Category Archives: Civil Rights

Limits to Free Speech?

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When I met last week with two Moroccan friends whom I hadn’t seen in a while, the first thing each of them wanted to talk about (the meetings were separate) was the anti-Mohammed hate film and the controversy it has caused. Both of them were upset, but they are worldly types who know that YouTube is filled with all kinds of trash, so they weren’t thrown into a frenzy by the simple fact that such a film could exist. They know they are haters out there. What they did want to know was how the U.S. government could stand by and do nothing, when the film was clearly designed to insult a whole community of innocent people (Muslim believers), and stir up trouble. Especially once the embassies were attacked and four Americans killed, wasn’t it the government’s obligation to shut the film down — if only to protect their own interests, not to mention prevent further offense? And didn’t their refusal to do so represent some kind of endorsement?

My response was, first of all, to point out that the filmmakers are a bunch of losers, completely unknown before the film went viral and had its stunning “success.” It is beyond the capacities of even the U.S. government to watch every video on YouTube, and estimate the potential for future harm before it happens. My friends were doubtful about this, perhaps because they give too much credit to the power and reach of the U.S. government, and perhaps because they live in a state that keeps a watchful eye on everything its citizens are doing and thinking. But I explained that our government has far more important things to worry about than fringe dwellers on YouTube. They are engaged in wars, overt and covert, in several nations, and are trying to figure out if Iran is preparing a nuclear bomb. They are trying to manage a financial crisis at home, and deal with the consequences of its bastard stepchild in Europe. There is the Chinese leadership transition to think about, and so on. Do they really have the time to notice a video on YouTube which, until the events of last week, only a few thousand people had seen?

My friends accepted this logic, though they still had their doubts. They began to look around for a conspiracy, and insist that there was more to this than met the eye. Surely Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, Steve Klein, and the others hadn’t made this film on their own. Someone had put them up to it — perhaps the Syrians, perhaps the Israelis, perhaps even the U.S. government itself. I mentioned Occam’s Razor, the idea that when trying to decide why something happened, the explanation “that makes the fewest assumptions” is often the best. Sometimes, I said, Oswald really is the lone gunner, the planes that flew into the World Trade Center are the cause of its collapse, and a hate film made by a bunch of nobodies is able to provoke rage in twenty countries. To imagine otherwise is to believe not only that the conspirators can forsee the results of their actions with eerie precision, but that they are able to control everything down to the smallest detail to get the intended result. Sometimes, I insisted, stuff happens — things no one saw coming, that create the illusion of a malign genius pulling the strings.

This left one other question on the table. Once the damage done by the film became known, why did the U.S. government continue to defend its right to exist? Why didn’t they just pull it off the internet, and arrest the filmmakers? This may seem like an outrageous question to many Americans, who put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the mobs who resorted to violence. For an American, a verbal assault never justifies violence — they are two different things, and a person who leaps from one to the other is displaying a moral weakness, a dangerous lack of self-control. (We can argue whether this is really true. What about bar fights? But we do tend to blame the person who threw the first punch, not the first slur.) My friends, who come from a different culture, see things from a different angle. For them, social harmony is more important, and freedom of speech is never the right to insult and defame. They see nothing wrong with expecting people to dress modestly, avoid vulgar language, and keep their carousing out of sight. After all, your grandmother might be offended — it’s a simple question of respect. Even more so for a film whose sole purpose is to offend others. Isn’t that like dumping your garbage on someone’s lawn? What right does that have to be protected speech?

I explained what free speech means in America. Different societies have different standards, I said, and the U.S. has perhaps the broadest standard of all. The only red lines I’m aware of are direct calls to violence, or spreading false information (such as slander or fraud) that does material harm. Even then, a crime must be proven, with evidence of intent and according to law. There is simply no way to remove a film proactively from circulation, on the simple assumption that someone’s feelings might be hurt. So there is nothing illegal about the Mohammed film, no matter how disgusting we may find it — and there’s a reason for that. America was settled by people fleeing from religious or political persecution, and they placed a very high value on the freedom to express their beliefs. In fact, this is the core value on which all our other freedoms are based. To protect that right, we must extend it to everyone. This means that no matter how strange or offensive an opinion may be to the rest of us, we protect it in order to protect our own perhaps equally bizarre opinions. And we accept the consequences of this, namely that we can never expect the government to step in and tell someone he’s wrong. If we find an opinion harmful we need to defeat it in argument, not through the force of the state — or just learn to “live and let live.”

Of course, as I think any American understands, this is the ideal, but the reality is far from perfect. These protections weren’t extended to Communists in the 1950s, who were considered to be agents of an enemy power. Another example is the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were persecuted in the 1940s for refusing military service on religious grounds. Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, was martyred in 1844, and from the Wobblies to the Civil Rights movement to the Occupy movement today, the U.S. government has a history of spying on opposition movements. Perhaps to a greater extent than we realize, we pick and choose which opinions to tolerate, which to celebrate, and which to suppress or condemn. The idea of freedom of speech as an incontrovertible right plays a fundamential role in our self-image as Americans, but in practice, we do place limits in the name of protecting ourselves against a greater danger. So the question remains — why is the Mohammed film okay, particularly when it has placed our relations with a large part of the world at risk? Is it possible that this is a symptom of something deeper in the American psyche? Is it possible that hate speech against Muslims is something we are prepared to defend, more so than other forms of hate speech?

Keep in mind, this film didn’t appear in a vacuum. Now, this isn’t the same as saying that the film was made by hidden conspirators, or anyone other than the handful of losers whose names we know. But there does exist an international network of anti-Muslim hate groups, from the English Defence League to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to people like Anders Behring Brevik, the Norweigian mass murderer, that has strong roots in the U.S. as well. Bloggers like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are the “intellectual” leaders of this movement, with Geller currently running ads on buses and subways in American cities that refer to Muslims as “savages.” Politicians like Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, and Peter King have lent their support to this movement as well. Mosques have been burned, referendums have been passed against the nonexistent threat of Sharia law, and an attempt to build a Muslim cultural center in lower Manhattan drew national controversy before it was finally approved. Our own president is often accused of being a Muslim — as if that were the deepest insult, a fatal sign of his “otherness.” Fortunately none of these are majority views. But it does show a certain tolerance for anti-Muslim hate speech, a double standard that calls into question our claim to universal rights.

In defending the right to make a film insulting Mohammed, are we merely sticking up for our principles? Or are we picking and choosing? If a group of Hezbollah supporters living in the U.S. were to make a film portraying Jews as pederasts, money-grubbers, and depraved lunatics — which is how Mohammed was portrayed — would our first instinct be to champion their right to free speech? Or would outrage and condemnation rain down from all sides, along with calls to investigate their finances, their network of connections, and even kick them out of the country? Perhaps the viewpoint of my Moroccan friends, which places social harmony first and asks people to use their rights responsibly, is worth hearing. Of course, it’s never okay to storm an embassy by scaling the walls, setting fires, sacking and pillaging. But that shouldn’t obscure the fact that millions of people who didn’t do these things — engineers, grandmothers, shopkeepers, schoolchildren — were deeply hurt and offended. Is our message to them that we don’t care, because they’re Muslims and somehow deserve it? Or can we show some respect? If they were our neighbors — which in this world of YouTube and Twitter, we all are — would we toss our garbage on their lawn, or would we strive to be neighborly?

It feels silly to appeal to basic decency, because that’s such an unhip value. It feels silly to say, “Muslims are people too,” but they are. Perhaps the rush of claims and counterclaims in the media makes us lose track of that fact. Muslims aren’t some abstract group of “others.” They get up in the morning and have breakfast, kiss the kids and send them to school, get on the bus to go to work, sell shoes or chop meat or fill out paperwork, study hard because they want to pass the test, have illicit affairs, go drinking with their pals, fall asleep in front of the TV. What are we trying to say to these people, when we claim that it is an American value to insult their religion, their cherished beliefs, and the bonds that tie them together? I support the right of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula to make that film — it’s our principle of free speech. But I think there’s a conversation we should be having as Americans, as to whether it’s the right thing to do. After all, we value social harmony as much as Muslims do. We voluntarily place limits on our own freedom. We don’t think it’s okay to walk up to people on the street and start hurling insults — so why do it on YouTube? It may be legal, and it may be protected speech, but a person obesessed with insulting others is not very healthy. Perhaps we should shame them in the same way we shame anti-Black racists, or anti-Semites. If Muslims are the last group in the world whom it’s okay for Americans to insult, that doesn’t reflect very well on us as a culture.

Do Kings Have “Special Legitimacy”?

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Marc Lynch raises the question, Does Arab Monarchy Matter?

    “What does it mean that no Kings have thus far fallen in the Arab uprisings while four non-monarchical rulers (Ben Ali, Mubarak, Qaddafi and Saleh) have toppled from their (non-royal) thrones and a fifth has plunged his country into a brutal civil war? Is there a monarchical exception in the Arab world? …
    “I am particularly unpersuaded by arguments that the Arab monarchies enjoy a distinctive legitimacy. … It is difficult to reconcile the idea of monarchical legitimacy with the tightly controlled media, carefully cultivated personality cults, and brutally policed ‘red lines’ which generally characterize such regimes. The alleged unique legitimacy of Arab monarchs strikes me as a carefully cultivated and ruthlessly policed political myth which could dissolve as quickly as did the universal adoration for Bashar al-Assad or Moammar Qaddafi when challenged. …
    “The claim for a unique legitimacy among the Arab monarchies is further undermined by the fact that they have in fact experienced significant political dissent over the last two years, to which they responded through fairly typical (albeit unusually well-resourced) combinations of repression and co-optation. … The resources and capabilities of the Arab monarchies may be different from their non-kingly peers, but the challenges facing them from popular mobilization really were not. …
    “To me, the monarchies look like fairly typical Arab authoritarian regimes, surviving because they enjoy greater financial resources, less demanding international allies, and powerful media assets to perpetuate their legitimation myths.  And that means that they will not likely be spared should those assets lose value…. The monarchs may be on offense around the region right now, but their defense might not be a strong as it appears.”

It is worth mentioning that Lynch is primarily concerned here with describing the Gulf Arab monarchies, with a few remarks about Jordan. Morocco gets only one mention—”Morocco’s monarch diverted popular mobilization through an early offer of limited political reforms”—and one broader, indirect reference—”Saudi and Qatari support for their less wealthy fellow monarchs seems to be more important to [their] survival…than the intrinsic institutional characteristics of a throne.”

That said, the argument about the special legitimacy of kings is one often heard in Morocco, when explaining why Morocco has known comparatively little unrest since the Arab awakening began. In this view, the king has a unique role to play as a “referee” among competiting forces, and as the guarantor of Moroccan unity. He is the sole force, the saying goes, who is respected by everyone, as the inheritor of a tradition that has been at the center of Moroccan life for centuries. However, the recent controversy over the bay’a, or ceremony of allegiance to the king, might be saying something different. In which case, Lynch’s words should serve as a warning regarding castles built on sand.

As James Traub put it recently in Foreign Policy:

    The reforms that Mohammed VI has instituted since assuming the throne in 1999 have succeeded in persuading a significant part of the Moroccan elite…that he is the key to the country’s future. But the elite game has ended: The young and the disenfranchised have stopped accepting the bleak future that stretched before them. … When the crowds denounced corruption and privilege, they were thinking, if not of the king himself—that would be lèse-majesté—than certainly of the makhzen. … Moroccans may increasingly find themselves balancing their reverence for the king with their frustration at their lot. And they won’t keep blaming the government, rather than the palace, forever.

Elections Do Matter

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As a follow-up to my post from three days ago, I want to take stock of all that is at stake in this November’s election.

First, consider this article by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, Fear of a Black President. It is an impassioned analysis of how President Obama has been constrained throughout his term by the “dying embers” of white racism in America. It is a long, incisive, “angry” (his word) analysis, which deserves to be read carefully as a study of American history and our current discourse from a black perspective. Coates’ main argument is that by the simple fact of his blackness, Obama faces barriers to his legitimacy that a white president with the same politics wouldn’t have. He must always be on his best behavior, or “twice as good,” as Coates puts it. This makes him unable to “speak candidly” on the question of race, or by extension, many of the other issues confronting our nation today.

    “For most of his term in office, Obama has declined to talk about the ways in which race complicates the American present and, in particular, his own presidency. … The irony of Barack Obama is this: he has become the most successful black politician in American history by avoiding the radioactive racial issues of yesteryear, by being ‘clean’ (as Joe Biden once labeled him)—and yet his indelible blackness irradiates everything he touches. This irony is rooted in the greater ironies of the country he leads. For most of American history, our political system was premised on two conflicting facts—one, an oft-stated love of democracy; the other, an undemocratic white supremacy inscribed at every level of government. … Barack Obama governs a nation enlightened enough to send an African American to the White House, but not enlightened enough to accept a black man as its president.”

Coates brilliantly teases out the ways in which white supremacy is still alive in America, and how it has informed the obstructionism of Obama’s opponents in Congress, as well as the rise of the Tea Party with its slogan of “taking America back.”

    “Whatever the saintly nonviolent rhetoric used to herald it, racial integration [in the 1950s and 60s] was a brutal assault on whiteness. The American presidency, an unbroken streak of nonblack men, was, until 2008, the greatest symbol of that old order. … At rallies for the nascent Tea Party, people held signs saying things like Obama Plans White Slavery. Steve King, an Iowa congressman and Tea Party favorite, complained that Obama ‘favors the black person.’ … On Fox & Friends, Glenn Beck asserted that Obama had exposed himself as a guy ‘who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture…. This guy is, I believe, a racist.’ … More than a dozen state legislatures have introduced ‘birther bills’ demanding proof of Obama’s citizenship as a condition for putting him on the 2012 ballot. Eighteen percent of Republicans believe Obama to be a Muslim. The goal of all this is to delegitimize Obama’s presidency. If Obama is not truly American, then America has still never had a black president.”

This might seem like a way to excuse Obama for not being more effective as president— and in particular, for not going further on issues dear to progressives, among whom he allowed himself to be counted in the early days of the 2008 primary campaign. He hasn’t prosecuted fraudsters on Wall Street because it would look like an attack by a black man on a bastion of white privilege. He’s ramped up the Pakistan drone strikes, and failed to close Guantanamo or reverse the Patriot Act, because he needs to go overboard to show he’s not in cahoots with the terrorists. A president whose loyalty to white privilege was secure would have more room to maneuver. Coates doesn’t make this argument directly, though he strongly implies it. “Race is not simply a portion of the Obama story,” he says. “It is the lens through which many Americans view all his politics.” He gives two examples: Glenn Beck labeled Obama’s health care reforms “reparations,” a term for payments to the descendants of slaves that no one leveled against Bill Clinton’s own health care proposals; and Newt Gingrich referred to Obama as the “food-stamp president.”

A more recent example is the claim by the Romney campaign that Obama is trying to do away with the work requirement in welfare, because he wants to give handouts to people with no desire to work. This claim, aired in TV ads in battleground states and by Rick Santorum at the Republican National Convention, is demonstrably false. David Roberts addresses the question of what journalists should do when they call a campaign out on a lie, but the campaign keeps on doing it. Michael Fournier discusses the racial subtext—lazy black people are taking the money of hard-working whites—and why the Romney campaign has chosen to play the race card. A slew of recent articles describe the demographic calculations underlying this strategy: see Ronald Brownstein, Jonathan Chait, and The Week. In effect, as minority voters become an ever-larger share of the electorate, there are only two ways to win the presidency: either design policies with broad appeal to minorities as well as around 40% of the white vote, or write off minorities and win over 60% of the white vote. The Romney campaign knows it can’t win the first way, given near-zero support among blacks and an immigration policy that alienates Latinos, so they’re trying to win by firing up working-class white resentment. “This is the last time anyone will try to do this,” said a Republican strategist. It’s 2012 or never to win the presidency with the white vote alone.

This ties in nicely with another tactic Republicans are using this year, a campaign to suppress the turnout of young, poor, and minority voters—all likely Obama supporters—under the name of fighting “voter fraud.” Voter suppression was already a favorite tactic of Bush appointees in the previous decade, but it has really picked up steam over the past two years, as many Republican-dominated state legislatures have passed “Voter ID” laws that require a photo ID to vote. Their claim is that this will prevent people from voting under someone else’s name, but this is solving a problem that doesn’t exist. A recent study found only ten cases of voter impersonation nationwide, going back to 2000. Meanwhile, under the new laws, anyone with a driver’s license will be able to vote, but those without one will need to apply for a special ID before voting. This obliges them, first of all, to know about the new law, and second, to get to the office where IDs are given and pay the fee. Isn’t this a bit like the poll tax of Jim Crow days? It places an extra burden on the poor, those without a stable address, and the less well-connected or well-informed, even though voting is a Constitutional right. Fortunately, as Andrew Cohen reports, in every case that has come before a federal judge this year, “Voter ID” laws and similar restrictive measures have been struck down. The issue is still working its way through the courts, but eight federal judges have ruled, and without exception, including Republican appointees, they have all found the voter restrictions to be without merit. As Cohen puts it: “Sometimes, clarity brings justice. And sometimes justice brings clarity.”

The point of all this is that the Romney campaign knows it can’t win without firing up white racial resentment on the one hand, and suppressing the turnout of poor and minority voters on the other. Their policies don’t have the support of the majority of the American people, so they have to tweak that majority. This makes me wonder: if nothing is at stake in this election, then why this willingness to win dirty? Why go to such lengths to game the system? Why not accept the popular will in a sportsmanlike way, and fight again another day? It seems that something big is at stake, maybe the whole nature of the American project. Who has the right to be here, to participate, to be served by our government? White privilege and racial resentment are the common thread of everything I’ve written here. Will this be the America we proclaim to the world in 2012? Or will the “other America” that emerged in 2008 show it endures?

Clearly, the face of America is changing—not just racially, as whites move toward losing their majority around 2040—but also as the pendulum swings back towards greater tolerance on social issues, such as gay and women’s rights; and a new, more progressive generation engages in politics. What we’re experiencing are the death throes of the conservative dominance of politics that began with the “Reagan Revolution” of 1980. I’ll admit that I wasn’t planning to vote at all this year, out of disappointment with Obama for being too cautious, too incremental: I wanted a clean break, and he’s all about continuity and “leading from behind.” I still have these reservations, but when I see the tactics of the other side, I think about those who fought for their right to vote before I was born. Do I want to see that rolled back, in the name of wounded white privilege? Or do I want to keep hope alive that the American discourse will one day reflect all of its people?

2012 isn’t a “change” election for me, but it’s a necessary one. If we want to keep things moving in the right direction, we need to push back against the politics of resentment, defend the rights we already have, and stake a claim for the future. We need to show we are here. This may not be the most inspiring reason to vote, but it’s enough. So it looks like I’ll put my voting boots on once again, and support Obama despite my reservations. He’s our one and only black president, our Kenyan–Muslim “other.” Is it too much too ask that he’ll act a little bit more like this in his second term?

Do Elections Matter?

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I can’t help but follow the ins and outs of the American presidential campaign, which are fascinating to me even though it seems to be more a contest of teams of advisers, marketing strategies, and scripted events than a spontaneous outpouring of democracy “of, by, and for the people,” to use Lincoln’s words. A debate is taking place, but it’s a packaged debate, mediated by the gatekeepers of public opinion: TV pundits, public intellectuals, party officials, professional image managers, and those who script campaign ads paid for by major donors, whose “money is speech” according to the Supreme Court. The result is that the rough edges are smoothed away and we are left with two packages, Brand A and Brand B, both claiming to represent the mainstream of American public opinion. This is expressed as well as anyone by Lambert Strether in a post today on the economic blog Naked Capitalism:

    “The national election campaign so far reminds me of nothing so much as a sports bar: There, up on the teebee screen, are the players on the field. Some wear jerseys labeled R; some wear jerseys labeled D. Announcers hold forth in a rapid stream of technical and statistical information, and proffer color commentary. The managers and the owners are unseen. And down in the bar, we, the ‘voters,’ cheer, or groan, or chant, or sit in white-knuckled silence, or shout advice. But are we, down at the bar, crazy enough to think that our chants and shouted advice actually affect what happens up on the screen?”

After we choose between Brand A and Brand B one of them gets to govern, constrained by all the institutional limits that have built up over time: international commitments, the demands of financial markets, the interests of powerful lobbies such as military contractors or retirees, bureaucratic inertia, and the Constitutional balance of power itself. Invariably, these constraints force any new president to tone down his most ambitious ideas, so that even “transformational” elections like 1980 or 2008 lead to only incremental change.

Perhaps that’s for the best, because we can’t have a revolution every four years, purging programs that people have come to rely on and completely remaking the rules of the game. Only extremists would want a party in power that pushes through its agenda without regard to the balance of interests in American society, and careless of whom it might hurt. All change is bound to hurt someone, and this in itself is a limit on the type of candidates we get, who are sponsored by two major parties that aspire to represent the broad majority of American public opinion. But it does raise the question of whether elections serve any purpose at all. Every election since at least 1992 has been cast by one side or the other as “the most critical election in our lifetime,” and this year is no exception. But after the elections are over, the seeming impossibility of changing anything leads people to wonder what all the fuss was about. Ronald Reagan, the anti-government crusader, raised taxes and expanded the size of government. Bill Clinton’s most enduring legacy may be “ending welfare as we know it,” which was a demand of the opposing party. George W. Bush ran up the deficit and engaged in nation building, two things he said he wouldn’t do. Barack Obama failed to prosecute bank fraud and continued the Bush policies embodied in the Patriot Act. Every four years, it feels like we’re embarking on an exciting romance, only to feel cheated and deceived the morning after. We mistake packaging for substance, and the good-looking stranger we took home turns out to be a cad. This year, the new kids on the block are Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. If elected, they will let us down too. Given this history, we might be forgiven for wishing we could skip the election entirely, and leave the system to run itself.

The same dynamic plays out in other nations. This spring, France saw a shift from the right-of-center Nicolas Sarkozy to the left-of-center François Hollande, but economic realities are putting severe constraints on the new president’s economic policy choices. Even in the foreign policy and domestic security realms, where he might be imagined to have more room to maneuver, his policies are shaping up to be more a continuation than a repudiation of what went before: a willingness to side with the Syrian opposition, much as Sarkozy did for Libya, and a continuation of the deportation of the Roma people begun by Sarkozy. Greece, Italy, and Spain have all seen changes in government since the outbreak of the European financial crisis, but in all cases, the new parties in power have been forced by the demands of financial markets to continue austerity policies begun under the previous administration, only more aggressively and effectively. Opposition movements such as Occupy Wall Street in the U.S. and its counterparts in nations as diverse as Spain, Greece, Argentina, and Israel have so far brought about no change in governing policy. In Morocco, popular protests last year led to constitutional changes and the election of a populist, Islamist party which had never before held power, but the new government finds itself constrained by institutional interests led by the king, and is unable to enact major reforms. Even in Egypt and Tunisia where dictators were overthrown and democratic elections held for the first time in history, change has been limited by military and economic elites, and the state bureaucracy whose interests are well entrenched. Indeed, one lesson of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 is the extent to which the interests of international finance dictate governing policies all over the world, limiting the options for popularly elected leaders.

Still, I tend to believe that elections serve some purpose, if only as a safety valve for popular discontent. In periods when society is in broad agreement that things are going well, elections are boring, party platforms are nearly indistinguishable, and it seems to make little difference who is elected. But as tensions rise in one segment or another of the population, elections heat up and begin to feel like they are really about something. The rise of the Tea Party movement in the U.S. in 2010 is a case in point. In the Congressional elections that year, rhetoric was flying that if change didn’t come to Washington, the only option left would be “Second Amendment remedies,” or taking up arms against the government. But even when the new crop of elected leaders turns out to be just like the last—cautious, pragmatic individuals interested in moving the needle as little as possible once they are in power—I tend to believe that public venting of emotions during the campaign isn’t a bad thing. Would it be better to have a real revolution, with Tea Party militias storming the Capitol, or Occupy activists looting the banks? Some people would say yes, because that’s the only way we’ll have real change, but they should be careful what they wish for. After all, not all radicals want the same thing. Some want a socialist system that takes from the rich to give to the poor, while others want to do away with government entirely so they can keep their money to themselves. In a revolutionary environment, which side will win? Elections smooth out these differences by forcing the extremes to choose among a limited set of options, all of which are palatable to the mainstream; and the mainstream seeks not revolution, but balance and common sense.

Those who feel that elections are a sham will argue that they distract us with illusions of choice, while returning the same elites to power over and over again. For these people, there is little difference between a dictator like Hosni Mubarak, who won elections with 95% of the vote, and institutional parties like the Democrats and Republicans who together chalk up the same score. My response is that elections do make a difference, not so much in November when one of two candidates is elected president, but in the messier, more intimate process of the previous year by which each party chooses its nominee. This is where the battle lines of November are drawn. In 2008, Hillary Clinton was the anointed choice of most of the Democratic Party elite, but Barack Obama came out of nowhere to win broad grassroots support and claim the nomination. One of his selling points was his early opposition to the war in Iraq, which implied a different way of seeing America’s role in the world; another was his ability to energize new groups of voters, particularly young people and minorities. This year has seen a similar process on the Republican side, in which first Michelle Bachman, then Herman Cain, then Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum took turns as the favored choice of Christian evangelicals against Mitt Romney. At the same time, Ron Paul’s insurgency gave voice to the strong libertarian strain which has emerged on the American right. Although the party finally settled on Romney as the safest, most mainstream candidate, the issues aired during the campaign played a large role in his choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate, since Ryan appeals to both evangelicals and libertarians. So in the case of both Obama in 2008 and Romney in 2012, a party representing about half of the American electorate used the nomination process to better define its identity, and discover the issues that fired up its supporters. However ritualized and mediated this process may be, it played out in living rooms and workplaces across the country, allowing individuals to form their own opinions. I can’t help but think that this is both cathartic and good for democracy.

Shall I close with the line often attributed to Churchill, that “democracy is the worst of all possible systems, except for all the others we’ve tried”? As a long-time resident of Morocco, I have some idea of what it feels like to live in a system where if public officials abuse their positions or don’t deliver on their promises, there is little recourse and nowhere to assign the blame. Is it the king, who is the ultimate “guarantor” of the Moroccan project but who governs mainly from behind the scenes? Or is it the elected government, which likes to excuse its policy failures by claiming it has no real power? At least in the American system, we know we can hold our elected officials responsible for their own mistakes, as typified by Harry Truman’s slogan, “The buck stops here.” It may be that when we replace our president or our representative in Congress, the next guy will be a product of the same system and no better than the last; or that our leaders tend to be self-interested and narrow-minded; or that the choices we get on election day are disappointing compared to the true diversity of popular opinion. But over time, I do feel that our system gives us an approximation of the popular will. It has allowed us to invest in public infrastructure, educate generations of young people, guarantee the rights of women and minorities, improve working conditions, regulate air and water pollution, build the Internet, and begin the reform of our health care system. Above all, it gives us the sense that we have a stake in the decisions that affect our daily lives. This may be an illusion, but without this illusion, we would have nothing but the rule of the powerful over the powerless. Besides, it’s an illusion that we can make real if we take it at its word, and act on it. Not just in elections, of course, but in the full range of our role as citizens: through activism, public expression, volunteer work, involvement in local causes, and staying engaged and informed.

Economic Monopoly, Political Stalemate in Morocco

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Some excerpts from How Morocco Dodged the Arab Spring, by Nicolas Pelham, which appeared on the New York Review of Books blog:

    “It is hard to ignore the royal court’s smugness at how they co-opted the Islamists to revive the monarchy’s legitimacy at its weakest hour. On the one-year anniversary of the King’s ‘historic’ March 9 speech ceding powers to a prime minister, the Moroccan state press, which usually commemorates royal anniversaries with religious attention, carefully avoided covering the event. ‘M6 [as the King is commonly known] was shaken to the core, and gave the biggest speech of his career pledging to open a new page,’ says Karim Tazi, a politically-active businessman who initially backed the protestors. ‘The way he changed his mind when the February 20 movement began to lose its way is shocking.’ …
    “But the King has not been able to resolve Morocco’s economic troubles. In his thirteen years on the throne, he has removed many of the shackles his father placed on modernization. Child mortality has fallen 30 percent in five years, and literacy is sharply up from previous appalling lows. Yet development projects seem mostly aimed at the country’s upper crust and at foreigners, who are feted by hoteliers in Marrakesh. Moroccan trains run on time, the streets are spotless, and motorways are being built across the country, while everyday life for many is staggeringly squalid. …
    “On the edge of nearby Jorf Lasfar, a fenced industrial zone containing a petrochemical and phosphates hub and a port which has pretensions to be the most modernized on Africa’s Atlantic coast, sheep pick through the detritus of nine cinder-block shacks scavenging for edibles smashed by police. The air is acrid with the exhaust of chimney stacks making money for German and American firms and Managem, the mining consortium which forms part of the royal portfolio. ‘The authorities told us we were squatting in an industrial zone,’ says Shakaroun, a jobless thirty-five-year-old, whose family lived in one of the nine. ‘They erected factories on our land without compensation, and then destroyed our homes.’
    “The primary school in Shakaroun’s village, meanwhile, is a picture of Dickensian neglect. Its doors hang from their hinges, chairs are missing their seats, flattened cardboard boxes cover holes in the roof, and the playground is a scrap of scrub. And it is just one of more than 15,000 primary schools the local press say lack drinking water and toilets. ‘Knowledge is the peak of happiness,’ reads the Orwellian slogan on the wall beneath the vacant windows of Classroom 3. And it is mockingly called Ibn Battuta, after Morocco’s fabled medieval traveler and man of letters. …
    “Ali Anouzla launched a popular news service, Lakome.com, on the Internet in the hope of bypassing state the censors, but the authorities simply frightened off his advertisers. Sitting almost alone in his office in Rabat, surrounded by banks of black computer monitors, even the coffee he sips makes him angry. Every time he adds a spoonful of sugar or drop of milk to his coffee, he says, he is boosting the profits of Société Nationale d’Investissement (SNI), the investment holding firm controlled by the king and his family. State subsidies on fuel, wheat and sugar all help the royal business. So too does a state road-building program, which uses royal cement. ‘King Hassan, his father, liked the symbolism of calling himself the first peasant, the first sportsmen, and the first artist,’ he says. ‘But with this king it’s real. He really is the country’s biggest banker, biggest farmer, biggest insurer and hotelier.’”

This article does a better job than most of showing how economic and social inequality are at the root of Morocco’s problems. Morocco shows a modernizing face to the world, with its high-speed trains and five-star hotels, but urban shantytowns and rural poverty are a stubborn reality behind the façade. It’s a bit like the legend of the “Potemkin villages” in which the Russian czar Catherine the Great toured the countryside to see how happy and prosperous the peasants were, but the colorfully decorated homes she saw were just an empty shell, and the peasants she saw dancing from a distance were actually being whipped.

Besides making the point that Morocco’s system benefits the wealthy elite far more than the people, Pelham’s article is also a report card on the first few months in power of Prime Minister Abdellah Benkirane, who has promised reform. The jist of it is that Benkirane is running up against the limits of his role, since real power, both policial and economic, remains with the king. Indeed, my friends in Morocco have felt all along that giving the PJD, Benkirane’s Islamist party, the chance to govern was largely for show.

The Arab Spring accomplished this much in Morocco, the arrival in power of a political party that had previously been outside the cozy circle of governance — but will anything really change? Or will the PJD in its turn, as the Socialist and Istiqlal parties before them, be blamed in the end for their lack of progress? In this view, politics in Morocco is a kind of theatre, designed to deflect blame onto elected leaders, while profit-taking and self-dealing among the elite continues its merry way. One thing I can say is that none of my friends knows what to do about this, because real change would require a chaotic upheaval none of them want to see.

The real problem seems to be the imbalance of prices and wages, along with unemployment which is alarmingly high. A restaurant worker or cashier might earn $150 a month, while a computer technician or language teacher might earn $300. Jobs in the public sector pay a bit more, but not everyone can work for the state, and more than half of young people have no job at all. Meanwhile, the price of clothing or electronics is about the same as in the U.S., while the price of staples like sugar or bread is maybe half. In Morocco as everywhere else, you get what you pay for. Obviously this works like a charm for the business class — among whom the king, through his holding company SNI, is the leading member — but far less for the workers or the unemployed. Can liberal reforms fix the problem, or are they just a salve on an open wound? And when will the elephant in the room, economic monopoly, become a matter for public debate?

My friend doga raised this very issue in his first post here back in 2006, which he titled Young Moroccans, A Neglected Future:

    “Confronted with [their desperate economic situation], young people start to wonder, ‘Why do I find myself in a house that is too small when there is someone living in a huge villa, or even a palace? Why are there people with Jaguars, when I struggle with what to eat each day? Why are Europeans better off than us? Is it because their officials and business owners love them, and our officials and business owners hate us?’ Despite the simplicity of these questions, they push us to wonder, ‘What methods and criteria are being used to distribute our nation’s wealth and its revenues?’ …
    “How can we speak of fighting poverty without discussing the way wealth and revenues are distributed? Keep in mind that a lack of justice in the distribution of wealth, revenues and resources is a basic factor contributing to poverty in Morocco.”

What’s sad is that after all these years, and even the Arab Spring, Morocco’s political system is still not up to the task of responding to my friend’s “simple” questions.

Let’s Evolve

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I’ve translated this from French because I like it so much. It’s from an article on nawaat.org, the Tunisian website, by Hind Mandy called “Yes, I Am an Enormous Provocateur.” It was written in the context of the upcoming Tunisian elections and the social tensions leading up to that, but I think it applies to all of us in these times of Occupy Wall Street and spontaneous uprisings around the world.

    “Let’s…put in place public discussion forums in the media, at school, at the university. Forums in the workplace where we can speak with respect and dignity…about liberty and about the Other, to accept and tolerate each other. Perhaps it’s high time to make our cultural revolution without attaching ourselves to any model: let’s invent our cultural revolution right now, without waiting, as a matter of urgency…. The great work of thought, reflection and culture must get started as soon as possible. ‘Living together’ must be invented. And that mustn’t come from discussions and debates among initiates in colloquia and symposia, but from the reflections of ordinary citizens, which is where the road maps of future generations will be laid out. The great work involves calling into question not only the system, but an entire way of thinking.
    “We must evolve from a fixed way of thinking to one with many variables, from an absolute reference point to many different reference points. All that without forgetting that we aren’t alone in the world, and without self-absorption. So let’s evolve.”

Here’s a great article about Occupy Wall Street, by the way.

Morocco’s Divided Youth

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A little sociological analysis! Let’s start by dividing Moroccan youth into three groups, and drawing a brief caricature of each.

At the bottom of the social ladder are the excluded, whom I assume to be the vast majority of Moroccan youth. They have few prospects for the future except to scrounge for a living. They have no financial independence, because their families are needier than they are and rely on the few pennies they bring in. Most in this group will never make it through high school, though some have specialized skills that allow them to make money from time to time. They include car mechanics, masons, fishermen, agricultural workers, and apprentices in the trades. They include young people who work with their extended family in groceries or in souqs. They also include drug runners, those who steal cell phones, and those who have nothing whatsoever to do. They live in shantytowns, cold-water tenements, and dirt-poor rural environments. Their hopes for the future are so low that they are desperate to seduce some Spanish girl into marriage, or get in overloaded boats to cross the Gibraltar Strait.

The next group may have issued from the same social class in the beginning, but they have managed to reach university level, and have broader ambitions. Many have supplemented their education with some private-school training, in computers, tourism, or secretarial work. This is the group that thinks most like American youth. They want to help their families and better themselves at the same time. Many work as teachers or in public administration, or on the lower rungs of the still-small corporate sector. These are the youth who work at call centers, or in big-city electronics and furniture showrooms. A few make it as freelance designers, or start small businesses of their own. Some are the first generation in their families to reach this level, while others have parents who are salaried workers themselves, and can give them a small boost. They have computers, a bit of money in their pocket, and the time to read newspapers and discuss with their friends. Their interests are broader, their tastes are more sophisticated, and most secular democrats come from this group.

The third group, the children of the elite, never have to worry where they fit in society, because their place is assured. They can get what they want through the power of connections. Whatever goes wrong for them, daddy will take care of it. They are arrogant, spoiled, and out of touch. They believe they are deserving, because everyone says so. They go to the front of the line, and public servants greet them with a smile. They are allowed to break the law, because no one wants to mess with daddy. They have mostly been educated outside Morocco. They are crudely materialistic, with fancy cars and sharp clothing. They buy expensive things because they are expensive. They start high-profile companies in media or real estate. They flaunt everything that divides them from the ordinary Moroccan, causing resentment in others, but they don’t notice this because they live in a bubble. Perhaps some of them doubt their advantages, but I can’t prove it because I have very little contact with this group.

So for the sake of our crude analysis, we have a social pyramid. Let’s say that the group on the bottom, the excluded, makes up 70% of Moroccan youth. The next group, the aspiring middle class, makes up 28%. The children of the elite are the last 2%. So where does each group stand relative to Morocco’s February 20 movement?

It should be clear that the first group isn’t happy about how things are going in Morocco. In their view, Morocco is run by a bunch of crooks. They’ve never been helped by the state, only harrassed and ripped off. But they’re pretty much out of it as far as constitutional questions are concerned. Their political consciousness is nonexistent, or limited to questions that concern them directly, like their housing conditions or medical care for their family. There is no political party that speaks to them, and they may feel that February 20 is made up of the same kind of slick opportunists. These are the people the king calls “nihilists,” because they don’t think politics is anything more than a con game. They are just as likely to be reactionary and authoritarian as they are democratic — the “baltagiyas” or regime-supporting thugs come from this group. But if February 20 could present a social platform that would improve their lives in concrete ways, it would have room for growth in this consituency.

The second group, the aspiring middle class, is where February 20 draws most of its support. This is a growing demographic that is frustrated by a lack of opportunities to match their capacities. They are educated, self-aware, and competent. They are the real future of Morocco. They want to contribute, and many of them do, through associations, cultural activities, or internet forums. They are aware of what’s wrong and brainstorm solutions. They are growing into their role as citizens, and want to be leaders, but find themselves blocked by a system that favors the well connected. They are a bridge between the excluded and the elites, because they have the grievances of the former and the ambitions of the latter. This is the group that would benefit most from change, because they are capable of much more than they can get in the present system. Critical thinking is necessary to belong to this group, and they apply it to their own case by asking, “Why not me?” A movement like February 20 is natural to this group, an example of their committed spirit. But while this demographic is growing, it is still a minority. The challenge before them is to broaden their appeal.

Finally, the children of the elite have nothing to gain from a reform movement. They have been raised to step into daddy’s shoes, and have received the best of everything in preparation. Their whole world is based on entitlement. They have received a first-class education, while the public school system is left to languish. Their expensive playthings are a consequence of daddy’s favors and kickbacks. Their status above the law would be lost in a democracy. Since they are the people whose privileges are targeted by February 20, what would motivate them to join in? Aside from a few rebels of conscience, their attitude is one of indifference. They will keep on partying right through the revolution, as seen in this video of Qaddafi’s sons, or this recent piece from Syria.

    “Pool parties in the Damascus suburb of Barada are openly promoted on Facebook, inviting patrons to get ‘wet and wild’ every Friday as mosques call the faithful to prayer. […] The fuel behind the fun is not escapism, but indifference. […] Many of the young, fashionable crowd in Damascus and Aleppo — who have varying degrees of association with the regime — drive in fast cars with blacked-out windows and openly smoke marijuana, knowing they are above the law and resenting the ongoing troubles. […] They have too much to lose and virtually nothing to gain and feel irrevocably alienated from their fellow countrymen.”

So what should we take away from all this? First, that the February 20 protesters do not yet represent a majority of Moroccan youth, but they have a chance to change this if they can persuade the marginalized majority that political reform can bring concrete results. The excluded class at the bottom is frustrated and angry, but they are the victim of years of social engineering designed to teach them passivity in the face of oppression. February 20 activists will have their work cut out for them if they want to connect with this group. They will need to go to Morocco’s villages and urban neighborhoods with teach-ins and community organizing. That will take time, but it represents the only potential for February 20 to expand its base and become a majority movement. Meanwhile, February 20 should expect no help from the young privileged elites, who will look out for themselves despite the taste for personal freedom they superficially share.

Is Morocco a “Liberalizing Autocracy”?

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In light of the constitutional reform proposal of King Mohammed VI, perhaps it would be useful to take a look at this recent article about Jordan, by Morten Valbjørn in Foreign Policy, which calls Jordan a “liberalizing autocracy” gifted at creating the illusion of change.

    “Indeed, by some measures Jordan is today less free than in 1989, when its much-claimed democratic transition began. This does not, however, mean that Jor­dan’s ‘transition to nowhere’ should be framed as an example of ‘failure of demo­cra­tization.’ Instead, Jordan should be seen as an example of a ‘libe­ra­li­zing autocracy’: always ap­pearing as being in the midst of a promising reform process, but still always an auto­cracy. Those in real power are not accountable to their citi­zens and they do not aim to gi­ve up or even share their power. They are only following Lampe­du­sa’s old advice that ‘if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.’ Such liberalizing autocracies should not be perceived as be­ing a transitory state on the road toward democracy, but rather as a distinct and quite resilient kind of authoritarian regime.”

What techniques does a nation like Jordan (or Morocco) use to appear to be liberalizing while in fact changing nothing? One is the transfer of liberalizing functions outside the state to NGOs, which have no political power and can be easily controlled.

    “Liberalization in such autocracies typically focuses on areas of special concern to international audiences which do not touch the heart of power. One of these areas is the field of civil-society…. The King has several times emphasized the importance of a dynamic civil-society and has cal­led on his fellow Jordanians to get involved in the more than 2,000 NGOs. However, this ‘civil-society promoting’ policy is supplemented by a number of subtle techniques which ensure that NGOs will not turn into a significant political force. These include the ‘Law of Societies,’ which states that NGOs must obtain licenses from the authorities and are moreover not allowed to be political or to ‘contradict with the public order.’ […] If the de­li­be­rately vaguely-stated requirements are not fulfilled, it is possible to dissolve an NGO or put it under administration. […] Finally, so-called Royal NGOs, wealthy associations sponsored by members of the royal family, make up nearly 60 percent of Jordan’s civil society, crowding out more indepen­dent NGOs.”

Sound familiar? This is the story of Mohammed VI’s twelve years of reign in Morocco. But what of the constitutional reforms he just proposed? That’s a real change in the balance of power, right?

    “The powers of the King are defined by the con­stitution and the citizens are entitled with basic rights. However, the con­­stitution is not only written by but also for the regime. Thus, the King is given extensive powers without being accoun­table and a nominal recognition of fundamental civil liberties is often balanced by various exceptions. The King has famously stated that the ‘sky is the limit’ when it comes to the level of freedom of expression…. In reality, there are ‘red li­nes’ regarding criticism of the King, the royal court, ‘friendly nations,’ or sta­te­ments that may hurt Jordan’s international repu­ta­tion. […]
    A reflection of how it often makes more sense speaking of ‘rule by law’ than ‘rule of law’ is the Jordanian election system. On the one hand, Jordan has since 1989 — with a few exceptions — regu­lar­ly held both local and parliamentary-elections…. While being (almost) spared for simple fraud, these elections have on the other hand been regulated by means of a highly con­tro­ver­sial elec­­tion law. Due to the voting-procedure and the distribution of constituencies, the elections are ac­cu­sed of favoring ‘independent’ candidates over political parties, [and] rural tribal areas over more regi­me-critical urban ones….

See my discussion from 2007 of the Moroccan parliamentary elections, which resulted in a Parliament so fragmented that no political party, or even a coalition of like-minded parties, could muster the political strength to act independently of the Palace. At the time it was widely assumed that this was intentional, the result of political manipulations dating back to the days of Driss Basri, and perfected in 2007 by “king’s friend” Fouad Ali Al Himma, who as Deputy Interior Minister tinkered with the election laws before being elected to Parliament himself! — where he formed the Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM), now Morocco’s largest political party.

Incidentally, in rereading the piece just now, I found this eerily prescient suggestion of what it would take to see real political change in Morocco:

    “Could groups at the left end of Morocco’s political spectrum, like the PSU or the Marxist-Leninist Annahj Addimocrati, ignore their differences with Islamists like Al Adl Wal Ihsane and the Mustapha Ramid faction of the PJD, to work together on their common goal of constitutional reform? Such a marriage of refuseniks would be fascinating if it happened, but of course it won’t.”

At the time it seemed frankly crazy, but that’s what is happening now, thanks to the February 20 Movement. Anyway, back to Jordan:

    “Although the par­lia­ment, according to the King, is ‘a main pillar of political work in Jordan’ and it nominally consti­tu­tes the legislative power, it does not hold any political significance and it is marked by surprisingly little political debate. Real politics takes place in the royal court, whereas the par­lia­ment is pri­ma­ri­ly an instrument for the distribution of patronage among loyal supporters of the regime. Thus, 80 percent of Jordanians think that their MPs primarily serve their own financial interests and only 4 percent state that the primary function of the parliament is to legislate and to check the government. […]
    “As real power and politics are situated in the royal court, the role of the government is prima­rily to implement decisions taken elsewhere. Usually the prime minister and his team are reshuffled once a year as part of a never-ending elite-circulation, where members of the elite re­vol­ve between the royal court, the government and the parliament. In this way, the emergence of [an] alternative basis of power with [its] own client-networks is avoided. Their loyalty is at the same time maintained as they remain within the inner-circles with the pri­vi­le­ges this implies.”

How well these words fit Morocco — which perhaps not incidentally, the West has traditionally grouped with Jordan as one of the “moderate, reforming” Arab states — along with Tunisia and Egypt!

So how will constitutional reform play out in Morocco? If everything else sounds familiar, maybe this will, too:

    “[It] becomes clear why Jordan is not an example of a ‘failure of demo­crati­za­ti­on’: democratization was never the real intention, so nothing has failed. Rather, the Jordanian story should be grasped as the ‘success of (a par­ti­cular upgraded form of) autho­ri­ta­ria­nism.’ The Hashemite regime has managed not only to stay firmly seated without any significant opposition, but Jordan has also been suc­cessful in leaving the impression among inter­natio­nal donors… and the US pre­sident apparently, that the coun­try is on the ‘right track’ toward democracy. […]
    “This ‘success’ does how­ever come at a price. It has given rise to a political culture marked by politi­cal apathy, wide­spre­ad cynicism to the official reform-lingo and a disillusion about the possi­bi­li­ty of making changes through the official political institutions. […] Against this back­ground, it is natural to question if Jordan is on the right track….”

A Missed Opportunity?

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The king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, gave a speech to the nation last night presenting the outlines of a new constitution, the product of three months of work by a commission hand-picked by the king, in consultation with political parties, labor unions, and civil society groups. The youth of February 20 refused to participate in the consultations, saying they were nontransparent and nondemocratic.

The king only summarized the new constitution in his speech, and the full text has not yet been made public. But at first glance, it seems that the king is keeping about 90% of the powers he already had.

The king’s person will no longer be considered “sacred” but rather “inviolable.” He will remain the spiritual head of Morocco’s Muslims, in a Morocco defined as a Muslim nation. He will remain the head of the armed forces, with sole authority to appoint and command its officers. He will retain the right to name the “walis” and “bashas” who are the true regional government, although elected regional governments will gain new powers under the new plan. He will retain his right of veto over the Interior Minister, who is responsible for Morocco’s police and security services, and he will continue to control Morocco’s foreign policy by appointing ambassadors. He will remain the head of the council that appoints judges, though the judicial branch will gain new independence. He will remain the “symbol of Moroccan unity” and the “referee and guarantor” of Moroccan stability. The main area in which the king has ceded some authority is by giving the Parliament sole responsibility for initiating legislation and running the business of government. The Prime Minister, an elected official, will be designated Head of Government, but the king will remain Head of State.

The king, presenting this project as a uniquely Moroccan form of democracy and the only way forward for the nation, called strongly on all Moroccans to vote “Yes” in the referendum to be held in just two weeks. He himself in his role as citizen plans to vote “Yes,” he announced. And then, once Moroccans overwhelmingly vote “Yes” as expected, the nation will continue its slow march to democracy under the benevolent guidance of the king. End of story.

But what of February 20, the youth movement that prompted all this talk of reform in the first place? Will they be satisfied with the new constitution? Perhaps we should wait for an official response, but I can hazard a guess. First, February 20 was already calling for a “No” vote even before the details of the new constitution were announced. In their view, any constitution that is “made to order” as this one is, rather than issuing from an assembly of the people, is illegitimate. Further, the new constitution falls far short of their key demands, namely a king who “reigns but does not govern” and a state whose economic, military, foreign policy, and domestic security institutions are under the control of elected officials.

This could lead to a standoff at some point down the road, between a governing class that wants only tepid reforms, and a youth movement demanding fundamental change. The fault rests, in part, with the political parties, who participated in the recent consultations with a remarkable lack of courage and imagination. The Arab Spring with its revolutions and uprisings opened a window to go much further, through a frank and open exchange of views on all the essential questions. Moroccans have the civic spirit to engage in such a debate peacefully, and achieve true popular consensus on a new system. With the proposed new constitution in which things change only to remain the same, I fear that window is closing.

UPDATE: Najib Chaouki, a February 20 activist from Rabat, made this statement to the AFP (I’ve translated it from the French):

    “The national coordinators have called for demonstrations on Sunday for a truly democratic constitution and a parliamentary monarchy. The project as it was proposed by the king yesterday doesn’t answer our demands for a true separation of powers. We will protest peacefully on Sunday against this project.”

Ahmed Mediany, an activist from Casablanca, had this to say:

    “The religious status of the king has been greatly strengthened. It’s very unsettling. […] The king preserves the essence of his powers as a political actor. We weren’t expecting that. We are disappointed.”

Morocco’s Early Adopters

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A few years ago, I wrote in my private journal about how social mutants can become heroes in times of stress.

    “When a society remains stable for a long time, the majority who obey its rules are its anchor and its strength — hence the term ‘solid citizens.’ But when a society is in flux and its conditions are changing, the old adaptations no longer work, and it is likely that those at the fringes, the outcasts and eccentrics, will discover qualities that had previously been shunned but are now eminently useful for the survival of the community — precisely because they are eccentric by the common definition, and thus in closer proximity to the new, emerging reality. In this way, those who had been despised become the new heroes, due to their possession of qualities which had never before been put to the test.”

I couldn’t help but be reminded of this when I read an article in Time by Ahmed Benchemsi, the celebrated editor of Nichane and Tel Quel who has gone on to greener pastures in the U.S.

    “For several years, groups of Moroccans have been using the power of social media — as well as the ability to attract the conventional media — to clamor for the freedom of belief, sexual liberty (notably for gays) and other individual freedoms that had until then been unthinkable.
    “The country’s conservative majority was suitably horrified, but the young activists were able to rally growing constituencies among human-rights advocates, leftist groups and the middle-class youth. Even so, the core group of renegades continued to be perceived as little more than a bunch of crazy kids — until they and their sympathizers spearheaded the most powerful wave of change since the kingdom’s independence, half a century ago.”

The activists of the February 20 movement are pioneers of something new in Morocco, a breach in the silence. Now things are debated in public that were spoken of only within one’s intimate circle just a few months ago. If the movement has one central demand (and it does), it is a reexamination of the state from the ground up, since the people can only be governed with their consent. The challenge to the existing order is fundamental, and now that it has come out in the open, it can never be wished away.

Naturally this causes discomfort to tradition-minded folks, who worry that it will open the Pandora’s box of fitna, or division. “Don’t go there,” they say. “It will only bring trouble.” No matter what humiliations they may have endured in their lives, they imagine a society in chaos and fear it could be worse. Can the Moroccan people truly govern themselves? Can donkeys become men? No one has tried it before, so it is a leap into the unknown. Better the misery they know than to risk the impossible.

On February 20, the day of the first protests, I was shocked when I left my apartment to discover that a nearby square, usually a bustling hub of fruit stands, pastry shops, and sandwich restaurants, was shut up tight. Even the next day, our neighborhood grocer wouldn’t open his shop all the way, but stood outside with the gate down until clients passed by. I laughed at this, because it was such an overreaction. Far better to benefit from the extra business the protests would bring! It’s true that there was a night of mayhem in some of the outlying districts of the city — car windows broken, a bank branch burned — but this had nothing to do with the protests themselves. It was opportunistic hooligans who came in after the marchers had gone. In any case, all the marches since then have gone off without a hitch, unless it was the forces of order themselves who broke the calm.

It’s true that the shopkeeper class must believe that daily life would be better off without such troubles. These hardworking folks barely make enough as it is, and the loss of a day’s business is nothing to shrug off. My friend Zakaria wrote a report from the scene of the April 29 march in Casablanca, which took place (by design) in a popular neighborhood rather than in the city center. This was the march that produced the startling video, now famous, of police clubbing a mother who was just a bystander, as her little boy runs away in panic. Zakaria reports that even before the march began, the attitude of some local shopkeepers was hostile, and the authorities did their best to stoke these fears.

    “[A few hours before the protest, a friend told me] ‘Zakaria, I was out for a walk and I noticed there are many secret police and the worst is that some inhabitants are going to submit complaints at the police station against the Feb 20 movement.’ Later, when we arrived to the neighborhood we realized that local authorities represented by ‘mukadem’ and ‘sheikh’ (very low officials) were asking shop keepers and cafés owners to do that claiming that their commercial interests were damaged because of the previous protest. Local authorities as I know from my friends who live in the neighborhood were also asking those people to display signboard on their shops on which they wrote, addressing the Feb 20 movement: ‘get out of our neighborhood,’ ‘who asked you to speak on our behalf,’ ‘don’t get into our affairs’ and such.”

Obviously, no one wants to see a running street battle in their neighborhood. In this case the battle was one-sided, as the video shows — police on foot or on motorcycles, wielding batons, thrash out almost at random, as their prey do their best to run away or evade the blows. There are two possible reactions from local residents who were caught up in events. The first is to blame the protesters for bringing these troubles to their streets. If there had been no march, there would have been no confrontation, and that mother and her child would have gone unmolested. The other response, perhaps more logical, is to blame the source of the violence, the baton-wielding policemen. If the state keeps acting like this, it will expose a brutal and thuggish side which is already well-known to Moroccans from years of unhappy experience. Those who thought the tiger had changed its stripes in recent years will be disabused of their fantasies. But whether you blame the protesters or the authorities, the choice is a painful one. Either you admit that you live in a country where those charged to protect you are capable of turning their batons against women and children, or you bear the burden in silence because you fear social division. This choice already existed before February 20, but the marches are bringing it into the open. Many will blame the protesters at first, but that could change.

I put it to Zakaria in this way:

    “Those who are agitating for change must accept that many people, even the majority, will in the beginning see what they are doing as disruptive, as an unnecessary attack on the social order. But the social order isn’t good in itself, but only insofar as it delivers other, greater goods — like justice and prosperity, for example. So a social order that isn’t providing these goods must be challenged, even torn, before it can be remade in a better way. The test for the people is to weigh the price of change against the price of things staying as they are. Either one is painful, and the activist offers them this painful choice. So he is seen as disruptive, and is blamed for the problem — but the problem was already there, he just exposed it. Eventually, if the activist is right, people will calculate that the pain is greater in staying the same than in changing, and they will decide to change. But in the early stages, the activist must endure being seen as the cause of the pain.”

Does this sound like the quote from the top of this piece, about those who are seen as “outcasts and eccentrics” turning out to be heroes? I think this is the root of any struggle, not just political ones. We could be talking about jazz music, or the invention of the PC. Extraordinary conditions require extraordinary responses, and those who go where others will not, learn those responses before the rest. As I said in my last piece, by shedding the constraints of political parties and recognized leaders, February 20 activists are exposing themselves to more risk, including the risk of being hated, for now, by the shopkeeper class. But they are also learning techniques of networking, collective planning, and communication that will be invaluable in a new, democratic Morocco. They are a democratic mutation, which must seem strange to many Moroccans who have never seen such a rare bird — but they would be completely normal in the streets of New York, Barcelona, or Paris. They are an essential part of what democracy means, and Morocco will never be democratic without them.