Democracy Itself Is Being Questioned Amid Genocide and Global Political Upheaval

We speak to acclaimed historian, activist and filmmaker Tariq Ali about Western governments’ support for Israel’s war on Gaza and popular protest in support of Palestine, which Ali calls the “biggest divide we’ve seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War.” He argues that this division is “challenging the very nature of democracy” and the international rule of law. Ali also shares his analysis of South Asian politics — in Pakistan, where former Prime Minister Imran Khan has accused the United States of engineering his ouster, and in Bangladesh, where a student-led uprising recently toppled the authoritarian regime of its former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Finally, we cover developments in Europe. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has appointed conservative leader Michel Barnier as prime minister, despite the electoral gains of the country’s left-wing coalition. This comes as far-right and anti-migrant sentiment spreads throughout the Global North.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Britain to meet with the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Foreign Secretary David Lammy. The focus is expected to be on the Middle East, Ukraine and the Asia-Pacific. Blinken’s meeting comes just days after the United Kingdom announced it’s suspending some arms exports to Israel, citing a risk they might be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza. Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer of the Labour Party, defended the decision.

PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER: This is a serious issue. We either comply with international law or we don’t. And we only have strength in our arguments because we comply with international law.

AMY GOODMAN: Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy told the British Parliament last week many weapons exports to Israel will continue, including parts for F-35 fighter jets.

DAVID LAMMY: This is not an arms embargo. It targets around 30, approximately of 350 licenses to Israel in total, for items which could be used in the current conflict in Gaza. The rest will continue.

AMY GOODMAN: Oxfam responded to the British government’s move by calling for all arms exports to be suspended to Israel.

To talk about Britain, Israel’s war on Gaza, and much more, we’re joined by Tariq Ali, the acclaimed historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review and the author of over 50 books, including the forthcoming You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024. He’s joining us here in our studio in New York.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Tariq. It’s great to have you in person.

TARIQ ALI: Very good to be with you and Juan, Amy. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this studio, about 12 years almost.

AMY GOODMAN: Amazing. Well, today you are here, and Antony Blinken is meeting with Keir Starmer in London and the Foreign Minister David Lammy. There have been massive protests in London around a U.K. policy toward supporting Israel in its war on Gaza, and now you have this stopping of some arms shipments to Israel. Can you talk about the U.K. stance and the U.K.-U.S. relationship, especially when it comes to Gaza right now and Israel?

TARIQ ALI: The U.K., Amy, has been totally complicit in this war. They’ve sent help. They’ve sent fighter jets. Their personnel are involved. So, for them to pretend somehow that they’re an impartial party is utterly ridiculous. This war has been supported by the Conservative government, and it’s now being supported by the Labour government. Keir Starmer, the prime minister you just showed on the screen, as leader of the opposition, supported the genocide in Gaza, supported the cutting off of electricity, supported the cutting off of all water supplies.

I think they have received legal advice that they have to do something or they are liable to international law by the courts — not that that amounts to very much, as we see these days. But I think that’s the reason they made a few cuts to the aid. But as they themselves say, these are meaningless. They’re purely symbolic.

And the bulk of the country now wants aid to Israel, and the military aid particularly, cut off. The antiwar movement in Britain is one of the largest in the world. We’ve had, I think now — it’s almost a year, Amy, since this war began. Almost a year. And we’ve had dozens and dozens of demonstrations, some including a million people. So the country is opposed to this, you know, across the board.

But we have these governments in power — I call them the extreme-center governments, because, right or left, they do the same thing. And why is Blinken visiting Starmer? Normally they send orders online. So, why the need for a personal visit is to boost each other’s morale. I can see no other reason for it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, it’s not just the U.K. government, but most of the European Union governments. Could you talk about the wide gap between how these governments are dealing with Israel’s war on Gaza and the rest of the world, especially the Global South?

TARIQ ALI: Well, the Global South is more or less, you know, formally hostile to it. This is the biggest divide we’ve seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War, that the Global South opposed to the war and the West very much in favor of it, Juan. And this comes across very clearly. Now, the other thing is that the demonstrators — you know, Jews, non-Jews, Palestinians, non-Palestinians — who’ve been marching in the streets of Western cities are identifying here very clearly with the Global South, so even in their own homeland, not to mention in the United States, the demonstrations and the campus struggles. So what we are seeing is a big divide on a global level and a divide on an internal level, where large sections, if not majorities, are against what their governments are doing in backing unconditionally what the Israelis have been up to for a year now in Palestine.

And this divide is going to continue, given what is going on with the U.S.-China rivalries. And so, this gulf now which has opened up is going to be difficult to resolve. I mean, whatever else, on foreign policy, I don’t think there will be any big change in the United States regardless of who is elected. So, the demonstrations still go on, a year later, all over Europe, including France. The Germans have banned demonstrations. They don’t allow them because of their special links to the Judeocide and Holocaust of the Second World War, for which the Palestinians are now being punished. That’s what’s going on.

And it’s quite a critical situation, because lots of young people who I come across and speak to are challenging and questioning the very nature of democracy, the nature of the system which exists, where one court, international court, after the other has said this genocide must stop, pressure on the International Criminal Court not to prosecute Netanyahu, which has been demanded. And so, international law itself has now been questioned.

So we are now in a situation where what the United States says goes. The decisions are made in the White House and the Pentagon and the State Department. These are the key institutions which determine what happens in Israel. And why the U.S. is doing this puzzles many people who are sympathetic to them. Why are they doing this, when we’ve had presidents like Truman, like Reagan, like Bush Sr. stopping Israel from doing things like this when it was necessary? Now not a single phone call, both political parties totally complicit in this war. They might have other disagreements, but on the Gaza war, they are completely united, apart from indies, like Jill Stein, who, personally, I would vote for, were I a U.S. citizen, a sort of excellent politician. But apart from her and a few others, there’s no one else in the mainstream who’s come out against this. And this is very disturbing, I think, for democracy itself and for all its legal, political institutions.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, I wanted to ask you, in terms of — you’re talking about the state of democracy. In your own homeland of Pakistan. Imran Khan has been detained since — for over a year now, accused of inciting violence, a former prime minister. And the U.N. panel recently had findings that Imran Khan’s detention is politically motivated. Do you think there will be any pressure on Pakistan to release him?

TARIQ ALI: So far, there hasn’t been any pressure. And Imran Khan, when he was first dismissed from office, claimed that the United States was behind the dismissal because of the positions he had taken on Ukraine at that particular time. He directly accused the State Department of having engineered his dismissal.

So, the fact that he is still in prison is a sign that the people who control Pakistan are the military. Politicians come and go. Political parties come and go. Politicians change sides in order to gain office. But effectively, Juan, it is the Pakistani Army that has run the show for many, many decades. They make the decisions. They choose the politicians, including Imran. He was a military choice. And his successors are military choices.

And now they are nervous, because normally they can discredit a politician very quickly. They haven’t been able to do it in the case of Imran Khan, and all the opinion polls show that were there to be an election in Pakistan, Imran would win by large majorities throughout the country. The Army have now made him a martyr. They’ve made him a popular hero. And he has been locked up in prison on completely frivolous and bogus charges.

AMY GOODMAN: So, there’s also the discussion of banning the PTI party, the Khan party, talking about it, oh, inciting violence, leaking classified information. What would that mean?

TARIQ ALI: Well, the classified information he revealed, Amy, which should be of interest to viewers here, is that a senior figure from the Pakistan Foreign Office said — wrote a letter back home from the United States saying that in the United States, he had been told in very clear language that Imran had to go. Well, in Pakistan, as in other parts of the world, these letters are not — they don’t remain secret for too long. So, Imran referred to the letter in public, stating something which most people knew. And as a result of that, they’ve charged him with betraying official secrets. I mean, there was no official secret. Everyone knew this in the first place.

And so, I think they’re determined to get rid of him. Banning his party won’t help, because his popularity will increase. And if there’s another uprising, like we’ve seen in Bangladesh recently, that could erupt in Pakistan, then they’ve had it. I mean, they’ll have to shoot people on the streets. And we’ll see a repeat of the uprisings of the ’60s and ’70s.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, I wanted to ask you about Bangladesh. The supporters of the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have claimed that the United States was behind that, as well, that it wasn’t really a popular uprising as much as a color revolution. I’m wondering your thoughts. Is there any credible evidence that that is so?

TARIQ ALI: I don’t think so, Juan. I mean, you know, because the United States has done these things in the past, it can do them everywhere. And what we saw in Bangladesh was a very authoritarian government, confronted largely by students demanding democratic rights and freedoms and an end to laws which they regard as anti-democratic. And they won. She ran. She was taken by a special plane waiting for her to India and is now blaming the United States for this. In my opinion, there is no evidence to show U.S. involvement so far. Some may come out. We will see.

But I think more disturbing is that the students who replaced her had no real alternative. So quite a few unprincipled parties, political parties, and politicians who were there and are now in power, or close to it, are mistreating Awami League supporters. And that, too, is unacceptable.

But in Bangladesh, as in Pakistan, behind the scenes in Bangladesh, it’s the military who rules. The appointment of a sort of banker who became a celebrity and won the Nobel Prize, Dr. Yunus, very, very aged man, older even than me, and he is not going to be able to deliver anything. Behind him, it’s the Army.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to what’s happening in France. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets Saturday protesting President Macron’s appointment of the conservative Michel Barnier as the new prime minister even though leftist parties won the most of votes in July’s snap parliamentary elections. This is the leader of the leftist Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, speaking last week.

JEAN-LUC MÉLENCHON: [translated] And so the election has been stolen from the French people. The message has been denied, and now we’re finding out about a prime minister that was named with the permission and maybe on the suggestion of the far-right National Rally, knowing that the second round of the legislative election has been entirely concentrated on making this National Rally fail.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of Unbowed. You have the leftists winning, and the president, Macron, who called the snap election and yet lost it, giving the prime ministership to the right.

TARIQ ALI: It’s appalling, Amy. I mean, this is the sort of trend we see in most of the Western world, a very authoritarian approach to politics if they lose. And Jean-Luc Mélenchon was determined to fight. He created a new united front with the socialists and all progressive parties to make sure that the extreme right-wing party of Marine Le Pen was defeated. Macron had said before the election, “Let the far right come to power. They’ll discredit themselves.” Well, that didn’t happen because of the campaign waged by La France Insoumise, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in particular. Effectively, they created a united front which defeated the far right. And this spoiled brat Macron, who belongs — who came up from nowhere, you know, a sort of technocrat politician, now operates as if he’s a statesman. I mean, I think he has discredited himself considerably. And we shall see. He had a meeting with the far right. He has not met Mélenchon once. He’s made it clear that he’s not going to appoint a president from the group or the bloc which got the largest votes.

And this is the trend I was referring to earlier, of they feel they can get away with anything. And there have been demonstrations. There have been a few strikes, as well. But there’s been no big protest from the so-called international community, i.e. the State Department in D.C. You know, no protest from Foggy Bottom at all that this is intolerable behavior, because, you know, they tolerate it when their own allies do it.

How it’s going to turn out for Macron, we shall see. I think there is now 52% voted for his impeachment. I mean, in opinion polls, 52% of French people said that Macron should be prosecuted and impeached. So he’s divided the country quite, quite sharply. So, we’ll see what he does. I mean, Barnier is a joke figure. He got 4% of the vote, and he’s been appointed prime minister.

I mean, what’s needed in France actually, to be serious, is an abolition of this Fifth Republic that was created by de Gaulle after he seized power as a general in 1958. And it was designed to give the president maximum powers. It’s not a democratic state, you know, in any sense of the word. The democracy has tried to push through it. And so, we need a new republic. And, you know, Mélenchon has been arguing, and many of us have been, let’s have elections to a constituent assembly to choose and draft a new constitution. We need a Sixth Republic in France, because the Fifth Republic has failed.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, I wanted to ask you, though — across Europe, the extreme right wing, especially anti-immigrant parties, have been gaining strength, even though in Britain and France they’ve been beaten back. But even the center has become increasingly more anti-immigrant, anti-African, anti-Arab, anti- — in the United States — Latin American. What’s your sense of the prospects for progressives and radicals to win popular support, given that sectors of the working class and the middle classes are falling prey to this anti-immigrant phobia?

TARIQ ALI: Oh, Juan, this is always the case at times of crisis — social, political, economic — that people from the working class and the middle class, as you call it here, get carried away. It’s a simple propaganda: “We don’t have enough jobs. We don’t have enough money. Look at these people coming from outside.” Well, in Europe, you can say that, but in the United States, as I always point out, everyone has come from the outside, except Native Americans. So, what is the big deal? That, you know, you just want to exclude people of color. In Europe, of course, they went and searched for workers all over the former colonies, because after the Second World War, there was a big shortage of labor. And what they did, effectively, was to go and plead with West Indian Black nurses to come and run the British National Health Service, for workers to come and run the factories. And this is a population which they are now targeting.

But the most reprehensible feature of this, as you point out, is that mainstream politicians have not managed to frontally take on these arguments. In fact, in the new Labour government, you have politicians sort of slyly saying, “Well, yes, there are problems. We have too many immigrants. Labour is working very hard to try and stop the flow.” And the result of this is illegal gangs promising migrants in poverty-stricken countries or countries where you have large numbers of people dislodged by wars, as we see in the Middle East today and as we’ve seen for the last five or six years, who want to come and seek refuge. And they’re being denied entry into the countries which have made these wars. And, in effect, many of them are drowning in boats in the English Channel, just dropping dead, being pushed out by unscrupulous gangsters who promised them that they would get them in illegally. So it’s a really grim situation on that front.

And this is now in Germany, too, that in recent state elections in the former eastern Germany, Thuringia, the far-right party, AfD, won the largest vote. I mean, you know, they can still be outvoted, but they won a large vote. And this is spreading in other parts of Germany, too, which also takes in the fact that some of these far-right groups are saying, “Why are we backing a war with Russia? Why are we supporting Ukraine? It’s not in our national interest. Why are we following the Americans?” So, it’s immigration and a lot of other issues actually being tied together by these parties. And the extreme-center governments, center-left and center-right, do nothing. They’re actually provoking this by doing nothing at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Tariq Ali, we want to thank you for being with us and in our studio. We look forward to having you back to talk about your memoirs when they are released. Tariq Ali is a British Pakistani historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review, the author of over 50 books, including the forthcoming You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024, in from London, here in New York City.

Coming up, as the official death toll in Gaza tops 41,000, we talk to former U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader about how the current death toll that is being repeated around the world may be a vast undercount. We’ll also be speaking with him about the upcoming debate, maybe the only one, between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Stay with us.