Historical events can lead to divergent, maybe even opposite, results. This is true for the "Great Depression" of 1929 - 1933: In the United States, the crisis led to the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the "New Deal," while it empowered Nazism in Germany. Roosevelt was elected president for four terms between 1933 and 1945, the year of his death, due to two exceptional turns of event: The aforementioned crisis and then the Second World War, and partly because of he was an exceptional leader. This had not happened before in the US history, nor did it happen afterward. In any case, he saved his country's economy and created jobs for millions of unemployed people.
Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, ignited a world war that killed at least 60 million people. The Nazi’s ascension to power through parliamentary elections was an exceptional event as well, but of a different nature.
The divergence of countries’ historical and cultural circumstances undoubtedly plays a certain role in shaping the divergence in their responses, but differences between the countries elites and rulers may, in other cases, play such a role. In the Middle East, we have a well-known example: In 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser and David Ben-Gurion understood the significance of the United States’ global rising prominence after World War II. The former came to understand this because the US support in the Suez War, or the Tripartite Aggression, Egypt’s war with the British, French and Israelis, allowed him to prevail, at least politically. The later came to understand the same fact because American support for Nasser was enough to ensure Israel’s defeat despite its military victory. The prime minister of the Jewish state decided to improve ties with US and made establishing those ties with it, rather than Britain, his top priority. The Egyptian leader chose to try to curtail Washington's influence in the region and expand his own at its expense.
Today, with the new coronavirus epidemic, the economic crisis, and the murder of George Floyd and its ramifications,there are two contrasting global sensitive issues that are crystalizing.
First, engaging with politics that was established by populist and nationalist leaders at least two decades ago: Discrimination against foreigners, refugees, and minorities, to whom elderly and the women who have been subjected to domestic violence have been added to by the recent developments. Blockades, sanctions and violence characterize this approach. The police force is the fist with which it strikes.
Secondly, there is that which is being propelled by the demonstrations in major American and European cities and what those demonstrations stand for: Rhe fight against racism and the demand for equality, justice and non-discriminatory employment opportunities. In this camp, there is a desire to renew democracy and expand its fields of operation, as well as strengthening the link between citizens’ political practice and their tangible interests in the economy, environment and education.
The police force is the direct opponent of those who hold these issues. This was evident in the United States, France, and Britain, and the same question remains: Is the apparatus’ purpose to recklessly and indiscriminately terrorize or serve the people and gain communities’ trust? In other words, is police a primarily repressive institution or an institution that serves and protects?
We will most likely undergo a period, which may be long or short, wherein these two sympathies clash and will be difficult to contain within a particular nation or religious or ethnic borders. The economic crisis will give both teeth: One of the two issues will continue to hold strangers and the other responsible, while the second will carry on blaming it on economic and political policies.
Of course, the power disparity between the two groups is evident, as one controls state agencies while the second still lacks the most basic of organizational requisites. This, in all likelihood, is one of the reasons for some of the chaotic and disruptive behaviors that anti-police demonstrators have been and are being engaged in, and some reckless acts of destruction, as witnessed in Stuttgart and American and British cities. However, we will certainly witness an escalation to this struggle in the media, and social media in particular, and culture and values will be among the most prominent topics of the acrimonious debate, especially since awaited culture works will in a large part revolve around racism, poverty and COVID-19.
What hurts, here, is that the differences of opinion between these two voices on humanitarian intervention against tyrants was and remains the least prominent, but we would not be exaggerating if we're to say that the more democracy and universalism are emphasized in the literature of the oppressed, the more prominent this issue becomes and the more likely that it will be taken with the seriousness it deserves.
How will this development deal with the upcoming major events, like the presidential elections in the US next November, the Chinese- US conflict which, some have been calling a “second cold war” or today’s growing number of regional civil wars? It will most likely be a topic of deep contemplation in the near future, but the only thing that can be asserted is that the conflict of those two sensitive issues, though it does not sum up our universe's contradictions, will have a decisive impact on it and our future.
