ICYMI: Nicolas | L’autoritarisme qui épuise

2024/10/22 Leave a comment

A lire:

Vendredi dernier, Gabor Maté, médecin canadien de renom et expert de l’impact du traumatisme sur la santé, a publié une lettre ouverte fascinante dans The Guardian : « Nous avons tous un nazi en nous. Nous devons comprendre les racines psychologiques de l’autoritarisme. » L’auteur de plusieurs succès de librairie internationaux est aussi un survivant de l’Holocauste : son titre retient l’attention.

Le texte est un condensé d’un des chapitres de son plus récent essai, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. La lettre ouverte comme le chapitre nous offrent une comparaison des traits psychologiques de Donald Trump et d’Adolf Hitler. Maté nous parle de leur propension au mensonge, leur méfiance proche de la paranoïa, leur opportunisme crasse, leur penchant pour la cruauté, leur mégalomanie, leur impulsivité sans borne et leur mépris pour la faiblesse.

Ce qui est intéressant, c’est qu’au-delà de l’opinion, on s’appuie sur les dernières études en santé mentale pour voir dans ces traits les signes caractéristiques d’une enfance marquée par le trauma.

En s’appuyant sur l’expertise de plusieurs collègues, Gabor Maté nous apprend notamment que plus un enfant aura été exposé à un style parental autoritaire et punitif, plus il sera prompt à soutenir des options politiques autoritaristes et violentes une fois adulte. Particulièrement s’il n’est jamais passé par une psychothérapie — et s’il est un homme.

L’auteur nous indique aussi que l’amygdale, soit la région du cerveau responsable de la peur, a tendance à être plus grosse et plus active chez les gens qui sont plus à droite, qui sont attirés par des figures autoritaires « fortes » et qui affichent une méfiance marquée pour les étrangers et la différence. Et, bien sûr, le développement du cerveau est influencé par le contexte dans lequel un enfant évolue.

Si je peux résumer dans mes mots : un enfant qui a été méprisé et ridiculisé, voire violenté pour sa « faiblesse » et son besoin de protection, aura tendance, à moins d’une guérison, à se transformer en adulte qui méprise la vulnérabilité — la sienne et celle des autres — et à se protéger de toute forme d’humiliation future en devenant lui-même l’intimidateur en chef, ou en gravitant autour de leaders qui opèrent avec une vision du monde similaire.

Ce plongeon dans les écrits de Gabor Maté m’a aidée à écouter le débat présidentiel américain de mardi avec une attention particulièrement… « clinique ». Parce des notions de neurosciences peuvent certes nous aider à comprendre Donald Trump, son admiration pour des figures autoritaires comme Viktor Orbán ou Vladimir Poutine ainsi que son attrait pour sa base. Elles peuvent aussi nous donner des pistes pour mieux saisir ce qui se passe en nous-mêmes lorsque nous l’écoutons. Le mot-clé, ici, c’est une sensation d’épuisement.

Nous sommes plusieurs ces temps-ci à évoquer la « loi de Brandolini », soit l’idée qu’il est bien plus énergivore de réfuter des sottises que d’en débiter. Trump ment pratiquement par automatisme : il invente une réalité dont il est le héros, au fur et à mesure, pour éviter de faire face au réel. Répondre à ses mensonges suscite à la fois un épuisement, un dégoût, mais aussi une fascination — un mélange d’émotions qu’on pouvait d’ailleurs lire sur le visage de Kamala Harris mardi. Raconter que des immigrants dévorent les animaux de compagnie des Américains, par exemple : vraiment, il faut le faire. Toute personne saine d’esprit prendra un moment pour se demander comment c’est possible. Cette stupéfaction nous tirera de l’énergie.

L’univers de paranoïa dans lequel nous plonge le trumpisme, ainsi que les droites autoritaires de manière plus générale, est tout aussi énergivore. Si l’on croit fondamentalement que toute « faiblesse » est à refouler, mépriser, écraser et éliminer, on ne viendra jamais à bout de l’ennemi, puisque le monde ne cessera jamais de produire de la vulnérabilité et de la différence.

C’est une vision du monde qui explique le mépris des femmes — associées dans l’imaginaire à la sensibilité — et de leurs droits fondamentaux. Et on le sait, la suprématie blanche a aussi profondément marqué l’Amérique : si l’on tient à imaginer la majorité de l’humanité comme barbare, « sauvage », on se sent nécessairement constamment en danger, assiégé par la figure de l’étranger, de l’immigrant, du racisé.

Dans le mode de pensée autoritariste, on croit sincèrement qu’un leader « fort », c’est-à-dire violent envers un Autre qu’on imagine capable de ne comprendre que la violence punitive, est notre seul rempart contre le chaos et l’insécurité. On a là affaire à une lointaine descendance de la pensée politique de l’influent philosophe Thomas Hobbes, qui imaginait comme d’autres avant lui que « l’homme est un loup pour l’homme » dans « l’état de nature ». C’est un univers psychologique qui est profondément dangereux pour ceux qui en font les frais, mais aussi angoissant pour ceux qui y adhèrent.

On aura tellement dit de choses sur Donald Trump depuis 2016. Mais je crois qu’on sous-estime encore comment son existence publique agit comme un vortex énergivore de classe mondiale. Nous sommes nombreux à avoir côtoyé dans nos vies personnelles des personnes blessées, restées émotionnellement immatures, et qui ne guérissent pas. Dans les cas extrêmes, elles deviennent des trous noirs d’attention qui absorbent les forces vitales de leur environnement et qui nous enferment dans la gestion de leur volatilité. Mais lorsque ce type de profil est celui de l’un des hommes les plus puissants du monde, c’est la planète qui risque de voir son niveau d’échanges rabaissé à celui de ce tyran et de ses sautes d’humeur.

Mardi soir, 90 minutes de télévision nous ont réexposés à un homme qui affiche une peur morbide de grands pans du réel, et qui se défend en niant le réel par le mensonge ou en promettant d’écraser le réel par la violence politique. Si 90 minutes suffisent à générer un profond sentiment d’épuisement, je n’ose pas imaginer quatre autres.

Source:  Chronique | L’autoritarisme qui épuise

Filed under Other Tagged with , , ,

Protecting academic freedom in international partnerships

2020/10/19 Leave a comment

Some valid suggestions to reduce foreign government influence:

We live in an age of academic internationalisation, especially pronounced in the United Kingdom. This has in many ways been a good thing. 

It has become more common for research institutions across the globe to establish collaborative research and joint degree programmes, often hugely benefiting research and teaching. Individual scholars and students travel more easily and frequently today, too, and their ideas and arguments travel with them. 

Moreover, even when physical travel is interrupted, as it is at the moment, academic communities can interact and stay connected remotely. 

But internationalisation has also produced new risks, especially in the context of engagement, exchange and collaboration with non-democratic countries. 

In an age of ‘democratic retrogression’ and deepening authoritarianism affecting many countries, many members of the global academic community face growing challenges – including censorship and travel restrictions, disciplinary measures and dismissals, criminal prosecutions and even physical attacks, as has been well documented by Scholars At Risk and other groups. 

Such repression has become increasingly internationalised, not only because repressive governments can extend threats and censorship across borders, but also because marketised funding structures, the casualisation of academic work and an opportunistic approach to building global ties have made academic actors within liberal democracies more vulnerable – and sometimes less willing to stand up for academic freedom and integrity. 

This is the case, for example, when universities take funding that comes with strings attached or raises concerns about the donor’s political goals or when academic publishers decide to accept censorship instructions from autocratic governments, apparently for commercial reasons. 

Exporting repression

Against this background, we must be concerned about the terms of our engagement with academic institutions abroad, as well as about repressive governments and institutions’ ability to ‘export repression’ in the field of academia.

At a time when the global pandemic has changed academic life beyond recognition for many of us in the UK and globally, and as we are already overburdened with the challenges arising immediately from COVID, we may feel reluctant to engage with further, more long-term challenges. 

Yet, as members of the recently established Academic Freedom and Internationalisation Working Group (AFIWG) in the UK, we feel that the challenges posed by academic internationalisation must be dealt with without delay – and, indeed, that the pandemic has exacerbated some of these challenges, for example, by making us more dependent on online communication.

Universities could respond in several ways. Denial – such as that by the Chair of Million Plus group of universities, Bill Rammell, in his evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) of the House of Commons in 2019 – is no longer tenable. 

An auditing response of generic and top-down reporting requirements, which spread like viruses through UK higher education, are also unlikely to touch conditions on the ground. 

Similarly, the notion that universities must “sensitively balance the need to uphold academic freedom with the importance of internal academic collaboration”– as suggested by then Universities UK president Janet Beer in her letter to the FAC – is equally inadequate and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of academic freedom. 

Faced with such inertia, the UK government, including its security agencies, have pressed British higher education to develop security guidelines and risk management strategies. In guidance just released, Universities UK finally addresses these concerns with academic freedom considered among a range of objects and values to be defended, including intellectual property and “national security”.

A new code of conduct

However, while there may be a need for draconian measures in rare cases, a national security approach is largely inappropriate as it is founded on false premises. 

UK universities are not national institutions under threat, but global institutions so thoroughly internationalised that any attempt to cut them off from foreign influence may make the problem worse. 

It would feed the narrative of some authoritarian states that they are vehicles of British ‘soft power’ against their values and even Trojan horses for spying researchers. 

A far better response is for a bottom-up process led by academic staff, supported by students, civil society and unions. 

The AFIWG has composed a Draft Model Code of Conduct for UK higher education institutions to bestow duties on them to protect their academic communities at home and abroad and be transparent and accountable to their members. 

It is a draft and a model so it can be revised in the coming months of consultation and adapted from the minimum standards enshrined in the model.

These minimum standards include a stipulation that universities must undertake meaningful risk assessment and due diligence when transnational collaboration is being considered before any agreement or arrangement is begun. 

In particular, they must ensure memorandums of understanding (MoUs) on international partnerships, including foreign campuses and the affiliation of foreign education or research institutions to UK higher education institutions within the UK, are subject to consultation across the university.

With regard to protecting their staff and students overseas, universities must evaluate academic freedom and the risks associated with its absence, as when planning fieldwork and field trips abroad, and make available enhanced travel insurance to cover politically motivated or arbitrary detention by state authorities.

On campuses at home, universities should ensure that academic freedom requirements, including personal data protection for these members of the academic community, are incorporated within all MoUs with state scholarship programmes. Vice-chancellors and their gifts committees must make all MoUs and summary information on all foreign donations public.

A system of confidential and public reporting is required to enhance protection and accountability. UK universities should establish a confidential and independent internal reporting mechanism to a designated individual on campus for cases or issues of concern, while serious cases and issues, including all those involving a threat to the welfare of the complainant, should be passed to a new, independent ombudsperson.

An academic freedom model in authoritarian times?

This is a model and draft which may have relevance far beyond the UK. It is designed to be revised via debate on campus among staff and students and adopted according to minimum conditions. The duties it imposes are on universities’ leaders – not on staff and students who may be vulnerable themselves. 

But there is a risk. If vice-chancellors pass down the code of conduct in the form of new and onerous auditing requirements for staff, or if governments make them matters of national security, academic freedom will be weakened, not strengthened. The way to protect academic freedom is for universities to be held to account by their academics and students. 

We must use our freedom before we lose it. 

John Heathershaw is professor of international relations at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. Eva Pils is a professor of law at King’s College London, UK.

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-nl.php?story=20201015062104681

Filed under foreign policy Tagged with , , , ,

The authoritarian reflex: Will it manifest in Canada? Adams

2019/06/17 Leave a comment

More insights on populism and authoritarianism, comparing USA and Canada, from Michael Adams and his collaborators:

A wave of authoritarian populism has been evident in Europe, Britain and the United States over the past few decades. Many Canadians are wondering how these energies might manifest in their own country’s upcoming federal election.

Social scientists have observed that some people, when made insecure by extreme complexity and uncertainty, respond with an insistence on order and conformity. Researchers call this the “authoritarian reflex,” a reaction characterized by increased rejection of and hostility toward “the other,” be they “deviants” from within or foreigners from without. Different societies manifest the authoritarian reflex to different degrees.

Canada is not immune to the forces at work in other societies. But our history, institutions and public policies are distinct – and it would be a mistake to assume any authoritarian reflex here will be the same as in the United States or elsewhere. Our survey conducted recently in the U.S. and Canada shows remarkable differences between the two countries – not so much in the prevalence of authoritarian sentiments as in the presence of countervailing anti-authoritarian beliefs and values.

In both Canada and the U.S., for example, about a third of the population expresses conformist sentiments such as the belief that obedience and discipline are keys to the good life. But more Canadians embrace open, flexible sensibilities that may serve as a check on the political expression of authoritarian impulses.

For example, Canadians are considerably more likely to agree that atheists can be just as virtuous as those who attend church regularly, and that gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as others. In other words, Canadians are more inclined to believe that people outside of traditionally normative groups (religious believers, heterosexuals) are truly equal – that “they” are really part of “us,” or that “those people” count as “the people,” too.

People in democratic countries used to be divided politically based on religious and ethnic identity (in Canada, Catholic/Protestant and French/English), and subsequently by economic class (as urban/industrial interests contended with rural/agrarian interests). Big-tent liberal, conservative and socialist parties represented these groups in legislatures.

But in recent decades, values and identity have become more salient, with issues such as same-sex marriage and environmentalism joining economic interests as key factors shaping voters’ allegiances. Status anxiety is also a growing presence. Those who feel stripped of privilege by social change are gravitating to parties that channel their resentments against groups such as women, immigrants and sexual minorities that are, from their perspective, taking over.

Some of these new drivers of political affiliation are fed by authoritarian tendencies. For example, while some who object to gay rights have specific and deeply considered theological objections, others simply long for a return to “normal” or a “simpler” social order. Where are order-seeking voters with such sentiments concentrating in Canada? Our data indicate they’re migrating to the Conservative Party.

While seven in 10 NDP and Liberal supporters think homosexuals and feminists should be praised for being brave enough to defy traditional family values, only a quarter of Conservative supporters agree. Similarly, while around six in 10 NDP and Liberal backers think it is wonderful that young people have the freedom to protest against things they don’t like, only a quarter of Conservatives relish this youthful defiance.

Conservative supporters are more likely to agree with statements strongly hostile to immigration. For example, 50 per cent of Conservatives strongly or somewhat agree that “Overall, there is too much immigration. It threatens the purity of the country.” Fewer than a third of New Democrats (31 per cent) and Liberal supporters (24 per cent) share this belief. This relative concentration of xenophobic sentiment in one party is a new phenomenon in Canada. Twenty years ago, more anti-immigrant sentiment existed in society over all, but it was evenly divided across all three major parties.

Today, a minority of Canadians are wary of social change in general and immigration in particular. Currently, most of these voters are parked with Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives. To be clear: Conservatives are not necessarily xenophobic, but Canadians who are xenophobic have been gravitating to the Conservative Party.

In a recent speech, Mr. Scheer forcefully denounced bigotry, saying to voters seeking channels for such sentiments, “There’s the door.” Mr. Scheer seems to calculate that his prospects are better if he opens the door to right-ish Liberals and immigrants disappointed with Justin Trudeau than if he tries to coax back hard-right, anti-immigration Conservatives who have decamped to the People’s Party, whose leader, Maxime Bernier, has claimed to be a defender of “Western civilization values.”

Will moderate Conservatives and disappointed Liberals be attracted to Mr. Scheer’s vision of a right-of-centre party that eschews xenophobia? How many protest votes will coalesce around Mr. Bernier? In this October’s federal election, Canadians will find out whether the authoritarian reflex will manifest in national politics here as it has in other countries and, if it does, whether it will be a passing spasm or a more significant seizure.

Source: The authoritarian reflex: Will it manifest in Canada? Michael Adams, Ron Inglehart and David Jamieson

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,