still loving every second of my time here. I really miss King’s in so many ways, but the move up here has been a refreshing change of scene; being able to live independently, especially in this beautiful city with which I am already in love, is a dream come true. I’ve even managed to cook for myself, something which I strongly doubted I’d be able to manage (but trust me when I tell you that I miss the King’s catering department more than ever). I love my course, and I find myself more excited to learn every day than I’ve ever been before; despite the fact that I dream of in-person lectures, I am reassured that they will one day be a reality (although preferably sooner rather than later).

In May, I wrote a piece for the Dolphin about lockdown, and how it had flipped the world on its head, but more importantly about how it had brought everyone together; there was a certain nationwide atmosphere of solidarity, and a common belief in embracing the hand we’d all been dealt. If I’ve learned anything since leaving King’s, it’s that—though on my last day at school I could never have seen this year going the way it has, the best thing I can do now is to make the most of what I’ve got. Life doesn’t always go the way that you’d hope or expect; sometimes, the only thing you can really do is just live it, and know that that’s enough.
–16/02/2021

The Meadows. Edinburgh, February 11th, 2021. Photo taken by me (for once).
Categories
Alex Featured

19

Today, I turn nineteen.

It isn’t a particularly important age for most people, I imagine; the afterburn of an eighteenth year full of change, from school to the real world (or halfway there, at least), from a child to something resembling an adult. I guess that turning this age also holds a lot of that for me—more than anything, Covid has led to this year being an even harsher cacophony of ups and downs, often in quick succession, and my birthday marks nearly a year since it all started. In my case, though, nineteen holds a certain significance. To explain that, I’ll need to tell a story about a friend of mine.

Lyon House, 12/02/2019.

A lot of you will know his name, but that’s not important: for the purposes of this, I’ll just call him J. By all means, I never actually knew J very well; when I joined my senior school aged thirteen, he was in his final year there. He seemed to have everything: he was Head Boy, captain of the school’s first-ever undefeated rugby team, and a living legend around campus. But what always stuck out to me was how despite all of his achievements, he was incredibly humble and down-to-earth—seeing him daily in our close-knit boarding house, he would never look down on us, the youngest in school (as most older kids, out of pride or perhaps insecurity, tended to). Sure, we never felt like equals, exactly, but more importantly he made us feel like we mattered; knowing he’d been at the forefront of pushing greater mental health awareness in school over the years, we all knew that if we ever had a problem, he would always be there to listen.

My memories of the guy are mostly pretty positive: I remember watching him charge down the rugby pitch in the final match of the season, fearlessly acting as an Eastern European maid in our house play (though the cast’s abilities were questionable, you will never see as many penis jokes in a single 90 minutes in your entire life) and screaming at the latest twist on Game of Thrones on a Monday night. As a kid, I never really got to see the other side of him: I am not sure that many did (though looking back, most of our house, at least, seemed to somewhat know). Hearing about his death, then, came to me as an incredible shock.

It’s as if it were last week, or maybe a month ago: the afternoon remains crystal clear, imprinted in my mind. It had been announced in the morning that the whole school was meant to meet later in the day: which, for a Thursday, happened to be pretty odd. I knew it was serious, obviously (this kind of thing hasn’t occurred before or since), but had absolutely no idea what was coming. At athletics that afternoon, I discussed the affair with my mates while (pretending to be) training our triple jump in the lazy, English summer sun: we decided another friend of ours had probably been busted for drugs (he’d been searched that morning and, turns out, had somehow managed to get away with it). Nonetheless, we thought, a whole school meeting would be a bit overkill, and so nobody was really sure what was going on—we should have taken the news that one of his teachers had been seen in tears that morning as a warning sign.

An ominous mood hung over the school as the Headmaster stood up to speak. He kept it brief: he announced that earlier that morning, he had heard of J’s death while on a gap year in Vietnam. He didn’t tell us how it happened: my naïve, fifteen-year-old mind wouldn’t fill that bit in until later. While I don’t recall his exact words, I can still feel the punch to the gut that I sensed the whole room, especially our house, most of whom had been living with him less than a year before, take as the news hit us; I remember the eerily silent, ten-minute walk back to our boarding house, as sixty boys tried to come to terms with their friend’s death; and I remember us getting back, collapsing onto the various benches that had been assembled outside to greet us, and crying, unable to believe that someone we looked up to and cared about like a brother could be so suddenly and unexpectedly gone.

He was nineteen years old.

Lyon House, 27/5/2016.

I mentioned before that me and J didn’t have a very close relationship. Given our ages, that was inevitable, really; while being in his house meant I knew him better than most, it’s not like we were best mates. What he did represent for me, though, was a role model. When he was at my school and in the years after he left, I looked up to him immensely; when I was that age, I thought, I wanted to be something like him. Sure, I never made Head Boy, and I was nowhere near captaining any rugby teams (never mind an undefeated season). But before and especially after what happened I was always determined to, if nothing else, try to live up to the way he inspired me, and instil that same inspiration in the kids who came after me. Because more tragic than the fact that I knew he would never be able to play another game of rugby, or see the end of Game of Thrones (although that was almost definitely for the best), was the fact that his memory would one day fade. I wanted to be a part of keeping it alive somehow, even if indirectly.

Looking up at J aged thirteen, I saw someone with the world at his feet. At nineteen, I feel just about as directionless now as I did then and I’m sure he felt nearly 4 years ago. But what’s changed is that we finally are, in a way, equals; today will be as close as I’ll ever get to seeing the world through his eyes. And in that respect, I think that my vision of his story, too, needs to change. After all, I’ve grown out of my school: my time at university has already had a huge effect on me, and starting to grow up has given me the chance to take a new perspective on the childhood I’ve left behind. Maybe now, the best way to keep his memory alive is not within some tiny country school, but beyond, in the world, by trying to change what led to his tragedy in the first place. By encouraging conversations about mental health. By deconstructing the toxic masculinity behind the struggles of him and those close to him in accepting his sexuality. By reminding people that any life, especially one as bright and inspirational as his, never deserves to be thrown away. While that’s a big ask, one I could dedicate my entire life to and still not achieve, making a difference starts with the small things; I guess that this piece is one of those.

Today I turn nineteen, and as I grow older, I realise that his is a story that I don’t need to hide behind anymore (people who have known me long enough are sick and tired of it, at this point). Nineteen is where his story ended. But mine hasn’t: I am determined to make it a force for good, in the memory of him and so many, too many, other victims of male suicide. Being a man is more than simply masculinity: looking back, I see that J carried that message, from the rugby field to the boarding house to the stage and beyond, and if nothing else, he passed it on to me. I intend to live by it. If you’ve made it this far, the most important step that any of us can take is simply to check on your mates. We, I, don’t do it enough; it’s always “what’s going on?” and never really “how are you?” And even if they’re fine, I promise that even being asked can make a world of difference—knowing someone cares about your problems does so much to lighten their load. Again, it starts with the small things; but if we can change even one person’s day for the better, every day, it stacks up. When you feel totally alone in the world, the reminder that even one other person is there with you can be all that you need.

Like all of us, J faced many challenges in his life; though he responded to all of them valiantly, in the end it was the battles inside of him that became too much to bear. I can never fully understand, but today marks the closest I’ll ever get to it—I want his memory to help me make change, however small. And I know that if I, or you, can make a difference in at least one story like his, he will be looking down with pride.

Lyon House, 10/06/2016.

“If”

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

Images
All images used are from the King’s Bruton Flickr, where they can still be accessed:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kingsbruton/
Though they feature my likeness (go have a look if you missed me), they are not owned by me. All credit goes to King’s, their rightful owner.

Categories
Featured Politics

America- Divided Against Itself

Abraham Lincoln famously quipped that “A House divided against itself, cannot stand”. Though these words were addressed to an 1800s America on the brink of Civil War, their message is applicable all across history: a timeless reminder that fundamental differences between allies can destroy even the most valiant institutions and movements from within.

A poignant example of this is the Spanish Civil War, which raged from 1936 through until 1939, ending just as the rest of Europe erupted into chaos with the outbreak of World War II. Spain, since the exile of its king in 1931, had become a democratic republic: it championed values such as suffrage, divorce, gender equality, and freedom of religion, all of which were controversially progressive issues for a country that even today is still deeply devoted to its traditional Catholic roots. Even these five years, then, were plagued by bitter political battles between the progressive left and the traditionalist right, as well as spats within each camp between those in support of republic and people wanting to tear it down, whether that be Christian monarchists or radical anarchists. This period of tension, subterfuge and backstabbing eventually concluded with the army’s right-wing generals launching an invasion of southern Spain, plunging the country into a Civil War.

The lines of this war were quickly and decisively drawn. There were “Nationalists”, people in support of the rebels’ leader, General Francisco Franco, and his fascist invading forces, and “Republicans”, which were pretty much everyone else: an alliance of everyone from moderates who simply preferred democracy to fascism, to socialists, to all-out anarchists, who just hated Franco more than they disliked the moderate Republic. While this uneasy alliance, borne out of hatred of their shared enemy, lasted about a year, by 1937 in-fighting began: extremists and moderates began to attack each other in the infamous “May days”, leaving the entire alliance vulnerable to the more unified, aggressive and focused Nationalist forces, who took advantage of the chaos to gain the upper hand in the war. The Republicans never recovered, and lost their stronghold of Madrid in March 1939, letting in nearly forty years of brutal dictatorship.

Francisco Franco celebrates his victory in the Spanish Civil War. Madrid, March 28th, 1939.

I think there are important lessons we can learn from this example, many of which are particularly relevant in today’s US. The truth is, like the (Spanish) Republicans, the current American Democratic party is an incredibly unlikely alliance: for the past 4 years, it has shown surprising cohesion as the “anything but Donald Trump” wing of the American political spectrum. Trump himself, on the other hand, is no match for Franco’s extremism and brutality—nonetheless, his recent denial of the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election only reinforces his long-standing opposition to democracy if it does not work in his favour, much like the 1930s Spanish right wing. And while, like in Spain, this shared enemy of democracy may temporarily unite two disparate viewpoints to oppose it, I think that the party, and President Joe Biden at the head of it, are going to face the mounting challenge of keeping the organisation together as time drags on.

Kamala Harris and Joe Biden celebrate their victory in the 2020 US Presidential Election. Wilmington, Delaware, November 7th, 2020.

Over 81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden: more than in any other election in the nation’s history. This, in itself, is a staggering figure which only highlights the importance of last year’s election. In the world’s most diverse nation, this group obviously consisted of a wide range of demographics: people of all ages, genders, races and backgrounds stepped up to vote, many for the first time. The victory they achieved was massive both in terms of sheer numbers and significance, and pushed Biden over his first hurdle to become the 46th President of the US. However, it only represented the first of his many challenges: more than anything now, it emphasises the weight of the unique hopes of those millions of individuals, all of which now rest on his shoulders.

Biden has already taken further steps by winning a majority in the US Senate. Unlike the UK, where the Prime Minister is simply appointed by the biggest party in Parliament, which is elected at once, America has separate elections for both the Senate and the House (think of these as almost like the House of Commons and the House of Lords, but both have important powers) as well as an entirely different one for the President, which is what we saw in November. While the approval of all three is needed to pass major legislation, it is possible for a President to have control of only one of these or even to have neither, as Obama faced later on in his Presidency—this means their opponents can stop almost anything they do. The good news is that while the world was watching Trump-supporting extremists storm the Capitol a week ago, the Democrats quietly won two Senate seats back from Republicans in special elections in Georgia, securing (barely) a majority for Biden when he is inaugurated on top of his control of the House; this means the President will actually be able to effectively pass laws through the Houses without the Republicans entirely blocking everything.

Joe Biden campaigning with Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, the two recently-elected Senators from Georgia. Atlanta, January 4th, 2021.

However, the battle nowhere near done—the new President still faces the crucial issue of keeping his party together, on top of running a whole country, down the line. Even after the races in Georgia, the Senate will be perfectly split 50-50 (with the Vice-President having the deciding vote): if even one Democrat decides to vote against him, he won’t be able to pass anything into law. In his new autobiography, “A Promised Land” (which I really recommend if you want to learn about American politics; it’s teaching me a lot), Barack Obama highlights the difficulties of this situation. The knife-edge majority grants every Democratic Senator a huge amount of bargaining power, allowing them to force any law Biden tries to pass to change, stopping it in its tracks by voting against it if he doesn’t listen to their demands. This presented huge issues for Obama who, even though he had a bigger majority than Biden does now, had to bend over backwards to ridiculous personal requests in order to pass anything at all, taking huge shortcuts such as extra billion-dollar projects in Louisiana to deliver his landmark healthcare bill, for example. The new President will face all of the same issues that Obama did: even so, I think that the fallout from having to concede to these demands may be greater than ever, effectively threatening to divide the party in two.

Americans gather around a radio at the Lincoln Memorial to listen as Barack Obama wins his first Presidential election (Obama remarks in “A Promised Land” that this is his favourite image from the night). Washington, D.C., November 4th, 2008.

The Democratic Party is split between two blocs: “moderates”, who are less harsh right-wingers looking to keep continuity in the US (think UK Tories but mixed with Lib Dems), and “progressives”, who push for greater government investment and change (more like Labour). This important rift, while having been swept under the rug for years in order to deal with Trump, is once again beginning to rear its head now that the Democrats once again have control of government. Biden and his future Vice-President, Kamala Harris, mostly fall into the former camp, while figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are more prominent leaders of the latter. Progressives, though, were instrumental in securing Biden’s win—led by Bernie after his defeat and young campaigners on social media, they began a mighty push to “settle for Biden”, throwing their support behind him solely in order to kick out Trump—Biden, too, rose to their demands, for example on cancelling student loan debt, knowing that he had to count on their support to win. And, he has: but now that aim has been achieved, the atmosphere amongst progressives is beginning to change from support to suspicion. Biden’s cabinet nominations are showing many more play-it-safe moderate figures than progressive torchbearers, causing many voters to be disappointed, indicating that there may already be a marked difference between Biden’s agenda and that which many progressives, both voters and politicians, were hoping for. The cracks, then, may already be beginning to show.

What does any of this mean? I am worried that like in 1930s Spain, the differences between the Democrats could spell disaster for them. The fact that any of the fifty Democratic senators could single-handedly stop a law from passing will mean that any of them could make pretty much any request they wanted: but what happens when a moderate makes a demand that progressives don’t like? Or vice versa? Such arguments are bound to happen, and I think they may well tear the party apart, causing either half to entirely veto legislation made by their own official allies. Meanwhile, the Republicans will surely be waiting on the sidelines, spying weaknesses to exploit during future elections in 2022 and 2024. If the Democrats can’t reconcile their differences, I don’t see their grip on power lasting long.

Mark Twain, Lincoln’s contemporary, told us that “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. The Spanish Civil War was fought over 80 years ago and in entirely different circumstances, but the principles at stake were mostly the same as in modern America: those who are driven to defend democracy pushing back those who are desperate to bend it to their will. And while we might think that if anywhere, democracy is safe in the Land of the Free, the 6th of January taught us that we should take nothing for granted (especially when the police and even the President support the aggressors). Joe Biden may yet face some of the toughest challenges of any President in recent memory: we will all be counting on him to overcome them.

Rioters storm the US Government at Capitol Hill in protest of the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. Washington, D.C., January 6th, 2021.

References
Most of this piece was done from my own knowledge, but there are a few articles out there touching on similar themes:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/15/democrats-divided-joe-biden-election-party
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/politics/democratic-party-joe-biden.html
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-issues-that-divide-people-within-each-party/
Also, if any of this interested you at all, read A Promised Land. Even if you don’t like Obama (I’m hardly his hugest fan), it offers an illuminating account into American and world politics from someone who was at the centre of it all (and actually knew what was going on, unlike more recent Presidents). Here is a link to it from my favourite independent bookshop here in Edinburgh, because fuck Amazon:
https://lighthousebookshop.com/products/a-promised-land-obama?_pos=1&_sid=c9c3f1d91&_ss=r

Image sources, in order of appearance (all credit goes to their rightful owners):
https://twitter.com/cfr_org/status/714464591384821760
https://www.ocregister.com/2020/11/07/ap-says-joe-biden-has-won-presidential-race-as-trump-continues-challenges/
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/president-elect-biden-congratulates-warnock-ossoff-record-turnout-georgia/4IGI3R3P6FHLXABG3FGD3SP62Q/
https://mattmendelsohnphotography.pic-time.com/art/mattmendelsohnartgallery/5f5283602405c10b4473d61e
https://www.rappler.com/world/us-canada/summary-trump-statements-inviting-supporters-join-rally-united-states-capitol-january-2021

Categories
Archive Politics

Archive: Privilege

Here’s the second archive piece from this summer. I wrote this one with my friend Seb Kingsberry for our school magazine in response to the BLM movement after the killing of George Floyd. Both of us are white, and pretty privileged ourselves, but we couldn’t just sit back without using our position for something; this piece is written from our perspective, about how the movement affects us and the people around us and what we can do to create change. Black Lives Matter, today and forever; don’t stop fighting until the people who aren’t recognising that are stamped out.
–AB

Many of us in the King’s community, pupils and adults alike, will look at the issues raised by the murder of George Floyd and think that they don’t apply to us. We go to a school in a Somerset town, where minorities and people of colour are few and far between, we are far removed from the tales of police brutality that we hear of in the cities of the UK and America. And besides, we’re not racist; incidents of abuse to people due to the colour of their skin are incredibly rare and, once they’re dealt with, they are quickly forgotten, and that’s enough, isn’t it?

More than anything, the past months have opened our eyes to the fact that it’s not.

As a community and as a country, most of us don’t understand how privileged we really are. We’re lucky to live in the world that we do, seemingly disconnected from the issues that encapsulate the protests that we are mere bystanders to. The truth is that those of us who are white benefit from that simple fact; the colour of our skin. Because we’re white, we don’t have to grapple with belonging to a community where everyone looks different to us. Because we’re white, we don’t have to worry that someone will judge us on our skin colour before they even meet us. Because we’re white, we don’t have to feel that intangible fear that so many feel every time they look at a police car; that they will be arrested, attacked, or even killed solely because of their appearance. Something that we must consider is that our lives have been made easier because we live in a world designed for people like us. And it’s not that our lives haven’t been hard, or that all lives don’t matter; nobody has ever claimed that. But the fact that people who are black or brown have to go through things that we don’t is an injustice that we have to fight; during this challenging time we need to use our privileged position to do something about it.

One person alone cannot stop police brutality, or undo the racist sins of history. But what we can do is take small steps, by ourselves, to start being anti-racist, and building a solution to the problem.

The first step is education. This issue is not going to fix itself until we learn more about it; we need to open ourselves up and listening to the voices of people of colour, whether that be through talking to our friends about the difficulties they face or reading articles and books that deal with historical and current issues of racism. Something many of us lack at King’s is exposure to, and awareness of, these struggles; nothing will change until we understand how our privilege has affected us and how others’ lives are made harder due to their ethnicities. It doesn’t take long to read one article a day, however an essential start to solving this is first understanding what we’re dealing with.

The next part is much harder, but is even more important; it involves challenging ourselves, and those around us. We live in a culture where talking about racism has become avoided and frowned upon, often for fear of somehow saying something wrong. In this culture, things will not change. Making mistakes, regretting something and atoning for it, is just how we grow as people, and it’s normal. If you find information about historic racism, or police brutality, or BAME education, that makes you change your mind, have the maturity to change it; stubbornness and close-mindedness get us nowhere. And if your friends, or even your family, make genuinely racist comments, have the courage to challenge them. Question why they believe what they believe; though it may be difficult in the moment, people won’t change if they don’t realise they’re wrong. Maybe they won’t back down, but in responding you’re showing them that their views aren’t accepted, around you or anyone else. But please don’t turn family dinner into a shouting match; approach it in a calm and measured way, and just have a discussion about it.

It is evident that we could benefit from greater open-mindedness and diversity at King’s; in our public-school world, it is all too easy to ignore these problems, but now is the time to step up and change that. In the past, we haven’t done enough to be anti-racist; but what matters now is that we try to change the future and build a community, and a world, where the colour of our skin does not decide who we are. Doing that won’t be easy or fast, and it was never going to be; but after some time and effort we will emerge as a more understanding, empathetic and united community.
–24/06/20

Categories
Alex Archive

Archive: “A Generation, Lost in Space”

I thought I’d take a minute to backlog a few pieces I had written earlier this year for my school magazine. This one is about lockdown and its effects on the teenage generation; it’s a bit sappy (it was a school magazine, alright) but it was a fun one to write. See if you can spot all the references (they took a lot of effort to fit in). The other archive piece should follow tomorrow; I’ll try and get some new main articles out soon.
–AB

Call it the day our music died; on March 20th, 2020, in a move not made in over 130 years, the UK government cancelled all GCSE and A level exams for this summer. The news was hardly unexpected; the exponential spread of covid-19 had already caused the government to shut all schools as potential viral hotbeds that Wednesday, and most universities had already closed their doors. But what this move effectively did is leave hundreds of thousands of teenagers and schoolchildren totally aimless— the focus of their lives, the goal of years of their work, had been swept from underneath their feet.

But though our summer swelter will be endured, for the most part, indoors and separated from our friends, we haven’t let that crush our spirit. Facing indefinite months in isolation, I spoke to my friends about how they were going to pass the time; I was shocked to find many already had plans in place, from learning Chinese flutes, to picking up new languages or running every day. I resolved to attempt to emerge from lockdown somewhat prepared for University and learn to cook (I can report that so far, zero kitchens have been destroyed in the process). I’d honestly expected most people to give up and sunbathe (an equally tempting option), so seeing them plan to put their time to good use was heartening.

But not only have we bettered ourselves; many have made efforts to emerge from their fallout shelters to better their community, too. Within days of lockdown beginning, teenagers (and even some teachers) had banded together through social media to nominate each other for a “Run 5, Donate 5” campaign where over £5.6 million was raised for NHS charities. And this was only the start; through making masks, social media campaigns, and volunteering to deliver shopping or even just call those who are, unfortunately, spending these months alone, our weeks divided as a school community have been spent making a difference at home, wherever we may be.

And though we’re split apart, these events have brought our nation, and our world, closer together. I now speak to my grandparents and cousins more than I ever did before (for the most part through the now-ubiquitous online quiz); neighbours seem friendlier, and my friends less far away. I suppose that lockdown, more than anything, has brought us all together, because we’re all in it together. In a way, right now we all are in one place, facing the problems of social isolation, economic insecurity, and fear of the virus; but in sharing that experience, we’ve all become that bit closer to one another. Of course, those of us who go to King’s are in a much more privileged and safe position than most in the midst of lockdown; but I think that this situation has given us space to reflect and build empathy and awareness for those less fortunate than us. I hope that this crisis will indeed give us time to start again, as a generation and as a country, and build a more understanding and united world.

For many of us, lockdown has taken away the ends of our school careers, and some of the most important summers of our lives; holidays and gap years have been postponed, and any whiskey (and indeed rye) and singing will have to be enjoyed with our parents, not our friends. In March, when this all began, I was worried a community usually so active and connected would end up becoming isolated, depressed and broken. Yet what the past few months have created is a sense of unity and responsibility; though our exams and our school, for the moment, may be gone, we have found new meaning in embracing the situation we’ve been placed in. And though the courtroom is indeed adjourned as to when we will be able to see each other again, and our music may have gone quiet for now, it is anything but dead; to hear that, you only need listen every Thursday.
–04/06/2020

Categories
Featured Politics

Uighur crisis- Déjà Vu

Several weeks ago, in mid-July, I was standing in Dam square in Amsterdam. It’s a renowned centre of activism and multiculturalism in the area; on that day, I was sat listening to a busker playing a Turkish clarinet and watching stands that ranged all the way from an online summit on Iran to a single person holding up a sign against systemic racism as an eclectic mix of people of all ethnicities and nationalities passed through. As I took in the scene, I was approached by a Chinese man who, in broken English, explained to me that he was collecting signatures for a petition over the CCP’s treatment of the Falun Dafa movement. As he explained his story to me, I was struck by the striking similarities between his situation and ones I have seen across social media and even in history class; specifically, the recent persecution of the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang. Their plight has been reported since 2018 and is gaining a resurgence across the news and social media, but relentlessly continues all the same. It dawned on me then that we have seen their exact story before with Falun Dafa, and if authoritarianism continues to exist unchallenged, we will doubtless see it again.

3pm in Dam Square. Amsterdam, 17th July, 2020.

Let’s start at the beginning; specifically, the mid-1990s, where a new form of spiritual practice, known as Falun Dafa or Falun Gong, is taking hold of China. Its founder, Li Hongzi, promotes a set of meditations and spiritual exercises designed to bring his followers the values of “truthfulness, compassion, [and] forbearance” which are central to the movement. It is, ultimately, about peace and self-discovery**(see edit at end); however, as it grows, China’s Communist Party, the CCP, seeks to control it, initially by attempting to establish Party branches within Falun Gong groups. When the groups refuse this, the CCP bans the publication of Falun Gong books in July 1996. Still, the movement grows; by 1999, some estimates pin 70 million people as practicing it, 18% of the population. Then, in July, the crackdowns begin; within a week of the CCP beginning nationwide arrests, some 50,000 Falun Gong practitioners are detained by the authorities. Hongzi flees for the US. Those who are captured are sent to secret concentration camps, where they are tortured, beaten, and forced to renounce their beliefs, calling Falun Gong an “evil cult” and expressing utter loyalty to the CCP. For those that succumb to the abuse, there are reports of their organs being harvested by the government. One practitioner, James Ouyang, tells the Washington Post in 2001 that he was abused by police for nine days straight before he denounced the movement and was allowed to leave. The West, shocked, condemns China’s actions to no avail; the systematic abuse carries on regardless.

1. Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners gather for their daily meditation. Liaoning Province, 1990s.
2. The first 4.25 protest against Falun Gong Persecution. Beijing, 4th April, 1999.
3. A lawyer is arrested for defending the rights of Falun Gong practitioners. Shandong Province, 2nd July, 2009.

Sound familiar? It should. The exact same strategy is being used today against the Uighurs. The Uighurs are an 11-million-strong ethnic population from Xinjiang in Northwest China who bear close links to central Asian nations and, majoratively, practice Islam. In the past, the Uighurs have intermittently expressed wishes for independence from a China which is different to them ethnically, religiously, and ideologically; nonetheless, separatist rumblings have been silent for years. Since 2018, there have been reports of many Uighurs mysteriously vanishing, reportedly having been sent to hastily built and rapidly expanded “re-education” camps, where, the CCP asserts, they are merely trained in artistry, poetry and music. Family members from outside of China claim that they have had no contact with these relatives, some of whom have apparently disappeared off the face of the earth. Though China studiously denies any maltreatment in these camps, stories relayed anonymously by survivors, terrified for their lives, show that through systematic torture, pressuring and brainwashing, inmates are forced to curse religion and renounce the Qur’an while singing songs praising the CCP, and chants of “Long Live Xi Jinping!”. Yet again, reports have escaped of the organ harvesting of those who die. Despite constant coverage since 2018 and international condemnation, Communist Party denial remains intact while these prison camps continue to expand. The relentless campaign to remove Islam from China shows no signs of slowing down; and, what is more, its development shows profound resemblance to what happened to the Falun Gong movement in the 1990s.

First of all, why? Why go to such extremes, even against international pressure, to crush what are mostly peaceful religious movements? The answer is, to put it simply, because the CCP are scared.  Authoritarian regimes thrive on a sort of fanaticism; much like religions do, they aim to invade and control the daily lives of their followers, and need their utter devotion to effectively function. Religion, in any form, poses a direct threat to this aim; it has the potential to replace this devotion to the ruling party with another, rival one, freeing those who follow it from the direct control of the regime, and even uniting them against it. We’ve seen it all before; Adolf Hitler himself spent years embroiled in a bitter fight with the Catholic Church, which refused to come under his control. No matter how hard he tried, whether through replacing priests or trying to swap pictures of Jesus for those of him in churches, he was emphatically rebuffed; and leaders of the Church, ever-popular amongst the people, were untouchable even to the SS lest they risk an all-out rebellion. Hitler failed to defeat religion, and the Church led resistance against him throughout the war, undermining his grip over the people.

Nazi stormtroopers holding propaganda in front of a church. Berlin, July 23rd, 1933.

The CCP refuses to make the same mistake; it wants its local headquarters to be its people’s Church, and Chairman Xi Jinping to be their God. If Falun Gong, or Islam, or whatever comes next, no matter how peaceful it is, stands in the way of that by setting forward an ulterior ideology, of course the Chinese government will stop at nothing to take it down—it wants the people’s devotion to itself, and it alone. And why shouldn’t they stamp it out; after all, they got away with it last time. Post-1999, the once-surging Falun Gong movement melted into the shadows, its memory erased from the Chinese people’s minds, and its followers banished, with little left to do but try to drum up support in places such as Dam Square for a cause that is long lost. If nothing changes, we are cursing the Uighurs to the same fate.

But finally, will anything change? Can it? The depressing and slightly morbid answer is, unfortunately, probably not. Recently, I have seen waves of support across Instagram for the Uighurs; stories seem awash with thousands of posts indicating the grim reality of the concentration camps and organ harvesting. Our politicians aren’t unaware, either; Dominic Raab, Marco Rubio and a whole host of others have officially condemned China’s actions. All of this seems impressive; however, do China care about Instagram stories, or foreign “condemnation”, or tiny petitions signed by tourists in a square in Amsterdam? No. Not at all. Western social media is banned in China, after all, and China’s historic hatred of foreign intervention in its affairs has only further hardened it against listening to any recommendations the West might make to it on how it chooses to treat its people. In an epitomising example of this in late July, the Chinese ambassador to the UK blatantly denied all misconduct even when faced with tapes of prison camps on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show; he, like the government he serves, cares precious little for what we think, so long as we keep buying their exports and using their products. If we really wanted to try to stop any of this, we would have to engage with China in a unified and direct way, and hit them where it hurts. I’m talking trade embargoes, or even further. A situation like this could even offer opportunity for an alliance between the defenders of human rights in the West and Islamic countries in the East to fight this injustice, together; if enough countries banded up, we could send out a threat that China simply couldn’t afford to ignore. But in a world fraught with xenophobia, mutual distrust and outright war between the West and Muslim nations, could such an unlikely unification ever be pulled off? And is Boris Johnson, or Donald Trump, really going to put their compromised political status and their already-crippled economies on the line in a war against China over a group of persecuted Muslims, half the world away? Perhaps, taking action would only serve to divide us just as much as our lack of it defines us.

China’s ambassador to the UK rebukes reporters, calling alleged prison camps “fake news”. London, 25th November, 2019.

We failed to properly react to Falun Gong 20 years ago. Today, the Uighur crisis is showing us that we clearly haven’t learnt our lesson. And mark my words: if we don’t learn it this time, the next will play out the exact same way. The harsh reality is that as long as authoritarian regimes like the CCP continue to exist, systematic killings like that of the Uighurs will occur. And with the way things are, none of that is showing signs of changing anytime soon.

Street protests commemorate 20 years since the CCP began arrests of Falun Gong members. San Francisco, July 22nd, 2019.

EDIT
Since writing this, a few people have engaged in conversation with me about Falun Gong propaganda and cultism; after doing a bit of research, it’s come to my attention that these pretty heavily and unfairly influenced my writing process and resources used for this article. I knew that Li Hongzi had gone progressively more insane over the years, but had no idea about the blatant extremism of the movement, which has more or less evolved into a cult. This, of course, doesn’t at all excuse the CCP’s abuse of Falun Gong, which remains abhorrent; however, the movement’s treatment equally doesn’t venerate it from all criticism, which it undoubtedly deserves. Below are some resources on the darker side of Falun Gong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JaPzJKycxc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAwsU6YIDHQ&t=23s
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-qanon-impending-judgment-day-behind-facebook-fueled-rise-epoch-n1044121

References
I read a lot for this one, and there’s a lot of information out there on it. Nonetheless, here are the resources that helped me the most in writing this piece:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-48700786
(The BBC has done a lot of reporting on the abuse of the Uighurs, and so I highly recommend looking at their content if you’d like to learn more.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/08/05/torture-is-breaking-falun-gong/ea6c5341-c7a7-47c9-9674-053049b7323d/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Falun_Gong

Categories
Featured Politics

Hong Kong-A Tale of Two Cities

The situation in Hong Kong is as serious as it is difficult. Millions of protesters line the streets and fill the universities, in outcry against the Chinese dictatorship. Their demands are, for the most part, reasonable; they want withdrawal of Carrie Lam’s proposed extradition bill, which would have Hong Kong prisoners sent to China at Beijing’s request, an independent investigation into the reported police brutality, involving outright beatings, gassings and alleged gang-rape of unarmed innocents and, most essentially yet controversially, real democracy and free elections. For some, they will stop at nothing until this vital request is fulfilled.

There have been many comparisons, notably by leading activist Joshua Wong in his visit to Germany, that Hong Kong is “the new Berlin” of my generation’s Cold War. The problems faced are, indeed, similar; a pro-democracy movement protesting the oppression of the totalitarian dictatorship it is forced to live under, and that dictatorship attempting to crush it into the ground. Hong Kong has a clear parallel with Berlin in that it is the semi-free link between China’s iron firewall and the outside world; this, combined with its slowly eroding “one country, two systems” status, fuels revolutionary attitudes in a strikingly similar fashion to how it did in Berlin. Perhaps, as happened 30 years ago, these protesters could start a nationwide movement to free China from the grips of its communist rulers; yet, the likelihood of this outcome seems to lessen and lessen with every Chinese response.

  • Joshua Wong

The protesters in Berlin were, undoubtedly, lucky; rather than being faced with the consequences of defiance, they were met with support from the Russian dictator, Mikhail Gorbachev; he went on to not only liberate Berlin but all of Eastern Europe from the clutches of the USSR and its puppets. But Xi Jinping is no Gorbachev, and Hong Kong no Berlin. In Europe, communism was all but finished; despite their planning, coordination and cooperation, the Soviets had not truly rivalled the Western states economically, and though they used terror tactics, and propaganda, to fully permeate every part of their people’s lives, they still did not fully embrace communism. After 40 years, Gorbachev realised that communism had failed; when the uprisings began, he embraced them. In China, the exact opposite has happened; economic performance is unprecedented, and I have seen first-hand the unquestioned control that the CCP holds over the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. They, like those who dare oppose them, are unyielding in their demands.

Hong Kong is, I fear, much more like Belfast, where I lived as a child, than Berlin. Both the so-called liberators and rulers are growing in violence as tension rises and no side seems willing to give. The students filling the universities, crying for freedom from China, seem only too similar to the youths who founded the IRA in the 1970s and set out to deliver Northern Ireland from British control. I felt the echoes the of bitter, bloody street fighting that ensued whenever I visited the city, conscious to hide any sense of Englishness lest an impassioned Republican notice. The war in Ireland never truly ended, rather reached a bitter stalemate; the standard-bearers of the IRA continue their fight politically in the halls of Stormont, rather than violently in the streets that surround it. What I am sure of is that Hong Kong’s freedom fighters will receive no such opportunity, and, if they press too hard, that China’s retaliation will know no limits. If the ripples of a conflict such as the Troubles can still be felt in Belfast today, I fear for the escalation of its new sister.

Maybe Hong Kong is not Berlin or Belfast, but its own story entirely; it will certainly make for a significant tale and its inhabitants, those who tried to fight the most powerful regime in human history, made an example of—for better or for worse. Whether today’s protesters reach freedom as in Berlin, grind to a violent stalemate as in Belfast or meet another end entirely at the end of Xi Jinping’s wrath, their memory will separate a city, a nation and a planet for years to come.

References

Joshua Wong on Berlin:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-germany/my-town-is-the-new-cold-wars-berlin-hong-kong-activist-joshua-wong-idUSKCN1VU0X4

I’d had the idea for this article a couple months ago, but several people had beaten me to writing similar stuff. Here are some of my favourites:

https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/could-hong-kong-become-belfast

https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/hong-kong-the-new-berlin-wall/

Categories
Alex

Alex’s Blog

I’m Alex, and I study PPE; that’s Philosophy, Politics and Economics. I like to think it’s how the world works, with each part representing a part of how businesses and governments think:

  • Philosophy: The vision, the ideology behind every decision,
  • Politics: The idea, how that vision is going to be realised,
  • Economics: The process, how that idea is going to be brought into the world.

It fascinates me so much because it gives me the chance to understand and learn from so many other people’s perspective on the world and what’s going on in it.

I guess I’m making this blog as somewhere to add my own.

-AB, 13/01/20