Terrorism, State Terrorism and Political Economy…

Israel continue to attack and oppress Palestine as international superpowers stand back and watch. We see Greece being given – eventually – another tranche Troika loan with the ‘success’ of this austerity driven bailout being measured by the positive market responses, not the thousands of people who are paying for a short-term capital expansion promoted by Northern European and powerful banks that ‘helped’ Greece through measures such as currency swaps to hide the true nature of their debt so they could get access to cheap and fast credit.

The GIPS countries – Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain – all suffered from this mentality of short-term, private credit driven investment. But it is ordinary people paying the price, especially since the 1970s as the Bretton Woods System collapsed, exchange rates became more volatile and private credit spiraled out of control but rescued by controversial damaging IMF bailouts in places such as East Asia (1997/8) and Argentina (2001). Spain are currently restructuring their banking system after being exposed to such effects, but here we see the idea of a bail in – where private creditors take responsibility before taxpayers pay for the irresponsible investments – utilised so it is ordinary people picking up the bill again!

Given this, it is interesting to consider the idea of what terrorism is. As we discussed in a recent university seminar, terrorism refers to actions and practices that are designed to create fear, with a clear political aim often utilising violence. Judged on this basis, then, what Isreal are doing to Palestine is state terrorism – but the media focuses on Hamas as terrorists and Israel’s actions as self-defense. It’s as much self-defense as Bush utilising the Resolution 1368 after 9/11 to invade Afghanistan.

Then, we look at international organisations such as the IMF (largely controlled by the US), regional organisations such as Europe in terms of the Eurozone (dominated by Germany) and specifically the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF) and then national states such as the UK’s slash and burn approach to ‘solving’ the economic crisis – the neoliberal shock doctrine is in place across the globe and this is by definition state terrorism as it has a clear political aim and ideology behind it, creating fear and also utilising force – both directly like the police and indirectly such as Germany or the IMF threatening to not pay loans if conditions aren’t met – to ram through the prescribed changes and hardship to ordinary people.

Robert Pape has conducted some influential research into how geographical factors and foreign interference are key to creating terrorist responses and organisations.

Some of the key points to take from the video include:

• 95% of suicide terrorist attacks around the world have strategic objectives of trying to drive a state’s combat forces out of their territory, of which the terrorist considers their homeland. Territory, not religion, is key. For instance, when Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982 Hezbollah did not exist, but one month later Hezbollah formed.
• He studied data of 71 individuals who killed themselves carrying out attacks for Osama Bin Laden. The largest number, 34, came from Saudi Arabia and a large majority from the Arabian Peninsula where the US first began to station combat forces in 1990. 1990 was the watershed year in combat deployment in Arabian Peninsula – most before were advisors. Al-Qaeda attacks started in 1995.
• The main cause of secular and religious suicide terrorism is foreign occupation!

Essentially, it is key to question what terrorism means and how political economy is central to this definition and the consequences of this. Political economy and historical oppression is central to the creation of terrorist responses say in terms of Rwanda after years of colonial divide and rule or say in terms of our role in the Palestine-Israel affair and the continual role we have in maintaining these divisions. Most state and financial terrorism is however seen as legitimate use of power and authority. But as the old saying goes: one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist.

‘Liveable’ and ‘unliveable’ lives; this government’s disrespect for ethics…

In 2010, I wrote a blog post discussing ethics and welfare for Public Sociology, a blog affiliated to the University of Leeds.  I find reciting this blog post very timely given my recent readings regarding the power of capital flows to destabilise economies, nationally and internationally, and the safety nets that institutions such as the IMF have created for incompetent private creditors/investors, as taxpayers – especially those belonging to stigmatised and vulnerable groups – take the brunt for greedy investors’ mistakes. This is alongside the increasing clampdown on welfare claimants in the UK as Iain Duncan Smith goes all China-style in proposing the state limit how many children someone can own and still receive certain benefits.

Essentially, it draws on the work of Judith Butler and her analysis of ethics and her related concepts of ‘liveable’ and ‘unliveable’ lives:

Butler purports that we have certain assumptions about what constitutes a ‘liveable life’, that everyone is interrelated by varying degrees of vulnerability, and that this ethical interrelationship is key to making lives bearable i.e. ‘liveable’. However, the vulnerability of those who are seen as having ‘unliveable lives’ is ignored, consequently, so are ethical obligations.

With welfare claimants paying the price for a £1.5 billion bank bailout as private debt is turned into public debt, as the blog makes note of, claimants are also associated with negative, misrepresentative discourses. So-called ‘facts’ are utilised to support a neoliberal, back to basics nasty ideology that puts the blame of the market onto the public sector and those seen as ‘unliveable’ – namely defined by whether they are in work, and if they are in work how much money they are earning alongside if they claim any form of assistance. Corporate assistance is judged as meriting a ‘liveable’ life whereas any form of assistance, such as child benefit or disability living allowance, that helps ordinary people work and survive, is often viewed as a reason to define someone as ‘unliveable’ with their vulnerability and associated rights ignored and trounced on by a cabinet of millionaires:

Butler’s acknowledgement of the interrelatedness and shared experience of vulnerability is important when analysing the welfare changes from a sociological critique. Everyone is vulnerable; it is an ethical obligation for us to acknowledge this. When this vulnerability is ignored, this is when ethics are discounted. The government’s welfare proposals are clearly ignoring the vulnerability that certain groups face, as they construct their lives as ‘unliveable’ mainly because they aren’t working.  When people rightfully protest against these ideological, shock-doctrine inspired cuts, people are protesting to be listened to and for this government to consider them ethically. Of course, people may not frame it like this – but utilising Butler’s arguments, you can see the clear link between ethics, respect and the right to self-determination and a life that isn’t destroyed by the ‘right’ of the State to dictate work as equating to ‘worth’.

This could be clearly shown in the recent proposals by Smith to limit child related benefits to those who have two kids. As I facetiously commented when hearing the news, unsurprisingly, the cap is ideological and inspired by the nuclear family, dogmatic back to basics rubbish. It is also demonstrates a pathological hatred towards helping those who need it, whilst rewarding those who got us in this mess. Hypothetically, what about triplets? Should the family abort? Or would it be their fault because of Social Darwinist reasons?

Again, it all comes back to this central question of whose life is valued. Pathologically, a private creditor that makes risky investments due to free capital movements (which is more than can be said about labour movement) and then capitalising on crises they help create by utilising a bailout to make money back from their bonds as taxpayers take the fall is given more worth, more respect and rights to having a ‘liveable’ life than an ordinary person trying their best to get along in a system. This system that discourages full employment, encourages false needs, endless consumption, greed and profit at the expense of comfortable, diverse and flexible employment where wages are higher and all people – irrespective of their social background – have their rights and vulnerability respected through ethical considerations of public good – not private good. As a note here, I am hoping to do a blog post soon on the idea of a bail-in that has recently risen to prominence given the cost to taxpayers from the global financial crisis.

The failures and excuses of the Shock Doctrine policies and rhetoric…

David Davis has proclaimed that the Coalition’s slash and burn approach to the economy, as the UK is in another recession, with welfare, benefits, education, pensions, health care, amongst numerous other things attacked, hasn’t gone far enough. In departmental cuts that Thatcher didn’t even dare implement, Davis slams the so-called timid approach of the government. He calls for a shock therapy/doctrine approach to the economy, with further tax cuts (presumably heavily focused for those at the top) and further cuts to spending. As borrowing levels go higher and higher, more than estimated by Labour, the neoliberal shock therapy approach has already been shown to fail especially when they are attacking a debt level that is historically not that unprecedented (debt was around 250% of GDP after the 2WW and is now currently around 60%) alongside the UK not being massively exposed to foreign markets like countries such as Greece and Spain to over valued credit. Furthermore, this country’s debt levels relative to other countries is also not that great.

There are two key case studies that can be cited here to provide evidence against this argument that the Shock Doctrine is the right way for Britain. Yes, case studies have their own context, but the general trend of what has gone wrong applies to the UK:

1. Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I have blogged about this beforeillustrating that Russia’s current problems have links to the capitalist shock tactics that were brought in following the collapse of the Soviet Union under Yeltsin’s and the Russian Chicago Boys’ guise. Despite Gorbachev being on path to liberalising the economy and political scene, it wasn’t good enough. Now after years of devastation many Russians are nostalgic for Soviet Russia given the security and safety net such a system provided them. For Yeltsin and the Boys, democratic reforms were a hindrance to neoliberal economic reform with the Constitutional Crisis a key example of this. Essentially, as I explained in the blog:“Naomi Klein’s shock doctrine analysis is a well known and very comprehensive report of what happened to Russia in the 1990s, after the public were still in a state of shock after the collapse of the Union. This allowed Yeltsin to push through his radical reforms quickly and painfully. In 1998, the economy collapsed with real incomes shrinking quickly and living standards at unprecedented lows; there was 74 million, compared to 2 million in 1989, living in poverty, alongside mass unemployment, rapidly increasing substance abuse with the population levels drastically decreasing. The UN Human Development Plan called this “a human crisis of monumental proportions”.”
2. The European Crisis. I have also blogged about the larger context to this crisis. I am fed up of having people say something along the lines of “The Greeks deserved it” – this ignores the context and mechanisms of those at the top that have created dire situations and living conditions for so many ordinary Greek citizens who did not benefit from the inflow of excessive overrated credit. Europe’s response has involved the tightening of already existing debt and deficit levels on countries, which is only making the situation worse. This ignores it was a well-known fact amongst leaders that Greece was not meeting these conditions before their access into the Euro (but nor was Germany meeting the deficit requirements in 1994; 1996; 2003-2006; 2009 and onwards; alongside breaking the debt limit since 2003) and they actually created a loophole for Greece to access the Euro, alongside Goldman Sachs’ helping Greece cover their true economic situation; but it was this that also allowed them to get access to over valued credit so key to their destruction once the crisis hit.

What is often used as an excuse for these neoliberal spending cuts and tax cuts for the rich is that without it we will see a brain drain and investment and economic growth will suffer. This ignores facts. For one, there is more evidence of regionalisation, rather than globalisation – with global economic integration not being historically unique. The idea that governments are powerless against some forces such as larger corporations helps states with policies such as those inflicted upon Russia and Greece because without them, the rulers say, their economies would be unattractive and people’s futures would be destroyed. This ignores the fact that for the ordinary person, like what is happening in the UK now, it is precisely these shock doctrine policies that are destroying people’s living conditions and lives. There has been a considerable amount of shock therapy inflicted upon UK citizens already, Davis just wants it intensified.

There needs to be more focus on the issue of regionalisation, for example:

In Monetary Union, Fiscal Crisis and the Preemption of Democracy, Scharpf (2011) refers to the problems of underlying structural and institutional differences of countries creating issues with European economic convergence alongside the problem of monetary policies not being tailored to specific national contexts. This is key when understanding what has happened to the so-called GIPS economies (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain)

Here there is a regional problem that needs addressing in terms of the Euro and the way it is structured and framed given its lack of political transparency and democratic accountability. For instance, there is concern that whilst the introduced European Excessive Imbalance Procedure recognises the problems of imbalances between economies it may also make it easier for Europe to push through neoliberal reform in countries under the facade of pitching to help correct imbalances.

Essentially, the idea that cuts for the rich and in public spending, alongside leaving the massive imbalances and unfairness in the tax, credit, banking and financial sectors alone is a good thing for society does not meet the facts, as shown in the two case studies used above. David Davis can try to argue that the government is not doing enough cuts, but that is elitist (edit: but as a reader of this blog has pointed out, it would be wrong to argue this is the same type of elitism of Cameron and Osborne, given Davis’s different background), out of touch bullshit. Ordinary people around the world are paying the price for greed and profit driven credit imbalances and bonus obsessions of the 1%, we are paying for the private debt being turned into public debt, and we are paying hard. No excuse, including the often purported excuse of globalisation, can be used when trying to defend such inhuman and sadistic policies.

Economic facts and myths…

There have been and are a lot of myths continually circulated about debt, Labour’s record in power alongside benefits (notable the stigmatising idea of ‘scroungers’) and the ‘need’ for cuts to restart growth. I have tackled these themes previously, but with news that disposable income is at a 9 year low, as benefits are being cut despite benefit fraud only equating to £1.6bn a year, alongside there being only around 200,000 vacancies for over 2.4 million people unemployed in early 2012 whilst the super rich are hiding at least $21 trillion in tax havens this idea that it’s Labour’s fault (despite the Tories accepting Labour’s economic spending plans up to 2008) is an ideological smokescreen by the Tory Government to enact their dream privatisation, social Darwin inspired slash and burn, help the rich economic and political policy framework.

It is often forgot that after the 2WW, as a percentage of GDP the UK was in over 250% debt – even after a £1.5 trillion bank bailout the UK economy now is in only around 60% debt. Instead of investing in a welfare state, the Tories are embarking on a critical attack against one of the most proudest things Britain has created. But cleverly, unlike Thatcher, they mask their intentions with lies and propaganda about how they want to make life ‘fairer’, ‘equal’ and talk about how there is such a thing called ‘society’. When scratching beneath the surface you see what the party funded 50% by the City is really about.

Excuses after excuses…

Hollande recently returned the favour of snubbing Cameron when he entertained Ed Miliband instead – as Cameron had to deal with Romney, even though his reason for not meeting Hollande was because he was only a ‘candidate’. France have changed the debate in Europe, and today have introduced a financial transaction tax of 0.2%. Europe are now talking about euro bonds again, with Hollande clearly having an effect upon Merkel. Europe are constrained by the restrictions of countries needing less than 60% of GDP debt and 3% deficit – this is something I recently wrote about, given the recent increased tightening of such restrictions. However, the ideological direction has changed in Europe with Greece’s new coalition that supports the bailout even disagreeing on cut agreements after needing two elections to fend off the anti-austerity movement and public outrage at the Troika’s proposals. In fact, the IMF have recently warned the UK that they may need growth inducing policies such as a VAT reduction to help kick start the economy.

As benefit claimants are attacked and people are told to get a job, despite there being a shortage of jobs – the Tories keep claiming that their economic strategy is working despite leading us back into recession. They will carry on blaming Labour, and if that fails the weather or the Jubilee but it is the government’s slash and burn approach to economic policy that has got us back here.

All this is evidence of the falling rate of profit endemic within capitalist operations.

The ‘logic’ of capitalism’s falling rate of profit: sack workers, decrease wages, increase prices, spend more and more on expensive capital upkeep/investment in a desperate bid to maintain unsustainable profit as demand goes down as people have less to spend, and so companies end up going bust and the economy suffers, not profits, for the majority. Eventually, as Marx talked about – monopolisation of capitalism happens as smaller companies and organisations are swallowed up by capitalists’ dog eat dog mentality as bigger corporations get more power and healthy competition is undermined – as we have seen with banks not lending to smaller organisations.

And the worst of the cuts are yet to come.

Essentially, capitalism needs debt to survive. It has been a victory for right-wing propaganda that the right-wing media monopolies have successfully created a narrative that it is the public sector’s fault and the public sector needs to be reformed to become like the private sector; that the welfare claimants are a key cause of the crisis, and that people on benefits are lazy and are scamming the state and hard-working ‘alarm clock’ Britain; alongside, the lie that it is Labour’s fault for spending too much despite there being a £1.5 trillion bank bailout of the PRIVATE SECTOR.

These are some of the issues, with a focus on the nature of the private sector, I hope to focus on when I go back to University, to complete my Masters, in my dissertation project. It’s really important that we keep fighting against the myths and understand the complexity of the situation and the vested interests that undermine realistic valid debates being widely circulated amongst the public. This is one of the things The Break-In Project is addressing, which Jay and I are the founders of.

Living with Me and My OCD Documentary by @ClaireWatkinso2

Living With Me And My OCD from Claire Watkinson on Vimeo.

Above is my sister’s, Claire Watkinson, trailer for her up-coming documentary that will be raising awareness and tackling the ignorance and stigma often associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Like my sister, I am also a sufferer from OCD. It can be a very debilitating illness, in fact it is in the “top 10 most debilitating illnesses by the World Health Organisation in terms of lost income and decreased quality of life”. Essentially, OCD involves constant obsessive thoughts that cause distress often alongside compulsions to alleviate the stress that such obsessions cause. These issues will be explored throughout the documentary, as demonstrated through the trailer!

I have gone along for company and support to a few of the many filming events Claire has set up, organised and recorded for the documentary alongside being filmed for the documentary myself. I am really proud and impressed by how much work and effort Claire has put into the documentary, and the potential such a documentary has for raising awareness. I have been amazed by how many people have come out – so to speak – with symptoms of OCD ever since Claire started filming, too.

This has also come at a time when MPs have began to open up about mental illness, with Charles Walker even discussing his own battle with OCD. What I found particularly effective with Charles Walker’s public admission was that he also discussed candidly the darker side of OCD, as well. Don’t get me wrong, all OCD thoughts are dark. But I mean the darker thoughts that revolve around thinking that if you don’t perform a compulsion you may kill or hurt people you care about, for instance. The many forms OCD can take is something Claire is also covering.

I really encourage everyone to watch and share the trailer alongside the documentary when it is released! We need to keep moving forward in tackling mental health stigmas and discrimination, and this is something Claire’s documentary will do. The personal diaries, filmed by Claire throughout shooting the documentary regarding her own experiences of OCD, are especially very brave and encouraging for other OCD sufferers to speak out. Just a really great idea by someone who has a heap of potential.

Well done, Claire!

Follow Claire’s progress at @ClaireWatkinso2 and http://www.facebook.com/LivingWithMeAndMyOcd

Blue Labour and the state…

We are witnessing a massive attack on the idea of the state, especially the welfare state, by the ConDem government. After a local Labour meeting/debate last week regarding Blue Labour and its potential for the Labour party, whilst recognising elements of Blue Labour that are analytically useful – such as the critique of the dominance of markets/capital – the rag-bag of ideas, which fails to unite a common practical policy framework, is in danger of actually helping further the current attacks on institutions such as the welfare state and trade unions that Labour, Red Labour if you like, have been historically central to creating and protecting.

Blue Labour as a movement has social conservative policies on crime and immigration, alongside support for new forms of organisation such as cooperatives at the centre of its vision. It criticises the so-called over reliance of the Labour party on the state, including the 1945 creation of the welfare state, and our focus on equality and eradicating the postcode lottery. Without an adequate policy prescription, however, it is not clear how they would replace the current state and welfare structure.

In a time when the NHS is being privatised even more, welfare benefits are being cut, taken away and subject to Social Darwin measures and when low paid workers are having their union rights slashed through the new universal benefit is it really the right time, and will it ever be, to join the attack on so-called welfare dependency – buying into ‘scrounger’ rhetoric – and the state? Yes, I have been very critical of the state in the past, and still believe new forms of organisation such as cooperatives and mutuals are essential. But I think promoting this idea that the welfare state creates dependency, attacking the creation of the welfare state in 1945, alongside criticising trade unions as excessive only helps the current Tory right-wing attack on the poor, the voters that Blue Labour apparently is trying to target. This is especially true, given they fail to prescribe a coherent alternative.

As Jay Baker said in a recent vlog (video included below), Labour actually fare badly when they try to be something that is not true to Labour’s core values:

All Labour has to do is stay true to their original values, having been founded on the working class, mass majorities labour workplace; it shouldn’t have to be so complicated.

The use of the word ‘Blue’ is supposed to represent loss, sadness and nostalgia. But nostalgia of what? Labour should be defending the rights of the state, equality, welfare and trade unions. Not criticising them. Let’s look at the facts. For instance, welfare spending is not excessive, it is rather stable:

Despite population ageing, greater welfare generosity under Labour and a much deeper recession than that of the early 1990s, welfare expenditure has not ballooned, gone through the roof, exploded, hit unsustainable levels or whatever other glib phrase people want to use to describe what didn’t happen over the last ten years.

It’s the same when looking at the movement to switch DLA to most likely ATOS means tested assessements despite there only being around 0.5% benefit fraud through DLA, alongside DLA being for many an in-work benefit so actually helps maintain employment – illustrating the ideological nature to the benefit changes. In fact,

DLA is not an out-of-work benefit, and many people use the money to help subsidise the extra costs of getting to work. Disability Rights UK estimates that at least 25,000 people could be forced to give up their work as a result of the drive to restrict payments, pushing up unemployment payments.

Fundamentally, Blue Labour is very weak when it comes to the state and presenting an alternative view of the state’s functions and fails to support one of Labour’s best and invaluable creations: the construction of the welfare state:

Blue Labour actually puts the final nail in the coffin of the state by placing faith primarily in communities as the last line of defence against the market, and leaving the question of the state’s function unanswered (for more, click here).

This is not to deny that New Labour vastly undermined Labour as a party; however, Blue Labour traces the decline of the Labour party to the 1945 nationalisation. What I am saying is that a Labour party that begins to give in to the massive attacks on the state’s value for providing welfare, alongside equality and the need for trade union rights at a time when these things are being attacked on a scale more extensive than Thatcher, is failing to defend its own successes. There are some good ideas within Blue Labour, but they’re not new to the Labour party’s underlying, central ethos.

 NB: Just found a really good article making a similar point to me over on Labour List.

Russian Protests: Yeltsin, Putin and Democracy…

In Moscow, protesters are demanding new elections after fraudulent presidential and parliamentary elections, alongside the electorate feeling cheated by the Granita style pact between Putin, who was recently inaugurated for a third term presidency, and former president, now prime minister, Medvedev.

But what about Russia and its history: politically, economically and socially? How does this relate to current events? After the fall of the Soviet Union, Westernised Russian Chicago Boys under Yeltsin’s guidance plundered the country into desperation and devastation. Russia, according to democracy rating agencies such as Freedom House (close to USA foreign policy), was considered a ‘democracy’ in the 1990s- despite fraudulent elections, inequality and a rampant decrease in living standards, as the collapse of the Union was considered a victory for liberal democracy alongside being ‘the end of history’.

Only when the harm and reality of what Yeltsin and his advisers had done throughout the 1990s became apparent did the West then start blaming the Russian system, rather than capitalism per se. It was said to be the Russian Soviet Style structures that undermined any chance of capitalism and a free market. Gorbachev was considered by many to be a pariah after many blamed him for the Soviet Union’s collapse, whilst also longing for a Soviet Union era of stability but with more freedom and equality; something Gorbachev was moving towards before he was ousted by Yeltsin – after standing on a tank and joining forces with two other Soviet Republics – and his free marketers.

I recently completed an essay for my Masters regarding democratisation and Russia; I controversially argued that Russia has not transitioned into a democracy, whether assessed minimally (so through free and fair elections) or more substantially. Drawing on Freedom House’s definition of democracy, which is a substantial definition, I illustrated that whilst Freedom House rated Russia as an electoral democracy (‘partly free’) in the 1990s, using their criteria this analysis is inconsistent especially with their recent (2009) downgrading of Russia, no longer rating them as a democracy. Most argue that Russia transitioned to a democracy through Yeltsin’s dual transitional approach to democratisation – through economic and democratic reforms – however, I argue this did not happen, as the economic reforms undermined and prevented democratic development. In fact, democracy was seen as a hinder to economic reform.

Gorbachev attempted to bring in democratic reforms through uskorenie (acceleration), glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). For instance, 1988 electoral changes, alongside a 1990 amendment ushered in a multi-party system and electoral competition. These electoral changes were halted through the 1993 Constitutional Crisis, as Yeltsin battled with Congress in his bid to ensure prominent presidential powers for himself. Decree no.1400 is a notable misuse of Yeltsin’s power, dissolving the Constitution and parliament, surrounding parliament with troops to set it on fire, as people/protesters were injured, killed and arrested – illustrating the clear dis-juncture between democracy and Yeltsin’s economic programme, as the source of the conflict was parliament’s repelling of Yeltsin’s decree powers to deal with the economic crisis because of the destruction and sadism endemic within the proposals. The West, however, supported Yeltsin.

Naomi Klein’s shock doctrine analysis is a well known and very comprehensive report of what happened to Russia in the 1990s, after the public were still in a state of shock after the collapse of the Union. This allowed Yeltsin to push through his radical reforms quickly and painfully. In 1998, the economy collapsed with real incomes shrinking quickly and living standards at unprecedented lows; there was 74 million, compared to 2 million in 1989, living in poverty, alongside mass unemployment, rapidly increasing substance abuse with the population levels drastically decreasing. The UN Human Development Plan called this “a human crisis of monumental proportions”.

Importantly, Putin ushered in a successful period of growth and success. After the Yeltsin era, many argue, persuasively, that Putin’s success and ability to become more authoritarian was due to the instability and insecure nature of Yeltsin’s tenure. Gorbachev was bringing in slow but progressive change – Yeltsin brought in chaos. The public “were ready to settle for a mild dose of authoritarianism providing further stability and steady economic growth, rather than opting for a Yeltsin-type liberal order that had aroused their expectations but largely excluded them from the hoped-for benefits” (Desai 2005:91). Furthermore, the absence of a civil society in the 1990s, the civil society many in the West now champion against Putin, was key in enabling the West to hammer through its privatisation, liberalisation of prices and free trade policies that plundered the country into mayhem. World Value Surveys illustrate the distrust and detrimental effects Yeltsin’s reforms had on people’s opinion of democracy in Russia.

Whilst these protests are focused on demanding new elections, electoral corruption is nothing new in Russia. Yeltsin utilised 33 times more funding than allowed in the 1996 election, significantly biased media coverage alongside a corruption riddled ‘loans for shares’ scheme to win the 1996 election, after debating whether to cancel it due to the unpopularity of his economic reforms. Putin replaced Yeltsin in 1999, arguably unconstitutionally, providing Yeltsin with legal immunity. Putin is criticised for cracking down on internationally funded NGOs in Russia. However, as authors have illustrated through the creation of the Civic Chamber, Putin has increased state funding to NGOs, after the abysmal record of NGO support from ‘democratic’ Yeltsin, with anti-government NGOs such as the Moscow Helsinki Group even receiving funding. Nevertheless, this was central, if not the driving reason, for why Freedom House downgraded Russia’s democratic rating.

As many authors have also argued, the protests against Putin are originating largely from the big cities such as Moscow – as shown by this recent protest – the areas where more middle class, intellectuals are forming/existent and who are now demanding liberal rights after Putin brought in more economic security. Many outside Moscow see Putin as key for stability – arguably a product from the Yeltsin times. Even with the League of Voters’ projections, a civil society group formed after the fraudulent elections, Putin would have still become president even without electoral fraud.

This isn’t to deny that Putin does undemocratic, unnerving things – Russia’s continual support for Syria is one of these – however, it does highlight the authoritarian tendencies of Russia now are related to the West’s imposition of capitalist neoliberal reforms in the 1990s, where people became scared about the meaning of liberal democracy, and democratic values – nostalgic for Soviet Russia and more stable forms of living. Putin provided that, and only now are we beginning to see real cracks forming as the people who achieved stability now want more. His authoritarian ways therefore gained support, as people yearned for stability alongside rebuilding Russia as a great super power.

To ignore the context would be to ignore the damaging effects this capitalist system causes. For Freedom House to rate Yeltsin’s regime as a democracy, just because it was enacting neoliberal reforms, links to the problems of the current European obsession with neoliberal economics. We need to keep highlighting these inconsistencies and understand the context and influences placed upon different countries and regimes.