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Good evening. Welcome to Oxford. Welcome to the Middle East centre.

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Pushkov is my name is Norman. And it is a pleasure to welcome you all to the eighth and final session of our webinar dedicated

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to the exploration of the dictatorship syndrome in the Middle East and big on NPR Arts.

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Today, the focus will be very much on the beyond as we welcome.

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Award winning author IGY Inadequate up in our virtual midst.

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It is by no means unknown to Oxford and that she has addressed on various occasions in the past.

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Some in our audience today might even remember a particularly tough exam question when

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they were asked to translate an excerpt of a review of Aegeus Novem Dugit Dream Letter.

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Usually I'm enough. Women who go nuts for such is the curse of every great writer.

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They eventually end up being the topic of an exam question and others associated in the mind of some students,

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at least with particularly challenging moments of their academic life.

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But also, I reassure you, with some very enjoyable ones now, e.g.,

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it's not only a leading novelist to has all such works, such as Must Sensibility The Sound of Bananas.

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They've each translated into English as the time of mute swans and only on consultancy group idiocy.

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The Encyclopaedia of Nonexisting Non-existent Births. She's also a poet, and as many of you will know,

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an award winning journalist who has throughout her career addressed some of Turkey's many open wounds,

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ranging from the status of political prisoners and hunger strikers to the country's difficult relationship with Armenia and to the,

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of course, the Kurdish question from that point of view. Her words are exemplary with what I call an ethics of listening.

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And I must say, it sounds much better in French ITIC, eloquent and a very rare talents to listen and to empathise with that,

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the downtrodden and those who rebelled and then to turn their voices into the subject matter of her work.

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This is by no means a passive engagement, legitimate.

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Karen has played a leading role in the anti-war movement against the invasion of Iraq and of course,

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in the 2013 Gezi protests in Istanbul and throughout Turkey that challenged AKP to some of her work, such as her 2015 Turkey.

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The insane and the melancholy have foreseen, documented and denounced Turkey's slow slide into autocracy in the 2019.

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How to Lose a Country. The seven steps from democracy to dictatorship, however,

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draws lessons from the Turkish experience and analyses the rise of authoritarianism and populism throughout the world.

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It is a vibrant call for vigilance in the West in the age of Brexit and illiberalism.

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But political engagement has come at a price and a lives in exile in Zagreb.

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And yet she refuses to be pessimistic and works on a new book Full of Hope,

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entitled Together and Choices for Better Now, which will be published in the spring next year by Fourth Estate.

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A few words now about the proceedings this evening. For those amongst you who are not familiar with our programme.

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Please send in your questions via the chat function.

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My colleague Eugene Rogan will be monitoring them and we'll put them to the AJC.

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After the talk. But this is enough for me now. Time has come to listen to E.J. and to talk entitled The Logic of Chaos.

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The pattern of dictatorship, e.g. the floor is yours.

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Lorand. Oh, my God. It is. Wow. Such kind words.

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I cannot thank you enough. My heartfelt thinking is for this introduction. Hello, everyone.

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Here again, I am going to be talking about a horrible topic and not a very joyful talk.

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And I'm going to I'm trying to I'm going to try to make it as pleasant as I can.

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I wrote this book, How to Lose a Country. There's seven steps from democracy to dictatorship throughout 2017 and 18.

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And then it was published in the beginning of 2019. Now we are coming to the end of bloody years to 2020.

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And the context is rapidly changing. And not only because of Korona, but also because my predictions have proven themselves to be true,

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unfortunately for Western democracies, which weren't very optimistic.

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The book tells about the seven steps, but also seven global patterns of right wing populism.

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One of the topics, one of the aspects of this book is when I want to talk about this a little bit.

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When the book was published, I was calling that the phenomenon Right-Wing Populism.

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But now I feel like we should call it fascism after all, because since two years, several things have changed.

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And I feel like I don't need to use this reder, docile term, Right-Wing Populism, whereas fascism is more convenient,

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more applicable in our current situation, especially when Trump is refusing to leave the White House.

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And when the white supremacists, not only in United States, but also in Europe,

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are making their voices heard not from the fringes, but from the central political machine.

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So I would say the book tells about the seven patterns that we see when fascism,

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this new type of fascism, introduces itself to the political sphere in any country.

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When I wrote the book, as you said, Lauren, I drew lessons from Turkey,

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and the book was partly a warning call for the Western countries because I was trying to tell

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them what had happened to us will be happening to you or actually happening to you right now.

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And you don't see it. And many people, you know, well learnt why is people, intellectuals in almost every European country?

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Because the book was published in almost everywhere in Europe.

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Many of them have fallen to the mistake of thinking that I am comparing the country's.

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Thankfully, I am not that not that naive.

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I don't compare countries. I know that these countries are completely different from each other.

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They have definitely they have different backgrounds, different sociological structure and etc.

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What I am comparing is the political development that it that that is taking place in each country and

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trying to compare these developments while trying to find out a pattern that is repeating itself,

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which in my point of view has seven steps.

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And these seven steps are for those who didn't. Who haven't read the book yet is one creative moment.

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I'll go through the steps very shortly and I'm going to see a few sentences for each step create.

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I'm creating a movement. It has been the motto since 2016 in Europe, European countries and the UK as well.

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And the word movement is very promising.

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And as opposed to the word party, party is a static word.

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And it gave me. It has a history going back two centuries, you know, centuries ago.

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Whereas movement, it promises us action, a direction and a mobilisation energy.

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So all these right wing populist movements, then fascist movements start their political life by creating a movement.

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And I would like to remind you that when Trump refused to leave the White House,

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his first statement after after the election night, Mike Pence, his weepie, was talking about this movement again.

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He said that are moments that are that are today. So whenever we hear the word movement, I think we all should be alert.

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We are going through a very interesting time globally.

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We know that both international and national institutions are falling apart.

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They cannot hold water anymore. U.N., NATO, European Union, all are going to the age of this our age of disintegration and on national level.

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The representative democracy, the mechanisms and the institutions of representative democracy are not responding to the needs of this age.

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And to do technological improvement, especially in communications.

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If they cannot respond, they cannot comply with, you know, the new conditions.

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That is why a movement becomes a more convenient, more appealing word, a political concept for a lot of people.

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And it also provides the weakness that these right wing populist movements, fascist movements,

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very much in need of the second step or the second commonality is disrupting the rationale and terrorising the language.

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I think Britain will experience this step very recently during Brexit.

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We have an understanding, as the people of the world is the educated people of the world, that there is a common sense.

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There are common codes of a society. And there are, you know, impossible to break law rules, unwritten rules like the basics of logic.

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Let's say, you know, Aristotelian logic, you cannot break it because if you break it, you become a schizophrenic.

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Let's say I'm just, you know, giving exaggerating the situation.

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But then we are now facing a political, a political, a global political movement that is using that is almost opposing the Aristotelian logic.

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And so it is only natural that those who have some sort of common sense feel like, am I mad?

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Has everyone gone mad or is the entire world mad?

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Ironically, these three sentences that we have been using so much since last few years

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belonged to a Russian writer who wrote her memoirs telling about the Stalin era.

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I find this quite ironic. And so there is this terrorising the language, disrupting durational.

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And it's so easy because we are operating in a communications square, which is not regulated.

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Social media, Internet and also the battered conventional journalism.

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Our entire communication sphere is like a jungle where the powerful gets the gets the rule.

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So do we have to remember that once the radio became a mass mass communication tool,

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it brought us a Second World War fascism ultranationalism during the Second World War.

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And now, once again, the humanity is changing its way of communication.

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It is understanding of truth.

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And then we have this new political movement, which pretty much stands upon this unstable communication spare and it energises.

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It is energised by that space. So and the third one is remove the shame immoralities hot in the post Truth World.

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And this is the I think, the most important thing in this book.

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I you know, I find it you know, in my point of view, this is the most important chapter and most important coming.

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Come on. Commonality, because truth in post truth.

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We have been talking about this topic all excessively since 2016 or even before that.

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But many people, as far as I can see, take it as a technical, technical problem.

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If he can, you know, double down, double cheque it the, you know, facts.

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If he can endorse the facts. The reality.

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The truth. We can beat the post truth era. And if you know enough journalism is done, there will there will be no rain of posturing.

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And so on. It is not true. Truth and the attack on truth is a moral and political issue and moral.

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The world moral. I underline that one. And we have about.

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Pretty long history of losing the truth. It didn't start with these right wing populist movements or fascist movements.

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It goes back to 1970s. It goes back to the Iraq war, actually.

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And it goes back to the no to war demonstrations, global demonstrations, which did not make the impact on the final decision of invasion of Iraq.

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So what is true? What is not became really.

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Laurie, what is right? What is wrong as well? And the fourth commonality of fourth pattern is dismantling judicial and political mechanisms.

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And Britain as well is now experiencing this step or this pattern of fascism.

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This is so it is not happening only through putting the, you know,

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assigning appointing a loyal party members to the certain critical positions in judicial and political mechanism.

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But also it is happening through toying with these institutions,

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so much so that the entire society has this new understanding of political and judicial institutions.

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A, they start thinking that, oh, these are paper tigers. These are super fearless.

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Actually, we don't need them. So it happens not only through not only through appointing loyal members of the party,

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but also constantly attacking these institutions to make them look super fearless in designing your own citizen.

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This one, the fifth pattern is mostly about women.

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It starts with women because somehow there is this understanding that if the you know, if you can't change, women are easier to change.

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And they have been always used as the window. The mannequins of ideological projects.

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Any ideological project. So right wing populism or fascism uses women.

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They take women as like these, you know, paper dolls.

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And then they put them put on them new clothes, new looks and new outfits, whatever.

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And they put on the on their ideological window dressing these women.

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But then it's also in this pattern includes or the step includes cancelling out the others.

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The unwanted, you know, slowly defining the unwanted citizen, which I am.

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I am as well. So like many other people in Turkey.

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So bit by bit you understand that there is a certain model of seats, citizen, and you are not one of them.

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And I remember two thousand seven election night in Turkey.

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And I'm giving this example to say that these things do not happen in a very blunt way.

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Like, they don't happen overnight. It is just tiny words, you know, a mention of insinuation and so on.

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In 2007, election night and I on giving his victory speech, which was embraced by media, mainstream media.

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And he was saying those you said this. Those who didn't vote for us are also the colours of this country.

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So when you hear something and the next day, every almost every, you know, highlight of the newspaper,

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every big news piece about this victory speech was saying how embracing was Mr. Yardarm.

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Whereas I wrote. OK, now we are gonna cheers. You know, the dressing's of the of the main meal.

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We are not the main meal. So it means like, you know, we can be skipped. We can be dismissed, easily pushed away from the edge of the plate.

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So it's about words. It's about, you know, details.

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And then. And people many people feel like they would be blamed of being paranoid when you when they pay too much attention to these details,

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when they mention these details or little insinuations.

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I think one of the mistakes we did in Turkey was that thinking that, you know, some of us is exaggerating too much the danger.

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So that is why maybe I, you know, more alert than anyone, you know,

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nothing anyone but more elect than many other people to what's happening in European countries in Britain and the United States.

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Anyway, let's go back to our pattern six pattern is let them laugh at the higher.

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I love this because it applies to Britain and United States a lot.

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It does into France or Germany. Their humour is not that, you know, not as good as these two countries.

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Unfortunately. I'm sorry, Lauren. Laughing and creating producing political humour, of course, can be a tool of resistance.

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But this but unfortunately, in our times, it also becomes a too comfortable bunker or shelter.

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To hide away from the realities of the political political developments.

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And also we actually know that now when I published the book, it was very fresh.

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But now I think many more people are aware that political humour is also taking away the tension, coming down the anxiety.

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Therefore, it is a little bit delaying the political reaction.

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But there is another thing which is which I find very important.

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The political humour, especially sarcasm, becomes a tool to hit your own.

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Not the power, not the oppressive power, but to hit the people that you are in solidarity with or that you should be in solidarity with.

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And I think that is because we feel defeated in this enormous wave would be before this enormous wave of fascism.

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And then we start doing things, stingy things, you know, picking on each other and so on.

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And it somehow I feel I as far as I can observe it is creating a behavioural

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culture amongst those people who are supposed to be in solidarity against fascism.

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And I think this is equally dangerous for a country that is sub that is facing danger of fascism.

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And the last one, of course, build your own country. And this is you know, we're well known to us from McCarthy era.

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Love or love it or leave it. And, you know, several other examples can be, you know, from the top of my head, it just McCarthy came to me.

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But, you know, Hitler or whatever, any kind of fascism ends up here.

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You are not wanted. So you go away. Either we kill you or imprison you.

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I'm like, that changes. But at the end of the day, this country is ours.

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We, as in the supporters, the loyal support, loyal members of that political movement and the others should go die or just disappear or something it.

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I don't think that European country, European citizens will end up here.

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Well, let me put it this way. I didn't think that European citizens will end up in the step.

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But unfortunately, I'm hearing many British people, many Americans from other European countries as well.

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Saying that I had to. This is not my country anymore. This is how you lose your country.

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This is the feeling that, you know, that comes to you very slightly.

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You know, this is not this is not Britain anymore. This is not United States. It's not France.

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This is not Germany.

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And then, boom, if you can only overcome that feeling and start reacting in an organised and cold blooded manner, not getting too excited about it.

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And then you can get back to your country. But I am pretty depressed to see that, actually.

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It is now happening to several citizens as well.

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Because you don't lose your country. By only having to go away from the country, but also the feeling of home is lost sometimes.

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And that is also losing your country. But I am very hopeful for the coming days.

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I just don't want to, you know, stop here in the most desperate sentence.

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That's why I'm adding this part. And I think this new crisis of pandemic will change a lot of things.

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It won't be pretty. It won't be easy. But I think it will change the context that we are living in and talking about.

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So let's see what happens. Thank you, Lawrence, and thank you, everyone.

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Thank you very much, A.J., for a very inspiring talk.

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I will continue by saying that, unfortunately, your book has proven to be prophetic.

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And while normally this would have been something to.

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I mean, something one could have rejoiced that as a as an also in this particular case, it is actually very, very sad.

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But I would like to use my mind. My prerogative is as a cheque, perhaps to start by asking you a couple of questions while the questions are,

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I believe, coming in also from the from the audience.

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It's going to be a little bit embarrassing. But I remember a talk you gave two or three years ago in getting in and now people are going

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to start to believe that I am some kind of group and following you that you were in that talk,

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you also referred to the role of the media in promoting these images of strong men like Trump, like add along like Autobahn in Hungary,

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and that one of the problems was that the press kept on publishing pictures of whatever you wrote about Turkey.

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What was written about Turkey?

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You ended up with an image of that, of being published whenever something was published about Hungary you had thought about.

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And I was wondering what if you could to elaborate this a little bit for our audience today as well,

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because I suppose a very important point, because this still is happening.

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And even though I tell all the editors, like, would you please not, you know, something else, not Mr. Erdogan.

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This is unfair, I think, in this you know, this idea.

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OK. It's an idea. It's an observation.

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Did the first time I remember observing this, I was in Den Haag with Mikhail Siskin, Russian novelist, an amazing person, amazing novelist.

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And we were supposed to talk about, you know, our countries and the political situation.

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And then we are in the stage and there's this giant screen behind us.

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And on this side, there's Putin on my side, there's that one.

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And I told we are too little. We are too small in the stage now.

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They are the bigger guy. So why are you reproducing at the power sheen once again?

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A whereas this is the stage where we are challenging this polishing and Michael kind of laughing a lot.

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So and whenever I write about taqiyya, I see I don't it is unfair because 20 years ago, not 20 like 30 years ago, let's say when we say Russia,

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the first word that would come to our mind would be Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, God, Gotting, you know, whatever.

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Some some is nice things, you know, the good side of humanity, so to speak.

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And now when we say Russia, there is no only not only the first wait word is putting that comes to our mind,

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but there is no other word that comes to mind.

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Is the, you know, Russian. Well, Alexander, I like the Nobel prise winning Russian author, of course.

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But for, you know, the first word and for a long time, the only word is Putin.

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And this is a quote. This also goes for Turkey. For United States, for Brazil.

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For Mexico. It is unfair to the people of those countries and all the things that they have done produced.

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I mean, it is, yeah. And also to the people who are resisting these, you know, political developments, we never mentioned them.

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It's their face. So there it is.

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We have to be careful because when we are opposing, sometimes we are reproducing the power relation once again without even noticing.

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So, yeah. Not, you know, taxi drivers, income ratio or in United States, even in the United States.

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I should say that. And in, you know, anywhere in Europe, when I say I'm from Turkey, they say, oh, Abdon.

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And I really want to say we are more than that.

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And now it is more. When I published a book, it wouldn't be so, you know, it wouldn't sound so familiar when I said this, but now I think it would.

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There is a certain shame. In our in these people, Americans, British or, you know, Turkish people to be represented by the worst.

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Of your country. And not being able to get rid of this situation and being able to get out of this situation brings breaks your heart.

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And it embarrasses you. So maybe we shouldn't, you know, constantly reproduce the situation so that we can have other voices,

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other faces, other pictures, other images from those countries so we can, you know, start from the start.

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They either continue to battle in the world of images as well, so to speak.

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I think this is a very important point and precisely about that battle and that that's going to be my point.

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My last question before I pass on to to to to Eugene with the questions from the audience, because I want to to to to ask an optimistic question.

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So could you give us a few of your while, some of your 10 recipes for for the better future that you are writing about right now?

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Not better future better now because the United now future is too far away.

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Well, the problem is I have been, you know, after writing this book and it was published in several countries,

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so I had to go through these several countries like a bloody Cassandra and repeat all these horrible things over and over again.

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And I was, you know. Personally or mentally and emotionally, I thought maybe it's time to be the Mary Poppins of politics now,

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so I decided to write together 10 choices for a better now.

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It is less of real politics, that book, but more sort of philosophical approach to the important matters of our time.

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And there are 10 words and the first word.

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And I think most important in the book is Faith.

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Because. We are seeing the worst of our kind constantly, we are subjected to the representation of the worst of our kind.

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And it's like a bombardment of images. We don't see.

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OK, let's put it like this. How many times this week did you see the face of the guy that the Turkish scientists, husband and wife?

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How many times did you see their faces and how many times did you see Boris Johnson or Trump?

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This bombardment of the worst.

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Actually, it damages our sense of humankind.

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One doesn't notice this until one become one starts hating oneself.

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Because you're a human as well. So you start asking this very, very wrong question.

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Is human evil in its essence?

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Maybe it's rotten. Already.

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So you gradually, because of fascism, because of this global wave of new form of fascism, you start losing your faith in your own kind.

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And it any use. If you cook, you lose your faith in your kind.

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That means the rest of us is down the hill. There is no going back from coming back from that.

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So I know you are one of the 10, 10 words that I chose was faith.

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And I wanted to. I wanted to tell people.

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We have a moral duty to have faith in our kind, not because we are naive, not because of those nice videos,

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people doing the nice thing, you know, the right thing on that that are, you know, multiplied in social media.

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It's a moral duty to do this. And we owe it to our ancestors and to our kids, to our children.

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So how are we going to restore our faith?

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And this is the question I asked. And it is not a very Samarai usable book, I should say, because it's stories I told everything through stories,

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personal stories, you know, stories around the world I've seen.

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And so but. I want you to think, you know, everyone who is listening now, how much faith do you have?

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An inhuman kind. This is the important to me, because I am thinking now, although Dostoevski, for instance, hated.

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You know. Quite many people in crime and punishment.

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He had a different sense of time in human kind.

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For him, there was no the end of the world was not calculable.

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Now we can calculate it. You know, everybody has an idea when everything is going to explode.

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And so this changes your perception of what you're doing.

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And the feeling of reason. Meaning everything.

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And then, you know, imagine all those. Writers from the beginning of 20 cent, 20 century.

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They were in OSV of humankind, although they hated it deeply as well.

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But we are different now. We are losing our face of humankind to the banality of evil.

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But to the evil of banality. Thank you, A.J.

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I will. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a long topic and I'm giving some highlights.

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I know it does definitely make sense. And I will use the opportunity to to try to think about my faith in humanity,

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while Eugene will be providing you with some more questions that has of questions that have been coming in from audience.

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Thank you. Learn. Thank you both. A.J., wonderful presentation.

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And you've inspired a lot of questions already.

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So I'm going to ask you to try and be brief in your answers so that as many of our audience as questions can be addressed as possible.

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The first is actually by Ali Saradha that.

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Ali, I'm going to ask you to please rephrase your question, because you've used an expression that I don't understand.

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And if I don't, I'm afraid our audience would either. Not sure what you mean by Shatzer.

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So if you could please just rephrase your question and type it up now. I'll get back to you later on.

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So our first question comes from an anonymous attendee.

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Could you please elaborate on the sixth stage you mentioned and give an example perhaps of how political sarcasm has been used?

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OK. Laughing It's something that I love and I think there is a deep connexion between ability to love and being human, especially as a woman.

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But I think in this time and at this stage of global politics, we have to be very careful.

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We have to pay attention, rather how we laughed and when we laugh.

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Because. And this, by the way, this idea writing about this step came to me in New York when Trump was elected.

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I was there right after like one. One month almost after the shock was still on.

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I mean, like, nobody was nobody. Everybody was really shocked.

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And it was a big audience. And they were trying to laugh, laugh in every possible way, as if they couldn't wait for a joke to laugh about Trump.

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And I thought how anxious it is, how terrified they are.

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So they just want to actually suppress their anxiety and by laughing at the phenomenon.

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They want to make. They want to feel like this is not as dangerous as it seems.

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So laughing can be curing. Laughing can be really damaging for the oppressive power, but also it can be a shelter, an emotional shelter.

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And this should be a, you know, scrutinised especially nowadays.

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It isn't. It would be a nice exercise, so to speak.

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When we look at the political humour, political jokes, let's think, you know, why are we laughing now?

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What are we laughing at? You know, are we trying to calm ourselves down or are we.

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Are we. By laughing. Are we damaging the power? Really?

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Which is, as I recall, from high school classics, where Gibbons goes in decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

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It's that combination of corrupt emperors.

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And when society begins to laugh at the rulers that the fall of an empire is around the corner.

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Well, we have been laughing at Mr. Idealogues where it massive scheme nothing escapes so far.

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Our next question, which should make is who praises you for an elegant wakeup call and asks,

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could you say something more about how you see the current and potential impact on regional organisations and specifically the EU?

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The EU has always been an incredibly boring subject, but also very interesting as well.

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EU. OK, let's do it like this.

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We have Putin, we have Trump, and we are, you know, and and on and several other leaders, you know, belonging to the same ilk.

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Let's say. And there is European Union. Who is it that is trying to supply some moral ground and, you know, talk from the high moral ground and so on.

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But then, unfortunately, Syria happened and Syrian refugees.

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You know, the entire refugee crisis destroyed the last resiting of pastiche of European Union.

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So I don't think there is no moral high ground in the world now, which is one of the problems,

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global problems that we are going through because, OK, we have leaders who do not have Shein.

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But also, we have no institutions that are morally intact enough to embarrass them.

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So it is not only real politic disintegration we are going through in terms of European Union,

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but also and more importantly, in fact, it is a moral disintegration.

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So, yeah. I was digging digging deeper.

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I think it wasn't a very often. More to come, though, because from the OSC area that you're great, as always, to have you with us.

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He's shifting your orientation away from the EU to what is going on to the United States and asks, do you think the movement that Trump has generated.

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The U.S. has been dealt a blow due to the election defeat he suffered, or can he come back because of the significant support he received?

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So is an election defeat enough to stop the chaos or does it not?

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Well, I recently wrote a piece for Guardian. It was like two days after the election.

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And I said that Trump is already building a political black op team within the government administration.

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So be aware it's not going to happen. Well, you know, many American commentators, academics and journalists, they are seeing this coming.

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They have been seeing it coming, but they didn't know how exactly would happen this pull and push about the White House.

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What is important is always happening somewhere behind the stage, behind somewhere, which we think could quite insignificant.

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The environmental committee is this little judge there in the, you know, insignificant courthouse.

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All these things have been happening in the United States. And I am not an expert on American politics.

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And there are amazing people who have been talking about these things, but.

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I wouldn't say exceptionalism, American exceptionalism. I wouldn't call it American arrogance.

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I because I know how hard it is to see that those things that only happen in crazy countries happen to you.

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How embarrassing it is,

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how it's how hard it is to swallow the fact that there has been some delay in seeing the urgency and the gravity of the situation in United States.

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And they are still making jokes about this White House.

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You know, Trump not leaving the White House. What they are doing wrong, in my point of view, is that they are waiting.

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Clear cut. He's not leaving White House.

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He's leaving White House. It doesn't happen like that. This entire machine of new form of fascism is working upon instability.

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It is immense ability to create it, to sustain instability and to make the crisis the rule.

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So he will be there. Biden will be the president, but constantly there will be this like a mosquito, you know?

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Well, that leads beautifully to our next question, which says, you know, if it were just a political matter,

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then an election defeat would be enough to bring about the change to stop this decline into chaos.

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But rather than that,

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isn't this new wave of fascism rather a social movement having much deeper roots that are just exploited by populist authoritarian figures?

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In other words, we have a much bigger issue to contend with than simply one which democratic processes might resolve.

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Mm hmm. Mm hmm. This is an interesting thing to, you know, aspect to think about, although I do think that elections or.

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Current state of representative democracy will not change anything in terms of getting rid of this political disease.

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They say,

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I wouldn't completely dismiss the fact that representative democracy is one of the best things that humanity could put together until this point.

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You know, when we look at the world that there is two. Those who want to change things have very, very roughly two perspectives.

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Let's get rid of all the institutions. Revolution and let's, you know, fortify the institutions.

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I think they will be something in between. I think they need political organisms that are now shaping through Occupy movement,

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through climate movement, through several other things, through women's Ramones or Black Lives Matter.

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I think they are going to occupy. The dying skeletons or the skeletons of representative democratic institutions,

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and they're going to be why these institutions in a certain way and they are going to reshape them.

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So I think that will be the answer. OK. Thank you.

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I, I. And Ali, Shane, thank you very much for the clarification. I think I now have the point of your question,

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which is really talking about the role of external powers in trying to influence political developments in other countries.

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And here the question really is whether sanctions that are, say,

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by Trump or by the Biden administration would serve to consolidate votes for the AKP or help the opposition.

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And do officials really understand the pros and cons of such sanction, action or outside pressures from the Turkish context?

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There was a lot of cynicism on social media when election results in the United States were delayed.

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And one of the jokes was America is faster when it comes to electing other people, other countries presidents.

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So, you know, the United States and European countries, in fact, has a lot of role for Mr.

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I do want to gain such national and international power and prestige.

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Let me remind you that Obama endorsed them as the example leader.

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The good leader for the greater Middle East. So when it comes to getting rid of the sanctions and.

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We can be more creative in that sanctions is like I haven't seen any any any in any time in history.

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Sanctions really worked. So I don't think that they should, you know, use more creative techniques if they really want to do that kind of thing.

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But I also, you know, these are jokes, but very easy to misunderstand.

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So I have to make sure that I do think that people of the of those countries who are subjected to right wing populism

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and fascism should be in solidarity and should come together and can come together to change their leaders,

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of course, and through elections. Obviously, I've got a comment from coloured capris and you can reflect on that one.

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And then I'll follow with the next question.

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Colette writes, One of the most worrying features of these new fascism's or new despotisms, as John King calls them,

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is the fact that criticising the regime or the strong man's misdemeanours ends up being a form of amplification or propaganda.

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And the other thing is the promise of welfare that these regimes do.

388
00:51:55,350 --> 00:52:01,860
This is appealing to the citizens need of stability in a changing civil as a Tory moment.

389
00:52:01,860 --> 00:52:06,150
So that was a comment more than a question. But is it anything that you had a reflection on?

390
00:52:06,150 --> 00:52:16,080
Yes, sure. You know, I have giving speeches like this in Oxford and in several other academic environment in universities.

391
00:52:16,080 --> 00:52:20,370
And when in when in such academic environment, people ask you, what do you.

392
00:52:20,370 --> 00:52:31,740
How do you define wing populism? And there are many definitions and there have there are many books, brilliant books about these this term.

393
00:52:31,740 --> 00:52:35,990
But what I like a you know, how I define it is coming from.

394
00:52:35,990 --> 00:52:40,380
It is kind of my definition is coming from my personal experience as well.

395
00:52:40,380 --> 00:52:49,060
It is mobilising the calculated ignorance against the instore interests of humankind.

396
00:52:49,060 --> 00:52:59,020
So. Right wing populism is something against the interests.

397
00:52:59,020 --> 00:53:04,320
It's something against the interest of humankind in.

398
00:53:04,320 --> 00:53:09,990
So whatever they promise. And their promises always change.

399
00:53:09,990 --> 00:53:14,730
It's, you know, this election, that this election, it's something different.

400
00:53:14,730 --> 00:53:31,350
Whatever they promise actually behind it is the only thing behind those promises is they are the ruthless desire for limitless power.

401
00:53:31,350 --> 00:53:36,700
And this is actually what maybe in.

402
00:53:36,700 --> 00:53:54,910
Differs in today's fascism, because in, you know, during Nazi Germany and in Hitler's fascist fascism or Mussolini's fascism, it was horrible.

403
00:53:54,910 --> 00:54:00,280
It was, you know, ridiculous. But still, they had the ideal.

404
00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:07,550
They had the ideal for humans. They wanted to create this evil Manch.

405
00:54:07,550 --> 00:54:15,540
You know, today's fascism. No ideals, no ideas and nothing to talk about.

406
00:54:15,540 --> 00:54:24,110
Except for very concrete, some false promises about very concrete, real politic issues.

407
00:54:24,110 --> 00:54:31,870
So there is no ideology, which is so interesting to me because.

408
00:54:31,870 --> 00:54:37,990
Yeah. Let me stop you there, because there's so many questions piling in, it's always hard.

409
00:54:37,990 --> 00:54:44,220
Laurie, I'm kind of a oh, on the contrary. It's just you're provoking a lot more from our audience.

410
00:54:44,220 --> 00:54:48,640
And I've got a couple of comments from Latin America I'd like to share with you.

411
00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:52,360
William California writes, I feel immensely privileged to hear Adjaye,

412
00:54:52,360 --> 00:55:00,050
whose book Seven Steps has become a Bible for those who, like me, are fighting to save our frail democracy and far away.

413
00:55:00,050 --> 00:55:06,580
And Salvador, what happened from Alejandro Craig, who writes Very interesting perspective.

414
00:55:06,580 --> 00:55:10,990
Thank you very much. I am Venezuelan. And you're familiar with the Venezuelan case.

415
00:55:10,990 --> 00:55:19,330
Of course, you know that over there we lived a very similar process since nineteen ninety nine, with many, if not all the steps you talk about.

416
00:55:19,330 --> 00:55:28,300
However, for the liberal media around the world, it took nearly 12 views to give credit to the voices of civil society and democratic resistance,

417
00:55:28,300 --> 00:55:33,130
even those coming from traditional figures of the left. So two questions. One.

418
00:55:33,130 --> 00:55:41,650
Do you think your emphases on right wing populism is necessary or could it not be just populism in the left and right?

419
00:55:41,650 --> 00:55:49,270
And to how does your perspective differ from the point of view of an Wookey who speaks about left to

420
00:55:49,270 --> 00:55:57,040
right transversal global trend from initially hegemonic democracies to clearcut authoritarianism?

421
00:55:57,040 --> 00:56:05,040
It's a lot to unpack, and if you want me to repeat any of it but start and then I think I will pick a day.

422
00:56:05,040 --> 00:56:14,900
When is there a case? Because it's always. Yeah, it is always very telling to talk about Venezuela as well as Mexico,

423
00:56:14,900 --> 00:56:23,990
because recently I gave a talk for a Mexican audience and we were talking about this Left-Wing populism.

424
00:56:23,990 --> 00:56:32,330
And I told the same thing when I'm asked this question in the United States or, you know, Britain or, you know, in European countries.

425
00:56:32,330 --> 00:56:37,850
So what do you think about Left-Wing populism? I don't answer it because the context is different.

426
00:56:37,850 --> 00:56:44,660
But if I ask the question in Mexico, in Venezuela, I can answer because I know that it is.

427
00:56:44,660 --> 00:56:52,580
That question is not, therefore rhetorical. You know, jumble Wombo.

428
00:56:52,580 --> 00:56:56,500
So. I wrote a book about when I saw LA.

429
00:56:56,500 --> 00:57:01,090
It's in Turkish. And I was there when Chavez came to power.

430
00:57:01,090 --> 00:57:04,900
I was embody those and talking to grassroots movements.

431
00:57:04,900 --> 00:57:15,670
And I think many people would agree with me that there is Chavez and there is the grassroots movement that brought Chavez to power.

432
00:57:15,670 --> 00:57:19,820
And let me tell you a funny story. I was there. I saw how it happened.

433
00:57:19,820 --> 00:57:24,260
It wasn't Chavez. It was the people who did the change.

434
00:57:24,260 --> 00:57:30,910
And they hoped something completely different. It I saw it with my own eyes.

435
00:57:30,910 --> 00:57:35,020
I wrote the book. And then a few years later, I was giving a talk.

436
00:57:35,020 --> 00:57:42,380
And I think this is enough to lose a country as well. I was giving a talk with the ambassador of Venezuela in Ankara.

437
00:57:42,380 --> 00:57:47,230
And suddenly. The guy was telling a completely different story.

438
00:57:47,230 --> 00:57:53,980
Chavez, as it is a, you know, hero, changed everything like Jesus Christ.

439
00:57:53,980 --> 00:58:00,760
He can't. He promised to to his country. He was telling a tale, a fairy tale.

440
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:04,720
So I said, oh, God, can Venezuelans. Obviously, they lost it.

441
00:58:04,720 --> 00:58:09,880
They lost the country. They lost everything. It's Mexico as well.

442
00:58:09,880 --> 00:58:16,470
Mexico has such a leader like Chavez. Maybe even worse than Charles.

443
00:58:16,470 --> 00:58:21,200
He says that he's a leftist, but even Subcomandante Marcos hates him.

444
00:58:21,200 --> 00:58:26,590
So, OK, be a leftist if Subcomandante hates you.

445
00:58:26,590 --> 00:58:40,650
He's the moral high ground of all. And so being popular and being a populist are two different things.

446
00:58:40,650 --> 00:58:47,400
Neither Chavez nor the Mexican leader are leftist figures in my point.

447
00:58:47,400 --> 00:59:00,760
They're just authoritarian leaders. But when this question asked to equalise the current danger of fascism.

448
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:06,930
With a tiny bubbling whoops of socialism.

449
00:59:06,930 --> 00:59:14,870
I am intimidated. Otherwise, we all know that neither Chavez nor I constantly.

450
00:59:14,870 --> 00:59:21,800
I cannot pronounce the name so I can memorise it. The Mexican leader. They're not leftist.

451
00:59:21,800 --> 00:59:31,280
They're just supposed to be suffering from grandiosity syndrome.

452
00:59:31,280 --> 00:59:47,390
People got. Garcia Marquez interviewed Chávez when he came to power and he said something like, oh, classic Latin American throat.

453
00:59:47,390 --> 00:59:53,140
OK. JJ, thank you so much for doing that.

454
00:59:53,140 --> 01:00:01,360
We have to stop here, but I want to say that really an important aspect of your contribution tonight

455
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:05,710
was to show that the many issues that we have been discussing over the last

456
01:00:05,710 --> 01:00:12,490
eight weeks as part of our exploration of the dictatorship's syndrome is that

457
01:00:12,490 --> 01:00:18,340
they are absolutely not reduced to the region that some called the Middle East,

458
01:00:18,340 --> 01:00:30,840
but that they are really global problems. So it is a real call for vigilance for everyone, but also here in Europe.

459
01:00:30,840 --> 01:00:37,260
This was the last of our eight talks in this series.

460
01:00:37,260 --> 01:00:50,760
So time has come now to say goodbye. But we will be online again next term for a series of talks about the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring.

461
01:00:50,760 --> 01:01:00,210
But until down until then, I wish you all happy holidays and I hope to meet again in a few weeks time.

462
01:01:00,210 --> 01:01:10,073
Goodbye. Thank you, everyone. My.