politics

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Trump and Germans’ lack of bullshitting skills

President Trump

This week I was watching the German news, which led with a surprising story: there had been a promising new breakthrough in solving the USA-EU tariff standoff. According to the reporter (Tagesthemen), President Trump had made a firm commitment to a deal with the EU. Interestingly, there had been no such report in US mainstream media. The item in the German news came from a statement the President had made in meeting with the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who was in Washington this week: “There will be a trade deal, 100%”. German media had taken the remark as a statement of fact. US media had taken it with a large dose of salt, as typical of promises made that never actually materialize (even Fox News). In fact, exaggerations, meaningless promises, and outright lies have characterized Trump for his entire professional life. The New York Times kept an amazing count of the lies early in his first administration. The fact-checkers at The Washington Post cataloged 30,573 false or misleading statements over the course of his four-year presidency; hat comes to an average of 21 every day he was in office.

This kind of behavior is inconceivable from a German perspective. German politicians are held accountable for the slightest act of dishonesty or statement of untruth. A series of ministers in the federal government in Berlin over the last few years have had to resign after being found to have plagiarized passages in academic work. Small potatoes compared to Trump’s dishonesty but considered unacceptable from a German perspective. This phenomenon, it seems to me, can be linked to well-known difficulty many Germans have with engaging in small talk, i.e., talking just to talk, shooting the breeze, without any serious information to convey. German conversations more often than in the US are transactional – trying to get things done, not just an occasion for socializing (although German do plenty of that as well, normally outside of work hours).

Americans are used to bullshitting, meaning to talk without regard to whether assertions made are true to not – just to keep a conversation going or to show off. A piece in Psychology Today points out that bullshitting has been a topic of serious academic inquiry going back to an essay by Harry Frankfurter in 1986, “On Bullshit” but that it seems to have exploded in recent times:

Bullshitting tends to happen when there’s social pressure to provide an opinion and a social “pass” that will allow someone to get away with it. Three decades ago, Dr. Frankfurt noted that such conditions were present in an America where people felt entitled if not obligated to offer “opinions about everything,” and politics in particular, and where objective reality was often denied in favor of voicing impassioned personal opinions. Fast-forwarding to the “post-truth” world of 2020, where facts and expertise have been declared dead, opinions are routinely confused with news, and objective evidence is endlessly refuted, the case could be made that bullshit has reached epic proportions.

From that perspective, President Trump is the Bullshitter-in-Chief, always ready to provide an opinion with no justification, tell a lie to cover over a misstep, or make up willy-nilly statistics or “facts”. Unfathomable for Germans, and should be as well for everyone else.

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Diversity is a strength, not a problem

Multilingal voting sign: a thing of the past?

There is yet another executive order forthcoming from President Donald Trump, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and Politico, this time proclaiming English as the official national language of the United States. It is not that there has been any doubt about what the dominant language of the country is of course, but it’s clear what the point of this order is: to alert those whose first language is not English that they are lesser-class US citizens. It is an invitation to discriminate against non-English speakers, with the additional outcome of instilling feelings of inferiority into families where English is not the primary language. It is likely to accelerate the decline in language learning in the US, which has already been underway for some time. The directive aligns with a growing move towards nationalism and xenophobia in the US, which unfortunately we are seeing in other countries as well.

The executive order joins others dismantling DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) efforts in government agencies. That affects US universities as well, as they have been told to shut down DEI programs or be in danger of losing funding from federal agencies. This has repercussions on academic programs and on educational opportunities for disadvantaged populations (minority groups, LGBQ+ individuals, women, less abled individuals, and more). It also has led to programs and individual faculty members being told to eliminate terms that can be interpreted as pro-DEI from Web sites and other online documents. I’m waiting to see if I will be asked to take down some of the pages of the open textbook I wrote on intercultural communication, as many chapters deal with topics such as racism, intolerance, and white privilege.

In the textbook I also promote the value of learning another language, as it has been shown to increase tolerance and understanding towards other cultures. Being bilingual also opens up new worlds of experience, emotion, and personal growth while providing insight into how language mediates our interactions with others and with our own identity. There was a fascinating interview this week on NPR with Mexican writer, Cristina Rivera Garza, whose 2007 novel La muerte me da (Death Takes Me) was recently translated into English. In the interview, the author talks about writing alternatively in Spanish and in English. She says that for emotionally laden topics (like writing about her deceased sister) she finds turning to writing in English creates a “buffer” that allows her to write with an emotional detachment that she doesn’t have available when writing in Spanish. In that way, she says, having access to a second language “may provide you with opportunities and freedoms that the language that you grew up with could not afford”.

It’s a shame to see government policies that will lead to fewer opportunities for developing bilingualism, and through it the expanded personal experiences that kind of double self creates. Maintaining a diversity of languages in our society, as well as a diversity of lifestyles, beliefs, and behaviors, enriches all of our lives.

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Eggs versus democracy

The cost of eggs is more important than the prospect of ending democracy, promoting xenophobia/misogyny, and destroying the planet. That, unfortunately, is the take-away from this year’s presidential election in the US, which returned Donald Trump to power. In exit interviews with voters, it was clear that pocketbook issues were one of main drivers behind how US Americans voted. Here are some examples:

Inflation is a constant concern. “A dozen eggs used to be 99 cents. Now they’re, what? $2.38 with a coupon?”

“Look, I didn’t like Jan. 6 — and I don’t want it to happen again — but it didn’t affect my life nearly as much as the price of eggs, milk and gas.”

So, having to pay $1.50 more for a dozen eggs overrides other concerns, like the future of American democracy, human-accelerated climate change, or giving women control over their own bodies? To me this is a case of collective amnesia (did we forget Trump’s disastrous first term?), willful ignorance (facts simply ignored), and unimaginable narcissism. Do we care so much for our own short-term creature comforts that we are willing to sacrifice the health of our planet and the well-being of our citizens?

In my course on intercultural communication, one of the topics we discuss is the important signal that leaders in different areas/fields can send in reference to communicating and getting along with those different from us in appearance, lifestyle, language, etc.. Positive examples are those who reach out to underprivileged and under resourced people and communities. Then there is Donald Trump, who regularly demeans women, denigrates immigrants, mocks disabled individuals, and denies equal rights to LGPTQ+ and trans individuals.

The opinions Trump expresses have allowed messages of prejudice and hate to be openly expressed, views that were long considered beyond the pale. Unfortunately, that phenomenon has been enabled and accelerated by our current media landscape, dominated by online influencers who peddle conspiracy theories and outright lies. Joe Rogan’s podcasts, replete with misinformation and distortions, are viewed by many more people than mainstream media.

The irony of the situation is that it is quite likely that Trump’s policies (high tariffs, for example) will move the US towards greater inflation and paying even more for a dozen eggs.

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Nonverbals and “weaves”: How politicians communicate

The debate this week between US presidential candidates Harris and Trump was interesting from many different perspectives, including nonverbal communication. In the earlier debate between Trump and President Biden, the latter’s body language, and especially his blank, open-mouthed stares, were seen as negatively as was the weakness of his voice and the confusion in his responses. This time around, Trump’s body language, staring straight ahead, never at Harris, scowling, and glaring at his lectern, was an issue. When riled by Harris’ needling and challenges (especially at the size of his rally crowds), he pursed his lips and opened his eyes wider, clearly angry and ill at ease. That impression was reinforced by the loud tone of voice he used increasingly as the debate went on.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, looked relaxed and in control, using a variety of facial expressions and gestures to express amusement or mockery of Trump’s statements. Particularly effective was when she rested her chin on her hand smiling, seeming to lean in closer to hear more. As the New York Times commented, “He’s the former reality television star, but she clearly understood the power of the medium. Her expression was her rebuttal.”

According to one “body language expert”, Traci Brown, Harris established that power differential at the beginning of the encounter:

Brown pointed to the candidates’ first moments on stage, citing Trump’s reluctance to shake his Democratic opponent: “[Kamala Harris] walked on more quickly than him and was trying to look him in the eye. He wouldn’t return that look.” Impressively, Harris wasn’t deterred and even walked into his territory to insist on a handshake, establishing dominance. The body language expert also exposed Trump’s unwillingness to shake Harris as a part of a “planned strategy” to avoid engaging her emotionally.

That emotional detachment on Trump’s part didn’t last in that he clearly became upset at having to put up with a very different perspective on his statements and positions than the unquestioned and adoring response he receives at his political rallies.

The verbal styles of the two candidates also offered an interesting contrast. Harris was clearly well prepared and offered her comments in coherent, logically connected statements. It’s likely some of her remarks had been rehearsed. Trump on the other hand was “winging it”, and in typical fashion for him tended to jump from one topic/thought to another, often with little apparent connection to one another, except in his own mind. He has praised this speaking style, describing it as “the weave”. As cited in the New York Times, this is how Trump describes it:

You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’

The Columbia University linguistics professor, John McWhorter, had an interesting take on “the weave”:

The idea that Trump has that what he’s doing is this kind of jaunty character trait called the weave is interesting. And he’s not completely out of his mind on that, in that most of us are not as organized in how we manage topics in the heat of a casual conversation. I mean, casual speech is much less tidy than we often think. But when I listen to Trump, what I hear is a kind of verbal narcissism. And what I mean by that is that very often, the connection between point A and point B is something that’s very difficult to understand. You have to almost parse it as if it was something in the Talmud, whereas it makes sense to him.

McWhorter describes the style as “verbal narcissism” meaning that Trump is not really intent on communicating to his audience, but rather connects thoughts in his own mind as they come to him and letting his listeners try to find the connections and the meaning. McWhorter comments more extensively in a piece in the New York Times.

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Is Democracy in Germany in danger?

Björn Höcke of the AfD and Sahra Wagenknecht

There are local elections on Sunday in two different German states, both part of the former East Germany: Saxony and Thuringia. They are to elect the state legislatures (Landtag). Recent polls show a worrying trend for German democracy, two parties in ascendance that are either populist, nationalistic, and extreme right (the AfD or Alternative for Germany) or populist and based on a personality cult (BSW or Bündnis [Coalition] Sahra Wagenknecht). The New York Times recently profiled Sahra Wagenknecht, a former Communist who leads the new party bearing her name, that is only a few months old. Both parties are deeply suspicious of the federal government and tilt pro-Russian. Neither is seen as a friend of German democracy, as seen in a recent documentary on German TV entitled “Machen wir unsere Demokratie kaputt?” (Are we breaking our democracy?).

If the AfD wins in Thuringia, then the new prime minister of the state is likely to be Björn Höcke (profile in the New York Times), the controversial former history teacher who has been fined this year repeatedly for using Nazi slogans. The centrist parties, who are part of the coalition running the federal government (SPD, FDP, Greens) are way behind in the polls. Some of them may not even reach the 5% of the vote needed in Germany to be eligible to have elected representatives. Many Germans are deeply worried over the increasing popularity of parties that threaten democracy and possibly the rule of law in Germany. One of the groups fighting extremism is called “Omas Gegen Rechts” (Grandmothers fighting right extremism), which originated in Austria and has now spread to a number of cities in Germany. Then group was profiled recently on NPR. They worry about whether there will be a democratic Germany for their grandchildren. Given the fact that the Nazi party gained power legally through winning elections, the grandmothers may be right to worry.

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School politics escolates: Burning books?

Nazis burning books in 1934

Here in Virginia the fight over schools has recently intensified. As in other US states, school board meetings have become battlegrounds over what should be and should not be taught in schools and who should set policies on learning content and on other school policies. According to election analyses, the recently elected new governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin won largely because of his embrace of the idea that parents should have more say in what is happening in elementary and secondary public schools. In his election campaign, Youngkin vowed not to allow “critical race theory” to be taught – the idea that institutional racism has been a defining feature of US life since the country’s founding. Interestingly, critical race theory is not actually taught in schools in Virginia (or across the country).

Another issue that has emerged concerns transgender students and how they should be treated in schools, especially regarding which bathrooms they should be using. There is actually a Virginia state law passed recently that requires school districts to accommodate trans students, allowing them to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity. Despite that, this week a county close to me (Hanover) voted to deny that right to trans students.

Also in Virginia, one more issue that parents have raised is related to books. In some school boards, parents have objected to having some books available to students, those that deal with topics such as sexuality or racism. Youngkin ran an ad featuring a parent objecting to having students read the celebrated novel, “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison, a story dealing with the horrors of slavery. Several school board members in Spotsylvania County have gone further, urging libraries to burn offending books. Destroying books is an attempt to rewrite history, as books are the most important artifacts of human culture and history.

For those familiar with German history, that idea also raises a troublesome occurrence during the early Nazi period, namely in 1934 students in universities across Germany burning what Nazis considered offending books, namely those from authors with different political views (i.e., socialists) or by rejected ethnic groups (i.e., Jews). Among the latter were the works of the prominent poet Heinrich Heine. In one of his dramas, one of Heine’s characters voices a prophetic line: “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen” [Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people]. A reminder that extremist words and actions have real world consequences, which may be horrific.

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Politicians: What’s worse, the “Big Lie” or plagiarism?

Former German Families Minister Giffey, accused of plagiarism, and forced to resign

In the US, there continue to be many citizens who cling to the “Big Lie”, the claim by former President Trump, and other Republicans, that Trump actually won the 2020 election. This follows the record number of exaggerations and outright falsehoods emanating from the Trump White House. Many have simply shrugged off the constant string of lies and misleading claims. This is clearly a dangerous trend in terms of maintaining a healthy democracy. In fact, today, Memorial Day in the US, President Biden said that “democracy is in real peril,” both in the US and elsewhere. Meanwhile, former National Security Advisor of the United States, Michael Flynn,  suggested that the military putsch in Mayanmar could be a model for what should occur in the US.

Added to that development has been the proliferation in the claims of “false news” when journalists published articles in any way critical of the Trump administration. That, along with the echo chamber created in social media, has resulted in widespread suspicion of mainstream media. That has led to projects such as the News Literacy Project, which aims to build an informed citizenry through “programs and resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy”.

Turning to Germany, a federal minister, Franziska Giffey, family minister has had to resign her position. Why? She has been accused of plagiarizing in writing her Ph.D. dissertation. In fact, she is the third federal minister in the recent past to have resigned for the same reason. Cheating and lying are seen as incompatible with holding public office in Germany. It’s remarkable, in terms of comparison with the US, how many German politicans have earned high academic degrees. Angela Merkel herself has a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry. It is not likely that Frau Giffey intended to plagiarize, but rather was likely sloppy in her note-taking and did not distinguish sufficiently between her own notes and citations from sources. That in itself is likely in Germany to be seen negatively, as an indicator of Unordnung, a failure to keep order and good organization in her research.

Of course, in the case of Frau Giffey, we are far far from the Big Lie (and the many smaller lies), which did not prove to be sufficient for a US President to be considered unfit for office. At least he didn’t plagiarize. Or has he?

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Who is Kamamboamamla?

Senator David Purdue

This week, Georgia Senator David Purdue, warming up the audience for a Trump rally, in Macon, Georgia, pretended he didn’t know how to pronounce the first name of the Democratic vice presidential candidate: “Ka-MA-la, KA-ma-la, Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever”

Perdue then warned the crowd of a potential liberal takeover of government with “Bernie and Elizabeth and Kah-mah-la or Kah-ma-la or Kamamboamamla or however you say it.” It should be pointed out that Senator Perdue has served with Kamala Harris in the Senate for 3 years, in fact on the same committee. So he clearly knows how to say her name, but through pretending to have trouble with the pronunciation, he wanted to draw attention to fact that she does not have a familiar first name, from a white American perspective.

In fact, both Harris’ parents were immigrants to the US, with her mother coming from India. They gave her a name that in the original Sanskrit (कमला) means “lotus” or “pale red”. For Harris, her name is a reminder of her heritage. For Purdue, it points to her foreignness, implying through the mocking way he played on her name that there was something not quite right about her. In other words, his words were a clear racist dog whistle, a signal his audience understood quite well, as they laughed along with Purdue.

This is not the first racist action from the Senator. He recently ran an ad, increasing the size of the nose of his Democratic opponent in November, Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish. Purdue has also accused Ossoff and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of trying to “buy Georgia.” In embracing the caricature of Jews with large noses and leveling the scurrilous accusation that Ossoff and Schumer – both Jewish – are trying to buy influence and power, Perdue invoked two of the world’s oldest antisemitic tropes.

This is another troubling sign that open racism has unfortunately become mainstream in many segments of the US population.

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Cancel culture and shifting power

D. Trump Jr. at the Republican Convention

One of the expressions current in the media is cancel culture, a term heard many times at the Republican Convention in the US last week. At that event it was used as a political weapon against the Democrats; according to buzzfeed:

A few weeks ago, most Americans either hadn’t heard of “cancel culture” or were quite unfamiliar with the term. And then President Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention began. Since Monday night, primetime convention speakers repeatedly have warned of a future where conservative patriots are silenced and vilified as a nation led by Joe Biden descends into lawlessness. Democrats and the media, they’ve argued, are canceling your beloved founding fathers and will cancel you next if you don’t adhere to their politically correct point of view.

In fact, President Trump’s administration has been active in suppressing speech from opponents, labeling as “fake news” not false reporting, but any news item not supporting the President’s views or actions.

The term cancel culture has been around for a while and has little to do with any conventional understanding of what a “culture” is. Instead it references a social practice, principally on social media, involving ostracizing or shaming someone for their behavior,  thereby “cancelling” their participation in human society, making them social outsiders. There have been famous cases in which social media attacks, for perceived or real transgressions, such as offensive tweets in the past (the film director, James Gunn) or calling the police on a black bird watcher (Amy Cooper), have resulted not only being “cancelled” in the media, but actually losing their jobs.

The phenomenon has been interpreted as indicating a shift of power in society (at least in the US), giving more weight to social media over official government authorities such as the courts or police. As reports of incidents or transgressions turn viral online, immense pressure is placed on those connected to the “cancelled” (employers, landlords, associates) to disassociate themselves from those individuals. The NY Times has run a number of stories on cancel culture, including several by Jonah Engel Bromwich. In one recent piece he commented:

People tend to see cancellation as either wholly good — there are new consequences for saying or doing racist, bigoted or otherwise untenable things — or wholly bad, in that people can lose their reputations and in some cases their jobs, all because a mob has taken undue offense to a clumsy or out-of-context remark. Personally, I think it’s best viewed not as either positive or negative, but as something else: a new development in the way that power works — a development brought about by social media.

The views on whether this is a good development vary.  Harper’s Magazine published an open letter, signed by a number of influential public figures, “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” which decried the development. The letter received some negative feedback, with the signers being accused of fearing that their own power and influence would be lost. However one might judge cancel culture, it seems undeniable that the power of social media it demonstrates is unlikely to go away any time soon.

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Working within or dismantling institutions: Miss America vs. the Presidency

Both serve as national icons, the President of the US and Miss America, but they represent institutions not normally brought together, although President Trump does have a history with beauty pageants. 

Miss America, Camille Shrier

Both figures were in the news this week. It so happens that the recently crowned Miss America, Camille Schrier, is a VCU student, working towards a doctorate in pharmacy. Her talent in the contest was doing chemistry experiments, with eye-popping results. She was back at VCU this week as part of her national tour to promote medication safety and to prevent drug misuse. She has said that her mission was also to promote science careers for girls, stating in an interview, “I’m trying to be like Bill Nye [the science guy]…That’s what I’m going for. I want to get kids excited, but I don’t want it to be boring.” Although in the pageant, Schrier wore a white lab coat and safety goggles for the talent performance, it’s clear that if she were not an attractive woman, she would not have earned the crown. However that may be, she is leveraging the exposure and publicity she is receiving to engage in public service, something in fact that is expected of every Miss America. In that sense she is working within normal institutional parameters.

That is hardly the case recently for many US politicians, including not only the President, but members of Congress as well. Their behavior in the impeachment process has been largely dictated by personal political interests, not by a concern to strengthen the institutions they represent. That’s not true of all those in Congress, but it’s a pattern that we’re seeing more often, and not just in politics. Self-interest rather than institutional support has become a driver of actions and attitudes, leading to wide-spread distrust of institutions in the US.

That’s laid out in a new book by Yuval Levin, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream, recently discussed with the author on NPR. In the interview Levin points out that many members of Congress “think about the institution as a way to raise their profile”, for example, Senator Ted Cruz after every session of the impeachment trial hosting a podcast commenting on the session. While Levin comments that it is legitimate “for important public figures to also have a profile in the culture”, doing so excessively and making that one’s major focus, “makes it much harder for the institution to function and much harder for us to trust it”:

When members come to think of Congress as a platform for themselves, it becomes much harder for them to see how working within the institution cooperating and bargaining is really what Congress is for…What happens in most congressional hearings now is basically a bunch of individuals producing YouTube clips to use later in campaigns.

One can make the same argument for President Trump, who has used the institution of the presidency as a platform, through Twitter, to promote himself:

President Trump is the first of our presidents who has not been formed by any of the institutions of public service in our country. President Trump has been a performer his entire adult life, and he’s been a performer as president, too. He uses the office of the presidency as a platform from which to comment on the government.

In the process, he is debasing the institution of the Presidency, leading to growing public mistrust. This is all the more disturbing given the power of that office. Levin sees this as a lesson for us all:

All of us have some roles to play within some institutions, even if that’s our family or community or workplace, let alone national institutions and politics and the economy. As a as a parent, as a neighbor, as a member of the PTA, as a member of Congress, as a CEO, what should I do in this situation? Not just what do I want, not just what would look good, but given my role here, what should I do? It is a question you ask when you take the institutions that you’re part of seriously.

In other words, in the institution in which we are involved, we should all be focused on civic engagement. Our current Miss America can function as a model. While she had participated in pageants as a girl, she stopped on starting college, as she wanted to focus on her interest in science (she has undergraduate degrees in biochemistry and systems biology). When she was a graduate student, she heard that the Miss America pageant had been revamped — eliminating the swimsuit competition and emphasizing professionalism and social impact. That provided an opportunity for her to showcase her own interest in science and potentially to serve as a role model and mentor for girls, demonstrating that, in her words,  “Miss America can be a scientist and a scientist can be Miss America”. She is using the institution, as she found it, to further goals of inclusion and acceptance, not self-interest.

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Contrasting views

I am writing this from Brno, Czech Republic, where I have been attending a conference on intercultural communication. There are attendees from all over, but more from Asia than from Europe or North America. The theme of the conference is “East / West: New Divisions, New Connections and Populist Political Reality”. Many Western speakers (UK, USA, Europe) have highlighted (and bemoaned) the populist political atmosphere in many countries, which encourages suspicion of immigrants/foreigners and celebration of nationalist views. In the process, they often critique their national governments, especially the xenophobic rhetoric from Donald Trump’s White House. On the other hand, the Chinese colleagues (not those from Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Macau) have highlighted in their talks a Chinese government development which I have not connected with intercultural communication: the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. The project involves Chinese companies working with local authorities on infrastructure projects. In the West, it has been controversial due to insensitivity to local cultural conditions and to debt-trap diplomacy.

Another controversial issue that arouse at the conference was the social responsibility of teachers, especially university professors, to speak out publicly about issues that might be viewed as political such as social justice or income inequality. Some colleagues pointed out that in some countries doing so might lead to those speaking out losing their jobs, or even going to jail. Others pointed out that just because of that fact, those of us in countries where it is (relatively) safe to speak out should do so. From that perspective, it may be that for those working in the area of intercultural communication might think about adding to the traditional components of intercultural competence, i.e. skills, knowledge, attitude, a fourth element: action. That would translate into encouraging students to take action to promote intercultural communication, which could involve political engagement, such as working to elect leaders who support tolerance and diversity. If we have that expectation for our students, that translates into teachers doing the same.

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Charlottesville: Lots of symbols

Statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, VA

Today, there was a memorial service for Heather Heyer, the young woman killed last Friday in Charlottesville, after a car rammed into a crowd of counter-protesters to the white nationalist rally. Living as I do in Richmond, the events in Charlottesville has really hit home. The white nationalists were in Charlottesville to protest the planned removal of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In Richmond, we have a series of statues of Confederate figures on Monument Avenue. The Mayor of Richmond today announced that he had changed his mind on the statues, and now is supporting their removal. The controversy over Confederate statues follows that over the Confederate flag. For many, these Confederate symbols stand for racism, as they relate to a cause which centered on the maintenance of slavery. Others claim the symbols are part of their identity as Southerners, representing their Southern heritage. The problem with that perspective is that honoring these symbols is deeply offensive to many people, particularly African-Americans, as the symbols – no matter their original meaning or intent – now, in most peoples’ eyes, stand for white supremacy. The Swastika was originally (and still is) a spiritual symbol in India, but no one would accept anyone today wearing a swastika as being anything other than a symbol of Nazism, and therefore of hatred, intolerance, and violence.

Speaking of Nazis, for those of us familiar with German history, the torch march of white nationalists was chilling, as it had so many echoes of similar marches of Nazis in the years before Hitler came to after, and thereafter. Other symbols on view in Charlottesville were also taken from Nazis, the Othala, a pre-Roman rune and the “black sun”. An article in the Deutsche Welle discusses the links of US white nationalist to Nazi Germany. Some of the slogans used in Charlottesville were also creepingly familiar – “Blood and Soil” is a word for word translation of “Blut und Boden”, which as the Deutsche Welle articles states, “expressed the idea dear to Nazis that ethnic purity is based on blood descent and land.”

Slogans and symbols carry deep meanings and often can be integral to a person’s identity – one might think of the what the cross means, for example, for devout Christians. That’s why it’s so important for our leaders to denounce those groups who use symbols like white sheets and hoods or swastikas that divide people and strive to spread their message of hatred. Young people can be easily misled by the facile and false slogans used by hate groups – they need to be contradicted strongly. Heather Heyer posted in social media: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention”. Let’s hope that many Americans, especially those in power, will express their outrage over the views and actions of the extremists marching in Charlottesville.

An example of that reaction is what has now become the most liked tweet ever, by President Obama, citing Nelson Mandela, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion…”

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Gastronomic racism?

Kebab food truck in Besançon, France

That term, “gastronomic racism” was used by Rim-Sarah Alouane, a researcher at the University of Toulouse, to describe a crackdown on street vendors of kebabs in the city of Marseille. In France, a kebab is a sandwich in pita or flatbread filled with meat, usually mutton, with salad and sauces. The city is making it harder for owners of kebab shops to be licensed to operate in the central business district. According to the story on PRI’s The World: “Although kebab shops are not singled out, the owners of the establishments fear the initiatives will effectively force the entrepreneurs to shutter.” The owners of those establishments are overwhelmingly North Africans, most of them Muslims.

This is not the first time that kebabs have been involved in issues around immigration and discrimination. According to the story, “A stall at the 2013 annual convention of the far-right Front National called for ‘Ni kebab ni burger, vive le jambon-beurre.’  That means, ‘Neither kebab nor burger, long live the ham and butter sandwich,’ the classic French fast food — a baguette with ham and butter.” In the recent presidential election campaign, the Socialist Party candidate, Benoît Hamon, tweeted the following:

The tweet, “J’ai craqué”, literally, “I creacked”, means I gave in, namely to the guilty pleasure of eating a less than healthy snack, namely the kebab and fries shown.

France is not the only country where kebabs have entered the political arena. Chancellor Merkel has been pictured repeatedly with the popular German version, Döner Kebab. Her love of the Turkish street food has sometimes been seen ironically, in the context of her famous statement in 2010 that “Multikulti ist tot” (multiculturalism is dead). On the other hand, she has been celebrated with being out front in welcoming refugees into Germany. Given the large number of newly arrived Syrians in Germany, maybe in the future she will be pictured enjoying the Syrian version of the kebab, Kufta Kabab.

Story in The World:

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Alternative facts

Interesting news story in the New York Times today, about the increased sales of George Orwell’s novel, 1984, in which a totalitarian state has absolute control over news dissemination, using “newspeak” to provide the view of reality the state wants to project, in the novel called “reality control”. Apparently, the surge in interest is related to the use by Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway of the term “alternative facts”, in defense of the false claim by White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, that Mr. Trump had attracted the “largest audience ever to witness an inauguration.” This first week of the Trump presidency has brought other “alternative facts”, such as that there were 3 to 5 million fraudulent votes in the presidential election, an explanation the President gives for losing the popular vote.

It might not seem all that important, whether there were more people at the inauguration this time compared to 2008, although clearly it does matter a great deal to Trump. The real problem is not with a president whose ego is so easily bruised. It’s that this refusal to acknowledge facts is likely to be something we will be seeing again, and in situations in which getting the facts right is vitally important (terrorist threats, trade negotiations, legislation). Having a government that puts out false information is clearly a threat to democracy. It risks putting the USA in the company of regimes, past and present, in which information from the government is routinely assumed by the citizens to be false. The media, mainstream and other, needs to be the safeguard, and we, as news consumers need to be more aware than ever of what sources to trust and which to doubt. It will be a sad state of affairs indeed if one of the sources we learn to mistrust is the White House.

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Big changes

Here in Richmond, we saw amazing shifts in the weather last week, after 8-9 inches of snow (20-22 cm) on Saturday, the temperature dropped to 0° F. (-18° C.) early in the week, but then went up to 68° F. (20° C.) on Thursday. That big change, however, pales in comparison to the political change we will be experiencing in the US this week, with the transition from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. The two men could hardly be more different in temperament, bearing, and convictions. As many have commented, the big concern many have voiced in the Trump presidency is not only in the kinds of new laws which may emerge, but also in the example that he represents in terms of acceptance of people different from himself, in race, ethnicity, gender, country of origin, or ableness. In my classes on intercultural communication, we talk about the importance of having leaders who are tolerant and counter-act stereotyping. Given the high profile and influence of the US President, the danger is that the attitudes in evidence in the White House may shape the views of the young and impressionable. In a country on its way to becoming minority white, that development is troublesome.

A big change is coming to the press in the US as well. That was clearly in evidence in the Trump press conference last week, which was highly adversarial. As he has done in the past, Trump deflected questions on topics that put him in a bad light, while using props (in this case stacks of folders) to assert the reality of his positions. He is not someone who is bothered by fact-checking – he simply makes up his own facts and ignores stories which expose his twisting of the truth. He exemplifies our post-factual political world. This makes the job of the press during the Trump presidency both more difficult and more important. It was announced today that the White House press corps may be moved outside the White House, allowing for additional kinds of press to be represented, including bloggers and reality show hosts. We are likely in the next four years to be bombarded with greatly contrasting press reports on what’s going on in Washington, D.C., making it all the more important for US citizens to engage in critical assessment of information sources.

Last night my wife and I attended a concert by folk singer Greg Brown, a terrific song writer and story teller. He ended with a song about the transition, with the refrain “Trump you won’t get this” after listing the things important to him such as love, music, and family. It may be that many Americans will respond to developments out of Washington with a turn inward. That’s understandable, but it’s good to remember President Obama’s comments in his farewell speech last week, namely that in a democracy the most important position is not the leader of the government but the citizen.

As we grow older, it’s more difficult for a lot of us to accept big changes. Part of that may be physical, as Greg Brown sang in the concert last night in relation to bones: