While Maximillian Alvarez was inside the Labor Notes conference this past April, attending panels and sharing space with intelligent, hard working organizers, Mel Buer was wandering the conference grounds outside, meeting folks and talking about the joy of being a member of the working class as they sat in the grass and ate their lunches and talked with friends, old and new. There’s something to be said about the people you meet when you’re sharing cigarettes outside a conference center–one such person was today’s guest, adorned in UFCW buttons and sharing his poetry with Mel while they smoked together on a bench near the conference. On this week’s episode of Working People, Mel sat down with labor poet and union grocer George Fish, a wonderful man full of stories about his life and work, his experiences growing up and ultimately leaving the Catholic Church, his politics–honed through decades of life experience–and his relationship to his writing and poetry.
Additional links/info below…
Permanent links below…
Advertisement
Featured Music…
Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song
Studio Production: Mel Buer Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mel Buer:
Hey everybody, it’s your host, Mel Buer, and welcome back everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, dreams, jobs, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and The Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you.
Advertisement
Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. If you love what we do and are looking for more worker and labor-focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network, and please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, friends, and family members. Leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you have recommendations for working folks you’d like us to talk to. And please support the work we do at The Real News by going to therealnews.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world.
I first met George Fish at the Labor Notes Conference in April where we shared a cigarette break outside of the conference hotel and talked briefly about what it meant to us to be part of the labor movement. The energy of the conference was incredible, and the optimism surrounding such a gathering was truly infectious. Before he went back inside to attend the conference, George shared with me some of his poetry about working in a union grocery store. Fascinated by his work and his life experience I shared my contact information and thus began the journey of getting him onto the show. For this episode, we had an interesting conversation about his life, his work as a freelance writer, and his current work as a unionized grocer. At the end of the conversation, George was kind enough to read one of his poems. Welcome to the show, George.
George Fish:
I’m George Fish. I’m a published writer and poet. I also work as an essential worker in the produce department at Kroger here in Indianapolis, Indiana, also known as Indianoplace, the World’s largest county seed. And I’m active in my union, UFCW Local 700, the Indiana Mega Local. I’m in Essential Workers for Democracy. And I view myself as a Gramscian organic intellectual. I didn’t go into my job to organize the working class. I went into my job because I needed a paycheck, and I’m very glad I published two poems so far in Blue Collar Review, the Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature. I have a wonderful editor there, Al Markowitz. By the way, you can look it up, Blue Collar Review is out of Norfolk, Virginia, and it’s an honor to use my poetry to reach my fellow workers, and I’m also reaching my fellow workers on my jam right now because our contract comes up in a year. We got a very pro-company contract and a lot of people are dissatisfied, so I’m trying to organize people to talk about the contract, so in a year we can get a better one.
Advertisement
Mel Buer:
Great. Welcome to the show. I think a great way to just start off this short conversation is to talk a little bit more about your work at Kroger, and your work with the UFCW. When did you start organizing with the UFCW?
George Fish:
Actually, I never started organizing. I got a job there very late in life in 2015. I had applied at Kroger many times before and almost got hired in the late eighties, but didn’t need to hire basically because I was considered too “introvert” according to their personality tests we had to take, but they needed people in 2015, and I got hired, and once I was in the union… By the way, on my first day of orientation, I joined the union and have been an active member since, and being with…
Advertisement
And about a year, a year and a half ago, I got in contact with Essential Workers for Democracy. We were very dissatisfied with our 2022 contract, which a lot of us found great pro-company, and it passed on two votes, the first vote it got roundly rejected, but the union insisted on another vote, saying that only fewer than 10% of those eligible to vote have voted on it. The second time it went through, but 40% voted against it, so there’s a lot of good basis for opposing that contract among my fellow workers, justifiably, and I’ve talked to my fellow workers, they’re concerned about pay, about COLAs, about more time off, about paid sick days, other matters too.
So, I’ve been talking to my fellow workers, just low-key, and following the advice I heard from Labor Notes of 80% listen, 20% talk, which I don’t always do, but getting to know my fellow workers. And I think I’m well regarded there as a union activist who has good things to say, and I hope to encourage them because the contract still weighs weight, and Indiana and Indianapolis do not have a tradition of activism, but we need it. And part of what I feel why is important is letting my fellow workers know that they are the union, it’s not the union rep. By the way, we have a very, very good union rep, a black woman. She doesn’t take any guff from management.
And it’s not the officials, and it’s not the international union officials, it’s not the stewards, it is us, the rank and file. And I think that a lot of people have taken inspiration from what the Teamsters and what the UFCW were able to do because they had a rank-and-file voice. And that’s what I’m trying to do within the UFCW. And I’m proud to be a union member, and I’m very glad to be a union member because I have protections that I worked… I worked 14 years in non-union shops as a temp, and, of course, had no rights. And we always dreaded they’d say, “Management wants to talk to you,” then they dress you down, and dismiss you from your job. And if you were lucky, you got unemployment compensation. If you weren’t lucky, you didn’t. But I’ve got this job security, and I tell you what, unions are a working man or woman’s best friend.
Mel Buer:
Advertisement
I agree. Yeah. I didn’t have union representation until I started this job at The Real News. The difference between the work I was doing in non-union shops or teaching or working as a freelance journalist, it’s night and day, and I really appreciate the ability to be able to have a bit more say in how the workplace runs and to be respected for that. So, I definitely appreciate the union difference here, and I’m glad that you have also noticed that. We met outside of Labor Notes, sharing a cigarette, and you had showed me some of your poetry, and you have just described yourself as a Gramscian intellectual working-class poet. When did you start writing poetry? What inspired you to start writing?
George Fish:
Actually, I had for a long time wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately, I had an alcohol habit, so I was drunkenly talking about writing instead of really writing. Back in the fall of 1980, I was in my early thirties. I was in forced sobriety for lack of money, and I actually wrote a short story to get published, and I was so excited that I started pursuing it from then on. And then, in 1984, had my first article, In These Times, that was followed by an article Monthly Review. So I started writing for the National Left Brass. I worked on a staff of a small magazine here in Indianapolis.
I started poetry, Christmas Eve 2004, I was in an angry mood from my ex-Catholicism, and I wrote a bunch of very angry irreligious poems just as therapy, and then put them aside and looked at them two weeks later and saw that a couple of them really worked out. So then, I started pursuing poetry and published my first poem in 2007 in the Indianapolis area-based Tipton Poetry Journal. And I’ve had about 30 poems published nationally, mostly in small Indiana publications, but also in the website, New Politics, and also, Blue Collar Review.
Advertisement
So I combine both working and writing, and unfortunately, writing doesn’t pay anymore, so I have to keep my day job at Kroger, where I’m a produce stocker, and I’m an older worker. I’m now in my late seventies, and I can’t afford to retire because of a poor work record for 38 years, so I don’t get that much in social security. But I do get a small pension for the union, and thanks to the union, which even though I was still working, contacted me, says, “You eligible for this pension.” So I was really grateful for the union, making sure that I got my pension money before I was too old to receive it or dead, and so I’m glad for that. And my wages, unfortunately, make up 69% of my income, so I still have to work.
It’s a physical blue-collar job. I’m on my feet eight hours a day, heavy-lifting of 50-pound bags of onions and potatoes, 30-pound bags of onions, 40-pound boxes of bananas. But it gets tiring, and as long as I can hold up to it, I’ll do it because, unfortunately, there is so little social safety net, even for the elders, that should I be too old to work, I would have such a drastic drop in income that I would really be hurting. So, I combine all three and write whenever I can because writing is my lifeblood. It gives me a sense of wanting to live, and be a part of life, and contribute. And I’m glad to say a lot of people like my writing. They like my ironic sense of humor. You see, I have a sardonic sense of humor. That’s because I have a million one-liners. I keep them so tense like sardines. Yes, I make a pun out of anything. So, I came late in life, but I’m glad, and it’s good to be alive after a rough, rough time growing up.
Mel Buer:
Yeah. Do you explore any of these experiences working at the age that you’re working, or the experiences that you’ve had in just in the last 30 years of your life? Are these some of the themes that you explore in your poetry?
Advertisement
George Fish:
Not yet. My poetry can be very eclectic. I’ve written a lot of things. Basically, yes, they’re all explored indirectly. I had a hellish childhood, being raised Catholic in small towns, a lot of it that was in the Pope Pius, the 12th era, was before Vatican II, and I became an atheist at 18 when I entered college. By the way, I have a Bachelor’s in economics from IU Bloomington, Indiana University Bloomington. But I explore it indirectly because I write a lot of irreligious poetry that my good ex-Catholic friend, that John has said, is theologically correct. So it’s highly irrelevant, but yet it’s theologically correct because I get back at the Catholic Church by skewering on them with my poetry. But you’ve given suggestions on more topics I can write about.
My first poem in Blue Collar Review is based on a true story of an encounter with an obnoxious manager at Kroger, that inspired me to write a poem. And like I said, I was encouraged by Blue Collar Review editor, Al Markowitz, who is a very helpful editor and always takes the time to give you a personal letter of critique if he doesn’t accept something or he wants to change. He’s very good in that realm, and I’m glad to say that every writer really benefits from a good editor.
Mel Buer:
Advertisement
I agree. My editor is here at The Real News, and the editors that I’ve worked with over the last, oh, 10 years or so, are really the reason why I improve, frankly. I know that I’m going to give you time at the end of the episode to read a selection from one of your poems, but I really of want to drive home some of the other themes that maybe you work with, so we’ve already talked about traumatic upbringing within Catholicism. I am also a born and raised Catholic, and grew up in the Catholic Church, probably had quite a different experience than you did, but still walked away from my relationship with that faith at a younger age, in the last 10 years or so.
George Fish:
You’re a lot younger, I can tell by looking at you. You’re a lot younger. You’re a lot younger than me. I’m usually old enough to be your father, if not your grandfather.
Mel Buer:
Advertisement
Yeah, I’m 32. Yep. But I went to high school in the Catholic Church, so I graduated into… I was 18 or 19, and then I went to a Catholic Jesuit University for two years in Colorado, so it was just… I don’t know, natural progression into the various stages of education that is controlled by the Church, and then fell out of it quite quickly, and also had struggles with alcohol and found there was no room for both faith and my addiction at the time. And so, I don’t know, I felt left behind by God and I used to write poetry about the same stuff. You get angry when you grow up in a faith like that and you find that your life circumstances don’t quite match up with what is supposed to happen or what you think is supposed to happen.
And so, I can understand wanting to write back to that. And I think that poetry specifically has this unique characteristic where you can start and have those conversations with the pieces of your life that you are most affected by. And I was wondering, are there other moments in your writing career in the last 30 or so years where you found that writing has particularly helped with, whether it be the alcohol, or the questioning of your faith, or other moments in your 30 years?
George Fish:
Yes, important. When I started writing seriously on a regular basis, I was writing for a number of small magazines that had deadlines. It helped me overcome my horrible previous habit of procrastination because editors just didn’t mess around when you didn’t make deadlines, so it got me off… It helped me break through procrastination because I had to meet deadlines. I had to be good fast, and I think it helped me learn to be good fast because I was an active freelance writer-journalist who had to produce something every week or every month and had to do it, so I did it. You don’t want an editor scorned on your back.
Advertisement
I want to thank you for sharing. We have a very similar parallel experiences. I also want to say that because of my writing, my writer’s biography is in Who’s Who in America for both 2019, 2020, that I know of. So, everybody check that out at the library, and I’m very glad that writing has given me my Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame, so if I may be egotistical or individualistic on that regard, but every writer, when I think about writing, writing is a very egotistical business because when you’re a writer, you have the chutzpah to believe that what you have to say is so well written and so incisive and so interesting that total strangers will read you. Yeah.
Mel Buer:
Yeah. What are some of the things that you did write about, and you said you got published in In These Times and other publications locally and elsewhere, what was the focus of your journalism beat?
George Fish:
Advertisement
Lots of things. I would be assigned articles by my editors in the magazines. I wrote on things, I wrote for many left publications, Indiana themes. I wrote about how the Indianapolis Colts extorted the city to pay for an expensive stadium. That was the Colts Extortion Board. That article I wrote for Against the Current. I wrote a lot on Indiana issues because that was your Indiana publications. When Indiana signed a Religious Freedom Act that discriminated against gays, I wrote a poem about that, and that was published in New Politics. So, I’ve combined my political and other interests with my poetry and writing, and not just political interest, I also wrote a poem that was published, T.S. Eliot Was Wrong, which starts out with the famous epigraph from T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land, “April was the cruelest month,” and I write that, but T.S. Eliot was wrong, very wrong. Although his language is vivid, picturesque, I say, “April was not the cruelest month. January is because January is cold and freezing and flu season.”
I write on a lot of different themes, but a lot of irreligious themes and a lot of political themes. And I’m a great lover of blues music and punk rock, and also classic rock and roll, including 1950s rock and roll. And I have a special fondness for early ’62 to ’65 Beatles because I think the Beatles did some of the greatest teeny-bop ever been done in rock and roll, early Beatles song. I don’t want to be just a one-dimensional person. I’m more than just a one-dimensional political walk. I just want to be as fully engaged in life as I can, and I’ve been successful at it so that I’m not just a jack of all trades and a master of none. As my old academic advisor, IU Bloomington, he said, and I quote, “Knowledgeable and unusual variety of activities, and that’s wonderful.” Thank you. Yeah.
Mel Buer:
Yeah. Do you ascribe to a certain type of leftist politics? Is there a specific ideology or political tradition that you find you identify with?
Advertisement
George Fish:
Well, for a long time, I was part of the Trotskyist far left, but now I consider myself a social Democrat, a democratic socialist in the sense of Michael Harrington, the left wing of the feasible. I think what’s important now, and of course, as I get older, it becomes more important because I know that my days on this planet are numbered. I want to see results in the here and now for me and for my fellow workers. And one of the big issues that concerns me, of course, is the Republican threats to social security and Medicare, which had my age, 77, I rely on.
But, yes, I would consider myself right now an anti-authoritarian democratic socialist, social Democrat. I was very, very enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, and wrote an article in New Politics praising Bernie Sanders 2016 candidacy when he announced it in 2015 and started a discussion on that going on in New Politics. So, basically, I think revolution is a will of the wits, I don’t think it’s going to happen, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do things to make our lives better in the here and now, and that’s what my politics is about now.
Mel Buer:
Advertisement
I tend to agree, pragmatic politics at this current moment.
George Fish:
And that was one of the things always so exciting about the Labor Notes Conference this past April 19th to 21st, is that it’s obvious now to me that the left wing of the labor movement is now a mainstream part of the labor movement. It’s not a fringe. It’s when 4,700 union activists from all over the country gather in one spot, you know you’re not a fringe. You may be a minority voice, but you are an important voice in the labor movement itself now, which is so different from the old Meany-Kirkland AFL-CIO I remember.
Mel Buer:
Advertisement
I was going to ask, in the last couple of years, there is this resurgence of… Not just in the popularity of, or I would say positive thinking about labor organizing, but also the new organizing and a… Oh, I don’t know, it’s like the clouds broke and the sun came out for the first time in a long time. What is the most exciting thing based on your experience of unions in the past and what we’re seeing in the last couple of years? What is the most exciting thing about seeing this resurgence in labor activity?
George Fish:
I think in the emergence of the organization active in Essential Workers for Democracy, taking a cue from what was done in the Teamsters and the UAW and trying to democratize a very top-down union, the UFCW, which represents over a million people and a lot of in the groceries and food processing who really need good unionism. And I think that’s been an honor to be able to participate with EW for the Essential Workers for Democracy and the good people who are involved with it, who are seasoned union militants, mostly on the West Coast, especially in the UFCW mega local, Local 3000, which represents Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, but also strong base in California. And we are all over the country, even in the Midwest, which lacks in activist culture.
Mel Buer:
Advertisement
Yeah, I see a lot of what UFCW 3000 is doing here on the West Coast because I’m based in Los Angeles currently. And it’s really exciting to see that not just the UFCW, but other unions are taking on this inspiration of creating reform movements inside of unions. They care so much about the way the union operates and they want to see it improve. They want this to be a new generation of union activists who are participating democratically within the institution of the labor union. And I think that is a really exciting piece of the new era of union organizing, this more modern era of union organizing.
George Fish:
Oh, yes, in for a long haul, it took a long time for UAW, for democracy, to win, but it did with Shawn Fain, it took a long time for TDU, Teams for Democratic Union, to make a difference, but it did. And one man, one vote, which encourages the rank and file to participate, and as I said before, it’s… Give us a sense that we are the union, it’s not the officials, it’s not the union rep, it’s not the stewards, it’s we ourselves, the rank and file, and when we have a voice, we really feel empowered to make a difference in our unions I feel.
Mel Buer:
Advertisement
Absolutely. Well, we’re getting to the end of our conversation, but I did want to give you time to… I would say we probably have time for one poem, or one selection from one of your poems. Which one would you like to read, and go ahead when you’re ready?
George Fish:
I would read my very first one, which is a show one, it’s only one page based on a true story that happened to be at Kroger in 2021, during the time of COVID when we had to wear mask and my mask inadvertently came… Wasn’t on my face that I got chewed up by a manager, and then a non-union shop would’ve gotten fired for what I did, but had protection because there the union, and was in Blue Collar Review in the spring of 2022. It’s called, I’m so glad I’m working in the union workplace.
Mel Buer:
Advertisement
All right, go ahead.
George Fish:
This was especially given home to me during the height of COVID when upset because the heavy box on an ill-stacked pallet nearly fell on my foot. I was so upset I forgot to pull up my face mask. It was on my face, attached over my ears, but in my upset, I’d forgotten to pull it up. Was obnoxiously reprimanded it by obnoxious assistant manager, and I blew up angrily in his face, in a non-union workplace, I would’ve been fired, perhaps some, barely. Instead, rather than have to face that assistant manager the following day, I simply went to the store manager and requested a personal day off, which was granted because the ability to do so was part of the union contract. Going home, I immediately applied through the union for a month’s disability lead, which was also granted. In the meantime, the nasty assistant manager was forced to take a vacation, and when I came back to work a month later, not only had I calmed down, he had too. He wasn’t hassling me any longer as he had, and even more beneficially, I had a job to return to. That is what union protection is all about. Ensuring you don’t pay through the nose for an inadvertent mistake by getting fired for.
And that is the poem I read to great satisfaction and appreciation at the Great Labor Arts Exchange, at the Labor Notes Conference, and I’m very proud of that all.
Advertisement
Mel Buer:
You should be. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about your writing, to talk about your poetry, and it’s been a joy talking to you, and I’m really glad that we finally, after a couple of months, got a chance to sit down and really discuss what makes your writing and your life experience unique. So, thank you so much for coming on, George. I really appreciate it.
George Fish:
Great. Appreciate it. And please send me an email with the link to the video so I can share it with others.
Advertisement
Mel Buer:
Absolutely. And as always, I want to thank you all for listening, and thank you for caring.
We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes we’ve got going there for our patrons. And go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network, where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for The Real News newsletters so you never miss a story, and help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today.
Once again, I’m Mel Buer, and we’ll see you next time.
Advertisement
Related
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
No publication has bettered the FT for the coverage of Boeing’s downward and tragic flight path resulting from putting financial engineering (sic) before real engineering. Rereading John Gapper’s piece about the revival of Rolls-Royce’s fortunes (Opinion, September 13) I was surprised to see no words of caution about the possible consequences of too much “squeezing” of a product that must work perfectly throughout its life, and no warning on the potential for a Boeing outcome.
For me, I am always reassured when I look out from a window seat to see the classic black and silver RR logo on the engine housing. Long may this continue.
Katie Martin A great moment in history has arrived. Rob Armstrong was right about something. Quite against the run of play — shush, Rob — quite against the run of play, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates — hurrah — from the highest level in decades, and for the first time since the pandemic. And what’s more, it went large, cutting by half-a-point, precisely as my esteemed colleague had predicted.
What kind of voodoo is this? Does the Fed know something horrible we don’t? Cutting by half-a-point is normally a crisis measure, a cry for help. Should we panic about a recession? And really, Rob was right. End times.
Today on the show, we’re going to explain how come investors are ignoring the usual script and taking this bumper cut as a good thing. This is Unhedged, the markets and finance podcast from the Financial Times and Pushkin. I’m Katie Martin, a markets columnist here at FT Towers in London. And listeners, I must tell you, the saddest of things has happened. I’m joined by Rob Armstrong, lord of the Unhedged newsletter. But the sad thing is he’s dialling in from his sickbed. Rob, I’m sorry, you’re poorly.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong I am poorly. It’s terrible. But on a 50-basis-point day, the dead shall rise from their graves. The angels shall sing. And we all . . . we’re all gonna talk about it.
Katie Martin Yes. Good, strong Barry White vibes I’m getting from this voice you’re busting out today. So, as you say, half a percentage point from the Fed; that’s 50 basis points in market money. Normally central banks love being super boring and they normally move by quarter-point increments. So, I mean, was it the shock of being right about the 50-basis-point thing that pushed you over the edge into sickness?
Robert Armstrong It could have been. I’m so accustomed to getting this wrong now that it was really paralysing. However, I think, you know, you mentioned earlier, why is the market kind of taking this in stride and seeing this as a good thing? And I think it’s a bit of a communications success by the Fed in that they told the story about this, that they’re not doing this because they have to, because it’s an emergency. They’re doing it because they can.
Katie Martin So gangster.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong And the reason they can is because they’ve kind of beaten inflation. Right?
Katie Martin So for people who, unlike us, have a life and don’t sit around watching central bank press conferences, the way this works is they do the decision, they say, here you are, here’s your 25 or 50 whatever basis points, or we’re on hold. This time around, it was 50 basis points.
And then just a little while later, there’s a press conference where the chairman, Jay Powell, gets up in front of like all of the kind of most pointy headed Fed journalists in the world and fields whatever questions. There’s a statement, and then he field whatever questions they want to throw at him. And this for him was the point of highest danger, because the risk of giving the impression somehow that . . .
Robert Armstrong Yes.
Advertisement
Katie Martin Yeah, we’re really worried. That’s why we’ve done 50. That was a serious risk, right? But instead, what happened?
Robert Armstrong Well, right from the press release announcing the 50 basis cut, they tweaked the language in the press release so that it was more affirmative and strong on the topic of inflation. We’re really pleased how it’s going on inflation.
Katie Martin Right, right.
Robert Armstrong And then in the press release, I mean in the press conference, he just reinforced that point again and again. The line he repeated was the labour market is fine, it’s healthy. It is at a good level. We don’t need it to get any better. We’re not trying to improve it, but we have the freedom to make sure it stays as good as it is.
Advertisement
And that message seems to have gone through. Markets didn’t move yesterday afternoon. And as a very, you know, opening minutes of trading this morning, stocks are up. So that message seems to have gotten through.
Katie Martin Yeah. That is skills, actually. You know, I will hand it to them. Because, you know, it’s . . . we’ve said this before on this podcast. Like, it’s so easy to like throw stones and peanuts at the Fed or the European Central Bank, the Bank of England or whatever and say they messed this up. But, like, this stuff is hard. Getting the markets to come away with that sort of impression is not to be taken for granted.
Robert Armstrong It’s not to be taken for granted. I agree. However, I will note any time you’re trying to spin a narrative and you want people to believe it, one thing that really helps is if the narrative is true. And in this case, I think it broadly is.
I think inflation really does look like it’s whipped. It’s really either at or very close to 2 per cent. And look, with an unemployment rate of 4.2 per cent and basically no increase in lay-offs and the economy is still adding jobs, I think the economy is pretty good. So it’s not like he had to spin a magical tale of unicorns and wizards here. He just had to, you know, make a case based on the facts.
Advertisement
Katie Martin Yeah. And and that kind of goes back to the fact that the Fed is not quite like all the central banks in that it has to look after inflation, but it also has to look after the jobs market. And so, you know, again, the risk is that you come away from a decision like this and think, well, you know, those little cracks that we’ve seen in the jobs market, maybe they’re the start of something really big and hairy and awful, but he seems to have massaged this one away.
Robert Armstrong Indeed. Impressive performance.
Katie Martin And so the other thing they do in this press conference is they give the general public and sad nerds like us a little bit of a taster about what’s coming next from the Fed, right. So they’re always, like, central bankers are at pains to say none of this stuff is a promise. This is just our kind of best current understanding of the state of the universe. But so, then you end up with this thing called — drumroll — the dot.
Robert Armstrong The dot plot.
Advertisement
Katie Martin The dot plot. Explain for normal people what the dot plot is.
Robert Armstrong OK. So it’s kind of a grid. And along the bottom are the years 2024 through 2027, and then another column for the infinite future. And then there’s a range of interest rates going up and down on the side. And every member of the monetary policy committee puts a little dot in each year column where they think the rate is gonna be in that year. Cue much speculation about what all this means, how they’ve changed their mind since the last dot plot and, you know, the implications of all of this.
Katie Martin Whose dot is whose? We’ll never know.
Robert Armstrong They don’t reveal whose dot is whose. That’s an important point. And by the way, Katie, according to everything we hear out of the Fed, having invented this device, which was supposed to increase clarity and make everyone’s life easier, everyone in the Fed now hates it and wishes it would go away . . .
Advertisement
Katie Martin Damn you, dot plot!
Robert Armstrong Because it just causes endless, idiotic little niggling questions from people like me and you. But once you’ve invented something like this, if you take it away, people get upset.
Katie Martin So you look at the dots and you look at what Jay Powell was saying at the press conference and what does it all add up to? Does it mean that, like, OK, they’ve started with 50 basis points, so like 50 is the new 25? Get used to it, boys and girls?
Robert Armstrong If you look at the dot plot and their kind of aggregate expectations of where rates are gonna go, it is not that 50 is the new 25. The implication is that the rate of cuts is going to be very measured — or might I say stately, from here until they reach their target.
Advertisement
Katie Martin Right, right.
Robert Armstrong And, you know, another point to mention here is where they think they need to go is very important. That’s the kind of last part of the dot plot is, like, where should interest rates be when everything is normal again?
Katie Martin Because that will happen one day. And . . .
Robert Armstrong Yeah, that will happen. They think it’s gonna happen sometime around 2026, 27. We’ll get to where it’s about normal and they’re looking for about 3 per cent rates in the long run and that . . . so that’s where we’re going to. Just to set the context, we cut from 5.5 per cent to 5 per cent yesterday. And the map of the dot plot shows us moving towards a little under 3 per cent over time. And it’s a matter of how quickly are we going to get there, and along the way, are we going to change our mind and decide we have to go somewhere else?
Advertisement
Katie Martin Yeah. So is there a kind of joyful hope that maybe the Fed could be, like, boring again and it can just sort of do 25 basis points here and there and just take this kind of glide path lowering rates that doesn’t get people excited any more?
Robert Armstrong Well, this is the problem about the future is that it is hard to predict and particularly hard to predict with interest rates. The issue is that the economy, the structure of the economy has changed a lot in the last couple of years because of the pandemic and for other reasons. So that final destination point I talked about, which economists call the neutral rate, which is the just normal, everything is boring and steady rate of interest in the economy where everyone has a job, there’s no inflation, everything’s cool, the neutral rate. We don’t know what that number is.
And Jay Powell has this line about it. We know it by its works. And what that means, stated less calmly, is we know it when we screw it up. In other words, we hit it, we go past it. We push interest rates above the neutral rate and stocks have a big puke and the economy starts to slow down and people get fired or we travel too far below it and inflation starts again. So like the Fed over the next couple of years is like walking down this passage in the complete dark and it knows it can’t touch the wall on its left or the wall on its right. Right? But it doesn’t know the shape of the passageway, what direction it’s supposed to go. So it’s just like, well, I sure hope we’re going this way. Dee-dee-dee. And hope it doesn’t hit too low or too high along the way.
Katie Martin Hope it doesn’t just walk into a wall.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong The history of interest rates is history of feeling your way along in the dark.
Katie Martin Rob, that’s the most lyrical thing I’ve ever heard you say.
Robert Armstrong Isn’t it? It’s poetry. It’s because I’m so ill. These could be the final words of a dying man.
Katie Martin What meds are you on for this cold you’ve got?
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong This could be my legacy, Katie. (Laughter)
Katie Martin I feel like we should kind of wrap up quite soon before you just like expire during the recording.
Robert Armstrong I do. As much as I like you, I’d like to have a few words with my wife before I shove off.
Katie Martin But I will ask you, are we ever going back to like zero interest rates, do you think? Or are we gonna look back on that…
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong I feel like I’ve been asking a lot of questions. This is a great question, Katie, but let me push it back on you. We had this wild period in the last decade where there was like a gajillion dollars of sovereign bonds issued at a negative interest rate.
Katie Martin I think that was something like $18tn or something.
Robert Armstrong Money was free. It was bonkers. And it was like the Fed funds rate was up against zero. Money was free. We were all in Silicon Valley inventing start-ups whatever, doing our thing. Do you think we’re going back to that? Like once this incident, the pandemic and everything after is over, are we going back?
Katie Martin I mean, I can’t see it. I buy the narratives that are kicking around about inflation now being structurally higher, right? There’s a climate emergency. There’s a global defence emergency. There is all sorts of things that governments need to spend lots of money on, borrow lots of money for, all things being equal. And then there’s the whole supply chain thing after COVID and with geopolitics yada-yada.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong And the world is getting older, right? And so when old people create demand for savings, that drives interest rates up, right?
Katie Martin Ah, old people. Yeah.
Robert Armstrong Old people.
Katie Martin But I think also before we wrap up, we should note that although you were right, about 50 basis points, I was right about the timing. I said on this here very podcast back in, I think it was June 2023, the . . . Not 24. 23. That the Fed is not gonna cut rates till the third quarter this year. So what I’m saying is I’m the genius here. You’re just like a (overlapping speech) took a coin flip.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong You’re basically Cassandra. Doomed to see the future and not be believed.
Katie Martin I’m going to . . .
Robert Armstrong Do I have the right mythological figure there? I think that was Cassandra.
Katie Martin Absolutely no idea. But I’m going to set up a hedge fund called like hunch capital where I can invest your money for two and 20. (Laughter) Based on nothing but pure hunches. Do you want in? Because like my hunch on that, your hunch on the other. I think we’re going to make good money.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong We could. We could be rich people, Katie. But I will answer your question seriously. I think interest rates are higher now. We’re not going back to zero. I will end on that serious point.
Katie Martin Yeah, yeah.
Robert Armstrong Governments are spending too much. They have to spend too much. There’s loads of old people. There’s the green stuff has to be funded. Productivity might be rising possibly because of AI. We are going into a higher interest rate world. And by the way, the Fed thinks that. If you look at the history of the Fed’s view of what the long term normal interest rate is, that has been steadily ticking higher over the last year and a half or so.
Katie Martin So rates have come down already pretty hard, but don’t get yourself carried away with thinking that we’re going back to zero, because ain’t . . . I mean.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong No. Ain’t gonna happen. Nope.
Katie Martin Ain’t gonna happen.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
On that bombshell, we’re going to be back in a sec with Long/Short.
Advertisement
[MUSIC PLAYING]
OK, now it’s time for Long/Short, that part of the show where we go long a thing we love, short a thing we hate. Rob, I feel like you should go first before you completely lose your voice. (Laughter)
Robert Armstrong Well, I’m going to go short wellbeing. And I say this not because my wellbeing is poor right now, but because of an article our colleague Joshua Franklin, wrote in the Financial Times yesterday that says, I’m quoting here, JPMorgan Chase has tasked one of its bankers with overseeing the company’s junior banker program, a response to renewed concerns about working conditions for young employees. And it goes on that this poor person is gonna have to make sure all these young investment bankers are happy and have work-life balance. I think investment bankers owe it to the rest of us to be miserable.
Katie Martin Right.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong They make a lot of money. They are the lords of the universe. They should not be happy. Their wellbeing should be awful. And that’s what you’re getting paid for. So I think JPMorgan Chase is doing the wrong thing here. And they need to appoint a banker to oversee the what’s the opposite of wellbeing. Unwell being of their junior bankers.
Katie Martin You’re a very, very mean person and you just want everyone to be sad like you.
Robert Armstrong No, if you want to be happy, become a journalist and make no money. If you want to be rich, become a banker and like get divorced and have your kids hate you. It’s just the normal way of life. (Laughter)
Katie Martin Well, I am long European banking merger drama. So if you’ve missed it, the German government is, like, quite scratchy and unhappy about a potential takeover of Commerzbank by Italy’s UniCredit. It’s the talk of the town. Everyone is kind of, you know, huddled around in bars in the city asking like, how the hell did UniCredit manage to amass like a nine per cent stake in this thing? Like that doesn’t seem like a good strategic move. There’s a lot of excitement over the motives. My interest here is that this is just like the good old days of European banking mergers with like very important European bankers wearing gilets under their jackets going around in like big fast cars and, you know, chatting away on their mobile phones and being masters of the universe.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong I just wish they would get along with it. As far as I know, in continental Europe, there’s actually more banks than people.
Katie Martin Yeah, it’s like sheep in New Zealand. You’ve just got . . . (Laughter)
Robert Armstrong They just need. I mean, as long as I’ve been in finance, people have been rattling on about how banking in Europe was going to consolidate. The industry was finally going to make some. They just need . . . I mean, as long as I’ve been in finance, people have been rattling on about how banking in Europe was going to consolidate. The industry was finally going to make some money and it was going be able to compete with the US. And then it’s like, you know, some Germans get mad at some Italians, it never happens and the cycle turns again.
Katie Martin Yeah, it’s like we want consolidation, but no, no, no, no, no. Not like that.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong Not like that.
Katie Martin Anything but that.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And I am here for the drama is all I’m saying.
Advertisement
Robert Armstrong Right on. I love it.
Katie Martin OK, listeners, we are going to be back in your feed on Tuesday if Rob makes it that long, but listen up anyway, wherever you get your podcasts.
Unhedged is produced by Jake Harper and edited by Bryant Urstadt. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. We had additional help from Topher Forhecz. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Special thanks to Laura Clarke, Alastair Mackie, Gretta Cohn and Natalie Sadler. FT premium subscribers can get the Unhedged newsletter for free. A 30-day free trial is available to everyone else. Just go to FT.com/unhedgedoffer. I’m Katie Martin. Thanks for listening.
Republicans in North Carolina and nationally are assessing the potential fallout for former President Donald Trump from a bombshell report alleging that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the party’s gubernatorial nominee, posted disturbing and inflammatory statements on a forum of a pornographic website.
CNN reported Thursday that Robinson, behind an anonymous username he allegedly used elsewhere, made the comments more than a decade ago, including supporting slavery, calling himself a “black NAZI” and recalling memories of him “peeping” on women in the shower as a 14-year-old.
ABC News has not independently verified the comments were made by Robinson, and he insisted in a video posted to X prior to the story’s publication that “those are not the words of Mark Robinson.”
But Robinson, a Donald Trump ally, already has a history of incendiary remarks about Jews, gay people and others, and elections in North Carolina, one of the nation’s marquee swing states, rest on a knife’s edge, raising questions of how much the latest news will impact his race and other Republicans on the ballot with him — including the former president.
Advertisement
“I think this only heightens the level of toxicity that the Robinson campaign has, and the real question becomes, what’s the radioactive fallout at the top of the ticket along with down the ballot for Republicans here in North Carolina?” asked Michael Bitzer, the Politics Department chair at Catawba College.
“This cannot be something that the voters aren’t going to recognize and probably play more into softening the Republican support. Is it isolated only to Robinson’s campaign, or does it start to impact Trump? Does it impact other statewide executive Republicans as well? We’ll just have to wait and see, but this feels like a pretty significant event in North Carolina politics.”
Robinson, who casts himself as a conservative family man and is running for North Carolina’s open governorship against Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein, is already behind in the polls.
Advertisement
PHOTO: Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, R-NC., speaking on the first day of the Republican National Convention, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
While he holds statewide office and has broad name recognition, Robinson boasts a highly controversial record, including calling the Holocaust “hogwash” and homosexuality “filth,” and he drew claims of hypocrisy when he admitted this year that he had paid for his wife to get an abortion, seemingly in contrast with his stated opposition to the procedure, which he’d previously likened to “murder” and “genocide.”
North Carolina’s gubernatorial race is still considered competitive given the state’s tight partisan divide, but Republicans in the state told ABC News they had already viewed him as trailing, and that Thursday’s report won’t help.
“He’s already got a lengthy history of publishing comments like that on the internet. These are perhaps a little more graphic. In terms of does this by itself serve as a guillotine, I don’t know. But it feels like the cumulative weight is starting to add up now,” said one North Carolina GOP strategist. “It flies in the face of everything he presents of himself publicly. So, cumulatively plus the hypocrisy of this, it’s obviously hurtful to him.”
Republicans were more divided on what it means beyond Robinson’s own candidacy.
Advertisement
North Carolina is a must-win state for Trump, and losing it would impose significant pressure on him to perform in other swing states.
Trump is already running ahead of Robinson — while polls show Robinson trailing, they also show a neck-and-neck race in the state between the former president and Vice President Kamala Harris. The main question now is whether the news depresses Republican turnout in a state where even a small nudge in turnout one way or the other can make decide the victor.
“[Robinson] was already toast. The question is if it hurts Trump, something the campaign is very worried about,” said Doug Heye, a veteran GOP strategist with experience working in North Carolina. “It doesn’t directly cost him voters, but his endorsed pick continues to be a big distraction and has no money to drive out the vote.”
“He’s a baby blue anchor around Trump’s chances in the Tar Heel State,” added Trump donor Dan Eberhart. “This is not good news for Trump’s campaign at all.”
Advertisement
PHOTO: North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson speaks at the Faith and Freedom Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton on June 21, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images, FILE)
Democrats are already seizing on the news to try to connect Robinson to Trump, who has repeatedly praised him, even calling him at one point “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
Kamala HQ, an X page that serves as one of the Harris campaign’s rapid response tools, posted a slate of videos featuring Trump speaking positively about Robinson.
“His campaign was toast before this story, so the real impact is on all of the Republicans who have endorsed and campaigned alongside him,” said Bruce Thompson, a North Carolina Democratic fundraiser.
However, Trump has been able to navigate his own headwinds, including felony convictions in New York, questioning Harris’ race and more to remain the leader of his party and a viable presidential candidate, leading some Republicans to doubt that Robinson’s struggles will impact the presidential campaign.
“Doubt it impacts at all down-ballot,” said Dave Carney, a GOP strategist who chairs a pro-Trump super PAC.
“I don’t think it helps, but it won’t hurt,” added Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary.
PHOTO: Mark Robinson, Lt. Governor of N.C. and candidate for Governor, delivers remarks prior to Republican presidential nominee former President Trump speaking at a campaign event at Harrah’s Cherokee Center on Aug. 14, 2024 in Asheville, N.C. (Grant Baldwin/Getty Images)
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt sounded a confident note, saying in a statement that the former president’s team would “not take our eye off the ball.”
Advertisement
“President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving this country. North Carolina is a vital part of that plan. We are confident that as voters compare the Trump record of a strong economy, low inflation, a secure border, and safe streets, with the failures of Biden-Harris, then President Trump will win the Tarheel State once again,” she said.”
Still, sources familiar with the matter said the Trump campaign was bracing for a story to come out about Robinson and is planning on putting more distance between the former president and the embattled nominee Robinson — but initially did not have plans to call on him to drop out.
“He seems to not be impacted by what’s going on down-ballot underneath him,” the North Carolina Republican strategist said of Trump. “There’s no way it helps him. But does it hurt him? I don’t know, I think that’s an open question.”
According to a 2022 report by Article 19, an international organization that documents and champions freedom of expression, 80 percent of the world’s population lives with less freedom of expression today than did ten years ago. The eradication of basic freedoms and rights is partly due to the pervasive normalization of censorship. Across media platforms, news outlets, schools, universities, libraries, museums, and public and private spaces, governments, powerful corporations, and influential pressure groups are suppressing freedom of expression and censoring viewpoints deemed to be unpopular or dangerous. Unfortunately, physical assaults, legal restrictions, and retaliation against journalists, students, and faculty alike have become all too common, resulting in the suppression of dissenting voices and, more broadly, the muffling and disappearance of critical information, controversial topics, and alternative narratives from public discourse.
We collaborated with an accomplished group of international scholars and journalists to document this disturbing trend in Censorship, Digital Media and the Global Crackdown on Freedom of Expression (Peter Lang 2024). Our collective work analyzed contemporary and historical methods of censorship and anti-democratic impulses that threaten civil society, human rights, and freedoms of information and expression around the world today. The collection explains how a rising tide of political tyranny coupled with the expansion of corporate power is stifling dissent, online expression, news reporting, political debate, and academic freedom from the United States and Europe to the Global South.
Advertisement
The Assault on Press Freedom
Our volume reveals an epidemic of censorship and attacks on journalists and free speech around the globe. Although completed prior to the horrifying atrocities of October 7, 2023, in Israel, the text provides context for understanding that Israeli violence against Palestinians since October 7, including the murder of journalists, has been decades in the making. This strategy initially took hold with the assassination of the veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American, as she documented Israel’s occupation of Jenin. The world has now witnessed the full flowering of the Israeli-state aggression against Palestinians that led to her murder. To date, Israel has killed more than 100 media workers in Gaza, raising the concern and outrage of numerous press freedom organizations and seventy UN member states that have now called for international investigations into each one of the murders. As the International Federation of Journalists reported, “Killing journalists is a war crime that undermines the most basic human rights.”
Journalists around the globe are repeatedly targeted because their profession, which is protected constitutionally in many nations, exists to draw attention to abuses of power. Thus, it is no surprise that the rise in global censorship has entailed the targeting of journalists with violence, imprisonment, and harassment. In Russia, journalists are jailed and die in custody, as they do in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, and Hong Kong. In Mexico, there are “silenced zones,” controlled by a deadly collaboration between drug gangs and government corruption, where journalists are routinely killed. In 2022, Mexico was the most dangerous country for journalists outside of a war zone.
The assault on press freedom has also been normalized in self-proclaimed democracies such as the United Kingdom, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been imprisoned for more than five years, and in the United States, which has targeted Assange with espionage charges simply for promoting freedom of information. Although US presidents and other national figures often refer to the United States as “the leader of the free world,” the United States now ranks 55th in the world on the Reporters without Borders 2024 World Press Freedom Index.
Advertisement
Repression of Artists and Academics
News outlets and their workers are not the only targets of the current wave of repression. Hollywood has long been shaped—and censored—by government and corporate power. For example, our book includes a chapter on the Pentagon’s long-standing influence on Hollywood, which has resulted in the film industry abandoning production of hundreds of films deemed unacceptable by the military.
In addition to media, educators and academics are increasingly subject to repressive measures that muzzle freedom of information and expression. Scholars and institutions of higher education sometimes produce research that challenges the myths and propaganda perpetuated by those in power. And even when they don’t, autonomy from micromanagement by government authorities and private funders is a prerequisite for the integrity of scholarly research and teaching, which tends to make elites exceedingly nervous. This is why universities and academic freedom are increasingly under siege by autocratic regimes and right-wing activists from Hungary to Brazil and from India to Florida.
Alarmingly, the latest Academic Freedom Index found that more than 45 percent of the world’s population now lives in countries with an almost complete lack of academic freedom (more than at any time since the 1970s). In Brazil, the government of right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro attempted to ban education about gender and sexuality, slashed budgets for the country’s universities, and threatened to defund the disciplines of philosophy and sociology. In 2018, Hungary’s conservative Fidesz government shut down graduate programs in gender studies, forced the country’s most prestigious university, the Central European University, to relocate to Austria, and sparked months of protests at the University of Theater and Film Arts in Budapest by making unpopular changes to the school’s board of trustees. Something similar happened in Turkey, where, since 2016, the ruling regime has suspended thousands of professors and administrators from their university posts for alleged ties to the outlawed Gülen movement and shut down upwards of 3,000 schools and universities. Meanwhile, in the United States, several Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted draconian laws prohibiting or severely limiting teaching about race, sexuality, and gender in college classrooms. Under the influence of its arch-conservative governor, Ron DeSantis, Florida eliminated sociology as a core general education course at all of its public universities.
Advertisement
Big Tech Censorship
Censorship is nothing new, but the pervasive influence of the internet and the development of so-called artificial intelligence (AI) have created new, more nefarious opportunities to crack down on freedoms around the globe. So-called smart platforms and tools have created new forms of Big Tech control and content moderation, such as shadowbanning and algorithmic bias. Regimes have set up a form of quid pro quo with tech companies, demanding certain concessions such as removing unfavorable content in exchange for government access to otherwise private information about tech platforms’ users. For example, in the United States, tech companies depend on largegovernmentcontracts and, as a result, often work with government officials directly and indirectly to censor content. Nor do they block only false or misleading content. Social media platforms have also been found to censor perfectly valid scientific speculation about the possible origin of COVID-19 and instances of obvious political satire.
These restrictive practices are at odds with Big Tech PR campaigns that trumpet the platforms’ capacity to empower users. Despite this hype, critical examination reveals that privately controlled platforms seldom function as spaces where genuine freedom of information and intellectual exchange flourish. In reality, Big Tech works with numerous national regimes to extend existing forms of control over citizens’ behaviors and expression into the digital realm. People are not ignorant of these abuses and have taken action to promote freedom across the globe. However, they have largely been met by more censorship. For example, as social media users took to TikTok to challenge US and Israeli messaging on Gaza, the US government took steps to ban the platform. Relatedly, Israel raided Al Jazeera’s office in East Jerusalem, confiscated its equipment, shuttered its office, and closed down its website.
Our book also details the complex history and structures of censorship in Myanmar, Uganda, and the Philippines, and popular resistance to this oppression. To this catalog of examples, we can add India’s periodic internet shutdowns aimed at stifling protests by farmers, the blocking of websites in Egypt, and the right-wing strongman Jair Bolsonaro’s persecution of journalists in Brazil. Each of these cases is best understood as a direct result of a rise in faux populist, right-wing authoritarian politicians and political movements, whose popularity has been fostered by reactionary responses to decades of neo-liberal rule.
Advertisement
What Is to Be Done?
Censorship is being driven not only by governments but also by an array of political and corporate actors across the ideological spectrum, from right-wing autocrats and MAGA activists to Big Tech oligarchs and self-professed liberals. Indeed, when it comes to censorship, a focus on any one country’s ideology, set of practices, or justifications for restricting expression risks missing the forest for the trees. The global community is best served when we collectively reject all attempts to suppress basic freedoms, regardless of where they emerge or how they are implemented.
To counter increasing restrictions on public discourse and the muzzling of activists, journalists, artists, and scholars, we need global agreements that protect press freedom, the right to protest, and accountability for attacks on journalists. Protection of freedom of expression and the press should be a central plank of US foreign policy. We need aggressive antitrust enforcement to break up giant media companies that today wield the power to unilaterally control what the public sees, hears, and reads. We also need to create awareness and public knowledge to help pass legislation, such as the PRESS Act, that will guarantee journalists’ right to protect their sources’ confidentiality and prevent authorities from collecting information about their activities from third parties like phone companies and internet service providers.
Moreover, widespread surveillance by social media platforms and search engines, supposedly necessary to improve efficiency and convenience, ought to be abandoned. All of us should have the right to control any non-newsworthy personal data that websites and apps have gathered about us and to ask that such data be deleted, a right that Californians will enjoy starting in 2026.
Advertisement
In addition, we should all support the efforts of organizations such as the American Association of University Professors, Article 19, and many others to fight back against encroachments on academic and intellectual freedom.
Supporters of free expression should also vigilantly oppose the ideologically motivated content moderation schemes Big Tech companies so often impose on their users.
Rather than trusting Big Tech to curate our news feeds, or putting faith in laws that would attempt to criminalize misinformation, we need greater investment in media literacy education, including education about the central importance of expressive rights and vigorous, open debate to a functioning democracy. The era of the internet and AI demonstrates the urgent need for education and fundamental knowledge in critical media literacy to ensure that everyone has the necessary skills to act as digital citizens, capable of understanding and evaluating the media we consume.
Steven Everts makes numerous important and laudable points on the need for the EU to seriously recalibrate both its capacities and posture in foreign policy (Opinion, September 12).
It’s worth adding that in a foreign policy area on the bloc’s very borders, the EU has led the west into a dead end of failure, in which official pronouncements have never been more at variance with the on-the-ground reality.
The western Balkans is the only region in which the US consistently defers to a democratic partner’s leadership — that of the EU.
Nowhere else does the west, if united, wield greater leverage or have a wider array of policy instruments. Yet for far too long, the EU has addressed the region almost solely through its enlargement process, neglecting its foreign policy commitments — including a deterrent force in Bosnia and Herzegovina mandated by the Dayton Peace Agreement and authorised under Chapter 7 by the UN Security Council.
Advertisement
This force remains well below the brigade-strength required to pose a credible deterrent to threats to the peace and territorial integrity. In addition, the EU states it will support local authorities, who have primary responsibility to maintain a secure environment — defying the reason the mandate exists to begin with: namely to thwart attempts by local authorities to upend the peace.
The desire to maintain the fiction that the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue is still alive compels the EU into all sorts
of contortions which in effect reward Serbia, despite allegations of Serbian involvement in recent violence, and periodic (and ongoing) threats of invasion. By straying from its original declared purpose to achieve mutual recognition between Serbia and Kosovo, as well as serving as a shield for Serbia’s authoritarian president, Aleksandar Vučić, the dialogue serves as a diversion from genuine problem- solving.
Incoming EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has demonstrated leadership and vision for Europe and the wider west as Estonia’s prime minister, particularly with regard to the response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
Advertisement
One hopes she will undertake the overdue task of making the policies of the EU and the wider west more consistent with the values of democracy and human dignity we proclaim to hold dear. She can begin by leading the west to a restoration of credible deterrence in the Balkans, and start to counter the backsliding of democracy long visible there.
Kurt Bassuener Co-Founder and Senior Associate, Democratization Policy Council, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
You must be logged in to post a comment Login