Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer speaking and gesturing in the House of Commons, UK Parliament, at Westminster Palace in London, UK, on February 7, 2024. Photo: Tennessee Witney.

How Should Mainstream Parties Respond to Populism? The Internal Debates of Britain’s Labour Party under Starmer

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceHomeLeadership & PersonaVoice of Youth

When Keir Starmer denounced populism as a “snake oil charm” in July 2024, he became the first British Prime Minister to attack it so explicitly in a major parliamentary speech. Yet inside Labour, the strategy is contested. Should populism be called out as corrosive to democracy, or quietly disarmed by fixing everyday grievances? Starmer prefers direct confrontation; his strategist Morgan McSweeney stresses delivery — “potholes, not populism.” Luke Malhi’s interviews with MPs, aides, and journalists reveal a party caught between naming the threat and co-opting parts of its language to blunt Reform UK’s rise. The debate echoes dilemmas across Europe, underscoring a central question: how can mainstream parties defend institutions without alienating the voters populists claim to represent?

By Luke Malhi

On a warm July morning in 2024, as parliament resumed for the first time following the election, Keir Starmer stood at the dispatch box and denounced populism as a “snake oil charm” that promised easy answers but could deliver only division (Starmer, 2024a). It was the first time a British Prime Minister had attacked populism so explicitly in a set-piece moment of national politics. For some, it sounded like the steady voice of reason after years of turbulence. For others, it risked reinforcing the image of a detached mainstream elite who scold rather than persuade the most dissatisfied in society.

Behind the scenes, Labour figures admit the party is still working out how best to handle the populist threat presented by Reform UK, a populist radical right (PRR) party which secured 14.3% of the vote in 2024, and is now polling at around 34% (Ipsos, 2025). In January of 2025, I conducted interviews with MPs, strategists, and senior journalists, with the promise of anonymity to encourage them to speak candidly. What emerged was a picture of a party that both fears the corrosive potential of populist politics and struggles with how directly to confront it.

Exploring these tensions matters because Britain is hardly alone. Across Europe, mainstream parties face the same dilemma of how they should respond to populists who thrive on frustration with the status quo. Do they call out populism as dangerous, risking charges of elitism? Do they try to quietly address the grievances that fuel it? Or do they attempt to co-opt aspects of the populist policy platform and rhetoric in an attempt to diffuse their appeal? Labour’s struggle with this balance offers a case study in how mainstream parties might navigate this populist age, and what that means for the future of democracy.

Labour’s Response to Populism

When asked how Labour’s inner core thinks about populism, one party strategist sighed: “It’s the problem we can’t ignore, but we can’t talk about it either.” On the surface, Starmer has not been shy about naming populism. In his New Year speech, he condemned “the politics of the easy answer” and accused right-wing populists of offering “grievances, not solutions” (Starmer, 2024c). In the King’s Speech, he branded populism a “snake oil charm” that divided communities (Starmer, 2024a). On a train to the 2025 party conference, he described a battle with the “populist Right Reform” for “the soul of the country” (Starmer, as quoted in BBC, 2025, 03:00). Several MPs told me this reflected his genuine conviction that populism corrodes democracy. One said: “he really does think it’s dangerous. He sees it as a slide toward US-style democratic backsliding.”

Yet many Labour elites worry that naming populism head-on risks alienating voters. As one backbencher put it: “You can’t just tell people they’ve been conned. That sounds like you’re calling them stupid.” A Labour strategist was even more blunt: “That was the Remain mistake. They shouted about how bad Brexit would be and people told them to sod off. If we repeat that with populism, we’ll lose again.”

These doubts are rooted in recent history. The failure of the “Stronger In” campaign during the 2016 referendum still looms large. Its warnings of economic collapse were dismissed by many voters as fearmongering, and that experience has left strategists wary of repeating the mistake of lecturing voters. Several MPs pointed out that even the term “populist”risks alienating audiences, since it is almost always used in a pejoratively charged manner, often shorthand for “irrational” or “ignorant.”

This tension has produced what insiders describe as a split between Starmer and his chief strategist, Morgan McSweeney. Starmer leans toward confrontation, “naming and shaming” populists in the words of one MP, while McSweeney takes the opposite view. According to a Labour aide, “Morgan thinks delivery is the only answer. Fix the potholes, raise living standards, and you’ll take the wind out of Reform’s sails. That’s the fight.”

But delivery is only part of the story. McSweeney’s strategy was said to increasingly involve borrowing selectively from populists where feasible, adopting their language on issues like patriotism or immigration, and co-opting policy themes that resonate with disaffected voters. One journalist explained: “It’s not just about competence. Morgan’s theory is giving people some of the populist framing but strip out the nastiness. Show them you hear their anger but redirect it.” 

The difference between the two men is not just tactical but stylistic. Starmer prefers sober warnings about the dangers of populism. McSweeney is more interested in whether voters feel their everyday concerns are being met. As one Labour organiser summarised: “Keir wants to talk about democracy. Morgan wants to talk about potholes. And that’s the real debate inside Number 10.”

Journalists I spoke to consistently described Starmer’s style as technocratic. Some called him “prosecutorial,” others “old-fashioned” or “statesmanlike.” Even sympathetic insiders conceded that he can come across as an “enforcer of the status quo.” Several argued that this style is both personal and political: it reflects Starmer’s legal training, but also Labour’s deliberate attempt to ‘detoxify’ after Jeremy Corbyn. One campaign aide said: “We knew we couldn’t win if we looked like we were promising the moon again. Voters didn’t want grand visions. They wanted someone boring enough to fix the basics.”

That instinct shaped the 2024 campaign. Unlike Boris Johnson, who thrived on flamboyant gestures, or Corbyn, who rallied crowds with populist appeals to the “many not the few,” Starmer positioned himself as the steady alternative. His rhetoric avoided spectacle. His speeches focused on detail, compromise, and delivery. A senior journalist put it this way: “The whole pitch was: ‘We’ll be dull but competent.’ After fifteen years of drama, dull sounded good.”

At times, this meant deliberately lowering expectations. Multiple insiders recalled that Starmer instructed the party to avoid language that might create impossible promises. One MP said: “He didn’t want a repeat of 2017 or 2019, when we wrote cheques we couldn’t cash. He genuinely fears that broken promises feed populism.”

Starmer’s Worldview and the Parliamentary Party

Starmer’s instinct to treat populism as a moral threat is rooted in his background. As a barrister and former Director of Public Prosecutions, he was steeped in the idea that rules and institutions hold society together. Starmer’s choice to appoint Richard Hermer as attorney general in July 2024 was a clear example of this, and something which required ‘considerable effort’ according to one political journalist (Rodgers, 2025). Soon after his appointment, Hermer (2024) gave a speech which made clear his concern about populism and his plans to counter it:

‘We are increasingly confronted by the divisive and disruptive force of populism… We face leaders who appeal to the ‘will of the people’ – as exclusively interpreted by them – as the only truly legitimate source of constitutional authority. Their rhetoric conjures images of a conspiracy of ‘elites’ – an enemy that is hard to define but invariably including the people and independent institutions who exercise the kind of checks and balances on executive power that are the essence of liberal democracy and the rule of law… I hope you take some comfort in the fact that the importance of the rule of law and the constitutional balance is embedded in my DNA and that of a Prime Minister who not only rose to the top ranks of the Bar but served his country as DPP.’

Political journalist Ian Dunt correctly observed that it is rare for British politicians, especially attorney generals, to demonstrate “the kind of political and philosophical depth shown in that speech.” Given their shared history, Dunt (2025) claimed Starmer “had clearly authorised him to do the work they both believed in [to counter populism], in a much more robust and outspoken way.”

Labour’s MPs generally echoed Starmer and Hermer’s worldview. In interviews, many brought up Cas Mudde’s (2017) definition of populism unprompted, describing it as a worldview that pits a virtuous “people” against a corrupt “elite.”They consistently rejected this framing as corrosive to democracy. One MP told me: “The idea that politics is just a battle between good, ordinary people and a corrupt elite goes against how democracy really works – I think we’ve tried to push against that.” Indeed, Labour interviewees’ comments echoed many of the inherent dangers of populism for democracy identified by political scientist Jan Werner Muller (2016). They stressed that compromise and pluralism are essential, that it is impossible to distil the will of the people into a single viewpoint, and that institutions such as the judiciary and Parliament are safeguards, not obstacles. One insider remarked: “Respect for institutions is what sets us apart from the populists. I think for everyone here, that is absolutely key.”

This worldview shaped Labour’s stance on contentious issues. When the Conservatives tried to override the Supreme Court on the Rwanda deportation scheme, Yvette Cooper (2024) chastised a party that wanted to “stop all courts.” When Boris Johnson was accused of breaking lockdown rules during Partygate, Angela Rayner (2024) argued that the Prime Minister had “degraded” Britain’s institutions. When Conservative MPs criticised the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Neteyahu, David Lammy (2025) passionately argued that the UK’s duty was to uphold international law, no matter what.

For MPs, these moments weren’t simply opportunistic attack lines. Rather, they reflect an institutionalist ethos that sets Labour apart from its populist rivals. Several interviewees contrasted this with both right-wing populism and left-wing ‘Corbynism,’ which, at times, they claimed, flirted with a Manichean and binary view of “the people versus the elite”described by the ideational definition of populism (Mudde, 2017). As one journalist observed: “Starmer doesn’t do binaries. He does compromise. That’s his politics.” This rejection of populism runs deep within the identity of the Parliamentary Labour Party. MPs and advisers alike saw their role as defending the structures and norms of democracy against the polarising logic of populism.

A Compromise Strategy

Despite these convictions, Labour’s public-facing stance has been more muted. The compromise between Starmer and McSweeney means explicit attacks on populism are largely confined to Starmer’s speeches, whilst the wider party message stresses competence and delivery. At the same time, McSweeney’s strategy has steered Labour toward selective co-option of populist themes, borrowing rhetoric on sovereignty, fairness, and security when it helps shore up support against the PRR Reform UK.

MPs are divided over this balancing act. Some welcomed Starmer’s willingness to call out populism explicitly, saying it reassured the new intake that the party was willing to “name the problem.” Others warned that in Leave-voting constituencies such rhetoric could backfire.

A similar divergence in opinion appeared when MPs were asked about McSweeney’s push for Labour to co-opt populist policies and rhetoric in certain areas. Some Labour elites felt that, although it was uncomfortable, it was necessary to reduce the electoral appeal of Reform UK. However, others felt it risked legitimising right-wing populists and alienating their voter base on the left.

Indeed, recent research highlights that mainstream parties risk alienating their core voter bases when co-opting populist policies or rhetoric. A 2024 study on mainstream partisans’ responses to populist radical right parties found that even tactical forms of cooperation can provoke feelings of betrayal among core supporters, while outright exclusion may conversely reassure them that democratic boundaries are being defended (van der Brug et al., 2024). In other words, accepting far-right actors as legitimate competitors may backfire by alienating loyal voters, reinforcing the dilemma that ignoring populism allows it to grow, but engaging with it risks damaging mainstream parties’ own legitimacy.

The result is a fractured Labour elite, and a party that highlights it is not populist, but is simultaneously cautious about declaring itself against populism. As one senior journalist told me: “They’ll quietly fix things, and when it helps, they’ll borrow the populist language.”

The European Dilemma

Labour’s balancing act is part of a wider European story. Both the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) frequently denounce the Freedom Party (FPÖ) as a right-wing populist force that threatens democratic stability. They highlight the FPÖ’s history of extremism and corruption scandals to argue it is unfit to govern. However, some analysts suggest that this moralising tone has also reinforced the FPÖ’s image as an outsider persecuted by the political establishment (Greilinger, 2024). 

In France, Emmanuel Macron has pitched himself as the rational bulwark against Marine Le Pen. His rhetoric helped him win two presidential elections, yet his reputation as the anti-populist “president of the elite” has also fuelled the resentment that benefits her party (Alduy, 2024). 

And in Slovakia, opposition leaders stress the importance of defending institutions against Robert Fico, though appeals to democratic norms often fail to resonate with voters who are more concerned about wages or security (OSW Centre for Eastern Studies, 2025).

Labour’s interviews echo these patterns. Starmer’s decision to call populism a “snake oil” resembles Macron’s confrontational stance, while McSweeney’s “pothole theory” mirrors the German CDU’s instinct to quietly address material grievances. And his tactic of co-opting populist themes recalls centre-left parties across Europe that have edged rightward on migration or nationalism in hopes of undercutting their rivals. Both approaches highlight the same paradox: ignoring populism lets it grow but confronting it risks alienating dissatisfied voters drawn to populist ‘common sense’solutions.

Conclusion: Lessons for Democracy

Labour’s struggle over how to deal with populism reflects a central dilemma facing European democracies. Mainstream parties increasingly recognise that populism threatens democratic norms, yet they are torn between exposing it and addressing the grievances that fuel it.

My interviews reveal a party uneasy about this balance. Starmer is inclined to call out populism for what it is. McSweeney and other strategists argue that delivery, not denunciation, is what keeps populists at bay – along with carefully borrowing some of their language and themes. MPs, often caught in between, worry about how rhetoric plays in their constituencies.

Since my research in January 2025, Starmer appears to have shifted closer to McSweeney’s view. He has grown more willing to co-opt populist policy positions and language in the hope of winning back voters tempted by Reform UK. A YouGov poll in early 2025 showed Reform UK as likely to be the largest party in parliament if a snap election were called, underscoring how desperate party elites have become. But comparative research suggests that Labour’s gamble may backfire. Political scientist Tarik Abou-Chadi has shown that when mainstream parties adopt aspects of populist policies from the far-right, they rarely succeed in winning over these voters. Instead, they might risk normalising the very politics they sought to resist.

Labour’s experience illustrates the challenge facing mainstream parties: how to safeguard democratic principles while competing in a political landscape reshaped by populism. These are not uniquely British problems, but global ones. For young people inheriting these democracies, the question is urgent: how can political actors who genuinely care about democracy confront populism without alienating voters or belittling their grievances?

 

References

Alduy, C. (2024, July 4). “How France Fell to the Far Right: In the End, Le Pen Hardly Had to Moderate to Gain Power.” Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/france/how-france-fell-far-right-le-pen-macron

BBC. (2025, September 28). “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: Interview with the Prime Minister [TV broadcast].” BBC iPlayer. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002k6hc/sunday-with-laura-kuenssberg-interview-with-the-prime-minister

Cooper, Y. (2024, June 20). “Speech on Supreme Court ruling and Rwanda deportation.” Hansard. https://hansard.parliament.uk

Dunt, I. (2025, February 5). “A good man in government.” Politics.co.uk. https://iandunt.substack.com/p/a-good-man-in-government

Greilinger, G. (2024, January 2). “Normalising the far right: a warning from Austria.” Social Europe.

Hermer, R. (2024, July 25). “Speech as Attorney General on populism and the rule of law.” UK Government. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/attorney-general-richard-hermer-on-populism

Ipsos. (2025, January). “Voting intention poll, January 2025.” Ipsos. https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/polling-voting-intention-2025

Lammy, D. (2025, March 10). “Statement on the International Criminal Court.” Hansard. https://hansard.parliament.uk

March, L. (2018). “Left and right populism compared: The British case.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 20(2), 281–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118763892

Müller, J.-W. (2016). What is populism? University of Pennsylvania Press.

Mudde, C. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780190234874.001.0001

OSW Centre for Eastern Studies. (2025, January 28). “Slovakia: Fico’s government in trouble.” https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2025-01-28/slovakia-ficos-government-trouble

Rayner, A. (2024, April 21). “Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges.” Hansard. https://hansard.parliament.uk

Rodgers, S. (2025, February 24). “For evidence of Labour doubt in the Starmer project, look no further than his attorney general.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/24/labour-keir-starmer-project-attorney-general-richard-hermer

Russo, Luana & Brock, Paula Schulze. (2025). “Mainstream partisans’ affective

response to (non) cooperation with populist radical right parties.” West European Politics, 48:6, 1389-1427, DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2024.2336436

Starmer, K. (2024a, July 17). “Debate on the address.” Hansard. https://hansard.parliament.uk

Starmer, K. (2024b, October 14). “PM International Investment Summit speech.” UK Government. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-international-investment-summit-speech-14-october-2024

Starmer, K. (2024c, January 2). “Keir Starmer’s New Year speech.” Labour Party. https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/keir-starmers-new-year-speech

Dr. DB Subedi is a leading scholar of peace and conflict studies at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Dr. DB Subedi Warns: Transitional Nepal May Face Real Dangers from Rising Religious Populism

by Editor’s ChoiceExtremism & RadicalisationHomeInterviewsMigration

“Transitional Nepal may face real dangers from rising religious populism,” cautions Dr. DB Subedi, lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland, in an interview with the ECPS. While the September 2025 youth-led uprising signaled a break with entrenched corruption, nepotism, and elite capture, Dr. Subedi warns that Nepal’s weak secularism leaves space for actors seeking to reinstate Hindu statehood. Such a trajectory, he argues, risks fusing populist nationalism with sectarian identity—posing a greater threat than conventional elite dominance. Yet he also sees in Gen Z’s unprecedented mobilization the embryonic signs of a participatory, post-elitist democracy. Much depends, he stresses, on whether Nepal’s interim government can ensure a smooth, accountable transition to elections.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

“Transitional Nepal may face real dangers from rising religious populism,” warns Dr. DB Subedi, a leading scholar of peace and conflict studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. In an exclusive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Subedi argues that while Nepal’s September 2025 uprising carries the seeds of a more participatory, post-elitist democracy, the country also risks sliding into a form of exclusionary right-wing politics. Having been the world’s only Hindu state until 2015, Nepal is now formally secular but only weakly so in practice. Everyday political life continues to be saturated with religion, leaving space for political actors and interest groups who seek to reinstate Hindu statehood. In Dr. Subedi’s assessment, this trajectory could open the door to religious populism—an outcome more dangerous than other forms of elite capture because it fuses populist nationalism with sectarian identity.

Yet, Dr. Subedi stresses, the September uprising cannot be reduced to a story of risks alone. It is also a product of deep structural inequalities, socioeconomic stagnation, and the frustrations of a digitally native generation. What began as a protest against the Oli government’s ban on 26 social media platforms quickly crystallized into a mass youth-led revolt against corruption, nepotism, and elite reproduction. The protests were unprecedented in scale, non-hierarchical in organization, and notable for their broad public legitimacy. Dr. Subedi sees in this horizontal mobilization the embryonic forms of a post-elitist democracy, rooted less in patronage or coercion and more in inclusive participation.

Placing Nepal within a wider regional frame, Dr. Subedi draws parallels with Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya (2022) and Bangladesh’s anti-quota protests (2024). Across these South Asian contexts, the drivers are strikingly similar: generational exclusion from politics, widening socioeconomic inequality, and a pervasive sense of injustice. In each case, social media functioned both as a catalyst and as connective tissue, transforming diffuse frustrations into coordinated movements. Yet Nepal’s fragile secularism makes it particularly vulnerable to the instrumentalization of religion by authoritarian populists, as has been evident in Bangladesh.

For Dr. Subedi, the stakes of the coming months are therefore clear. Much depends on whether the interim civilian government—tasked with organizing elections within six months under the leadership of former Chief Justice Sushila Karki—can ensure a smooth, legitimate transfer of power. The challenge lies not only in delivering credible elections but also in holding past regimes accountable for corruption and abuses of power, while simultaneously preventing a populist-nationalist hijack of the transitional moment.

In the conversation that follows, Dr. Subedi provides a detailed analysis of Nepal’s September uprising, reflecting on its social, economic, and political roots, situating it in the broader South Asian context, and sounding a critical warning about the dangers of religious populism in Nepal’s fragile democracy.

Here is the transcript of our interview with Dr. DB Subedi, lightly edited for clarity and readability.

A Revolution Born of Structural Inequalities and a Youth Bulge

Nepal Protests 2025 — Demonstrators, largely Gen Z, rally against the government’s ban on 26 social media platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. Police presence and Nepalese flags marked the nationwide unrest. Photo: Tetiana Strilchuk.

Professor Subedi, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Analysts describe the September 2025 uprising as a Gen Z revolution, yet youth mobilization in Nepal has a long genealogy. From your perspective, what specific social, economic, and political configurations enabled this generation to rupture the cycle of elite reproduction where earlier movements failed?

Dr. DB Subedi: Thank you so much, I am very happy to be here talking to you about protests in Nepal. As you mentioned, Nepal has experienced different cycles of revolutions in the past. In particular, I would like to highlight two peaceful revolutions that at one point turned violent—those of 1990 and 2006. In between, Nepal also endured Maoist revolutions lasting 10 years, a very violent civil war. This current youth uprising, however, primarily led by Gen Z in Nepal, is driven by a number of structural and systemic issues. In fact, the protests, which began on 7th September, were directed against what protesters identified as corruption, elitism, and the lack of generational change in Nepal’s politics. 

These are much larger structural and systemic issues, driven primarily by three interrelated factors. First, on the economic front: despite Nepal having undergone shifts in political systems in the past—most notably in 2015, when the country transformed from a constitutional monarchy to a federal republic (a decision made in 2008 but further institutionalized with the drafting of new constitution in 2015)—this was indeed a massive political shift. However, when it comes to economic change, Nepal still has a long way to go. Economic and developmental stagnation persists, and the institutions created and re-strengthened after the 2015 constitution have failed to provide meaningful incentives to the broader population, especially young people.

Rather, what we have seen over the past two decades is a deepening of socioeconomic inequalities in the country. These economic factors are further compounded by political and social ones. Politically, even though Nepal has gone through different cycles of democratization, most major parties lack intra-party democratization, as political leadership has not been passed on to younger generations. Thus, there is both a lack of internal party democracy and a lack of generational shift within political parties. At the same time, there are numerous examples of elite capture and domination of the economic and productive sectors, producing what we call cronyism. Nepal has recently experienced a particular form of cronyism that emerged through a nexus between economic elites and political elites.

And the third, social dimension is particularly important in relation to this recent youth revolution. Looking at demographic figures in Nepal over the past decades, we can observe a youth bulge pattern, meaning that a large proportion of the population consists of young people. This demographic trend creates vulnerable conditions for revolutions to emerge.

In a nutshell, the economic, social, and political factors came together and produced structural conditions and political opportunity structures on which this recent youth uprising and revolution have taken place in Nepal.

Gen Z Turns Precarity into Protest

A Nepali farmer at work in a rural field during the monsoon season. As the rains arrive, farmers across Nepal become busy in their fields, though most still rely on traditional farming techniques. Photo: Shishir Gautam.

Nepal’s youth today confront what might be called a triple disjuncture: mass migration, precarious labor markets, and the expansion of the digital public sphere. How do these dynamics intersect to produce a new political subjectivity that resists both elite capture and authoritarian closure?

Dr. DB Subedi: Mass migration and precarious labor markets are, in fact, deeply interconnected. While this is true in other contexts as well, in the case of Nepal the interconnections are much more significant. Moreover, these are not new issues. At one level, there is a trade-off between political elites and the people at large, especially young people, when it comes to migration, because political elites have viewed mass migration as a source of remittances—income sent home by those working overseas, particularly in labor migration. But from a political perspective, this has also functioned as a tactic of social control. When the young population is displaced from the country and moves abroad, only the elderly and very young remain in society. Such a society, from a political point of view, is easier to control, since politicians and elites at both national and local levels face far less political opposition, especially from young people. This trend has persisted for a long time and, as I mentioned earlier, has coincided with the rise of a crony-led economy that has grown exponentially in recent years.

For young people who have migrated and are working in extreme conditions in the Middle East and elsewhere, it is a sort of double-edged sword. On one hand, they see overseas employment and labor migration as a way to support and look after their families. But at the same time, there is also a sense of missing out on engaging in social and political activities locally. This was the situation for about 20–25 years. With the rise of social media and digital platforms in the age of the internet, however, we have also seen the emergence of transnational political activism. Now, even if young people have migrated and been away, they can engage in discussions about the politics of their homeland through social media. This kind of transnational political activism, facilitated by digital platforms, has also been a contributing factor in generating support for youth activism in Nepal.

You mentioned the precarious situations. In fact, among younger generations there is also the perception that a remittance-led economy is very inconsistent. It is not sustainable, as it largely depends on the economies of migrant-receiving countries. Recently, we have seen that young people are increasingly interested in exploring opportunities within the country rather than migrating overseas for short- or long-term employment. As a result, economic conditions in the country have been very precarious, with lands left uncultivated for a long time, especially in the hills and other areas. There are also villages where young people have been absent for years. This has affected the demographic configuration of the country as much as its economic configuration. Altogether, these factors contribute to a sense of vulnerability, and among young people, there is a growing urgency for social, political, and economic change. The September protest was an expression of that urgency for social change, which political parties and elites have so far failed to deliver.

A Tactical Blunder and an Authoritarian Reflex

Many Nepali citizens join Gen Z–led protests in Bhojpur, Nepal on September 9, 2025, showing solidarity with nationwide demonstrations. Photo: Dipesh Rai.

The ban on social media is often cited as the immediate spark of revolt. Should this be understood as a mere tactical blunder by Oli’s government, or as symptomatic of a deeper authoritarian reflex embedded within Nepal’s ruling elite?

DB Subedi: That’s a very good question, and I think it is indeed both. On the one hand, it was what I would call a tactical blunder of the Oli government, because the ban on 26 social media platforms was based on a miscalculation of the possible social and political consequences it could produce. The reason it was a miscalculation is that we have now seen how it actually drove people to take to the streets—not only in Kathmandu but across the country. It was a tactical blunder because it failed to anticipate the reactions, especially from younger generations, Gen Z and others, who are digital nomads and live in the digital space. For them, the digital space is everyday life, not just a platform for networking and entertainment, but increasingly also a space for political competition and contestation. The government failed to predict the potential political and social backlash and consequences of this. Or at least, they were probably not ignorant of it but simply undermined the consequences.

At the same time, this also reflects a symptom of the increasingly authoritarian style of politics of the Oli government. One example I would cite is that when social media was banned on 4th September, news still circulated on the platforms that remained operational at the time—I think this included Viber and a few others—where the frustrations of young people were voiced. Through those platforms, there was a call for a nationwide protest against the government’s decision.

Rather than engaging with the people—especially the younger generation—and explaining to the population at large why the ban would be necessary, for example, as the government claimed, to maintain social cohesion and avert social fragmentation caused by misinformation and disinformation circulating on social media, the Oli government failed to make its case. That could have been a well-intentioned policy, and there may have been good intent behind it. However, the government not only failed to explain this to the people, but at the same time, ex-Prime Minister Oli was seen publicly criticizing and undermining young people’s frustration. This was symbolic and spoke directly to his authoritarian stance on the use of social media. For young people, it was not simply a matter of compliance; they saw it as an attack on their freedom of speech. In my view, then, the decision to ban social media was partly a tactical blunder and partly a symbolic expression of the increasingly authoritarian politics of the ruling elites at that time.

Nepo-Babies as a Symptom of Neo-Elitism

Viral outrage against “nepo-babies” seems to reflect a moral economy of resentment against elite entitlement. To what extent did the digital spectacle of political heirs flaunting luxury lifestyles crystallize diffuse frustrations into a new form of class politics—distinct from the agrarian and proletarian struggles of earlier eras?

Dr. DB Subedi: The outrage against nepo-babies, which we have seen on social media for some time in Nepal, is not unique to Nepal. In Asia, we have also seen similar kinds of outrage against nepo-babies in Indonesia and elsewhere; the Philippines is another example. But in the case of Nepal, this is actually a symptom of a deep cultural conflict within Nepal’s politics. It also points to the inequalities and disparities that have grown between political elites and ordinary people in the past decades.

Of course, nepo-babies are also a symbol of neo-elitism and a growing political culture that endorses elite entitlement and elite resource capture in a resource-poor country like Nepal. In other words, the outrage against nepo-babies—or the framing of nepo-babies as a particular type of social class on social media—is a symptom of growing socioeconomic inequalities and political divides in the country. This has also supported a different kind of elitist political culture, one that people did not expect after the massive political change in 2015.

To put that into context, when the Maoists called for a revolution—armed revolution—in 1996, during the 10 years of insurgency, 17,000 people died. Many hundreds, even thousands, are still missing. And there are thousands upon thousands of families that have been disintegrated or displaced because of the insurgency.

There are also ex-combatants who actively fought in the war—from the Maoist side as well as from the government side—who are now living with disability and carry deep emotional and psychological distress inherited from the war. The memory of those precarious, insecure times has not faded away. For Nepalese society, this is not a very distant event in history. People remain very much aware of what was sacrificed—not just by those who fought in the war, but also by ordinary people during the Maoist insurgency.

Then there was a political shift in 2008 and 2015, but now you can contrast these situations with the children of political elites—politicians who are living a luxurious life and, most importantly, flaunting that life and their privileges on social media. That kind of contrasting scenario is obviously going to be outrageous for people who feel they lost a decade of their lives because of the insurgencies, and who see few opportunities available for the masses.

So, what we have seen in the recent revolutions is the clash of those two types of political cultures, and the very contrasting lives people are living. That is why young people have shown their frustrations against nepo-babies. But again, nepo-babies are a product of bad political culture, rising neo-elitism, and institutional failure to bring about equitable socioeconomic change and transformation in the country.

Different Triggers, Shared Inequalities

Nepal is the third South Asian country in four years to witness mass youth-led uprisings, after Sri Lanka in 2022 and Bangladesh in 2024. What do you see as the common drivers across these cases, and what is unique to Nepal’s trajectory?

Dr. DB Subedi: Actually, there are several common drivers. One of the main ones is that in all three revolutions, there was overwhelming involvement and participation of young people, especially in Bangladesh and Nepal. We have seen Gen Z play a leading role in these kinds of protest movements. In Sri Lanka, in the Aragalaya, it was a bit different because people from three different ethnic groups—Tamils, Sinhalese, and Muslims—came together. This movement was also mostly led by young people, but people from other generations were involved as well in the revolution that toppled the government of Rajapaksa.

Of course, there are contextual differences too—differences in terms of politics, history, and so on. But there are also common structural issues behind the rise of these movements in all three countries. At the center of that structural inequality, that structural issue, is the perception of injustice. In Sri Lanka, the Aragalaya movement was mostly fueled by the government’s failure—economic collapse and the government’s failure to manage the economy when the country transitioned from decades of civil war to peace and stability.

In Bangladesh, this was directed towards a bad government policy by Sheikh Hasina’s government regarding quotas in government jobs and opportunities for young people. So, it was actually aimed at a particular kind of policy. In Nepal, by contrast, it was triggered by another policy decision—the ban on social media.

Regardless of these three different trigger factors, what we have seen is growing socioeconomic inequality, lack of generational change in politics, the perceptions of young people, and the reality of their sense of socioeconomic exclusion, relative deprivation, and frustration toward increasingly elitist types of politics. These are the common issues we can observe in all three countries. And when these issues converge in motivating young people to take to the streets, social media plays an important role as a facilitator of this kind of collective movement.

The Key Is a Proper Handover of Power

Thousands joined a joint morning procession organized by the CPN-UML and Nepali Congress district committees in Inaruwa Bazaar on September 19, 2025, to mark Constitution Day. Photo: Nabin Gadtaula.

In Sri Lanka, the Aragalaya protest movement toppled the Rajapaksas but was quickly reabsorbed into elite politics. What lessons should Nepali youth learn from the Sri Lankan experience to avoid repeating this cycle of betrayal?

Dr. DB Subedi: Sri Lanka’s case is probably somewhat different from that of Nepal, particularly when it comes to the transfer of political authority at the end of the revolutions. There is now a new government that came to power after the elections—a progressive government, distinct from the previous populist nationalist government of Rajapaksa. What we have seen in Sri Lanka is a very quick and relatively smooth transfer of power from the previous regime to the new progressive government, which, as the recent elections show, has received an overwhelming mandate from the Sri Lankan people. The transition was, of course, fragile, but the Sri Lankans managed it very well in terms of shifting power from the previous regime to the new one.

In the case of Nepal, we now have a civil society government, a pattern more or less similar to what we saw in Bangladesh after the 2024 revolution. This civilian government has been given a mandate to hold elections within six months, and it is headed by the former Chief Justice of the country, Sushila Karki. Nepal can actually learn a few things here from Sri Lanka. One is that it will always be in the best interest of the people and the political system to manage these transitions and make them as short as possible, because a proper handover of power from previous governments to the next elected government is the key.

In the meantime, there are also additional challenges for the Nepalese government—the civilian government in power at the moment. Nepal also faces the challenge of holding those from previous governments accountable for the loss of life during the protest movement. Proper investigations into the abuse of power and coercion by the previous regimes are difficult issues, but they need to be addressed. At the same time, there is widespread public frustration and anger about corruption cases. There are dozens of cases dating back as early as the 1990s that have not been properly investigated, and political power has been used, misused, and abused to avoid scrutiny.

So, while the civilian government in power at the moment has many challenges, the main lesson it could learn from Sri Lanka in particular is the importance of ensuring that processes, mechanisms, and systems are in place to transfer power from previous authorities to newly elected authorities.

The Risks of Religious Populism

In Bangladesh, the fall of Sheikh Hasina has opened space for religious extremism and new forms of repression. How should we understand the dangers of authoritarian populists exploiting anti-corruption or anti-elitist discourses in fragile democracies?

Dr. DB Subedi:  That’s a very good question, and Nepal also has—I wouldn’t say a strong possibility, but there may be—some scenarios where certain political forces, either existing or emerging, might use populist rhetoric to exploit the fluid situation in the transitional period. In other words, there may be risks of populist, nationalist kinds of political narratives being circulated as mainstream narratives in the meantime and taking over in the post-revolution political system. The risks are always there. In Bangladesh, we have seen religious extremist narratives circulating in the political domain and influencing politics, and this is typical of Bangladesh because of its sociocultural and socio-religious configurations.

In the case of Nepal, there are two potential scenarios where populist forces seeking to exploit the situation could emerge. In my view, one is that there is probably a lesser risk of right-wing populist politics exploiting culture or ethnicity to advance populist agendas in Nepal. Because Nepal is ethnically diverse, if any populist forces emerge at this stage, one possibility is that they might actually mobilize people across ethnic divides. In that sense, it might look less like the right-wing populism we have seen elsewhere.

But at the same time, the bigger risk is that Nepal was the only Hindu state in the world until 2015. When the new constitution was passed in 2015, it became a secular country. And even though it is now formally secular, it is weakly so, because in practice, in everyday life, religion is still present in the public domain. It has not been retracted into the private sphere. As a result, there are certain political parties and interest groups that want to reinstate the Hindu state in Nepal. That is another risk, where there may be potential for populist politics to emerge in this transition, mobilizing and exploiting religious factors, narratives, and ideologies. If that happens, that sort of populist politics might be more dangerous, because it could share certain elements of right-wing populism we have seen elsewhere, since it would be a form of religious populism in Nepal.

So, yes, like Sri Lanka, Nepal also faces risks. But at the same time, it also has an opportunity, because elections have been called in six months’ time, and if elections take place and there is a smooth transition of power, then Nepali society might be able to navigate these challenges in the days to come.

Unprecedented Support, Uncertain Future

The municipality office in Inaruwa, Sunsari, lies heavily damaged after protesters targeted it during the nationwide demonstrations against corruption and the social media shutdown on September 9, 2025. Photo: Nabin Gadtaula

And finally, Professor Subedi, do you see in Nepal’s Gen Z uprising the embryonic forms of a post-elitist democracy—an order rooted not in patronage or coercion but in participatory, inclusive politics? Or does the violence of the movement suggest that the path forward remains perilously uncertain?

Dr. DB Subedi: At the moment, I would like to be optimistic about your question, and I would say there are signs of a post-elitist kind of politics beginning to emerge in this case. But again, a lot depends on what kind of political institutions will consolidate in the days to come. Looking at the past, one of the major challenges in Nepal is that even though there were political changes—political shifts in 2015, 2008, and even earlier—the change in institutional setup did not result in meaningful socioeconomic transformation. One reason it didn’t happen is because institutions changed, but the institutional culture inherited from the past essentially remained the same. As a result, corruption continued, exclusion continued, and people’s frustrations with the system and political elites deepened.

In these situations, how the voices of younger generations can be institutionalized and established in mainstream politics in the days to come will determine a lot. Still, I would view this change more optimistically than pessimistically, because despite some losses—there was destruction and violence when the protests intensified on the second day—there is nonetheless a sense of awareness among the public that change was inevitable, change was necessary, and that we have come to a time when much more meaningful change is required, both in terms of political institutions, systems of governance, and political participation. But changing political culture is also necessary.

And I think if more and more young people are able to participate in politics, they might be able to foster a political culture that is much more participatory and inclusive, and can establish not only economic systems but also political systems that are fair, inclusive, and capable of bringing about the change desired by those who sacrificed their lives, as well as those who participated in these protest movements. A lot depends on how the state and society will navigate this challenge and crisis, because sometimes past history also gives us a clue to predict the future. Unfortunately, the past record of how Nepalese society has navigated post-revolutionary political space is not very encouraging.

But this time, because the revolution was led particularly by young people outside of the political parties’ participation—it was not hierarchical, as would have been the case if it were led by political parties—at the same time, even though it was a leaderless movement, it very quickly sought some results, some consequences. So, the kind of public support this protest movement has received is unprecedented. In that sense, there is huge public support, and in fact, that kind of public support is also a good indicator of the legitimacy of the current government, and also the government that will take over when it is handed over to an elected government. That kind of legitimacy is good for any government and any political leaders who come to power with the intention of bringing about meaningful social, economic, and political change. And that is what we can hope for at this stage. But a lot depends on how this will be managed, and how society will navigate through it.

Banksy protest mural in Palestine. A mural by the artist Banksy on a wall in the West Bank village of Beit Sahour, June 18, 2014. Photo: Dreamstime.

Queerness, Genocide, and International Law – A Look at Palestine

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceGenderHomeHuman Rights

This commentary examines how queerness intersects with genocide and international law in the context of Palestine. Ass. Professor Izat El Amoor argues that queer Palestinians confront not only Israel’s genocidal violence but also Western pinkwashing narratives that weaponize queerness to justify oppression. By situating pinkwashing and pinkwatching within broader struggles of decolonization, the piece shows how queer analysis exposes the hypocrisy of Western legal and human rights frameworks while offering new tools for resistance. Linking Israel’s use of pinkwashing to global failures of international law—including the ICJ case brought by South Africa—the essay insists that genocide studies must reckon with queerness as central, not peripheral, to understanding both the violence in Gaza and pathways toward Palestinian liberation.

By Izat El Amoor*

In the colossal scope of the annihilation of Palestinians since October 7, queerness is not a mere addendum when positioned in the scholarship and legality of genocide. As Palestinians contested Western discourses of international law and genocide for their liberation, queer Palestinians in parallel challenged Western discourses of queerness – pinkwashing[1] – that have been employed as genocidal tools against all Palestinians. Within the larger Palestinian decolonization struggle, a queer analysis reveals additional shortcomings of the current genocide scholarship and legal frameworks that are useful for Palestinian resistance yet might otherwise remain hidden.

Pinkwashing genocide emerged boisterously from within Israel’s toolbox against an increasing diplomatic and legal global isolating pressure. This pressure entailed a string of legal and humanitarian decisions/actions such as UN Security Council votes for Palestinian statehood and membership; UN Human Rights Council resolutions of crimes against humanity; ambassador recalls and severance of diplomatic relations with many countries; states’ recognition of Palestine; state-calls on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate war crimes against civilians; state-requests for a court opinion on whether Israel’s occupation violates international law. Pinkwatching[2] aims at strengthening this pressure that Israel has been diligently countering via pinkwashing, amongst other schemes. Consequently, pinkwashing and pinkwatching—while contradictory—transpire as instructive of the pretense of Western hypocritical dichotomies tied to human rights, international law, and preventing/ending genocide insofar as Palestinian liberation.

The ICJ Case Through a Queer Lens

Though not obviously connected at first glance, South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ—filed on December 29, 2023, regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza and widely considered the most significant diplomatic/legal attempt to isolate Israel—can also be analyzed through this queer framework. South Africa alleged that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, violating the Genocide Convention through 75 years of apartheid, 56 years of occupation, and a 16-year blockade prior to October 7. Specifically in Gaza, South Africa accused Israel of eight “genocidal acts”: killing Palestinians; inflicting serious bodily and mental harm; mass displacement; deprivation of food and water; denial of shelter, clothing, hygiene, and sanitation; blocking medical care; destroying Palestinian life; and imposing measures to prevent births.

On January 11–12, 2024, the Peace Palace in The Hague hosted two days of hearings on South Africa’s request for provisional measures. On January 26, 2024, the Court ordered Israel to take all steps to prevent acts that could qualify as genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The Court acknowledged that at least some of South Africa’s claims could fall within the Convention’s scope. However, it did not order Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza, as South Africa requested. Still, both governments declared the ruling a win, each interpreting it as validation of their stance.

Although ICJ rulings carry binding force, they lack enforcement power, and Israel has refused to comply. South Africa’s foreign minister Naledi Pandor emphasized that compliance would be impossible without a ceasefire. On February 26, 2024, Human Rights Watch reported that Israel had not implemented the Court’s provisional measures and had “continued to obstruct the provision of basic services and the entry and distribution within Gaza of fuel and lifesaving aid.” That same day, Amnesty International stated that Israel was “defying” the ICJ ruling. On March 28, 2024, in response to worsening conditions, the ICJ issued additional emergency measures requiring Israel to guarantee basic food supplies to stave off famine. Then, on May 24, 2024 the Court ordered an immediate halt to Israel’s Rafah offensive, which Israel outright rejected.

Because both Israel and South Africa are signatories to the Genocide Convention, jurisdiction is established. South Africa argues that, as a state party, it has a duty to act to prevent genocide and is legally obligated to pursue all necessary measures. The Genocide Convention extends beyond punishment to prevention, recognizing genocide as more than mass killing. South Africa’s petition highlights this obligation, aiming to fulfill the Convention’s purpose. Despite historical precedent of international law failing Palestinians and the slim likelihood of success, the case still carried hope—not only for a ruling in South Africa’s favor but also for a possible end to Israel’s genocidal campaign.

Decolonial Struggles Beyond the Courtroom

Pinkwatching operates on a similar basis of hope for Palestinian collective liberation, even though Israel is unlikely to abandon its pinkwashing efforts. Both South Africa’s ICJ case and pinkwatching contribute to the Palestinian decolonization struggle, offering different tools for globally isolating Israel and its supporters. While pinkwatching may occupy a small place in international legal and political arenas, it nonetheless provides an important pathway for resistance. This resonates with Palestinian scholar Nora Erakat’s (2020) claim that law must work alongside political strategies if it is to meaningfully support Palestine.

Like South Africa’s ICJ case, pinkwatching underscores the divide between legality and morality in international affairs. Western responses to both overlook moral dimensions, thus blocking accountability-based decolonial breakthroughs. Legal efforts are essential to halt genocide, but they remain insufficient to achieve the deeper moral and spiritual transformation necessary in the West to ensure genocide truly stops and does not recur. Treating genocide solely as a legal matter exposes the inadequacy of law when societies, like Israel’s, persist in the immoral conviction of having the right to commit it. Pinkwashers similarly claim false moral authority, reinforcing the Western legal hypocrisy that South Africa challenges. Recognizing this, pinkwatching organizers long ago chose to work outside such flawed structures, rejecting Western queer discourses that cannot deliver Palestinian liberation. Their efforts affirm that a queer-informed path to freedom cannot rely on Western legal or rights-based paradigms.

International law’s stated responsibility to prevent genocide and protect victims has repeatedly faltered due to “realpolitik, the lack of political will, and economic interests,” in the words of scholar Samuel Totten (2011). Historically, Totten says, responses to genocide have been “inconsequential. Nothing that will rock or threaten a [genocidal] government or nation’s well-being. Nothing punitive.” Israel dismissed South Africa’s charges as “baseless,” accusing it of acting as “the legal arm” of Hamas while insisting its actions were self-defense under international law—claims that largely went uncontested.

Pinkwashing, Early Warnings, and the Dynamics of Genocide

A clear example of realpolitik overriding legal and scholarly genocide frameworks came in the US, Germany, and France backing Israel at the ICJ, despite their histories of complicity in past genocides. France declared that accusing Israel of genocide “is to cross a moral threshold.” Germany pledged to defend Israel in light of the Holocaust. The US dismissedthe ICJ case as a distraction from “peace and security.” Beyond a lack of will to prevent genocide, South Africa’s case reveals that failure itself is pursued to serve Western interests.[3] Thus, by undermining their own institutions of “justice” such as international law and the UN, Western powers show themselves not only complicit in but active facilitators[4] of genocide. Their justifications parallel pinkwashing narratives, which weaponize queerness under a veneer of liberal progressivism while disregarding Palestinian lives—queer and non-queer alike.

From a queer perspective, Gaza’s genocide illustrates what scholar Sheri Rosenberg (2013) describes as the “danger of classifications” in genocide prevention. The targeting of queer Palestinians demonstrates that genocide “must be understood as an unfolding process, considered in light of historical, political, and social factors” and recognized as a complex phenomenon rather than reduced to a definition. When genocide is confined to legal definitions “against which unfolding events are to be measured,” it prioritizes “legalism [and] subjects each genocide to a rigid test in order to maintain the integrity of the term and determine criminal culpability.” Seeing genocide in Palestine as dynamic rather than static makes space for analyzing pinkwashing and pinkwatching as integral to genocide studies. Queerness unsettles the field’s fixation on definitional debates and strengthens arguments such as Rosenberg’s for “early warning systems [that] seek to collect, analyze, and communicate information” to identify potential genocides before escalation. For Palestinians, decades of orientalist tropes—including the use of homophobia to dehumanize them—could have served as early warnings had queer experiences been taken seriously.

Beyond South Africa, a queer reading of Gaza’s genocide also pushes genocide studies to destabilize fixed ideas of group identity. Scholars like Lily Nellans (2020) and Patrick Vernon (2021) have noted the Genocide Convention’s failure to recognize groups defined by gender and sexuality. Scholar Matthew Waites (2018) argues that including sexual orientation and gender identity as protected groups allows recognition of violence against queer communities in Nazi Germany, Uganda, and the Gambia as genocidal. Although Israel’s violence in Gaza targets Palestinians indiscriminately, pinkwashing’s use of queerness to normalize genocidal policies highlights how queer identities are manipulated within genocidal contexts. This manipulation, shaped by pinkwashing, differs from past genocides, marking a distinct phenomenon in the Palestinian experience.

Testimonies Erased: Pinkwashing as Justification and Diversion

Scholar Thomas Simon (1996) argues that in the initial legal definitions of genocide, the Convention’s drafters assumed that the groups requiring protection were “permanent, stable, and intractable,” recognizable by all. Because queer Palestinians have historically resisted Western queer visibility politics—centered on recognition, citizenship, and coming out—they cannot be defined as a protected group under this framework. Scholars like Freda Kabatsi (2005) argue that while the drafters treated group existence as a prerequisite for other rights, pinkwashing constructs queer Palestinians as a group only through a savior-like gaze that conditions their rights and protection on Western recognition. By forcibly separating queer Palestinians from the broader society, this group-based framing legitimizes a genocide that in reality indiscriminately targets all Palestinians. This occurs, Kabatsi (2005)  says, when the “group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator.” Through pinkwashing, Israel reshapes the definition of the Palestinian collective by isolating its queer members, portraying them as exceptions to the population at large. This narrative enables Israel to justify violence against Palestinians—including queers—while presenting itself as a defender of queer rights.

When examined through pinkwashing and pinkwatching, the instrumentalization of queerness to justify genocide reveals a key distinction between contemporary and historical genocides as studies by Robert Melson (2011) show. While queer people have been killed in earlier genocides, the case in Gaza differs because of the weaponization of both alleged Palestinian heteronormativity and Israel’s homonormativity, the latter being used to claim the role of “savior” of queer Palestinians in the process of ‘othering’ all Palestinians. This demonstrates, to build on Vernon (2021), that both heteronormativity and homonormativity are “relevant to genocidal violence against non-queer people as well as violence against queer people.” 

Genocide, therefore, emerges as a behavior rather than a consistent phenomenon across cases. In Palestine, this “comportment of genocide”—which may either define or obscure genocide—takes the form of pinkwashing (Kabatsi, 2005). Here, pinkwashing functions as both a tool of justification and a means of diversion in the genocidal narrative against Palestinians. This may, in fact, represent the first documented instance of such comportment through pinkwashing.

Queering the analysis of genocide in Palestine beyond legal approaches further underscores the importance of listening to victims. In genocidal contexts, as Melson (2011) argues, “testimonies of victims and survivors must be taken into account in order to better understand the motives of the perpetrators and bystanders” and to give victims and survivors a voice in the narrative of destruction. The testimonies of queer Palestinians and the work of pinkwatching activists, however, remain especially marginalized—not only because queer Palestinians, like all Palestinians, are killed in the genocide, but also because pinkwashing depicts them as either nonexistent or limited to experiencing social death in their communities, thus erasing their capacity to provide testimony. This is particularly relevant in light of the ICJ’s order that Israel preserve evidence of genocide and comply with UN investigations. Instead, Israel has systematically destroyed evidence by blocking journalists from entering Gaza, targeting and killing reporters, and denying UN workers access for documentation.

From Exceptionalism to Resistance: Rethinking Genocide Studies

Israel’s reliance on pinkwashing to avoid accountability has broader consequences beyond the devastation in Palestine. By exploiting queer communities in pursuit of ethnonationalist goals, Israel signals to other states that such practices can be adopted with impunity, without fear of consequences. Condemning Israel and the West’s disregard for international law, Irish MEP Clare Daly stated, “the rules-based order is in roaring form.” Israeli exceptionalism reinforces the fact that the West has always applied one standard of international law for its allies and another for the rest of the world. After months of openly discarding international law in Gaza, the collapse of the post–World War II system—built by the US and Europe to maintain global dominance—has become undeniable. Palestinians, including queer Palestinians and their pinkwatching allies, remain steadfast in their resistance to this destructive order.

Pinkwashing and pinkwatching emphasize the need for genocide studies and international law to adopt queer perspectives in documenting, analyzing, and explaining both Israel’s genocide and the international community’s failure to prevent it. Building on the leadership of pinkwatching activists, scholars must foreground the heteronormative and homonormative structures of Zionism, nationalism, colonialism, orientalism, and imperialism as central to understanding genocidal violence in Gaza and beyond. As scholarship continues to evolve, queerness must be acknowledged as an essential contributor to Palestinian liberation, complementing other political strategies. Since legal approaches alone have repeatedly proven insufficient for advancing decolonization, recognizing queerness at the intersection of law and politics is crucial.


(*) Dr. Izat El Amoor is a self-identified queer Palestinian, and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hendrix College studying LGBTQ issues in the Arab world, Palestine included.

 

References

Erakat, N. (2020). Justice for some: Law and the question of Palestine. Stanford University Press.

Kabatsi, F. (2005). “Defining or diverting genocide: Changing the comportment of genocide.” International Criminal Law Review, 5(4), 387–407.

Melson, R. (2011). “Critique of current genocide studies.” Genocide Studies and Prevention, 6(3), 279–286.

Nellans, L. (2020). “A queer (er) genocide studies.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, 14(3), 7–16.

Rosenberg, S. P. (2012). “Genocide is a process, not an event.” Genocide Studies and Prevention, 7(1), 16–23.

Simon, T. W. (1996). “Defining genocide.” Wisconsin International Law Journal, 15(2), 243–289.

Totten, S. (2011). “The state and future of genocide studies and prevention: An overview and analysis of some key issues.” Genocide Studies and Prevention, 6(3), 211–230.

Vernon, P. (2021). “Queering genocide as a performance of heterosexuality.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 49(2), 248–279.

Waites, M. (2018). “Genocide and global queer politics.” Journal of Genocide Research, 20(1), 44–67.


Footnotes

[1] To pinkwash, Israel exploits queer rights to project a progressive queer friendly image of itself while concealing its occupation and apartheid of Palestinians.

[2] Pro-Palestine anti-pinkwashing organizing.

[3] Some signs include the May 6th threatening letter by 12 US republican senators, led by Sen. Tom Cotton, to the ICC chief prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan with sanctions and banning ICC “employees and associates” from entering the US over possible warrants against Israel, saying explicitly, “target Israel and we will target you.” South Africa’s Pandor received the same letter. On May 20th, Khan applied for arrest warrants for Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

[4] The US and Germany, Israel’s top arms supplier, saw their weapon manufacturer corporates directly profit from the genocide as their share prices have exponentially risen since October 7.

Kenneth Roth is the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School for Public and International Affairs. Until August 2022, he served for nearly three decades as the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations, which operates in some 100 countries.

Professor Roth: Israel Exploits Antisemitism Allegations to Silence Criticism of Genocide in Gaza

by AuthoritarianismEditor’s ChoiceHomeHuman RightsInterviews

In an exclusive ECPS interview, Professor Kenneth Roth—former Executive Director of Human Rights Watch and now at Princeton—warns that Israel is cynically using charges of antisemitism to shield what he calls genocide and mass atrocities in Gaza. “Netanyahu and his supporters are not defending Jews worldwide,” Professor Roth stresses. “They are sacrificing them—cheapening the very concept of antisemitism just when it is most needed.” Drawing on three decades of human rights leadership, Professor Roth situates Israel’s narrative strategy within a broader authoritarian playbook: populist leaders tilt elections, capture institutions, and scapegoat minorities while silencing dissent. His central warning is stark: criticism of Israel is not antisemitism, and blurring this line endangers both Palestinians and Jews worldwide.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In this exclusive ECPS interview, Professor Kenneth Roth—longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch and now Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School for Public and International Affairs—warns that the Israeli government is cynically using allegations of antisemitism to silence criticism of what he describes as genocide and mass atrocities in Gaza. “Netanyahu and his supporters are not defending Jews worldwide,” Professor Roth stresses. “They are sacrificing them—cheapening the very concept of antisemitism just when it is most needed.” For him, conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism not only shields state crimes but also undermines real protections against anti-Jewish hatred.

Professor Roth’s reflections build on more than three decades of global human rights advocacy. At Human Rights Watch, which he directed until August 2022, he oversaw the organization’s expansion into one of the world’s leading rights watchdogs, active in about 100 countries. Earlier, he worked as a federal prosecutor in New York and on the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington. From that vantage, he situates Israel’s narrative strategy within a wider pattern of populist-fueled authoritarianism. Today’s autocrats, Professor Roth argues, “still crave elections but tilt the playing field,”systematically undermining courts, capturing media, restricting NGOs, and intimidating universities. Democracy, he insists, cannot be reduced to ballots alone—it requires freedoms of expression, association, and the rule of law, all under attack.

Even amid authoritarian resurgence, Professor Roth emphasizes the power of coalitions of democratic, rights-respecting states. He recalls decisive breakthroughs such as the treaty banning landmines and the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC)—both achieved despite superpower opposition. More recent successes, from UN oversight of the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen to European-Turkish pressure curbing Russian strikes in Syria, show that principled middle-power alliances still matter. NGOs, too, must remain unwaveringly consistent: “Our work doesn’t distinguish between perceived friend and foe—we apply the same standards to everybody,” Professor Roth explains. That consistency, he argues, sustains credibility and strengthens the politics of shaming.

The interview traverses urgent contemporary debates: Trump’s embrace of authoritarian leaders, his sanctions on the ICC, and his “flood-the-zone” tactic of overwhelming institutions with constant shocks. Professor Roth dissects the dangers of scapegoating minorities, the misuse of Holocaust memory to excuse present atrocities, and the precedent of blurring law enforcement with war in extrajudicial killings. At every step, he insists that human rights must not be selectively applied or subordinated to cynical populist narratives.

Taken together, Professor Roth’s insights offer both a sobering indictment and a pragmatic roadmap: exposing the authoritarian logic that links populism, repression, and impunity, while affirming that principled coalitions and civil society can still defend rights. Above all, his warning is clear: criticism of Israel is not antisemitism—and protecting the integrity of that distinction is essential for Jews worldwide, Palestinians under siege, and the universality of human rights.

Here is the transcript of our interview with Professor Kenneth Roth, lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Autocrats Still Crave Elections but Tilt the Playing Field

Nested dolls depicting world autocrats Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Recep Erdogan on the counter of souvenirs in Moscow

Thank you so much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In your recent writings, you stress the fragility of checks against authoritarian drift and note how today’s rulers “raise the cost” for defenders by targeting courts, media, and NGOs. What, in your view, makes this current wave of populist-fueled democratic backsliding distinct from earlier authoritarian surges, particularly in the subtler tactics of regulation, funding, and legal harassment?

Professor Kenneth Roth: I’m not sure it’s completely unique, but clearly autocrats are learning from each other. The current wave is characterized foremost by what you might call electoral authoritarianism. That is, autocratic leaders who still want the legitimacy of an election but use the steps of the autocrat’s handbook to undercut checks and balances on their authority and to tilt the electoral playing field in their favor.

It’s pretty straightforward what they do: they target the various potential checks on their authority—courts, lawyers, journalists, academics, civil society—and use different techniques to undermine their independence. With the media, for example, outlets may be owned by large corporate conglomerates vulnerable to government pressure. We’re seeing that in the United States right now. It could also take the form of regulations that make it harder for civil society to secure funding, particularly from abroad. Sometimes it’s direct attacks, such as withholding funding, which we’re now seeing Trump do with universities.

These are variations on a theme, but the aim is always the same: to stymie and weaken the elements that sustain democracy. Because democracy is not just about elections. It is about the freedoms of expression, association, and assembly, as well as the rule of law that holds leaders accountable to the law and to the rights it embodies. And these autocrats are intent on undercutting those checks. It’s pretty clear.

Coalitions of Democracies Can Overcome Superpower Opposition

You have argued that coalitions of mid-sized states—beyond the West—can sometimes defend human rights more effectively than major powers, urging leverage toward countries like India, Brazil, South Africa, Japan, and even China. Two decades on, do you still see these “plural centers of pressure” as the backbone of rights defense, or has today’s fractured multilateralism, intensified authoritarian entrenchment, and the rise of populist geopolitics blunted that strategy—and what would an updated map of leverage look like?

Professor Kenneth Roth: I wouldn’t say that coalitions are better than the major powers, but that they can serve as substitutes when the major powers stand in opposition. At this stage, when the US government has essentially stopped promoting human rights, I don’t think we should just throw in the cards and give up. There have been many cases in the past where coalitions of governments have compensated for the absence—or even the opposition—of the US government, not to mention the Soviet or Russian government, or the Chinese government. I describe this in my book Riding Wrongs, where repeatedly, coalitions of democratic, rights-respecting governments, when banded together, have had the moral authority to overcome superpower opposition.

That’s what happened with the treaty to ban landmines. All the major powers opposed it, yet a group of about 60 governments—a coalition that Human Rights Watch and our colleagues helped to build—overcame that opposition. We ended up sharing the Nobel Peace Prize for that effort. Something very similar occurred with the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). You may recall the Clinton administration was adamantly opposed to a court that could even theoretically prosecute an American. That was not its idea of justice. Yet in the final vote in Rome in 1998, the US lost overwhelmingly—120 to 7—marking a decisive victory for the rule of law.

More recently, as I describe in my book, despite a lack of any assistance, if not outright opposition, from Washington, a group of governments led by the Netherlands secured oversight from the UN Human Rights Council of the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing in Yemen—making a huge difference in terms of saving civilian lives. Another coalition, involving Germany, France, and Turkey, pressured Putin in March 2020 to stop bombing the three million civilians in Idlib province in Syria, the last area at the time held by the armed opposition.

These are just a few among many examples showing how coalitions of governments can effectively defend human rights—not only without Washington, but often despite its opposition.

NGOs Must Be Principled—Apply the Same Standards to All

Since major powers like the US, Russia, and China routinely instrumentalize human rights for geopolitical ends, how should NGOs and the broader rights community rethink their strategy—balancing naming-and-shaming with ally-seeking—while avoiding the slide from principled engagement into complicity in populist or authoritarian projects?

Professor Kenneth Roth: The idea that governments instrumentalize human rights is nothing new. This has always happened. If you just go back historically, there was a tendency during the Cold War to highlight the human rights abuses of one’s opponents and neglect the human rights abuses of one’s allies. So, this has always been a problem. I think the role that NGOs should play is to be principled. That is to say, to ensure that our work doesn’t distinguish between perceived friend and foe, but that we apply the same standards to everybody. That enhances the capacity to shame, because people understand that when human rights groups condemn somebody, when we spotlight a government’s abuse, we’re not pursuing some geopolitical strategy. We are pursuing a universal, principled effort.

Now, shaming is never the only thing that human rights groups do. We also enlist influential allies to try to put diplomatic or economic pressure on a target government, and I describe this in my book. These are important supplements to the process of shaming.

The fact that governments are selective in their defense of human rights does undermine their credibility, but doesn’t preclude our ability to enlist them, because frankly, nobody is consistent. So, we try to enlist allies where we can, push them to be more principled. But we don’t have a rule that you’ve got to be perfect before we enlist you, because then we’d enlist nobody. We’ve got to be a bit more pragmatic than that and try to maximize pressure on a target government from any credible source that we can find.

Trump Isn’t Blurring Lines—He’s Embracing Authoritarianism

This editorial image, captured in Belgrade, Serbia, showcases an array of novelty socks featuring the likenesses of Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump in Belgrade, Serbia on December 12, 2024. Photo: Jerome Cid.

Trump’s open admiration for autocrats such as Putin, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, and Netanyahu blurs distinctions between democracy and authoritarianism, while also resonating with a global populist style that treats rights as obstacles to “the people’s will.” To what extent has Trump shifted the normative boundaries of US foreign policy on human rights, and what does this mean for the wider contest between populism and rights-based democracy?

Professor Kenneth Roth: First, I would not say that Trump is blurring the distinction between democracy and authoritarianism. He’s simply embracing authoritarianism. I don’t think anybody believes that because Trump embraces Putin, suddenly Putin is a democrat. That’s absurd. Trump, as an aspiring autocrat, admires leaders who have managed to secure autocratic power for themselves. That’s what he does. And we obviously have to push back against that.

This is a bad period for US foreign policy, but it’s not the first time we’ve seen something like this. Think back to the George W. Bush administration, when the so-called global war on terrorism became an excuse not only to support abusive governments but also to engage in severe human rights abuses by the US government itself—systematic torture and the use of Guantanamo for endless detention without trial.

We have seen this flouting, this unwillingness to abide by human rights standards emanating from Washington before. Our job in the human rights movement is to spotlight complicity in human rights violations, or responsibility for them, when the government behaves inconsistently, and to push for it to be even slightly less inconsistent. Fortunately, the American people—and I think this is also true globally—want a more consistent human rights policy.

That’s why spotlighting inconsistency is valuable, because it forces leaders like Trump to pay a political price. When he is seen as aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza, we can already see the effect on US public opinion. People are turning against Israel; they are upset with the unconditional US support for Israel. We’ve seen Trump react to that somewhat already—not sufficiently—but this effort is worthwhile. Ultimately, this is how we can pressure Trump to do the one thing that would end the genocide: suspend or condition massive US arms sales and military aid to Israel until the genocide stops.

Rulings Mean Little Without Government Backing

You’ve argued that “democracy” without rights is easily gamed by “despots masquerading as democrats.” After the ICJ advisory opinion(s) and an emboldened ICC, can international courts still constrain leaders amid intensified lawfare and sanctions against judges/prosecutors? What insulating reforms (treaty, funding, travel protections) matter most?

Professor Kenneth Roth: There’s a lot in that question, so let me try to dissect it a bit. First, when despots masquerade as democrats, it means they still hold periodic elections, but they tilt the playing field so much that the elections become meaningless. This can be a dangerous endeavor. Take Viktor Orban in Hungary or Erdogan in Turkey: they are classic autocrats who still hold competitive elections but with very severe limitations. Orban today faces a serious challenger in Peter Magyar, who is charismatic and has united the opposition. It may not work for him. Erdogan went so far as to lock up his main opponent because, according to the polls, that opponent was going to win. His party had already won the major mayoral elections in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and elsewhere. The more an autocrat moves toward a zombie election—that is, one with zero credibility—the more they lose the very legitimacy they seek. That’s what Daniel Ortega did in Nicaragua, Museveni in Uganda, Putin in Russia, and Lukashenko in Belarus. They hold electoral charades, but no one is fooled, and they simply become dictators.

I don’t view international courts as particularly effective against these kinds of autocratic attacks on democracy. The courts are more useful in addressing mass atrocities. For example, with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) entering the fray in Gaza, and with the ICC charging Putin and four generals for Ukraine, these are important efforts. They may someday lead to actual trials in The Hague. Even short of that, they are incredibly stigmatizing. They mean that these leaders cannot travel to the 125 ICC member states without risking arrest.

Of course, an ICJ judgment or an ICC arrest warrant does not self-execute. They don’t automatically constrain leaders because these Hague-based courts don’t have police forces; they depend on governments for enforcement. That’s always a problem. So, we need governments that claim to uphold the rule of law to act consistently with these rulings. Take the ICJ advisory opinion on the illegality of Israel’s endless occupation: governments should now ensure they do nothing to support that occupation. On the ICC, Trump outrageously imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor, the two deputies, and six judges. It’s important, particularly for the European Union, to use its so-called blocking statute to neutralize those sanctions so that judges and prosecutors can continue to access their bank funds and operate normally.

I would also encourage the prosecutor to examine whether this constitutes obstruction of justice—a violation of Article 70 of the Rome Statute—which I think it clearly does. One option would be to actually charge Trump for this blatant interference with an independent institution of justice. So, there is plenty that still can be done, but we shouldn’t deceive ourselves into thinking that international courts, simply by issuing rulings, automatically change the world. They need the backing of governments.

Being a Drug Trafficker Doesn’t Make You a Combatant

In critiquing Trump’s extrajudicial killings of Venezuelan traffickers, you warned of the drift from policing to “war” rules in law enforcement. If such precedents take hold—turning metaphorical wars on drugs or terror into literal grounds for lethal force—what global spillovers do you foresee, and what bright-line doctrines should civil society insist on to prevent their entrenchment?

Professor Kenneth Roth: First, let me explain the two sets of rules that govern the use of lethal force. In war, you’re allowed to shoot combatants on the other side, and unless they’re surrendering or injured and thus out of combat, you can shoot to kill. There is no duty to detain them. By contrast, in law enforcement situations, it’s almost the opposite: lethal force can be used only as a last resort to meet an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury. It is an extremely limited use of lethal force; otherwise, the duty is to arrest and prosecute.

Now, Trump has ignored that distinction. He has declared Venezuelan suspected drug traffickers—people we have no real knowledge about—and has, in three separate incidents, blown up boats and killed those on board, simply on the claim that they were traffickers. But being a drug trafficker does not make you a combatant. There is no war, no armed conflict here. If you believe Trump’s account, these people were committing crimes and should have been arrested and prosecuted. The US Coast Guard is fully capable of interdicting these boats, detaining the suspects, bringing them to Miami or elsewhere, and prosecuting them.

Trump is disregarding the strict law enforcement rules on lethal force by declaring this a “war,” and therefore claiming the right to shoot to kill. That is an incredibly dangerous precedent, because he could label anyone a combatant or terrorist—terms he wrongly uses interchangeably. But even terrorists are criminals who must be prosecuted, not summarily executed. We have to be very careful here, because what’s to stop him from declaring a war on civil society or a war on the political opposition and then justifying killings on that basis?

This is a very dangerous precedent. Even though drug traffickers are unpopular, it is essential to start with the principle: even if they are suspected traffickers, they should not simply be blown up. They have the right to be detained, charged, and prosecuted if the administration’s claims are true. That is why it is crucial not to let metaphorical wars on drugs or terrorism be transformed into literal wars that substitute the narrow rules on lethal force in law enforcement with the much more permissive rules governing armed conflict—which this clearly is not.

How Populist Autocrats Weaponize Minorities to Mask Their Failures

Border Patrol agents monitor an anti-ICE protest in downtown Los Angeles, June 8, 2025. Demonstrators rallied against expanded ICE operations and in support of immigrant rights. Photo: Dreamstime.

You’ve tracked how strongman admiration and majoritarian claims corrode protections for minorities and migrants. Has Trump’s second term normalized an executive theory of unfettered discretion that will outlast him in US foreign policy—and how should allies signal costs early to deter that stickiness?

Professor Kenneth Roth: As you’re suggesting in your question, populist autocrats frequently rally support by demonizing some unpopular minority in their country. It could be immigrants, LGBT people, or Muslims—it varies from country to country. It is very important to push back against this. Typically, they resort to such tactics to divert attention from their lack of a political program that could actually address the economic and political needs of their base. Usually, their base is the ethnic majority working class.

When you see leaders demonizing immigrants or LGBT people, you can almost be certain there is no serious program to help the working class. Trump is a perfect example. He loves to demonize immigrants. Then he puts forward a massive economic plan that cuts taxes for his cronies while eliminating healthcare for many who need it. This doesn’t help the working class—it decimates it.

It’s important to expose this sleight of hand—the use of scapegoating unpopular minorities to distract from harmful economic policies. So, what’s the best way to push back? First and foremost, by defending the rights of these minorities. We cannot pretend that an attack on one unpopular group will stop there. In fact, I often view attacks on LGBT people as the canary in the coal mine for broader assaults on civil society. Those almost always follow.

We need to recognize the path populist autocrats are taking and nip it in the bud. We cannot ignore the early stages just because the victims are unpopular. This is a well-trodden path, and it must be stopped at the outset.

Countering Trump’s Flood-the-Zone Strategy

You’ve described Trump’s “flood-the-zone” strategy—overwhelming opponents and institutions with constant shocks—as a hallmark of autocratic playbooks. From the resistance you’ve observed, what lessons proved transferable to other democracies under stress, and which were context-specific wins?

Professor Kenneth Roth: I’m not sure that Trump’s flood-the-zone strategy is typical. It’s pretty unique to Trump. It especially characterized his first few months in this second term, when there was one outrage after another, day after day, and people were so busy responding to yesterday’s crisis that they didn’t know where to start with today’s. Now it has slowed down a bit, but he continues to use the tactic—finding some new provocation every few days to divert attention from what he had already done.

The key for the targets of these efforts is not to let themselves be overwhelmed but to band together and coordinate their defense. We didn’t always see that in the United States. For example, certain universities, like Columbia, cut deals with the Trump administration, while others have since taken a more principled stand and joined forces. Some big law firms also cut deals, while others chose to fight back in court—and are now winning. Trump has also turned his threats toward civil society, but here too, many large progressive private foundations have banded together, issuing a joint statement declaring that they will not be divided and will fight back collectively.

That kind of collective response—the refusal to let Trump pick off opponents one at a time, as he has done with certain media outlets—is essential. When a powerful government can target one victim at a time, the victims usually lose. But when it faces a coordinated defense, the chances of success rise significantly.

When Sovereignty Becomes Impunity

The flag in front of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands on March 27, 2016. Photo: Dreamstime.

Trump’s sanctions on the ICC—aimed at blocking investigations of Israel and US officials—highlight how powerful states can obstruct accountability through jurisdictional caveats and intimidation. What does this precedent mean for the enforceability of international criminal law, and what enforcement pathways remain viable to safeguard prosecutorial independence?

Professor Kenneth Roth: When you say jurisdictional caveats, I think what you’re referring to is that the Trump administration, like the US government for much of the last 20-plus years, has objected to the International Criminal Court’s so-called territorial jurisdiction. That is, the court can prosecute anybody who commits a crime on the territory of a member state. Going back to the Clinton administration, the US government hated that because it meant that American military personnel could theoretically be prosecuted if they committed a crime on the territory of a member state. That’s why the US government was so outraged, in the first Trump administration, when the ICC opened an investigation into Afghanistan—because there was fear that Bush-era torturers, many of whose worst crimes were committed there, might be subject to prosecution. Now, that turned out to be more of a theoretical concern, but that’s the territorial jurisdiction the US government has always objected to.

Ironically, when that same territorial jurisdiction was used by the ICC to charge Putin for crimes committed in Ukraine, everything changed. Biden called it justified. Lindsey Graham, the leading Republican senator who had always opposed the ICC, suddenly said, “I’ve changed my mind, we support the ICC now.” He even pushed through a unanimous resolution, and the Senate upheld what the ICC had done. That remained the case until that same territorial jurisdiction was used to charge Netanyahu for crimes committed in Gaza, in Palestine—a member state. Then suddenly it was back to outrage. The US position has been utterly unprincipled. Fortunately, nobody else accepts that. As I mentioned, the US lost its efforts to block territorial jurisdiction in Rome at the outset by a vote of 120 to 7. This is a losing proposition, and the key is for the 125 member states to reaffirm their support for territorial jurisdiction.

Of course, a state should be able to say, in a time of crisis, if our courts are not working—if we can’t prosecute people who commit crimes on our territory ourselves—we should be able to delegate that power to the ICC. That should be an inherent aspect of sovereignty. For the US to say, “Oh, well, because we’re American, we can commit a crime on your territory with impunity”—that’s crazy. If I, as an American citizen, were to go to Brussels and murder somebody, is it an affront to American sovereignty if Belgium prosecutes me? Obviously not. So why would it be an affront to American sovereignty if, under extreme circumstances, Belgium delegates that prosecutorial power to the ICC? This is normal. But the US insists on American exceptionalism when it comes to the rule of law. Nobody buys that, and governments should find ways to push back.

The Vanity Lever: Using Trump’s Ego to Pressure for Human Rights

You’ve suggested Trump’s transactional ego—the “vanity lever”—can sometimes be used to pressure him on rights. How realistic is it to constrain authoritarian choices through vanity appeals, and where should we draw the ethical line between pragmatism and entrenching cynical politics?

Professor Kenneth Roth: What I’ve written about is that if you approach Trump frontally and say, support human rights, he’ll probably look at you and say, what are those? This is not a guy who is going to openly support human rights. But, as I describe in my book, the process of shaming always has to look at the target and figure out what they care about. In Trump’s case, what he cares about is his self-declared reputation as a master negotiator. In his book The Art of the Deal, he defines what he thinks is great about himself.

That gives us some leverage. For one, he wants a Nobel Peace Prize. Fine—you’re not going to get a Nobel Peace Prize by endorsing the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. You’ll get the Nobel Peace Prize by actually securing a just peace, including recognition of a Palestinian state. Another effective strategy is to spotlight how Putin in Ukraine and Netanyahu in Gaza are actually bamboozling Trump. They’re manipulating him, they’re playing games with this supposed master negotiator, and Trump looks naive.

He hates that. This is a guy with a fragile ego who doesn’t like criticism. If people are laughing at him, ridicule is horrible when you’re an autocrat. So, I think that provides an opportunity. We’re already seeing some movement by Trump in Ukraine. He has not yet imposed the so-called severe consequences he promised if Putin continues to obstruct ceasefire negotiations, but his rhetoric has become somewhat tougher. In the case of Gaza, we also see Trump distancing himself in certain ways from Netanyahu—for example, rejecting Netanyahu’s false claim that there is no starvation in Gaza, criticizing him for attacking the Hamas negotiators in Qatar, and twice imposing temporary ceasefires.

So, there is some distance there. I think we just need to keep pushing, with the aim of getting Trump to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. I don’t think that’s cynical—it’s simply pragmatic. If that’s what it takes to stop mass atrocities, I’ll do it.

When Ethnic Cleansing Becomes a Defense to Genocide

Destruction in Shejayia, Gaza City, Gaza Strip. Photo: Dreamstime.

You’ve argued that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the Genocide Convention through killings and life-destroying conditions, even alongside ethnic-cleansing motives. How do you answer critics who say genocidal intent is unproven, and what evidence most strongly supports its inference under current ICJ standards?

Professor Kenneth Roth: If you look at either the extent of the killing or the imposition of conditions of life designed to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic or national group, what’s going on in Gaza is clearly genocide. At this point, the clearest example is the imposition of mass starvation, mass deprivation, and the wholesale destruction—today of Gaza City, but overall of all Gaza. The aim, quite clearly, is to make Gaza unlivable so that it becomes “humane” to then force everybody out into Egypt. The ultimate aim here is ethnic cleansing, a supposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by getting rid of the Palestinians—first in Gaza, and then later in the occupied West Bank. That’s clearly what’s going on.

The only real challenge here—you mentioned the International Court of Justice standards—is that the court ruled in the Croatia v. Serbia case more than a decade ago that if you are going to infer genocidal intent from conduct, it has to be the only possible inference. I think that’s a wrong standard. They are going to have to re-examine it, because in effect what they have said is that the motive of ethnic cleansing becomes a defense to genocide, which makes no sense. To prove genocidal intent, the standard should be absolute: are you clearly demonstrating genocidal intent? The fact that there may be a mixed motive—that there may be genocide in the service of something else—is often how genocide takes place.

So, I do think the ICJ will have to revisit its standards. It will have an opportunity in the Gambia v. Myanmar case concerning the Rohingya, where something very similar occurred. The Myanmar army killed, say, 10,000 Rohingya in order to force 730,000 to flee into Bangladesh. That was genocide as a means to mass ethnic cleansing. I hope the court uses that case, which will come first, to re-examine its standards, to find that the conduct does permit an inference of genocidal intent. That would then also apply positively to the case of Gaza.

Criticism of Israel Is Not Antisemitism

Election billboard showing Netanyahu shaking hands with Trump, with the slogan “Netanyahu. Another League,” in Jerusalem on September 16, 2019. Photo: Dreamstime.

You’ve warned that equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism both silences accountability and weakens real protections for Jews. What are the dangers of this conflation, and what concrete standards can help distinguish legitimate criticism from antisemitic incitement without suppressing dissent?

Professor Kenneth Roth: That’s an important question. Let me begin by saying that the problem of antisemitism is an acute one today facing Jews around the world, and it has become much more intense since October 7, 2023. So, this is a genuine problem. But what we’ve seen is that Netanyahu, the Israeli government, and some of its supporters are using charges of antisemitism to try to silence criticism of Israel’s genocide and mass atrocities in Gaza.

That’s a very cynical move, because it cheapens a concept that is badly needed. If people come to see claims of antisemitism as just an effort to change the subject and defend Israel’s inexcusable conduct in Gaza, they will become cynical about antisemitism at the very moment we need it to remain a viable concept. In effect, what Netanyahu and his supporters are doing is sacrificing Jews around the world for the benefit of the Israeli government. They’re basically saying: we’re going to throw Jews worldwide under the bus. Who cares if you face antisemitism? Who cares if we’re cheapening the concept? All we care about is defending the Israeli government. That’s a horrible thing to do—but that, in essence, is what the Netanyahu government is doing.

Now, are there standards on antisemitism? Yes. The standard that legitimizes this cynical approach is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The way it’s been interpreted has lent itself to saying that criticism of Israel, or efforts to demonize Israel, are somehow antisemitic.

There are two far superior definitions of antisemitism: the Jerusalem Declaration and the Nexus Document. The reason they are superior is that they make explicit that mere criticism of Israeli misconduct is not antisemitic. They define antisemitism in positive terms similarly, but they also include negative examples to make clear that antisemitism should never be weaponized to shield Israeli misconduct.

So, if the concern is truly antisemitism, people should adopt the Jerusalem Declaration or the Nexus Document. But if the concern is simply defending Israel while throwing Jews around the world to their fate, then go with the IHRA definition.

“Never Again” Means Never Again for All

You argue that Israel’s invocation of “never again” and its Holocaust halo have been weaponized to justify present atrocities. How has this complicated recognition of genocidal conduct, and how can we honor historical victimhood without letting it serve as a blank check—while restoring legal clarity around proportionality and civilian protection?

Professor Kenneth Roth: As you suggest, the Israeli government, much like the Rwandan government, cites the Holocaust for Jews and the Rwandan genocide to suggest that the current government is somehow above it all. The logic is: how could the victims of genocide, in turn, commit mass atrocities? Obviously, that’s illogical, but they use the argument implicitly to try to defend the indefensible.

For me, “never again” doesn’t mean never again except for Israel, never again except for Rwanda. It means never again for anybody. Part of the advantage the Israeli government has is that when people think about genocide, they tend to focus on the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide, where the aim, after a certain point, was to kill every Jew or every Tutsi that could be found.

But if you read the Genocide Convention—the treaty that defines genocide and that many governments have ratified—genocide can be aimed at destroying a group in whole, as in the Holocaust or Rwanda, or in part. This is where the Holocaust and Rwandan examples can mislead, because it is also genocide if you target part of a group, either for killing or through conditions of life that bring about their partial destruction. That is what defines Gaza today. The Israeli government is not trying to kill every single Palestinian. But it is trying to kill enough Palestinians and deprive them with enough severity that they are forced to flee into Egypt. Genocide with an intent to destroy a group in part is what’s really going on here. The Holocaust leads us astray because that’s not what it was about. So, we need to read the Genocide Convention as written and recognize that the Holocaust alone does not define genocide. There are other forms—such as the one playing out in Gaza today.

Past Genocides Do Not Justify Present Atrocities

And lastly, you’ve drawn parallels between Kagame’s Rwanda and Netanyahu’s Israel in weaponizing past victimhood to justify present crimes. How can the human rights community dismantle such narratives without denying past genocides, and which accountability tools—aid conditionality, arms suspensions, or regional pressure—have proven most effective against such impunity politics?

Professor Kenneth Roth: As I mentioned, both Netanyahu and Kagame play on past genocide to divert attention from their current mass atrocities—Netanyahu in Gaza, and Kagame through both his repression at home and, most acutely, his invasion of Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo through his own forces as well as the proxy M23 rebel group.

The goal of the human rights community is obviously not to deny the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. These are facts, these are horrific episodes in human history. But the point is to say: “Yes, they happened, but they don’t excuse present abuses.” So, we have to carefully document what’s happening in Congo and in Gaza and press for real pressure to stop it.

That pressure can and should include economic measures. Sadly, the European Union—while many of its members are recognizing a Palestinian state—has yet to suspend Israel’s trade benefits, despite vows from Commission President von der Leyen to do so soon. In eastern Congo, back in 2012, a similar Rwandan invasion via the M23 was stopped in its tracks when the US and British governments told Kagame they would cut off aid unless he withdrew. Within days, the M23 crumbled. Today, that isn’t happening. Trump cut a deal allowing Rwanda to stay and exploit the minerals.

So, we need to look at what has worked in the past, namely intense economic pressure. I would like to see the International Criminal Court (ICC)—which has already acted in part in Gaza—do much more and also extend its action to eastern Congo. It has done so in the past, but not with respect to this current invasion. Plenty of steps remain available to help rein in Kagame and Netanyahu and to stop their misuse of past atrocities as an excuse for committing new ones today.

The municipality office in Inaruwa, Sunsari, lies heavily damaged after protesters targeted it during the nationwide demonstrations against corruption and the social media shutdown on September 9, 2025. Photo: Nabin Gadtaula

Professor Paudel: The Youth Uprising in Nepal Is the Result of Long-Brewing Frustrations

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In an interview with the ECPS, Professor Dinesh Paudel argues that the September 2025 youth uprising in Nepal was “the result of long-brewing frustrations.” Far from a sudden outburst, he situates the revolt at the intersection of elite failure, geopolitical maneuvering, and structural economic decline. Young Nepalis, caught in what he calls a “triple disjuncture” of mass migration, precarious labor markets, and digital mobilization, transformed simmering anger into protest. Yet Professor Paudel cautions against viewing it as a revolution: “It will not fundamentally alter the political structure that produced these conditions.” Professor Paudel highlights corruption as the “governing logic of elite power” and signals volatile struggles over Nepal’s political and economic future.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

The September 2025 uprising in Nepal has been described by analysts as a “Gen Z revolution,” but as Professor Dinesh Paudel emphasizes, “It was already brewing. This kind of uprising and discontent had been in the making for a long time.” In an exclusive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Paudel—Professor in the Department of Sustainable Development at Appalachian State University—offers a critical interpretation of the forces driving this moment of rupture. His central argument is clear: “The youth uprising in Nepal is the result of long-brewing frustrations.”

These frustrations, he explains, stem from a convergence of structural, political, and geopolitical factors. Domestic elites failed to adapt to generational aspirations, leaving young Nepalis alienated from politics and unable to envision themselves in the nation’s future. At the same time, external pressures intensified: “Nepal sits right where these possibilities converge, at the center of the Himalaya and at the heart of what some call a Second Cold War, especially between China and the West.” Such tensions, combined with India’s long-standing dissatisfaction with Nepal’s constitutional framework and a dependent, deindustrialized economy, created the combustible conditions for revolt. Social media then amplified negativity and spread the belief “that nothing works in Nepal and that something else must come—even though that ‘something else’ was never really thought through.”

Professor Paudel situates this eruption within what he calls a “triple disjuncture” confronting Nepal’s youth: mass migration, precarious labor markets, and the expansion of the digital public sphere. These forces, layered onto chronic inequality and unemployment, have generated new forms of political subjectivity—angry, aspirational, yet fragile. “I would not call this a youth revolution—it is not,” Professor Paudel cautions. Instead, he views it as part of a recurring cycle in Nepal’s modern history: “Every decade Nepal has seen movements—the democratic movement, the Maoist movement—and young people have always been at the center.”

At the same time, Professor Paudel underscores that symbolic battles—such as the viral backlash against “nepo-babies”—have sharpened frustrations against entrenched entitlement. These spectacles, he argues, expose the persistence of a “feudal political structure still dominant in the country.” Yet he warns that generational framings risk obscuring deeper inequalities rooted in class, caste, and land.

Ultimately, Professor Paudel interprets corruption not as an aberration but as the very “governing logic of elite power.” For him, corruption sustains both domestic hierarchies and Nepal’s insertion into a regional and global economic order defined by dependency. Without profound restructuring—particularly rebuilding a national productive base—Professor Paudel doubts the present movement will transform Nepal’s political economy.

And yet, he insists that youth frustration is real and points toward new possibilities. “What they are seeking in the future is post-elite—some kind of egalitarian economic and political system.” Whether such aspirations can overcome entrenched interests and regional constraints remains an open question—but the long-brewing discontent that exploded in September 2025 ensures that Nepal has entered a volatile new era.

Professor Dinesh Paudel is a Professor in the Department of Sustainable Development at Appalachian State University.

Here is the transcript of our interview with Professor Dinesh Paudel, lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Elite Failure, Geopolitics, and Youth Anger Collide

Professor Dinesh Paudel, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Analysts describe the September 2025 uprising as a Gen Z revolution, yet youth mobilization in Nepal has a long genealogy. From your perspective, what specific social, economic, and political configurations enabled this generation to rupture the cycle of elite reproduction where earlier movements failed—and how do corruption, nepotism, and entrenched elite dominance fit into the deeper structural drivers that made such an eruption possible now?

Professor Dinesh Paudel: Thank you for this great question. It’s long overdue. It was already brewing. This kind of uprising and discontent had been in the making for a long time.
But the current conjuncture has multiple factors coming together, leading to this eruption.

One factor is the internal political dynamics within the parties. They were not able to understand the new generation’s aspirations. They also failed to govern in a way that allowed the young generation to see themselves in politics and in the future of the nation. That’s one of the main factors—the internal failure of the party system. The internal conjuncture of power dynamics ruptured.

The second important point is geopolitical tension. It is about how the government was overthrown and how the young population began mobilizing their force. It was carried away by other interests, creating a kind of popular imagination of revolution. But in reality, multiple bigger powers were trying to secure their interests in a country that is geopolitically strategic—physically between China and India, at the center of the Himalaya, and at the heart of what some call a Second Cold War, especially between China and the West. India’s relationship with the West is not in the best shape at the moment. Nepal sits right where these possibilities converge, and many people anticipated this.

The third point concerns India specifically, which was not happy with the government in Nepal. This discontent started with the promulgation of the constitution 10 years ago. India never wanted Nepal to have that constitution, but the issue escalated when the constitution included part of historical Nepal now controlled by India. Including this in the constitution angered India further.

The fourth point is social media, amplified by intellectual and journalistic voices, which propagated negative perceptions of the governing system. They presented things as not working, and this negativity grew steadily. It spread among the general public, particularly through youth on social media, fostering the belief that nothing works in Nepal and that something else must come—even though that “something else” was never really thought through.

Finally, development programs, NGOs, and modern aspirations led the public to believe they deserved development in a new way. But this remains controlled by an extremely dependent economic system. A very few elites—primarily Indian, some Chinese, and others—control it. The Nepali market is essentially the Indian market. The production system is crumbling, and deindustrialization has been ongoing for many years. This has produced a particular corporate culture that dominates politics, media, intellectual life, and more. It is a system that fostered extraordinary dependence, out-migration, exploitation, and inequality, particularly between rural and urban areas. All of that came together in a moment when people just burst into action.

But the impact resulted not only from the protests. Other interests also infiltrated and pushed the movement further. That’s the current situation. Basically, it reflects the failure of the political regime to institutionalize its agenda, but it has also been pushed by geopolitical forces seeking to destabilize Nepal and secure a stronger footing in the country.

Nepal’s Youth Caught in a Triple Disjuncture

Nepal’s youth today confront what might be called a triple disjuncture: mass migration, precarious labor markets, and the expansion of the digital public sphere. How do these dynamics intersect to produce a new political subjectivity that resists both elite capture and authoritarian closure? In particular, how have structural forces such as economic inequality, chronic youth unemployment, and the dependence on migration shaped the political consciousness and mobilizing capacity of Gen Z in Nepal?

Professor Dinesh Paudel: Very good question, and this is exactly that conjuncture of multiple forces you mentioned that resulted in a particular type of economic precarity. Especially young people’s aspiration was to become economically successful, but the opportunities to do so were really decimated. But you cannot just blame the current political structure. You have to go back almost 30 years to understand what produced this. As soon as Nepal entered multi-party democracy in 1990, the government was forced to adopt an open market economy in such a way that the industrial sector basically collapsed in front of Indian and Chinese industrial and corporate power. That led to massive closures of national industries. The frustration from that also fueled the Maoist Revolution, which started in 1996. The Maoist movement, lasting for 10 years, led to massive out-migration from rural areas, while the open market economy that destroyed the national economy pushed people to migrate abroad.

So, Nepal lost two things: national productive capacity—the industrial base—and the labor force. That severely degraded national production. Over the last two and a half decades, this has produced massive unemployment, while national and international forces facilitated a process by which young people migrated to other countries. In effect, they wanted to solve the Maoist problem by exporting young people, so that they would not join the revolution. But then it became systematic: rural populations moved to urban areas, and from urban areas to other countries, primarily Gulf and Middle Eastern states, numbering in the millions.
Nepal thus lost not only industrial capacity—in terms of organizing, owning, and mobilizing capital—but also massive labor power, which created a lack of farming in rural areas. In some places, more than 70% of land is uncultivated, which used to be farmed in the past, because there is no labor.

This kind of economic situation continues to create chronic problems for generating opportunities in the country. All of this has reinforced political patronage and historical feudalistic conditions within the party system. That, in turn, made young people extraordinarily frustrated. They were frustrated by the economic situation, frustrated by dependency, and frustrated because they could not realize their dream of being modern and advanced. At the same time, the political structure adopted a feudalistic culture in which young people could not find their space. All this is leading to deep frustration, and the danger is that it will create further problems, because there are no coherent responses. Sometimes I feel it could evolve into a kind of gang politics. I am worried, even though it has not yet reached that point. But if this kind of mob-based, violent politics continues, there is real danger. Yet it seems inevitable, because the political structure has not been able to manage, understand, and maintain its hegemonic order. In other words, this is a failure of elite hegemony.

Even though the elites created these conditions, they have also been unable to preserve the very hegemonic structure that favors them. As a result, ruptures have emerged. I would not call this a youth revolution—it is not. Rather, it forms part of a longer trajectory of revolutions. Every decade Nepal has seen movements—the democratic movement, the Maoist movement—and young people have always been at the center. But those earlier uprisings were politically led, whereas this one is somewhat different. Still, I would not call it a revolution, because it will not fundamentally alter the political structure that produced these conditions. Sometimes I describe it instead as a kind of development: a double situation in which the political structure generates upheaval, but the outcome also reinforces the same structure. It will not truly transform the system. That leaves youth aspirations blocked from finding another path. Judging from how events have unfolded so far, it will not reach a transformative point.

The Social Media Ban Was a Trigger, Not the Cause

Social Media

The ban on social media is often cited as the immediate spark of revolt—yet should this be understood as a mere tactical blunder by Oli’s government, or rather as symptomatic of a deeper authoritarian reflex embedded within Nepal’s ruling elite?

Professor Dinesh Paudel: The social media ban… you have to look at it from two perspectives. One is the aspiration of young people and how embedded they are in the social media structure. But at the same time, you have to look at it from the perspective of a smaller country. These social media and multinational companies do not want to recognize, for example, Nepali sovereignty. They do not want to register; they do not want to pay taxes. Even social media companies—Twitter, Yik Yak—officially said that Nepal is a corrupt country, so they cannot register or be taxed. That undermines national pride, nationalism, and everything. We need to understand the positionality of a smaller country. So, people think they must register. Why not? If they registered in India, then they should register in Nepal; it’s the same—a similar sovereignty situation. That’s one aspect of it.

But at that moment, the youth protest against corruption and the demand for good governance was already planned, and social media was used to organize those movements. So yes, it fueled the process, but it was not really the cause. The social media ban did not trigger it. Similar bans had happened in the past as well. They banned TikTok, and TikTok came back, registered, and now pays taxes to the country. But these other companies do not want to do that. Still, there is a Nepali psyche and intellectual understanding that Nepal’s sovereign rights must be respected. Young people support that too, actually. But deeply embedded, long-simmering social frustration, lack of employment, lack of good governance, and systematic corruption—it’s not just the political class, they are part of it. It’s the totality of the system that mobilizes all kinds of power nexuses in building corruption. That is what led to this frustration, and that was the culminating point, rather than it really being about authoritarianism tied to the social media ban.

People haven’t really looked at this. They use the word authoritarianism because they want to make a political point, but in fact, Nepal had been trying to get these companies to register for many years, and that process started long ago. Legislation was passed with 100% support in parliament one year ago, and the government called on these companies regularly to respect the law and comply. I don’t think it was an authoritarian attitude that led to the social media ban. Rather, the ban triggered other frustrations—that’s how I would put it.

Nepo-Babies Symbolize a Feudal Political Structure Still Dominant in Nepal

The viral outrage against “nepo-babies” seems to reveal a moral economy of resentment against elite entitlement. To what extent did the digital spectacle of political heirs flaunting luxury lifestyles crystallize diffuse frustrations into a new form of class politics—one mediated by resentment, spectacle, and digital culture, and distinct from the agrarian or proletarian struggles of earlier eras?

Professor Dinesh Paudel: Right. This is a very fundamental part of it. The corrupt kind of system, this nepo-babies idea, is a good instrument to utilize—not only against politicians, but also other kinds of forma and everything. It really helps people understand how the feudal family structure mobilizes the political structure for its benefit. So, it’s real.

But at the same time, it is not really pervasive. Not every politician managed to make their kids that way. And the corruption in Nepal is actually maintained and regulated by a particular type of corporative capitalist—middlemen business structures that mobilize and consolidate power, creating nexuses. These nepo-babies are part of that; they are enrolled into those nexuses and act as mediators in negotiations through karopsana (patronage brokerage / political fixing in Nepalese) and everything.

So, in that sense, it’s a particular agenda in creating a certain kind of populism. “Nepo-babies” is a very easily sellable term. But there is also a reality: it symbolizes that the feudal political structure is still dominant in the country, and that really helps people to grasp it. However, there is a danger in this kind of new generation movement, because it is framed in generational rather than other forms of inequality. Class, gender, caste, and socialist structures are deeply embedded in South Asia and in Nepal. So, this generational framing risks undermining those other dimensions of inequality. That danger is emerging.

There are generational inequalities, yes, but the young generation in Nepal is often better off than the older generation, especially in rural areas. The subsistence farmers live very hard lives and are the ones doing the lowest-level jobs. By contrast, the young generation leading this movement lives better lives than many others. They are urban, educated, and from well-off families. They are not the everyday working people—those are the millions working abroad in the Middle East in factories.

My worry is that the inequality perpetuated in Nepal through pluralistic land structures and a pluralistic political and economic system requires deep class-based analysis, and this generational lens may obscure that. At the same time, there is an oligarchic attitude toward politics: “Okay, this is for me, next is my wife, then that.” This attitude is dominant. It’s not only in Nepal—it’s big in India, Bangladesh, and many other countries. The symptoms were already present in Nepal, too. This revolt has hit hard against that pattern and may disrupt it temporarily. But it will likely reconfigure within the elite structure, and regardless of which elites dominate, the elite-based political structure will continue unless there is massive restructuring of the economic system that maintains this power balance.

Without a national production system and without mobilizing substantial yields toward the national economy, this is not going to change. In Nepali, they call it Bicholia—basically brokers. It is a broker’s-rule political system. These brokers—traders, contractors, suppliers—are the ones who mobilize everything. Unless those structures are directly addressed and transformed, it will be difficult to imagine a different political and economic system emerging in Nepal or the region.

This also requires understanding at the regional level. It is not only Nepal—it is part of an open economic structure. The majority of traders are from India or other countries, with only local agents in Nepal, who manage the political structure from behind the curtain. One therefore needs to understand the local political dynamics and economic structures, but also their relation to regional systems. In that sense, I consider this a necessary, even natural, kind of revolt. But the optimism that it will lead to deeper restructuring of the country is, I think, very minimal.

Corruption in Nepal Is the Governing Logic of Elite Power

The municipality office in Inaruwa, Sunsari, lies heavily damaged after protesters targeted it during the nationwide demonstrations against corruption and the social media shutdown on September 9, 2025. Photo: Nabin Gadtaula

Corruption in Nepal is often framed as administrative weakness, but your work emphasizes its structural role in reproducing elite hegemony. How should we theorize corruption—not as deviation but as a governing logic—in post-monarchical Nepal? Do you see corruption in Nepal primarily as a symptom of weak institutions, or as an intentional system of elite reproduction and authoritarian consolidation?

Professor Dinesh Paudel: This is a great question. Corruption is deeply embedded, and I would say it mobilizes both kinds of structures. It reproduces elite dominance, and it’s one way of maintaining elite hegemony in the political-economic system. But it is also systematically introduced at every level of society and governance in such a way that it became a ladder for making political-economic progress, from the local to the national elites.

To understand corruption, we must also look at the massive development projects implemented over decades. Nepal was one of the priority countries for international—especially Western—actors to carry out such programs, along with international investments through banks, the World Bank, and others. Instead of focusing on national priorities, these actors pursued their petty geopolitical or other interests. They mobilized elites to implement their programs and, at every scale—from small to large—channeled resources so that they would have better access to contractors. They could harvest trees, collect sand, build roads, construct buildings, or procure everyday goods. In return, they would always provide some kind of commission—“okay, you do this, then I’ll offer you this.” These practices, sustained over decades, systematically developed an internal, informal institutional system that entrenched corruption in the country.

There are also checks and balances, of course. The public watched and pushed back—it was always there. But at the same time, even at the small municipal level, people, even minor officers, would not act without taking bribes. Over decades, corruption became normalized, and it took a long time for everyone to grasp the root causes. For me, corruption is a symptom of how the pluralistic political structure maintains itself, but it is also the result of the particular form of economic system introduced over the last 30 years—one that required sustaining political power structures through bribes and political payoffs. This allowed the larger corporate world to control the economic system and labor production, supplying laborers cheaply to other countries while selling whatever they wanted by shutting down Nepal’s national production system. Industries collapsed—they could not compete with others, or they were simply bought out.

So, corruption is not something that any politician can fix in Nepal. It requires a systematic overhaul—a restructuring at every level with the introduction of a national production system. Otherwise, it will remain deeply embedded in how the state functions every day, at every level. At the same time, there is widespread understanding among the public that corruption is a big problem and must be eliminated. Any slogan with an anti-corruption agenda will therefore gain strong political support from the public. But those who bring such agendas are themselves part of the same political structure; they are not separate from the economic and political system. For this reason, I do not see corruption disappearing soon, unless Nepal achieves economic independence and builds a self-reliant economic structure—which has now been overtaken by the corporate world and is no longer under Nepal’s control.

Populist Agendas in Nepal Will Not Dismantle the Elite Structure

In your work on ethnic identity politics, you demonstrate how elites instrumentalize social divisions to consolidate authority. Do you see a similar risk with today’s anti-nepotism and anti-corruption discourses—that they could be co-opted by authoritarian populists who reframe them as projects of “purification,” while ultimately reproducing exclusionary politics and elite dominance?

Professor Dinesh Paudel:  The answer is yes. The danger of populism is that populist agendas have always been propagated to maintain the elite structure. For me, I would consider this almost as a fight between elites. There is no rural poor people’s mobilization, and real thinking toward an egalitarian political structure is not there. So, populism in South Asia—like Hindu nationalism in India, the recent uprising in Bangladesh, similar things in Myanmar, with some exceptions in Sri Lanka, and now in many other places—has taken a very different route. There are some people-centric agendas, but most of the time in the South Asian context, it looks cultural or political, but it ultimately serves elite interests.

In Nepal, too, the populist mobilization around anti-corruption, youth inclusion, and similar issues is important, as in India. But it will not dismantle the elite structure that has dominated for a long period of time. So, my fear is that there was huge damage under this mobilization this time. Nepal lost billions of dollars and many people. It’s a huge damage. But what will it result in? It will not move outside the elitist structure already in place in Nepal.

Nepal Faces More Instability

The unprecedented state violence of September 2025 raises questions about authoritarian consolidation. Should we interpret the crackdown as a desperate last stand of a collapsing elite order, or as evidence of a longer trajectory in which coercion is becoming normalized within Nepal’s democratic institutions?

Professor Dinesh Paudel: I would say it’s a degradation of the elite structure, in one sense, which has created these ruptures—and the ruptures are already there. It’s a continuous process along this path, which is an interesting thing. Politics is propagated under these ruptures. But it will also create space for another similar elite-based structure. That’s my fear, and I already see it happening.

So yes, it is a pillar within the elite structure that was maintained through a particular type of political party system. But these political party systems also became vulnerable to external pressure and influence. They were always managed by external forces.

Truly national interest and genuine national decision-making haven’t happened on either side—the rebuilding side or the elite side. Therefore, once mobilized, the elite structure continues to be reproduced. I do not imagine that the elitist structure will go away—that is not a possibility. But the current conjuncture of political elites, especially an older generation of political leaders, is now losing ground and space quite drastically. The danger, however, is that those spaces will be filled in ways that probably create even more instability in the country.

My sense is that Nepal will go through more political instability, and that will harm the region more broadly. That harm may in fact serve the interests of some geopolitical forces, because if the political structure is unstable, they can more easily insert their interests. That is the fate of smaller countries in the Global South in particular.

Without Economic Reform, Nepal Risks Mass Youth Exodus

A Nepali farmer at work in a rural field during the monsoon season. As the rains arrive, farmers across Nepal become busy in their fields, though most still rely on traditional farming techniques. Photo: Shishir Gautam.

Your ethnographic work on the Maoist revolution highlights how rural communities once generated alternative political imaginaries. To what extent do you see continuities—or disjunctures—between those insurgent subjectivities and the digitally mediated agency of Gen Z?

Professor Dinesh Paudel: That’s a very good one. There are some continuities in the sense that Nepali people have always sought alternative imaginaries, but there is also a complete disjuncture between the current generation and the past. The current generation does not really know the rural dynamics. They do not understand the moral economic system. They have no clue about present politics.

So the ideas of alternative imagination are almost opposite. Rural imaginaries were more sober, rooted in production and autonomy, while today’s are more connected to modern lifestyles and jobs, moving away from the traditional economic system. Both are alternative imaginations, but what they are looking for is different.

If they could find some kind of synergy, it could lead to real change in the country. But that synergy requires political negotiation and organizing—and that is not going to happen. Primarily, rural areas are heavily influenced by the traditional structures of political parties, while the urban youth are deeply alienated from them. So, the negotiation between the two will likely not happen anytime soon.

That unnegotiated gray space is where all kinds of interests will grow—and that is the danger for Nepali youth, their aspirations, and their inspiration. I would not be surprised if, in the next few years, out-migration of young people from the country increases massively. Without correcting the economic structure, there will not be more jobs. There will not be much of anything. Simply changing the government will not do it, because deeper structural changes are required.

But young people now have big hopes, and those hopes may soon turn to frustration. Either they will leave the country, or Nepal will face further instability and imbalance. So, the future scenario for the next few years looks extraordinarily volatile.

From Red Revolution to Red Neoliberalism

Given the Maoists’ descent into corruption and clientelism, can their revolutionary legacy still serve as a democratic resource for the present, or has it become a cautionary tale of how emancipatory struggles are absorbed into elite circulation?

Professor Dinesh Paudel: This is a wonderful question, because the kind of feudalism and elite-controlled politics was propagated by the Maoists themselves. They became the victims of elitism within their own movement. Yes, they challenged the political conjuncture and elitism of that time, but only to reintroduce their own. So, I would not consider that the old Maoists, in the structures they proposed, were ever going to be non-elitist or truly helpful.

The frustration that young people are expressing today also comes directly from the Maoists. When they entered peaceful politics and the new constitution was introduced, the Maoists became the only party in the country that was always in government—sometimes in coalition with one party, sometimes with another—but their performance was the most miserable.

It is very important to note that while the Maoists had an interesting political vision for the country, they had no vision for the economy. They became victims of the open economic structure, which I call red neoliberalism. They adopted neoliberal policies in such a way that they dismantled national production capacity, especially in industry, and alienated young people. They could not really understand this dynamic, became part of it, and therefore contributed directly to the dissatisfaction we see today.

Young people today have learned some lessons from that history, but they see no real connection to the Maoists’ promises, because they view the Maoists themselves as the problem. The Maoists destabilized rural areas, triggered mass out-migration, and destroyed national productive capacity. So, today’s youth frustration is deeply tied to what the Maoists promised versus what they delivered. And what they delivered was further dependency, out-migration, bad governance, and overall decline.

Crude Nationalism Cannot Satisfy Young People’s Aspirations

Thousands joined a joint morning procession organized by the CPN-UML and Nepali Congress district committees in Inaruwa Bazaar on September 19, 2025, to mark Constitution Day. Photo: Nabin Gadtaula.

Finally, do you see in Nepal’s youth movement the embryonic forms of what might be called a post-elitist or post-authoritarian democracy—an order rooted not in patronage or coercion but in new modes of participatory and inclusive politics?

Professor Dinesh Paudel: I do not see that happening right away. But this has raised a lot of questions for the population, the political elites themselves, and others. The country will suffer more through various challenges, but this is the beginning of a different kind of political imagination that is emerging. Probably it will not find success quickly.

This particular episode may do more harm than good. Looking at the last couple of weeks, I can see it in the way they are now appointing ministers, the way they are appointing political elites back into power, and the way they use military force to enforce their agenda—all of which reflect an extraordinarily feudalistic structure in the country.

Given this, the current moment will not do much to change elite hegemony in Nepal. But no matter what happens, young people’s frustration is directed against elitism. What they are seeking in the future is post-elite—some kind of egalitarian economic and political system. That aspiration is a positive sign toward new possibilities. But this episode alone will not do much other than reintroduce the same elitist structure.

Primarily, young people are not questioning the economic structure. They are not really grasping how the dependent economic system in the country continues to produce an elite-controlled political system. This is similar to Bangladesh, where a major revolt not long ago did little to address the country’s economic situation. A similar pattern is emerging in India, too. Youth-led frustration will continue across South Asia—it will not stop in Nepal. I see big brewing parties emerging in India, which is a major hot spot. I am not sure when it will erupt or in what form, but for decades—almost 70, 80, 100 years—the economic feudalistic structure has not been resolved. I see something coming.

Even though India uses neighboring political instability to its advantage, crude nationalism alone will not satisfy the aspirations of young people, especially amid growing economic inequality. Regional change will happen only if something major occurs in other countries, especially in India and beyond. Still, this is a good symptom: unless elites create space for young people—and some form of inclusive system, even if not fully post-elite—these tensions will persist, not only in Nepal but across the region, for decades to come.

Dr. André Borges is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Brasília.

Dr. Borges: Brazil Is Becoming More Like American Politics, Where Polarization Normalizes Rule-Breaking

by Editor’s ChoiceHomeInterviews

Brazil’s democracy faces one of its greatest stress tests with former President Jair Bolsonaro sentenced to 27 years for plotting a coup. In an interview with the ECPS, Dr. André Borges, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Brasília, warns that Brazil is “becoming more like American politics, where affective polarization drives citizens to see opponents as existential threats.” Such polarization, he argues, risks normalizing democratic rule-breaking. Yet Dr. Borges also highlights Brazil’s resilience, rooted in its “institutional mix that deconcentrates authority”—federalism, separation of powers, fragmented parties, and an autonomous Supreme Court. This paradox defines Brazil today: resilient institutions confronting dangerously eroding democratic norms.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

The conviction of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup has plunged Brazil into one of the most turbulent chapters of its democratic history. While Bolsonaro’s allies denounce the ruling as political persecution, and international far-right figures echo claims of “lawfare,” Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) has defended the trial as a necessary step to safeguard democracy.

Against this backdrop, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) spoke with Dr. André Borges, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Brasília, whose research focuses on party systems, coalition formation, and right-wing populism. Dr. Borges warns that Brazil is “becoming more like American politics, where affective polarization drives citizens to see opponents as existential threats.” In his view, such dynamics risk normalizing democratic rule-breaking, as voters increasingly rationalize the repression of political adversaries in the name of survival.

At the same time, Dr. Borges stresses that Brazil retains significant institutional defenses against authoritarian capture. “In comparative terms, if I look at other Latin American countries, I would say that Brazilian institutions are, in a sense, more resilient to this kind of attack. The reason for this has to do with several factors, one of which is that Brazil has an institutional mix that deconcentrates authority. It has a federal system, a presidential constitution with separation of powers, and a very fragmented party system. On top of that, there is a relatively autonomous Supreme Court.”

This “institutional mix,” he argues, explains why Bolsonaro could not consolidate authoritarian rule in the style of leaders such as Nayib Bukele in El Salvador or Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Since 1989, no Brazilian president has commanded a legislative majority, forcing presidents—including Bolsonaro—to rely on fragile coalitions with clientelistic parties that are reluctant to rewrite rules that benefit them. “Doing so would simply empower Bolsonaro and his family to the detriment of traditional politicians—and that is not something they would like to see happening,” Dr. Borges notes.

By situating Bolsonaro’s downfall in the tension between institutional resilience and intensifying polarization, Dr. Borges highlights a central paradox: while Brazil’s democracy has thus far resisted authoritarian capture, the country’s deepening affective divides may yet erode the very democratic norms its institutions have preserved.

Here is the transcript of our interview with Dr. André Borges, lightly edited for clarity and readability.

The Supreme Court Stepped In Where Congress Was Lenient

Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal – STF) at night, Brasília, Federal District, Brazil, August 26, 2018. Photo: Diego Grandi.

Professor Borges, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction for plotting a military coup marks an unprecedented moment in Brazilian democracy, with the Supreme Court framing his conspiracy as an attempt to “annihilate” the democratic rule of law. How do you see this outcome reshaping the balance of power between elected executives and judicial institutions, and how does it fit within your account of Brazil’s long-run party-system de-institutionalization, where shifting alliances eroded voters’ ability to distinguish governing alternatives and opened space for an authoritarian outsider?

Assoc. Prof. André Borges: That’s a great question. In my view, the Bolsonaro administration was unmistakably illiberal. It deliberately sought to weaken checks and balances, empower the military, and expand the role of the armed forces in national politics. This was evident throughout Bolsonaro’s years in power, as his government aimed to restore to the military some of the authority it had previously lost. For example, the military significantly increased its control over national security institutions.

Because of the Bolsonaro administration’s attacks on democracy, the Supreme Court became more activist. I believe its heightened role in recent years is also a consequence of Congress’s leniency toward Bolsonaro’s anti-democratic agenda. This is crucial to note: on several occasions, Supreme Court could have acted to obstruct this illiberal project. For example, during the pandemic, evidence emerged that top government officials were involved in corruption scandals tied to vaccine purchases. Yet, dominated by center-right, right-wing, and far-right parties, Congress largely sided with Bolsonaro—leaving the Supreme Court to step in.

With regard to party institutionalization, Bolsonaro’s rise to power is closely tied to the weakening of mainstream center-right forces, particularly the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). Initially a centrist—indeed, at times even center-left—party, the PSDB gradually shifted rightward. Prior to Bolsonaro, it was the principal center-right alternative. Yet over time the PSDB experienced a profound collapse: its electoral base eroded, key leaders departed, and internal fractures deepened. Bolsonaro capitalized on this weakening of the mainstream right.

This is not unique to Brazil. In other countries in the region, such as Chile, we see a similar dynamic: major rival parties like the UDI and National Renovation have lost ground to the far right. More broadly, across Latin America, the mainstream right is losing parts of its conservative electorate. There are many reasons for this, but once conservative sectors no longer feel represented by traditional right-wing parties, it opens opportunities for anti-system, far-right alternatives. This trend is reinforced by a broader climate of distrust in political parties. People feel unrepresented and believe that all parties and politicians are corrupt. That sense of disillusionment creates the conditions in which far-right populist voices can gain ground.

Brazil’s Institutional Mix Makes Democratic Backsliding Harder

In your research on party system erosion and right-wing populism, you highlight the fragility of institutional constraints under populist rule. Does Bolsonaro’s sentencing suggest that Brazil’s institutions have developed greater resilience compared to other cases you have studied, or might this verdict deepen polarization and fuel narratives of political persecution?

Assoc. Prof. André Borges: That’s a great question as well. My take on this is the following. In comparative terms, if I look at other Latin American countries, I would say that Brazilian institutions are, in a sense, more resilient to this kind of attack. The reason for this has to do with several factors, one of which is that Brazil has an institutional mix that deconcentrates authority. It has a federal system, a presidential constitution with separation of powers, and a very fragmented party system. On top of that, there is a relatively autonomous Supreme Court.

In this scenario, it is harder for a far-right populist like Bolsonaro to implement a democratic backsliding project. In this respect, Brazil is different from El Salvador. If you look at what is going on there with Nayib Bukele, it is very clear that El Salvador is no longer a functional democracy: checks and balances have been eroded, the Supreme Court was packed with political allies, and the legislature no longer acts as a check on presidential power. But it would be very difficult to reproduce that in Brazil.

One reason is that illiberal backsliding is more likely when executives can rely on supermajorities—when the president’s party holds a very large majority in the legislature. This is very unlikely in Brazil. Since 1989, none of the presidents elected has had a majority; in reality, all have been minority presidents. Bolsonaro, when elected in 2018, had a party with only 10% of the seats. This makes Brazil very different from cases like Hungary, where Fidesz under Viktor Orbán held a supermajority, making it much easier to implement constitutional changes.

In Brazil, a far-right populist who comes into power is forced to forge a coalition with right-wing parties. Many of these parties are essentially office-seeking, clientelistic organizations rather than programmatic ones. It seems to me that the traditional politicians within these parties are not willing to change the rules of the game, for a very simple reason: the rules of the game benefit them. If you look at Brazil’s recent history, the political right has always held a plurality of the vote in legislative elections for the lower chamber. Considering that the right consistently wins, why would they change the rules of the game? It does not make sense. In the end, doing so would simply empower Bolsonaro and his family to the detriment of traditional politicians—and that is not something they would like to see happening in the coming years. So in this sense, yes, Brazilian institutions are probably more resilient compared to other cases.

Portraying Trials as Persecution Is a Familiar Populist Script

Brick Lane, one of the UK’s most famous locations for street art and graffiti, is synonymous with London’s vibrant urban art scene. Photo: Nicoleta Raluca Tudor.

Bolsonaro and his allies have framed the trial as political revenge, echoing claims of ‘lawfare’ often made by populist leaders across Latin America. To what extent does the framing of accountability as persecution resonate with broader patterns you have identified in multiparty presidential systems?

Assoc. Prof. André Borges: There is nothing new in this kind of narrative. It has been used by different types of populists from both sides of the ideological spectrum. This is the usual script when they face trial: they portray it as political persecution. In the case of Bolsonaro in Brazil, this framing seems likely to resonate mainly with his hardcore supporters. Depending on how you measure it, the so-called Bolsonaristas—Bolsonaro’s followers—represent between 20–25% of voters. That is significant, but it is not enough to win a presidential election, because in Brazil you have runoff rules, and you can only win with 50% plus one of the valid votes. So that base is insufficient.

If Bolsonaro—or another far-right candidate—plans to take over national government, he will need to build an electoral coalition that goes beyond far-right voters. In this sense, I do not think this narrative will help Bolsonaro much, especially given that rejection of him and his family has grown among the electorate. The latest polls show that about 64% of Brazilian voters would never vote for Bolsonaro. When other names are considered, such as his wife, Michele Bolsonaro, or his son, rejection rates are even higher. This makes me think that this narrative will not be enough to gain support beyond the far-right, more extremist space.

Bolsonaro Reinforced a Preexisting Trend of Militarization in Brazilian Politics

The trial revealed detailed evidence of conspiracy, including potential plans to assassinate political rivals. From your perspective, does this reinforce arguments about the militarization of Brazilian politics—an area you have explored in your work on authoritarian inheritance—or does it reflect a unique rupture under Bolsonaro’s leadership?

Assoc. Prof. André Borges: On this question, I must say first that I am not a specialist in military politics, but with that being said, I do think there has been a process of militarization in Brazil, in the sense that civilian control over the military has always been weak. Brazil has not been as successful as other Latin American countries, for instance, in convicting military officers involved in human rights crimes during the dictatorship. In this regard, Brazil differs from Argentina or Uruguay, where there were truth commissions, trials, and many convictions of former officials.

Even before Bolsonaro’s administration, we had already seen an increasing presence of top military officers in civilian posts, especially in the area of public security. This reflects the fact that crime is a major concern among Brazil’s population, as in many other Latin American countries. As a result, there has been a gradual militarization of public security. Brazil’s constitution allows for military intervention in public security under certain circumstances, and one such intervention occurred during the Temer government, which was an interim government just before Bolsonaro, from 2016 to 2018. That intervention took place in Rio de Janeiro, the country’s third-largest state and one with particularly high levels of crime.

It is notable that the general who commanded this intervention, Braga Netto, was later nominated as Bolsonaro’s vice-presidential candidate in the last election. For this reason, I would say that the Bolsonaro government reinforced and accelerated a preexisting trend of greater military involvement in national political affairs. One clear piece of evidence is that no other government since the transition to democracy appointed as many military ministers as Bolsonaro did. He built a cabinet with a very high proportion of military officers—something highly unusual for a consolidated democracy. While this might be politics as usual in a country like Pakistan, it is striking in a country that is classified as a democracy.

There has also been concern about the politicization of the armed forces. This is the main concern, because since the end of the military dictatorship there has been a strong effort by the armed forces toward professionalization, ensuring that the army, navy, and marines would not become involved in politics. That is not the role of the military; they should remain separate from politics. The Bolsonaro government, however, represented a kind of return to the past, as we saw some active generals appointed to political office. This also triggered debate in Congress, because the Brazilian constitution and legislation on military affairs are very clear: if you are part of the military and want to run for political office, or if you wish to be appointed to a ministry or a secretary position at the state level, you must first retire. You cannot serve while remaining active military. Congress even approved a law on this issue to reinforce that rule and prevent such situations.

But yes, the concern is not only the politicization of the armed forces but also the politicization of the police. In Brazil, unlike in many other countries, we have two police branches: the military police, which has a more repressive function, and the civil police, which is responsible for investigating crimes. The military police has close ties to the armed forces, and existing research, as well as events during the Bolsonaro government, show that many police officers are in fact Bolsonaro supporters. Support for Bolsonaro is particularly strong among the lower ranks of the police forces. 

This is troubling, because these officers are ultimately responsible for maintaining law and order during protests—for instance, when far-right supporters take to the streets. We saw what happened in January 2023, when a mob of Bolsonaro supporters invaded Congress and the Supreme Court. It was so easy for them because the police of the Federal District—which, while technically a city, has the status of a state and is home to Brazil’s capital—was responsible for overseeing the demonstration and preventing violence. Yet they were lenient; they essentially allowed the protesters to invade public buildings. As a result, it took considerable time before the situation was brought under control.

Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro poses with anti-riot police agents after cast their ballot in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil on November 29, 2020. Photo: Antonio Scorza.

Bolsonarismo Could Survive Through Party Deals

Given your work on electoral coalitions and incentives in presidential systems, what implications might Bolsonaro’s conviction have for the future strategies of Brazil’s right-wing parties and actors? Could sidelining Bolsonaro encourage institutionalized conservative alternatives, or will his movement continue to dominate the right despite his imprisonment?

Assoc. Prof. André Borges: That’s an excellent question, and one I have asked myself in recent years. I don’t think I have a definitive answer. But what I can say is that Bolsonarismo, if we think of it as a far-right movement, is already rooted in society. Bolsonaro was able to mobilize an electoral base comprised of ultra-conservative voters who support him because they share the same agendas and policy preferences he expressed during his campaign. So, in a sense, the connection is not only based on charisma. In political science, we usually distinguish between two types of linkages between voters and leaders, or between voters and parties: charismatic linkages, which rest on exceptional qualities of the leader and emotional attachment, and programmatic linkages. In the case of Bolsonarismo, I think you have both. There is an emotional connection to Bolsonaro, but also a programmatic one.

This makes me think that even if Bolsonaro is imprisoned and forced to step away from national politics—because, if everything goes as planned, he will not be able to run for office again in his lifetime, having been sentenced to 27 years in prison plus another 8 years of ineligibility—Bolsonarismo will endure. Bolsonaro is now 70 years old, which means he would be over 100 before being eligible again. In this sense, other right-wing leaders could inherit his movement, since the electoral constituency of far-right, extremist voters will remain.

I see two possible scenarios. In one, the political right divides: a candidate from Bolsonaro’s family—his son or his wife—runs, while the rest of the right supports another candidate, most likely Tarcísio de Freitas. This would split the right into a Bolsonarista wing led by his family and a non-Bolsonarista wing. In this scenario, it will be harder to consolidate a strong right-wing party.

The reason is that Bolsonaro and his family have never been able to build a party of their own. Bolsonaro is currently in the PL (Liberal Party), which today represents the far right but was previously a typical office-seeking, clientelistic party. Crucially, the PL is not controlled by Bolsonaro, but by traditional mainstream politicians like Valdemar da Costa Neto. That is the core problem: to create a strong Bolsonarista party, you need an organizational structure, and building one takes time and resources. I doubt the Bolsonaro family has either the capacity or the will to do that. They would likely need to take over an existing party, but all the major right-wing parties are controlled by traditional politicians.

The only feasible path would be some kind of agreement between Bolsonaro’s family and the more radical factions of the PL, which is itself divided between legislators loyal to Bolsonaro and more independent figures. Such a power-sharing arrangement could keep Bolsonarismo politically alive. At this moment, though, I don’t see how that would be possible—but perhaps I am wrong.

Affective Polarization in Brazil Risks Eroding Democratic Norms

In your recent work on the illusion of electoral stability, you discuss how party system erosion paved the way for Bolsonaro. Does his conviction close that cycle, or could institutional breakdown re-emerge in new forms?

Assoc. Prof. André Borges: It’s hard to know what is going to happen. For now, what I can say is that Brazil today is an increasingly polarized society. Brazilian politics is becoming more like American politics, in the sense that people’s political preferences are starting to interfere with their personal lives. This is very unusual for us Brazilians but has been happening in the United States for a long time. For example, you might see a situation in which someone who is a strong Democrat will not accept that his daughter marries a Republican. This is a clear case in which political preferences affect personal life—things that should normally be separate from politics.

The same pattern is now emerging in Brazil, where there is a lot of hatred and stereotyping on both sides. On one side, you have the petistas, supporters of the Workers’ Party, the largest left-wing party in Brazil, which governs the country today. On the other side, you have the Liberal Party and Bolsonaro supporters. The result is a deep clash between these two groups.

I think this is bad for democracy, because when you have this kind of affective polarization, it often leads to the politicization of democratic rules. This is very dangerous, because people start to calculate what is acceptable or not acceptable in day-to-day politics. When two groups hate each other and you have this us-versus-them logic, it becomes easier for voters to rationalize a situation in which, for instance, a president from my party takes action to repress supporters of the other party. Then I might say, “Well, the people on the other side are dangerous, they represent a threat, so why should we respect their political rights? Maybe it is justifiable to break the rules of democracy, because in the end, the other side is evil, and we should not respect their rights.”

I think we are reaching that point in Brazil, which in my view is dangerous. But as for knowing what will happen in the coming years—I don’t know. It wouldn’t be fair to say that I have the answer. 

Trump Treated Brazil as If It Were an Enemy State, Not an Ally

Supporters of Brazil’s former President (2019–2022) Jair Bolsonaro hold signs during a demonstration in São Paulo, Brazil, on September 7, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.

Trump’s use of tariffs and sanctions to pressure Brazil on Bolsonaro’s behalf highlights an unusual case of international populist solidarity. Does this signal a shift in how external pressures operate on Latin American democracies compared to past US interventions?

Assoc. Prof. André Borges: My impression is that, yes, this represents a departure from US foreign policy in recent decades. It is very unusual for an American president to try to interfere with judicial decisions in another country. I can’t think of any other recent example of this. So, this is very serious. But surely, it has to do with Donald Trump and the more radical wing of the Republican Party. This is worrying.

If we think about what happened during the 2022 elections, support from the Biden government was very important to ensure that we did not have a coup attempt or some kind of mobilization to discredit electoral results. The Biden administration was very quick in recognizing Lula’s victory. In addition, US military officers made very clear in public statements that the United States would not support any kind of military intervention aimed at overturning electoral results. So, it is obvious that this had an impact, especially because military forces in Brazil and in the United States have been collaborating for several decades.

The fact that we now have an American president who is not committed to democracy and the rule of law in countries that are supposedly allies of the United States is alarming. I used to think that Brazil and the United States were allies, and they had been allies for a long time. But the way Donald Trump has been treating Brazil and its top government officials suggests that Brazil is no longer an ally. It is as if Brazil has become like Iran or another country placed by the United States in the so-called “axis of evil,” to use George Bush’s phrase.

This is very strange. We don’t have an atomic bomb. Brazil does not represent a threat to other countries. We never said that we wanted to drop bombs on Argentina, destroy it, or wipe out its population. Brazil is, in the end, a peaceful country. So everything that is going on is just because of politics—because of this transnational far-right network. Trump is using US foreign policy to help Bolsonaro, to help a political ally, which is obviously absurd. I am no specialist in American constitutional law, but I suspect this alone would be grounds for impeachment. This is very serious. So, yes, I think what is going on is very worrying.

The Far Right Is Now a Transnationally Connected Movement

Finally, considering your comparative research on coalition formation and right-wing populism, how should scholars understand the interplay between domestic party realignments in Brazil and the broader international networks of illiberal leaders, from Trump to Orbán and Erdogan?

Assoc. Prof. André Borges: That’s a good question. I have the impression that these transnational far-right, illiberal networks have been very important in the sense that they provide resources to far-right leaders across different regions of the world. There is a kind of mimicking going on: when Viktor Orbán succeeds in weakening checks and balances in Hungary, this becomes an example for other far-right populists in Latin America, Asia, and beyond. I feel this dynamic contributes to introducing new axes of conflict. In the end, once you recognize that there is a far-right international movement, it becomes clear that this is not a local phenomenon. It is something happening across the world, and these actors are connected.

In the case of Brazil, we know that some of these far-right leaders from abroad are trying to interfere in national affairs. Obviously, this is going to affect political divisions and how party systems organize around conflict. In the end, parties and politicians have to take a position and ask themselves: “What do I think about Trump trying to interfere in national political affairs?” Because ultimately, this is about national sovereignty. The whole idea of nationalism is that we cannot accept this. Such interference can have a very substantial impact, especially within the political right, where parties will have to decide where—and with whom—they stand. This could certainly reshape the party system in Brazil, particularly since opinion polls show that a very broad majority of the population is against Trump’s use of sanctions to meddle in internal political affairs. So this raises a clear question for far-right politicians: maybe they have gone too far.

Dr. Mara Nogueira is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London.

Dr. Nogueira: Brazil Did with Bolsonaro What the US Failed to Do with Trump

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In an interview with ECPS, Dr. Mara Nogueira (Birkbeck, University of London) argues that Brazil’s decision to convict Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup marks a turning point in democratic accountability. “By convicting Bolsonaro, we are doing what the US should have done with Trump and moving in the right direction toward democracy,” she says. Rejecting claims of judicial overreach, Dr. Nogueira stresses: “The Supreme Court is not overstepping but rather fulfilling its role.” She welcomes the unprecedented prosecution of both civil and military senior officers since the 1964–85 dictatorship, while warning that far-right actors are already mobilizing “judicial dictatorship” narratives. For her, the trial sends a crucial signal: “It’s not acceptable to plan a coup d’état—and if you do so, you will face charges.”

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

The conviction of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup has generated both domestic turbulence and international controversy. While his lawyers denounce the ruling as politically motivated, and allies abroad echo claims of persecution, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) has framed the case as a necessary step to defend democracy against authoritarian threats. Against this backdrop, Dr. Mara Nogueira, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London, reflects on the political and institutional meaning of Bolsonaro’s trial in an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS).

Dr. Nogueira underscores that the trial signals democratic resilience rather than overreach: “By convicting Bolsonaro, we are doing what the US should have done with Trump and moving in the right direction toward democracy.” She contrasts Brazil’s approach to accountability with the United States, where Trump has avoided similar consequences: “You had the foot soldiers of the Capitol invasion going to jail, while Trump not only remained free but was also allowed to run for president and become president again.”

In her view, the STF has not exceeded its mandate but fulfilled it: “I think the evidence that Bolsonaro and his conspirators attempted a coup d’état is hard to ignore, so when a crime like that is committed, it needs to be punished. The Supreme Court is not overstepping but rather fulfilling its role.” Importantly, she welcomes the fact that not only Bolsonaro, but also senior officers are facing accountability for the first time since the 1964–85 military dictatorship. “Perhaps Brazil would have had a different history if that had been done sooner,” she notes.

At the same time, Dr. Nogueira remains cautious. She observes that far-right actors are already mobilizing the “judicial dictatorship” narrative: “What they want in this case, however, is impunity. The revenge is already underway, with Congress now voting to expand its protection against legal prosecution.” She also highlights the fragility of Brazilian democracy, pointing to Bolsonaro’s 2018 victory and the January 8, 2023, attack as symptoms of unresolved cleavages. Yet she stresses that the conviction sends a crucial signal: “It does not inoculate against authoritarian relapse, but it does send a message that it’s not acceptable to plan a coup d’état, and if you do so, you will face charges.”

For Dr. Nogueira, Bolsonaro’s conviction represents both accountability and warning. Whether it deepens polarization or strengthens democratic institutions will depend on how political actors and society interpret this landmark moment.

Here is the transcript of our interview with Dr. Mara Nogueira, lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Dissent Shows Democracy at Work, Not Dictatorship

Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro protest Supreme Court actions in his trial on Paulista Avenue, São Paulo, Brazil, August 3, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.

Dr. Mara Nogueira, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: How do you interpret Justice Luiz Fux’s lone vote to absolve Bolsonaro on jurisdictional and evidentiary grounds—arguing lack of proof, improper venue, and unmanageable case files—within Brazil’s broader debates on lawfare? Even as a majority of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) has now convicted Bolsonaro for leading a “criminal organisation” to plot a coup, could Fux’s reasoning still provide legal ammunition for appeals, annulment claims, or retrial efforts?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: For anyone following the trial closely, Fux’s vote was not a surprise, since he had been signaling this divergence with the reporting judge for a while. That said, his vote was surprising given his prior positions in the trial of the participants in the invasion of Congress on January 8, 2023, and his overall trajectory in the Supreme Court. So, it was unexpected when considered in light of his own trajectory rather than what was anticipated of him in this trial.

I think he attempted to give a technical veneer to an 11-hour vote that was eminently political. His judgment essentially shifted depending on who was being accused. He was clearly speaking to a wider audience rather than to his peers. But I don’t see his lone vote as an issue; on the contrary, in a democracy with functioning institutions, dissent is part of the process.

The fact that Fux was able to voice his dissent, contrary to what the far right argues, shows that there isn’t a dictatorship in Brazil. In a dictatorship, he wouldn’t be allowed to dissent or he would have faced persecution for doing so. Neither of those things happened. Instead, he is facing criticism from part of the public and being celebrated by others, which is not abnormal in any sense.

But I don’t think his vote changes anything. At the end of the day, Bolsonaro and his co-conspirators were convicted, and I believe, rightly so. In a highly politicized trial such as this, of course, Bolsonaro’s supporters will seize on anything to twist the facts and argue for his innocence. They will push as far as they can, but in the current context, I don’t see how this trial could be overturned, even if it went to the plenary.

That said, a future annulment would obviously depend on how the political landscape in Brazil evolves in the coming years, and it’s very hard to predict, in my opinion. The Supreme Court is not isolated from the broader political climate, and changes in its composition under, for instance, a future far-right government could have consequences. We only need to look at the US to see what that might look like. Still, I think that by convicting Bolsonaro, we are doing what the US should have done with Trump and moving in the right direction toward democracy.

Convicting Bolsonaro and the Military Officers Shows Institutions are at Work

With the STF asserting unprecedented authority—convicting a former president and top generals, placing Bolsonaro under house arrest, and wading into disinformation inquiries—does this expanded role bolster democratic resilience, or risk normalizing states of exception that revanchist actors can exploit as evidence of “judicial dictatorship”?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: As I already mentioned, by looking at the US, you can see the consequences of not prosecuting an attempted coup d’état. The US now has a president with unprecedented authority, backed by a Congress that is essentially on his side, and a very politically aligned Supreme Court. So, you can ask, where are the checks and balances in the US right now? Of course, I’m not an expert in American politics, but the current state of affairs seems to imply that the US president can do as he pleases, including attempts to influence judicial proceedings in a foreign country, as he is trying to do in Brazil.

I think the evidence that Bolsonaro and his conspirators attempted a coup d’état is hard to ignore, so when a crime like that is committed, it needs to be punished. The Supreme Court is not overstepping but rather fulfilling its role. And I see it positively that not only a former president but also the military are, for the first time in Brazil’s history, being convicted for attempting to abolish the democratic rule of law. Perhaps Brazil would have had a different history if that had been done sooner.

But as I said previously, the far right will attempt to exploit what happened to paint a picture that we live in, as you say, a judicial dictatorship. What they want in this case, however, is impunity. The revenge is already underway, with Congress now voting to expand its protection against legal prosecution, for instance. There is also ongoing discussion about a bill aimed at the participants of January 8. This bill is nicknamed the Amnesty Bill, though it should be called, in my opinion, the Impunity Bill, because what Congress is trying to do is to reinterpret the notion of amnesty to appease a political group and perhaps set, what I believe, would be a very dangerous precedent.

This idea that Fux mentioned in his speech—that the January 8 participants were a disorganized or unruly mob—is preposterous and ignores the broader context in which the invasion of Congress occurred. Yes, they were unable to overthrow the state, thank God, but they failed because the rest of the plot didn’t work out, and their leader, Bolsonaro, knowing the plan had failed, fled to the US.

All that said, I’m not a particularly optimistic person, and I am not a big fan of the kind of worship the Supreme Court judges are receiving these days, but in this instance, I think they are performing their duty, which is to safeguard the democratic rule of law in the country. A dictatorship would imply the suppression of other powers and an authoritarian ruler, and this is not what’s happening in Brazil right now. Only those living in far-right bubbles will interpret the context in that way.

No Crisis Between Government and Military Despite Convictions

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro during 74th Anniversary of Parachutist Infantry Battalion held at Military Village in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on November 23, 2019. Photo: Celso Pupo

The conviction encompassed senior military officers for the first time since the 1964–85 dictatorship. How does this reshape Brazil’s civil–military relations, especially in a context where the armed forces remain politically salient and segments of society view them as guarantors of order?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: That’s quite an interesting point. Historically, the military has been behind all the successful coups in Brazil, and there have been several. So, as I already mentioned, I see it positively that after so many other instances, the military is finally facing legal consequences for its actions.

I’ve been following the media coverage of the trial very closely, and I don’t think, at least from my perspective, that this has been a major point of discussion. As far as I can tell, there is no crisis at the moment between the government and the military, or between the Supreme Court and the military, and perhaps that has to do with the surprising fact that the military played an important role in preventing this particular coup d’état from succeeding.

Just one of the military commanders, Almir Garnier Santos, who was the commander of the Navy under Bolsonaro, was convicted. Out of the three military commanders, he was the only one who went along with the plan. For many analysts, the coup failed because it didn’t have the support of the Army and Air Force commanders, who refused to join the plot.

Of course, they could have done more than just say no and could have denounced the coup, which would have given even more credibility to the trial. Still, their role in this case was ultimately positive, and that may help explain why the coup didn’t succeed, and also why the military has not been the main focus of media coverage or public discussion.

Brazil’s Democracy Is Fragile—But Functioning

As school curricula, memorials, and policing doctrines institutionalize January 8, 2023, how do these “memory practices” shape collective political identities? Do they inoculate against authoritarian relapse, or entrench binary cleavages that revanchist actors can instrumentalize?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: I think it’s still very soon to say how this particular event will be narrated in Brazilian history. That’s yet to be seen. But if you take, for instance, the 1964 military coup, the military, to this day, celebrate the date as the day of the revolution. They call it the revolution rather than the military coup. Bolsonaro himself has praised prominent members of the military dictatorship, such as Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who was notorious for leading torture and repression during this period.

The dominant view of 1964 today, however, is that it was a coup d’état that installed a violent dictatorship in this country, which ended, in fact, quite recently—1985, as you say. It’s not the only view, but it is the one that students, for instance, will learn about in school.

As I said, democracy in Brazil is still young, and one might say it remains quite fragile. I see Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018, despite his authoritarian rhetoric, as a sign of that fragility. The fact that he and his core conspirators felt emboldened enough to attempt a coup also shows how fragile democracy is. But I don’t see his conviction as a demonstration of this fragility. On the contrary, in this instance, I see it as a sign that democratic institutions are working despite that fragility.

I am, like many other social scientists and observers, concerned with the political cleavages in Brazil, but I don’t think this is unique to Brazil right now. The far right is on the rise globally, and one could ask, for instance, whether January 8 in Brazil would have happened if the Capitol invasion hadn’t occurred in the US, or if the real leaders of the Capitol invasion had been punished. One could also ask what would have happened if Trump had been the US president in 2023.

I think punishment in Brazil’s case does not, as you say, inoculate against authoritarian relapse, but it does send a message that it’s not acceptable to plan a coup d’état, and that if you do so, you will face charges. That’s a good message for the country to be showing the world right now.

Tarcísio de Freitas Seeks to Inherit Bolsonaro’s Capital

São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas attends a pro-amnesty demonstration for former President Jair Bolsonaro in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, on March 16, 2025. Photo: Saulo Angelo.

Building on your work on “entitled anger,” how is middle-class resentment mobilized around the trial—particularly in claims that the STF has usurped sovereignty and thwarted the popular will?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: My work on revanchist populism and entitled anger is about the rise of far-right populism globally, and particularly in the Global South. Revanchist populism is a term that I coined with my colleague Ryan Centner. And what we are doing with this is describing what we see as a turn in political imaginations towards the retaking of the nation in line with a powerful discourse of “the people” and righteousness. And we see this mapping onto populations who nostalgically sense they have lost what was rightfully, morally theirs, which might be regained by applying an angry sense of entitlement to an alternative and often authoritarian exercise of government.

In this context, the Brazilian middle class has been particularly described as resentful and an important support base for the far right. But I don’t think alone middle-class resentment can explain recent political cleavages in Brazil. Going back to your question more specifically, as I already mentioned, of course, the Supreme Court decision will be mobilized by the far right to fuel particular understandings of the current political situation in Brazil. There is a group of die-hard Bolsonaro supporters that will buy into any narrative that the far-right leaders produce. But I don’t think the future of Brazilian politics depends on this particular group, but more on the voters who are moderate and will swing their vote depending on a broader understanding of the situation.

It’s clear from his more recent speeches that the current São Paulo governor, Tarcísio de Freitas, is trying to position himself as the heir of Bolsonaro’s political capital and the natural candidate of the far right in the next presidential election. Some of Bolsonaro’s electorate will naturally transfer to whoever he decides to support, and that is significant, but not enough to win the next election. We have to remember that Bolsonaro himself lost the last election to Lula—by a small margin, of course—but he still lost. So, what I think is under dispute is the interpretation of current events by this broader population, who are not loyal to either Lula or Bolsonaro.

And it’s interesting that you touch on sovereignty, because it’s a very hot topic in Brazil at the moment—not because of the Supreme Court decision, but because of Trump’s attempt to interfere with the judicial process in Brazil. Lula’s popularity has recently increased slightly because he was gifted this position of defender of Brazil’s sovereignty in response to Eduardo Bolsonaro’s lobbying that led Trump to raise tariffs on Brazilian products to 50%. So, in this context, it’s difficult for the far right to play the sovereignty card while conspiring with Trump to penalize Brazil’s economy.

Urban Poor in Brazil’s Peripheries Hold the Swing Vote

What spatial patterns (capitals vs. peripheries; South/Southeast vs. North/Northeast) do you observe in post-verdict mobilizations, and how do they map onto Brazil’s longer histories of regional inequality and uneven development?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: I don’t have the data to comment specifically on the geography of how people are reacting to the trial, but if we look at Bolsonaro’s 2018 election, when he was victorious, we can find some evidence of the geographies of far-right voters and supporters in Brazil. The work of Matthew Richmond and Lisa McKenna, colleagues of mine, examined the geography of the votes in 2018.

The interesting thing here is that, unlike in the US, or in the case of the UK and Brexit, the geography of the vote in Brazil is not the traditional urban versus rural pattern. What their work pointed out is that the votes of the urban poor have been decisive in the last elections in Brazil. In particular, the votes of the urban poor in the peripheries of big cities have been swinging between the left and the right throughout the years. The explanation for this has to do with major changes in Brazilian society—from the growth of evangelical church influence to enduring criminality, which affects the urban poor more prominently, for instance.

In my own work, I have focused on changes in the global labor market and how they also play a role in the new political landscape that breeds the far right. Again, if you think of the case of the US and the UK, you see deindustrialization and the loss of stable jobs alongside austerity and neoliberalism, which have impoverished particular groups. Immigration, in these cases, has then been used as the far-right scapegoat to channel this entitled anger into votes.

In the case of Brazil, we have historically had a very stratified labor market with widespread precarity, and this has also grown as a consequence of neoliberalism and deindustrialization. But the traditional left in Brazil grew out of industrial trade unionism, and now there is this huge population of workers outside formal wage relations who don’t feel represented by these traditional left-wing narratives. So, when you think about geography, these spatial inequalities interact with wider social and economic dynamics, and my point is that if progressive politics doesn’t find ways to speak to this new workforce, far-right narratives offering simple solutions to complex problems can fill this gap.

With Bolsonaro confined to house arrest and restricted from social media, how has the street/platform nexus of contention shifted—especially regarding plazas, evangelical pulpits, WhatsApp/Telegram ecosystems, and diaspora mobilization in the US?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: All the arenas you mentioned have long been part of the political landscape in Brazil, and the far right has been very effective at capitalizing on social media, perhaps because their extreme language and rhetoric are well suited to generating engagement—the very thing that drives these platforms. I don’t see this scenario changing with Bolsonaro’s arrest. The main question at the moment, as I already said, is who will inherit Bolsonaro’s political capital and represent this far-right group in the next election.

The Left Must Speak to Precarious Workers or Risk Losing Them to the Far Right

Brazilia’s Luiz Inácio Lula is seen during the 2022 election campaign in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on October 20, 2022. Photo: Aline Alcantara.

How does the trial intersect with the politics of informal work and the gig economy? Are precarious workers—street vendors, delivery app couriers—recalibrating their partisan attachments in light of the conviction, or holding steady?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: Again, I think it’s very soon to say how particular groups of workers are reacting to the trial. We don’t have the data. But as I already mentioned, this mass of precarious workers that characterizes Brazil’s economy plays a key role in current affairs. Of course, they are more than workers, and they have other affiliations that might also impact their political behavior, but the point that I have been trying to make in my own work is that this group feels underrepresented in political debates.

The left tends to view informality solely as an issue of precarity and exploitation, and its responses to the growing changes in the experience of work have been inadequate. In my research, I focus on street vendors who have been criminalized by local governments and feel attacked by exclusionary policies that constrain their ability to work on the streets and earn a livelihood. The left’s response has been to insist on wage work and development as solutions that will eventually incorporate everyone into the regular labor market, but workers are not necessarily on board with that. People’s desires for autonomy and flexibility are often interpreted negatively, in this context, as signs that these workers have been indoctrinated by neoliberalism.

What we need to understand is that for a huge proportion of people in Brazil, wage work was historically either unattainable or represented a precarious inclusion through low-paying jobs, where people had to endure excessive hours and, more often than not, harassment and humiliation. For many, the far-right promise of disruption feels like a real hope for change. Globally, the far right has succeeded in large part because it taps into real suffering and mobilizes genuine frustration by offering the hope of disruption.

Moreover, in some ways, the left has become a conservative political force, protecting abstract values that do not necessarily resonate with people’s everyday struggles. The new realities of the labor market and of society at large demand bolder thinking and out-of-the-box policies that can address the challenges of people’s lived realities. For instance, Zohran Mamdani’s political platform for the New York City mayoral election is a good representation of what I’m talking about. In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where I do most of my research, there is a bill up for a vote to implement free bus fare, which is also very interesting. So, there are some promising developments, and there is a progressive way out of this tough political landscape that we are living through.

Brazil’s 2026 Race Has Already Begun

Within Bolsonaro’s coalition, how are key pillars—evangelical leaders, police unions, agribusiness lobbies, military clubs—reframing their narratives after the verdict? What does this suggest about the durability or the recomposition of his revanchist base?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: It’s an interesting question. One day after Bolsonaro’s conviction, the Folha de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s most important newspapers, ran a headline on the twin deficit in Brazil and the dangers of Lula’s third mandate for the economy. What happened, essentially, is that Bolsonaro had become an issue, and his conviction was applauded by the major media because they wanted him out of the presidential race. But the big players you mentioned also don’t want a fourth Lula mandate.

In the lead-up to the 2022 election, there was an attempt by the major media to create the idea of a third way. Some had hoped, for instance, that João Doria, the former governor of São Paulo, or even Luciano Huck, a famous TV presenter in Brazil, would be presidential candidates to represent this third way and overcome Brazil’s polarization. But that didn’t happen, and I do not see it happening in 2026 either.

What I think will happen is a repositioning of political support. Tarcísio de Freitas, the current governor of São Paulo, seems to be the natural choice to replace Bolsonaro as Lula’s main opposition in this polarized economic and political landscape. But he will face a very difficult task in his campaign: essentially paying homage to Bolsonaro and capitalizing on his support, while at the same time trying to present himself as a more moderate and market-friendly politician. It will be a hard act for him to pull off.

How successful he is will also depend on what happens in Brazil between now and the election. There is already a sense that the presidential race has begun, and PT, Lula’s party, is currently treating Tarcísio as the main opposition.

Fux’s Vote Echoed the US Pattern of Punishing Followers but Acquitting Leaders

Supporters of Brazil’s former President (2019–2022) Jair Bolsonaro hold signs during a demonstration in São Paulo, Brazil, on September 7, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.

Do you observe unequal “graduations” of culpability—between January 8 “foot soldiers” and political principals—that echo Brazil’s broader selective enforcement of law (e.g., in housing or labor), thereby reinforcing perceptions of institutional bias?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: I don’t think so. I keep going back to the US, but I think it’s a useful parallel. That happened in the US: as you say, the foot soldiers of the Capitol invasion went to jail, while Trump not only remained free but was also allowed to run for president and become president again. If there is any echo of that in Brazil, it’s in Fux’s vote. As I said in the beginning, he voted for culpability for the January invaders but acquitted Bolsonaro, so his vote reflects a bit of that. But the Supreme Court decision has been coherent in the sense of condemning both the foot soldiers and what they perceive to be the leaders of this movement.

Lastly, Bolsonaro’s defenses—claims of witch-hunts, persecution, procedural overload—resonate with Trumpist repertoires. Where do Brazilian specificities (evangelical media ecosystems, military memory, police syndicates) create distinct discursive frames?

Dr. Mara Nogueira: In terms of the rhetoric, Bolsonaro’s entire act is very much aligned with Trump’s, so I don’t see much difference there. But of course, the content and the way he speaks to his political base are, as you say, shaped by Brazilian specificities, particularly the conservatism of his supporters. The differences between Brazil and the US have more to do with the essentially different composition of the two societies—social, economic, cultural, and, as we already discussed, geographical—and how Brazil differs from the US.

In terms of discursive frames, however, there is a kind of right-wing rhetoric that is common to different political leaders within this spectrum, modulated to speak to particular groups of supporters shaped by their culture and, in the case of Brazil, by religious positions within society.

Dr. Mark Levene is a genocide scholar, peace activist, and Emeritus Fellow in History at the University of Southampton.

Dr. Levene: Dysfunctional International System Enables Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

by Editor’s ChoiceForeign PolicyHomeHuman RightsInterviews

A new United Nations commission of inquiry has concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, citing mass killings, forced displacement, the destruction of essential infrastructure, and even measures to prevent births as evidence of genocidal intent. While Israel has rejected the findings as “distorted and false,” the commission underscored that all states are legally obliged to prevent and punish genocide. Against this backdrop, the ECPS spoke with genocide scholar and peace activist Dr. Mark Levene. In the interview, he warns that genocide is not an aberration but “a dysfunction of the international state system,” arguing that Gaza exemplifies how structural failures and powerful alliances allow atrocities to continue unchecked.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

A United Nations commission of inquiry has concluded on Tuesday that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, finding “reasonable grounds” that four of the five genocidal acts defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention have been carried out since the war began in October 2023. These include mass killings, inflicting serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately creating conditions to destroy the group, and preventing births. The report cites statements by Israeli leaders, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to bring “mighty vengeance,” as evidence of genocidal intent reinforced by systematic military actions. Israel has categorically rejected the findings, denouncing them as “distorted and false,” but the commission underscored that all states bear a legal duty under international law to prevent and punish genocide.

It is against this backdrop that the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) spoke in depth with Dr. Mark Levene, genocide scholar, peace activist, and Emeritus Fellow in History at the University of Southampton. In this wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Levene situates Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza within a broader theoretical and historical framework of genocide studies. His intervention goes beyond the binaries of “self-defense” and “terrorism” to expose the systemic dysfunctions of the international state order that allow such atrocities to persist.

The urgency of Dr. Levene’s analysis is underscored by his activism. On September 6, 2025, he was arrested during a peaceful sit-down protest in London’s Parliament Square. Alongside nearly 900 others, he was detained under the Terrorism Act simply for holding a sign declaring, “I Oppose Genocide, I Support Palestine Action.” This lived commitment frames his reflections on Gaza and lends moral force to his scholarly perspective.

The title of this interview—“A Dysfunctional International System Enables Israel’s Genocide in Gaza”—captures its central thesis. For Dr. Levene, genocide is not an aberration but “a dysfunction of the international state system.” Contrary to the dominant framing of genocide as a violation of an otherwise rules-based order, he argues that “you cannot separate what is happening in one state from its relationships with others.” Modern genocides, whether in Myanmar, Rwanda, or China, must be understood within the interlocking political economy of nation-states. Gaza, in this reading, is not exceptional but symptomatic: a structural outcome in which powerful allies shield perpetrators from accountability.

What emerges in this interview is both a historical and moral diagnosis. Dr. Levene emphasizes the asymmetry of power between Hamas and the Israeli state, notes the persistence of genocide despite multiple international rulings, and insists that the key question is systemic: “Why has this been allowed to continue?” His reflections range from the rationalization of mass violence through developmentalist fantasies—such as the so-called “Trump-Riviera Plan”—to the moral responsibilities of genocide scholars. Speaking as both historian and activist, he affirms that “we do have to speak truth to power,” even when power refuses to listen.

Here is the transcript of our interview with Dr. Mark Levene, lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Genocide Is a Dysfunction of the International State System

UN Security Council meeting on the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, New York, August 25, 2016. Photo: Ognjen Stevanovic.

Dr. Mark Levene, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In “The Changing Face of Mass Murder” (2002), you argue that extreme violence cannot be understood solely through the acts of perpetrators but must be situated within broader political and societal conditions. How might this framework help us interpret Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza beyond the binaries of “self-defense” and “terrorism”?

Dr. Mark Levene: That’s a big question! Let me go back a little beyond that particular article, which was written quite a long time ago. I’ve always argued that genocide cannot be understood as something attributable to a single actor. There is always a dynamic at play between what we call perpetrators and victims, and I think that kind of categorization is not always helpful.

In the case of Gaza, we can identify two sets of perpetrators, but the asymmetry between them in terms of power and actions is very stark. Hamas can be seen as a perpetrator, if we use that term, but the Israeli state is also a perpetrator—albeit one with vastly greater lethal capacity. So, the dynamic is profoundly unequal.

In genocide—or at least in the mindset of those who commit it—there is always this dynamic with the other party. In law, this often translates into ordinary people being encompassed within broader categories. What is significant is that when there is a political-military struggle between two sides, entire populations become encompassed within that logic. They are punished simply because they are perceived as part of the “other side” of the conflict. And that is what is happening here.

But the point I want to make is that genocide, in the modern world, occurs essentially within the framework of nation-states—not all nation-states, not all the time, but often enough to form a recurring pattern. I see it as happening within an interconnected, interrelated political economy—in other words, within the international system of nation-states. You cannot separate what is happening in one state from its relationships with others. I cannot think of a single modern case of genocide—whether in Myanmar, Rwanda, or even China—that can be understood entirely in isolation, as if it were only about internal dynamics between a state and a population it deems so troublesome that it considers or actualize the destruction of that whole communal population.

Does that help as a starting point? It’s a tricky issue and difficult for us to fully grasp—not least because genocide is so often understood primarily through the prism of the UN Convention on Genocide, as if it were an aberration. It is framed as something that violates the norms of a rules-based, civilized international system of nation-states, in which genocide is presumed not to occur, and any such event is treated as a transgression. I don’t see it in those terms at all. I see genocide rather as a dysfunction of the international state system. In that sense, we have to view what is happening in Gaza, for instance, by asking: how is it that almost two years on from its beginning in October 2023, the genocide committed by Israel is still continuing? I actually warned on October 11, just four days after it began, that Israel was on the cusp of committing genocide.

And I do want to say something about the other side as well, because Hamas also has a role. As I said earlier about perpetrators and victims, the reality is always more complex. But the question we must ask, nearly two years on, is: why has this been allowed to continue? It’s a fundamental issue, because we’ve had so many statements, analyses, and commitments—culminating in the UN grouping, which just yesterday (September 16, 2025) declared this a case of genocide. The ICJ, ICC, and countless scholars weighed in much earlier, affirming the same. Yet it continues. That sense of helplessness felt by so many around the world, horrified by this abomination, stems from precisely this question: why is it still happening?

I think the answer lies in Israel’s relationships—not only what Israel itself is doing, which I see not as exceptional but symptomatic of the world system we inhabit. What is happening is clearly tied to Israel’s relationship with an extremely powerful actor on the international stage, namely the United States, but also with countries such as my own, the United Kingdom, where the response has been, to put it mildly, ambivalent. Why has the UK not been more proactive? On the one hand, the legal framework is very clear: this is genocide, and it has been clear from very early on. Yet on the other hand, we face the evident failures of the political system. This, I believe, reflects the deeper dysfunction of the global order itself.

States That Oppose Genocide Routinely Assist Those Who Commit It

Anti-Israel flyers displayed during a demonstration at Place du Châtelet, Paris, March 28, 2009. Photo: Olga Besnard.

Your essay “Why Is the Twentieth Century the Century of Genocide?” (2000) links genocide to the structural dynamics of the modern international system. Do you see the current assault on Gaza as symptomatic of a systemic dysfunction within the nation-state order, especially when powerful states shield Israel from accountability?

Dr. Mark Levene: The simple answer is yes—I’ve just explained why. Yes, clearly that is the case. But, again, I should say that I have not spent the last two years, or indeed the last 30 or 40 years, just looking at Israel’s relationship with Palestine or Gaza. What is happening here reflects the way that states that commit acts of genocide are often shielded by other states. 

I wouldn’t say it’s normal, but the ambivalence of other states in relation to those committing such acts is rather standard. There is almost a routine process whereby a state might commit genocide, while the rhetoric of other states suggests opposition, yet their actions and policies—through omission or commission—may actively assist that state in what it is doing. And one can think of, indeed I could enumerate, examples in the recent past where this has been the case. 

So, in a way, I have a very gloomy prognosis here: I don’t think what is happening in the case of Israel, and what it is doing as a state in relation to Gaza, is somehow entirely exceptional. It is actually indicative of something broader—a deeper malaise, a wider dysfunction that exists within the international system of nation-states. These are the same states that, on the one hand, created the Genocide Convention, which in effect says, “thou shalt not do this.” That is how I see it, in almost religious terms—an extension of “thou shalt not do this.” But in practice, the system still allows it to happen.

Gaza Is Accelerated Genocide; the West Bank Is Creeping Genocide

In your study of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (1999), you coined the term “creeping genocide” to describe gradual elimination under a developmentalist state agenda. Could Israel’s long-term blockade, de-development of Gaza, and deliberate destruction of infrastructure be understood as a comparable case of creeping genocide?

Dr. Mark Levene: Well, yes and no. I’d say something rather different here. I think what is going on in relation to the entirety of Palestine, i.e. what we would now include as the West Bank, is creeping genocide, though it is accelerating. What I think is happening in Gaza is at the extreme end of accelerated genocide. I don’t think this is creeping, actually, even though it has taken two years to get Israel thus far. And I would emphasize this developmental—you mentioned development. The developmentalist aspect is something we should focus on a little bit. And the way I would approach it is by returning to what is, in my view, highly indicative of what is actually taking place here—and what, to ordinary eyes, might seem completely off the map—namely, the Trump-Riviera Plan. But this is going to be determined, this area is going to be turned into a sort of Riviera of the Middle East. That, to me, is not, in terms of how genocidal actors think things through, off the map. We ought to take it extremely seriously. Because genocide is always, in some ways, linked to the latent ideas, even in the back of one’s head, of states that are trying to envisage transcending the conditions under which they normally exist into something else, into something where they can truly develop themselves as they would like to in their heads. 

Does this make sense? What I’m trying to say here is that states in the modern world, the international system of nation-states—are developmentalist. They have to develop in order to survive within an international system which is, by definition, social Darwinian. It’s a sort of, almost a competitive race to the top, or race to the bottom. Normally, states cannot realize what is unrealizable. If we take the case of Israel, the thinking would be we would really love to have a state which was streamlined, which didn’t have any Palestinians in it, which we could turn into a corporate security entity, as we have it in our heads, which is going to be the Mecca of the Middle East, if I can be a little bit ironic. Before October 2023, Israel was maneuvering around that idea, but no concrete projection of a developmentalist arrangement granting them the totality of Palestine to use as they wished yet existed.

The crisis of October 7th—and it really was that—I mean, I’m sure you’ve spoken to Omar Bartov about the trauma Israel suffered on that day—it’s what I would call the perpetrator’s never-again syndrome. Namely, we have a situation where, in the past, the victim group has attacked us, posing a mortal threat to our existence. This came to pass in a very real way on October 7th with what Hamas did. One could argue that what Hamas was attempting was itself genocidal; it simply lacked the means and capacity to carry it through. This became a green light for the Israeli state to bring out its tucked-away, last-resort plans—to tear up what had been in place up to that point and strike out toward something completely different and new. In other words, even if what Israel was doing up to 2023 was grotesque and hideous in relation to the West Bank and Gaza, after that moment there was a genuine rupture. From then on, Israel was attempting to realize what had previously been unrealizable: sweeping away the population of Gaza and creating something entirely new.

Now, this is hideous, but it is part of the mindset of genocide. It’s a sort of drive toward transcendence. That Riviera plan sits at the extreme end of that developmentalist thinking. You might call it fantasy, but it is fantasy being put into practice. The way the Israeli defense forces are bulldozing Gaza into non-existence—turning it into rubble—is a precondition for that transformation. What is actually happening on the ground is the pulverization of a people, of an entire population, rendering them so destitute and degraded that they can be removed.

Now, again, I can make comparisons. I wouldn’t say this is a unique action of Israel. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza should be seen within a much broader framework of politically mandated ethnic cleansings in the modern era. But that doesn’t excuse it in any sense, because all those ethnic cleansings—though not listed as elements of genocide in the Genocide Convention—are, in practice, genocidal. I have no doubt of that, even if it puts me at variance with the Convention. 

What is happening in the West Bank, however, is creeping genocide. You could put it like this: Gaza is stage one; the rest—the Bezalel Smotrich plan for the West Bank, which also entails total ethnic cleansing and is unfolding piece by piece, olive grove by olive grove, village by village—is creeping genocide, but under the aegis of the international state system. And the fact that Israel has a powerful ally supporting it, doing nothing to stop this—namely, the United States—means this creeping genocide is accelerating very rapidly. These facts on the ground are intended to sabotage any aspiration of those states and people who advocate a two-state solution. This is precisely what Smotrich and those within the Israeli government are attempting to achieve. That’s the way I see it. It may sound horribly cynical, but then genocide is, by definition, cynical.

Framing Gaza as a ‘Problem Population’: The Logic of Genocide

Pro-Palestinian protesters hold signs. Photo: Oliver Perez.

You argue that genocide is often undertaken by states perceiving a “problem population” as a threat to their developmental or geopolitical survival. How does this resonate with Israel’s depiction of Gaza’s entire civilian population as complicit with terror organization Hamas?

Dr. Mark Levene: That’s a rather tricky question, isn’t it? I’m not sure that I am entirely—again, if we take other historical examples, one closer to home: the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in Turkey. There were groups who were defined as terrorists by the Ottoman state in 1915, and there is still a problem area I have written about: the degree to which insurrectionary groups, or groups challenging the integrity of the Ottoman state in wartime, were clearly—some of them at least—debating or actually practising terrorism against the state. That’s my position. There were other insurrectionary groups in Europe at that time; it was not only Armenian groups.

The difference here is that the Ottoman response—more specifically, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) response—was enacted by a regime that did not represent the Ottoman population as a whole. The Israeli government does not necessarily represent the Jewish population in Israel as a whole. But that CUP regime chose to encompass the entire Armenian population as insurrectionary—despite many complex cross-currents—and pursued a programme of their deportation or elimination. The stated aim was ethnic cleansing—to remove them to the desert regions to the south of the empire—but the result was genocidal.

Now, in the Palestinian population in Gaza, which I’ve never been to, so I can only speak second- or third hand, I’m sure there are a lot of crosscurrents of political, social, and cultural attitudes and feelings, as there are in all societies. Those would include people who were supporters of Hamas, and who—part of the thinking—would like to wipe Israel off the map. Does this, therefore, justify an attack on the whole population of that region: a population that is not just a “problem population,” but one that is co-responsible for what Hamas did? You can hear what I’m saying: I cannot justify what Hamas did. I think it was not only morally wrong but strategically an error. But can one justify treating the whole population as collectively responsible—and therefore punishable—which in effect legitimizes what Israel is now attempting, namely ethnic cleansing that, given there is nowhere else to go, results in creeping elimination day by day, hour by hour?

So again, this is what I’m saying: I hate what I’m saying, but I think there is a general genocidal thinking that goes on here. We almost have to get into the mindset of a perpetrator, and one can read it in, actually, all the various utterances of government ministers, but also social commentators and so on, who have been speaking in the last two years of wiping this “problem population” off the map, of making it disappear somewhere else. This is the mindset of genocide, unfortunately.

Holocaust Memorialization Risks Collapse in the Face of Gaza

In “The Holocaust Paradigm as Paradoxical Imperative” (2022), you warn against a sacralized, exceptionalist reading of the Holocaust that blocks solidarities with other victims of mass violence. How might this paradigm be shaping Western reluctance to acknowledge Gaza as genocidal?

Dr. Mark Levene: So again, it’s a very big question. The brief answer might be this: what I call the Holocaust paradigm refers to the way what happened to the Jewish populations of Europe under the Nazi aegis—not just under Nazi occupation, but, and this is a historical point I would want to develop more fully elsewhere, involving the co-responsibility not only of the Nazis but also of other European states in the destruction of the Jews. That is a major theme of mine.

Looking back retrospectively, the key moment was the 1990s, and I think that timing is significant because it came at the end of the Cold War. From then onward, the West, primarily, elevated this destruction of the Jews, of a key component of the European population, into something sacralized—turned into a kind of sacred act. It was not only made exceptional but also set up as the benchmark by which we ought to understand genocide.

Part of the reason lies in why this memorialization took shape. On one hand, it was tied to notions of tolerance and possibly of a multicultural society, which Europe by that time seemed more willing to embrace. The Holocaust became a peg upon which that notion could be hung. On the other hand, my argument is that this came after the collapse of the West’s number one enemy, the Soviet Union. With the Soviet Union gone, the West needed a figure of antithesis, and the Nazis filled that role—as the most awful, insidious, diabolical example imaginable.

At the same time, in the 1990s, genocides were occurring within Europe—most notably in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the collapse of the Soviet system in the East—which showed how close such horrors could be. And so there emerged an almost edifice of Holocaust memorialization that became very significant. It became, as you say, sacralized. One could not touch it. If you wanted to talk about other genocides, you had to do so by asking whether they fit within the frame of this sacralized genocide.

This shaped interesting directions of travel: one could point to Rwanda and say, yes, here is another genocide we should also recognize and memorialize. But Armenia in 1915, for instance, was always politically fraught, for reasons tied to structural relationships between states, and so it never fully entered the pantheon of what was considered “in” or “out.”

So, to return to your question, the simple answer is yes: Holocaust memorialization became central to a self-referential notion of the West as the “good guys.” The Holocaust carried a significant emotional weight within that way of thinking.

I think what’s striking about the present—and I say this as someone who is Jewish—is that I do not wish Holocaust memorialization ill; on the contrary, I wish it well. It offered us an opportunity, potentially, to recognize that the world has witnessed many genocides. But I believe it is now in danger of being smashed to smithereens by what is happening in Gaza.

There is another aspect here. We are very focused on Gaza, yet Holocaust memorialization in this country—in Britain, for example—still issues statements as if Gaza were not happening. It continues to speak only about what befell the Jews in the 1940s, which of course it should do, but it seems unable to draw any reference to what is unfolding today. That inability is deeply troubling. It creates an obstacle to connecting past genocide to contemporary atrocities.

What is revealing about Holocaust memorialization is that it deals with something fixed in the past. You can point to it and say: this was terrible. But what is terrible now is not being addressed. From a Jewish communal perspective, and from the broader framework of Holocaust memorialization, this represents another catastrophe—a consequence of the many consequences flowing from the genocide in Gaza.

We Have to Speak Truth to Power

Israelis walk next an Israeli election billboard of Likud Party showing US President Donald Trump shaking hands with Likud chairman and Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Beth Shemesh, Israel on September 8, 2019. Photo: Gil Cohen Magen.

Finally, across your scholarship you stress the moral responsibility of genocide scholars not only to analyze but also to warn. In the face of Gaza, what role should genocide scholars play: cautious analysts, public intellectuals, or active witnesses?

Dr. Mark Levene: Again, that’s a very big question, because it involves a whole spectrum of human beings who are “genocide scholars.” And I can’t speak for them. Some see themselves as public intellectuals, while others see our role as being able to have an impact on situations like this through our analysis and what we say. I’d also note, of course, that within the genocide and Holocaust arenas of scholarship there is a lot of unease and fractiousness now about how we view what is happening in Gaza. Not everybody is on the same page, and I think one should acknowledge that there is a multiplicity of viewpoints.

I can only speak for myself here. My background is not only as a genocide scholar but also as a peace activist. I spent my formative years, my late 20s and early 30s, as a peace activist in a Europe which, as we saw it, was on the verge of nuclear annihilation. So, my own position, for what it’s worth, is about speaking truth to power. And the sadness of that, from a personal point of view, is that power is not very interested in listening.

In the end, one has to resort to action, as I did last week. I felt impelled to join Palestine Action, a group in Britain challenging the relationship of the British government to the genocide in Gaza—through what it allows to happen on its soil, or through its engagement in selling components for F-35 planes that have been used to bomb Gaza. Palestine Action has been challenging, non-violently, the British state’s role in this process, as well as companies on British soil, including one just down the road from where I live in the Welsh borders: Elbit Systems, a major Israeli defense manufacturer with an embedded role in the British defense industry.

I felt impelled to support Palestine Action, even though it has been proscribed as a terrorist organization. Ultimately, I can only do what other human beings can do: put my feet non-violently on the ground—and in this case, be arrested under Section 12 or 13 of the Terrorism Act in Britain—for saying no to genocide. I was arrested simply for sitting in Parliament Square in London with a poster saying, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” And for that, I am now, apparently, a supporter of terrorism.

We have reached a point where what should be blindingly obvious—that my government, and all governments, should be doing something to stop this—seems to be beyond their capacity. So, I don’t exaggerate my role as a genocide scholar. Most of the time, we are not listened to in high political or elite circles. So, there is a limit. We have to be aware of those limitations. But we still have to speak truth to power.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan watching the August 30 Victory Day Parade in Ankara, Turkey on August 30, 2014. Photo by Mustafa Kirazli.

Professor Barkey: Turkey Has Become a Full-Blown Authoritarian System

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In an interview with the ECPS, Professor Henri Barkey—born in Turkey and one of the leading US experts on Middle East politics—warns that Turkey has crossed a decisive threshold under President Erdogan. “Turkey has now become a full-blown authoritarian system,” he stated, arguing that Erdogan has removed the “competitive” element from competitive authoritarianism by subordinating the judiciary, jailing rivals, and even deciding opposition party leadership. While repression deepens, Professor Barkey sees a paradox: “The system is becoming more authoritarian, but society may be resisting much more than we realize.” He highlights youth-led mobilization, fears over arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu’s popularity, and Europe’s limited leverage, concluding that Erdogan’s overreach may ultimately galvanize opposition forces.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In a wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Henri Barkey, a leading scholar of Middle East politics who was born in Turkey, delivered a stark assessment of the country’s current trajectory under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Turkey has now become a full-blown authoritarian system,” Professor Barkey stated, emphasizing that the transition from “competitive authoritarianism” to outright authoritarian rule marks a dangerous turning point.

Professor Barkey—Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and holder of the Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Chair in International Relations at Lehigh University—has long studied Turkey’s political development. He previously directed the Middle East Center at the Wilson Center and served on the US State Department Policy Planning Staff during the Clinton administration.

Professor Barkey situated Erdogan’s consolidation of power within a broader historical and political context. Turkey’s modern history, he observed, has been marked by cycles of democratic openings and authoritarian retrenchment. Yet, despite repeated interruptions—from military coups to autocratic turns—“the Turkish public, by and large, has adapted and adopted a sense of democratic culture.” The resilience of ordinary citizens, he noted, remains a crucial counterweight to authoritarian encroachment.

At the heart of Professor Barkey’s argument is Erdogan’s dismantling of institutional safeguards. “He is turning Turkey into a complete authoritarian system because he controls the judiciary, and judges and prosecutors essentially do whatever he wants them to do,” Professor Barkey explained. Recent episodes—politically motivated trials, the dismissal of opposition leaders, and the manipulation of party leadership contests—demonstrate, in his view, the collapse of even the minimal competition that previously characterized Turkey’s hybrid regime. “In other words, Erdogan is now deciding who will lead the main opposition party.”

This tightening grip, however, is not without risk. Professor Barkey underscored a paradox: “There’s a kind of dialectic here: the system is becoming more authoritarian, but society may be resisting much more than we realize.” Millions of citizens, particularly the younger generations who have never known a Turkey without Erdogan, have mobilized in protests, demanding change. Professor Barkey noted that such resistance is difficult to gauge because “people are afraid to speak out” and reporting is restricted, but he insisted that “at some point, this is going to break.”

Erdogan’s own fear of rivals, especially Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, reflects this tension. Professor Barkey argued that the regime’s extraordinary measures to sideline Imamoglu—ranging from imprisonment to retroactive annulment of his university degree—offer “the clearest demonstration that he’s terrified.”

Professor Barkey also highlighted the role of external actors in shaping Erdogan’s room for maneuver. In his view, former US President Donald Trump “doesn’t believe in democracy” and effectively gave Erdogan “carte blanche” at home by refusing to criticize his repression. Europe, for its part, remains uneasy with Erdogan’s authoritarian aims and worried about migration pressures, but Professor Barkey noted that Erdogan feels confident he can “withstand European pressure” while focusing on demolishing the opposition. Ultimately, the combination of a permissive US stance under Trump and Europe’s limited leverage has reinforced Erdogan’s sense of impunity.

Ultimately, Professor Barkey’s analysis suggests both danger and opportunity: the danger of entrenched authoritarianism, but also the possibility that Erdogan’s overreach may galvanize opposition forces. As he concluded, “Authoritarian leaders always make mistakes… and I think Erdogan is already making them.”

Professor Henri Barkey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and holder of the Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Chair in International Relations at Lehigh University.

Here is the transcript of our interview with Professor Henri Barkey, lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Erdogan Realizes He’s Weak: People Are Fed Up and Want Change

Professor Henri Barkey, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Turkish President Erdogan has long relied on a blend of populist narratives and authoritarian tactics to consolidate power. Given the backlash over Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu’s imprisonment, the use of lawfare through corruption investigations, the appointment of trustees to CHP-led administrations, and the wave of nationwide anti-government protests, do you believe this strategy is now undermining rather than sustaining his authority? Could this moment mark a potential inflection point for his populist-authoritarian model?

Professor Henri Barkey: It’s interesting you say that, because I actually had a piece published in Foreign Affairs Online where I basically argued very strongly that Erdogan had made a terrible mistake by imprisoning the mayor of Istanbul, and I thought this was the end of Erdogan. Imamoglu is still in jail, and Erdogan is still the president, and he has gone ahead and imprisoned a lot more people—journalists and other members of the opposition party—and he is also trying to get rid of the leadership of the opposition party. 

But to me, all of these are indicators that he realizes, after 23 years in power, that people don’t want him anymore. He has actually lost public support, and he has to resort to these incredible machinations to stay in power. In other words, he realizes that if there were elections any time now, he would not be re-elected, and his party would lose. In fact, in the last municipal elections in 2024, the main opposition party came in comfortably—comfortably for Turkey—as number one, and his party came in second.

What is going on today in Turkey is that Erdogan realizes he’s weak. He has support—it’s not that he doesn’t have support—but of course, he has the state machine, which he can always mobilize to get anything he wants done. However, for him, it must be very difficult to accept that he, who used to be genuinely popular in Turkey and who won elections genuinely, is now losing support. People are fed up. People want change. And it’s natural. 

Imagine if you are 25, or maybe even 30 years old. All your conscious years have passed under one leader. People want change. So, it’s partially psychological, but partially also, of course, due to his responsibility for what’s going on in Turkey. The economy is not doing well. Inflation is high. He made terrible mistakes. And naturally, people want change.

The System Is Becoming More Authoritarian, but Society May Be Resisting

In your writings, you describe Erdogan’s evolution from a reformist leader promising EU-style democratization to a populist-authoritarian consolidating near-total power. How has this transformation shaped Turkey’s political trajectory and institutional resilience over the past two decades?

Professor Henri Barkey: Turkey—if you look at its modern history from World War II onwards—has experienced many different variations over the past 80 years. There have been democratic governments, military coups, and repeated interruptions in its political system. But what strikes me is that the Turkish public, by and large, has adapted and adopted a sense of democratic culture. Not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it exists. The Turkish public has a stake in elections and in the freedom to say what they want and to act as they wish.

Of course, there have been authoritarian periods—Turkey is going through one now—but you still see a certain resilience. The fact that 15 million people, after Istanbul Mayor Imamoglu was arrested, signed a petition to have him declared the candidate of the main opposition party is an incredible demonstration of people’s stake in the democratic system.

So, what’s happening is very interesting. On the one hand, underneath, there is this democratic culture. Again, I don’t want to exaggerate—it’s not perfect. But whose democratic system is perfect these days? Everything exists on a scale. What has happened in Turkey, however, is that Erdogan has essentially transformed the country into a, quote-unquote, “competitive authoritarian” system. Elections still take place, outcomes are largely determined, but there remains some element of competition. Certain offices may be won by the opposition, and the opposition can still win seats in Parliament, and so on.

But now he’s actually taking the competitive part out of competitive authoritarianism and eliminating it altogether. He is turning Turkey into a complete authoritarian system because he controls the judiciary, and judges and prosecutors essentially do whatever he wants them to do. We have seen people sent to jail for no reason whatsoever—simply because he doesn’t like them. Authorities have claimed that the main opposition party engaged in questionable practices in its primaries or conventions, and suddenly the justice system decides that leaders who were elected a few years ago should no longer hold their positions, and someone else should replace them. In other words, Erdogan is now deciding who will lead the main opposition party.

This is partly because he is clearly afraid of the current leadership, and especially of the mayor of Istanbul, who is in jail. Turkey has now become a full-blown authoritarian system, and I don’t think this is going to end well. By that, I mean authoritarian leaders always make mistakes, because there is never anyone around them to say, “Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, you shouldn’t do this; there may be consequences.” People always agree with them. So of course, mistakes are inevitable.

And I think Erdogan is already making mistakes. He has galvanized the opposition in a way that, if truly free elections were held today, he would be seriously doubted—he would not win. People can see that what he is doing is deeply unjust.

So there’s a kind of dialectic here: the system is becoming more authoritarian, but society may be resisting much more than we realize. It’s hard to see this resistance all the time because of restrictions—even on reporting. People are afraid to speak out. But at some point, this is going to break.

Imamoglu’s Jail Proves Erdogan’s Fear

Ekrem Imamoglu
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu addresses supporters during a protest under the banner “The Nation Stands by Their Will” outside the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality on December 15, 2022. Photo: Tolga Ildun

The mass protests following Imamoglu’s arrest have been driven largely by younger generations who have never known a Turkey without Erdogan. How significant is this demographic factor in shaping the country’s political future, and do you see parallels with youth-led anti-authoritarian movements elsewhere?

Professor Henri Barkey: As I alluded to earlier, if you are 30 years old, Erdogan became your Prime Minister when you were 7 or 8 years old. I’m picking age 30 as an example, but imagine: all your conscious years you’ve seen one leader. And the other thing, of course, is that in terms of the communication systems—television, radio, newspapers—they are completely dominated by Erdogan in Turkey. So, you wake up to Erdogan, you go to bed with Erdogan.

And I’m not saying there isn’t a youth that actually supports Erdogan—there is. But there is certainly a youth that says, “Look, we would like to see somebody else.” In 2023, during the national elections, the main opposition party presented as a presidential candidate Mr. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who was unimaginative, did not appeal to the youth, and gave them no reason to galvanize. Now, for the first time in a long time, you have a leader on the opposition side. People criticize him, and that’s fine—he’s not perfect—but he has managed to capture the youth’s imagination. You see a great deal of mobilization, and that’s why they put him in jail.

Erdogan has many different court cases against him to keep him in jail. And in which country do you see a political leader arrested like this? He didn’t commit murder, he hasn’t done anything dangerous. But he has been in jail since March 19th. It’s been almost six months now, and he’ll be in jail for a very long time, because they don’t let you out—as if you were an axe murderer about to kill people. Journalists and others stay in jail for one or two years, and then suddenly maybe they decide to let you go, find you innocent, but you’ve already spent two years in jail.

We’ve seen this, of course, in the cases of the Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtas or the civil society leader Osman Kavala—they’ve been in jail for no reason whatsoever. And in the case of the mayor of Istanbul, they even annulled his university degree 30 years after he got it. Imagine if somebody decided to find some technicality and say, “Oh, my university degree is invalid, and therefore everything else I’ve done since then is invalid.” You can’t do that. But they come up with excuses to prevent an opponent from running against Erdogan.

The fact that Erdogan goes to such lengths to stop Imamoglu from running tells you how afraid he is of him. To me, that’s the best proof, the clearest demonstration, that he’s terrified.

Imamoglu’s Jail Time Only Raised His Standing

A photo from the mass CHP rally in Istanbul on March 29, 2025, protesting the unlawful detention of Ekrem Imamoglu, organized by party leader Ozgur Ozel. The event brought AKP and opposition supporters face to face. Photo: Elif Aytar.

Imamoglu’s repeated electoral victories and rising popularity have made him Erdogan’s most formidable rival. By imprisoning him and pursuing politically motivated trials, has Erdogan inadvertently elevated Imamoglu into a symbol of democratic resistance, similar to Erdogan’s own trajectory after his imprisonment in the late 1990s?

Professor Henri Barkey: He is smart enough to have realized that he owes his popularity, at least in part, to the fact that, as mayor of Istanbul, he was kicked out of his job and spent a short time in prison. That actually enhanced his standing. Moreover, if you remember, not in 2024 but in the previous municipal elections, Imamoglu won with a small majority. Then the Erdogan government came up with an excuse, claiming irregularities in the elections, and ordered that they be held again. People saw through it. What happened? Imamoglu won by a much larger margin against the same candidate. Why? Because people were angered by Ankara’s political interference in their choices. Even those who did not vote for Imamoglu the first time decided to vote for him the second, just to punish Erdogan.

Anyone should have learned that lesson. He hasn’t. The alternative, of course, is that he knows the lesson, and this time he intends to prevent Imamoglu from running. He will find him guilty and keep him in jail so that he can go into the next elections unopposed. He is also trying to destroy the opposition party, aiming for it to nominate, or to be led by, the candidate who ran against him in 2023, because he knows he can outmaneuver him and thinks this is the way to secure another term.

So, I think that’s his intention. I believe he’s made up his mind. He knows he can’t beat Imamoglu, but he can beat the new CHP leadership. And unfortunately, we will see a lot more people going to jail.

Erdogan Wants to Take the Competitive Part Out of Politics

Opposition party deputies, members and the members of civil society organisations had to guard the ballots for days to prevent stealing by the people organized by Erdogan regime in Turkey. The photo was shared by opposition deputy Mahmut Tanal’s Twitter account @MTanal during the Turkish local elections on March 31, 2019.

We’ve seen Erdogan’s government dismiss elected CHP mayors, replace them with trustees, and initiate corruption investigations against opposition-led municipalities. To what extent does this strategy reflect a deliberate effort to transform Turkey into a de facto one-party state, and could it ultimately backfire by strengthening opposition solidarity?

Professor Henri Barkey: I think my previous answers essentially say yes, of course. But you’ve noticed he’s now doing something else. He’s putting pressure on individual mayors of localities and forcing them to change parties and join his party. I saw today—though I forget where—that a deputy mayor was resigning from the main opposition party and joining Erdogan’s party. You can imagine the kind of pressure they must be exerting enourmous force her to do that, because it doesn’t make sense, when CHP is running high, to switch parties. But we’ve seen a number of cases like that.

So he’s not going to completely eliminate the main opposition party; he’s going to completely weaken it. He will make it what it was, let’s say, five years ago, before the opposition’s rejuvenation—when it won a few municipalities and a number of seats in Parliament, but had no influence and couldn’t do anything.

What’s very interesting is that all these corruption investigations have been initiated against opposition parties, opposition mayors, and sub-mayors. Not a single AKP mayor—or municipality—has been similarly treated. Can you really tell me there’s no corruption on the AKP side? No, but they’re all part of the system. That’s what I’m saying.

What Erdogan wants is to take the competitive part out of Turkey’s politics, because in his mind it should no longer be competitive. So it’s going to be only authoritarian. He’s turning Turkey into an authoritarian state.

Erdogan Cannot Control the Exiled Opposition Abroad

With the judiciary, media, and much of the bureaucracy subordinated to the presidency, are there any institutional safeguards left to counterbalance Erdogan’s authority? To what extent has the post-2016 purge of alleged Gulen-affiliated judges, prosecutors, academics, media, and civil servants accelerated Turkey’s democratic backsliding and hollowed out state capacity?

Professor Henri Barkey: Today the judiciary is completely under Erdogan’s control. If a judge rules in a way that Erdogan does not appreciate, he gets kicked out and sent somewhere else. The same applies to prosecutors. And there must be an internal state security apparatus that keeps tabs on all of these people, so that whenever pressure is needed, it can be applied.

So what’s left? What is the source of opposition today? I think, to a large extent, it’s the online environment—whether internet newspapers, journalists, or individuals with blogs and podcasts. Whenever Erdogan feels pressured, he tries to throttle the internet, slow it down, or impose bans on opposition networks by preventing them from broadcasting online. And they don’t have any other outlet, since they are not allowed to appear on mainstream television.

But that’s very hard to sustain all the time. It looks bad, and it can actually increase opposition if overused. When you slow down the internet, you slow it down for everyone—including people who simply want to buy things online. So it’s not clear to me that this is a viable long-term strategy. It’s more temporary and occasional. He did it this week with X, or Twitter.

So the online space remains, essentially, the main source of opposition. And you also have in Turkey a large number of journalists, academics, and public figures who are actively opposing him. This is what I meant earlier: there is still an element of democratic culture.

Now, you mentioned the Gulen movement. I know people who were professors at Gulen-owned universities. They were perfectly good academics, with international reputations, publishing internationally. They were not necessarily Gulenists. If you get a job at a university, you get it through established structures and processes. Yet all these people lost their jobs and became unemployable. That was a major blow to Turkish civil society and to the country’s intellectual world.

The Gulen movement was defeated, yes. But parts of it should not have been touched—for example, the universities. And by the way, I don’t know exactly what happened during the coup. To me, the coup remains an enigma. Maybe Gulenists were involved, but I think there were other factors as well. I suspect Erdogan knew ahead of time that a coup was coming, and when it happened, he took advantage of it. In the process, many people were smeared without due process.

This is something Turkish society will one day have to come to terms with. Gulenists who were guilty, yes—but not everyone was necessarily a Gulenist. And many suffered a great deal.

Another source of opposition, by the way, may be Turks who have emigrated to Europe. Yes, there is a large pro-Erdogan community abroad that tries to organize support. But there are also many dissenters now living in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. They are a major source of opposition—and unlike in Turkey, Erdogan cannot control them, because he cannot throw them into jail.

You Can’t Have Democracy in Diyarbakir and Fascism in Istanbul

A Turkish man in Hyde Park, London, shows support for protesters in Istanbul following the eruption of nationwide demonstrations—Turkey’s largest anti-government unrest —challenging then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authority in June 2013. Photo credit: Ufuk Uyanik.

The PKK’s recent renunciation of armed struggle and ongoing talks involving Abdullah Ocalan and the DEM party suggest potential openings for renewed negotiations. How do you interpret Erdogan’s ambivalence toward these developments? Could a genuine Kurdish peace process pave the way for democratization, or is it more likely to be instrumentalized for political survival?

Professor Henri Barkey: To me, this is a very interesting situation because, with your question about democratization, how can you have… as a Kurdish leader once said, very correctly: you can’t have democracy in Diyarbakir and fascism in Istanbul. That is to say, what does it mean to democratize? Turkey needs to democratize. Turkey needs to deal with the Kurdish question. Turkey has to recognize that there are people who are not Turks, who have a different language, who would like to live as Turkish citizens but would also like to be able to express themselves in their own language or in any other fashion, and not have to go to jail for that.

The fact that the PKK has decided to renounce armed struggle is a good thing. They should have done it a long time ago, because the armed struggle wasn’t going anywhere. They had been completely defeated. They were just up in the northeast of Iraq, in the Qandil Mountains, stuck there with 158 Turkish bases in northern Iraq that completely dominate the area. One or two attacks a year is not what’s going to make the PKK the PKK. So the PKK was defeated, and they finally came to this realization. It’s good that they abandoned it. But I don’t think there is going to be a peace process. I don’t think this is going to go anywhere.

Because, first of all, Erdogan himself doesn’t believe in democracy. I mean, what did the opposition, the DEM party, say they want? They didn’t ask for anything specific. They would like, of course, prisoners to be released. They want to deal with what to do with the fighters who are abroad, in Iraq, who would like to be able to integrate into society. But basically, what the leadership has said so far is that they want democracy. They want to be able to participate. But this is not something Erdogan wants. Everything Erdogan is doing is, as I said, taking the “competitive” out of competitive authoritarianism and establishing a completely authoritarian state. So this is not going to work.

Now, it turns out that on the Kurdish side, the main leader who’s in jail—Ocalan—doesn’t happen to be a democrat either. So it’s a big question mark. He’s 80 years old now. He must be thinking about his legacy, and that’s why he’s trying to… but he also can’t make a deal that is going to be rejected by the democrats in Turkey. So he’s also stuck. I’m sure Erdogan’s idea was probably to convince the DEM party to vote for either a constitutional change, or more likely for early elections, that Erdogan would make sure he would win. That’s probably still his plan.

Bahceli’s Gamble on Kurdish Talks Faces Dead End

The one interesting question mark here is that, to a large extent, this whole process started with an initiative from Erdogan’s main right-wing coalition partner, the MHP, led by Devlet Bahceli, who used to be the most anti-Kurdish figure in Turkey. He said Ocalan should not be released, but should come to the Turkish Parliament and address Parliament. That was really an amazing statement by him, and he pushed the process.

I wonder if Mr. Bahçeli, who’s at the end of his life and has run the party without much to show for his years in power or as a party leader—what has he done, what has he accomplished?—maybe that was his way of creating an inheritance, if you will, for his followers: that he would bring domestic peace to Turkey. Well, if that’s his incentive, that’s fine. It doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you do it.

So the big problem Erdogan has is: to what extent is Mr. Bahceli committed to continuing the process? And Mr. Bahceli himself must realize that, the way things are going now, the DEM party is not going to be able to make a deal with Erdogan. There will be talks—we’re going to see a commission has been created, supposedly there will be conversations—but this is not going anywhere. And in the meantime, Erdogan is destroying CHP, and this puts the DEM party in a terrible situation.

Trump Gave Erdogan Carte Blanche

Nested dolls depicting authoritarian and populist leaders Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan displayed among souvenirs in Moscow on July 7, 2018. Photo: Shutterstock.

And lastly, Professor Barkey, given Washington’s strategic interests—from NATO cohesion to cooperation with Syrian Kurdish forces—how should the US and EU respond to Erdogan’s escalating repression of the opposition? Would stronger political and economic pressure risk reinforcing his anti-Western populist narrative, or is greater confrontation inevitable?

Professor Henri Barkey: Let’s be honest here. What Erdogan has done since March would not have happened if you had a different president of the United States. Here you have Trump, who is upset about Bolsonaro getting tried, and he imposes sanctions even on the judge who is judging him. And then he has not said a word about what’s going on in Turkey. Trump doesn’t believe in democracy. Trump is only interested in himself and his own interests. So, he’s decided that he likes Erdogan, and he can do business with Erdogan, and therefore, Erdogan can do whatever he wants. And that’s what Erdogan is doing.

Let’s say Biden or Kamala Harris had been at the White House today. Erdogan would not have done any of these things, because the US government would have really pushed very hard. Whether it was investments or any other type of help that the Turks would need, they would not get.

The Turkish economy is in terrible shape. Inflation is much higher than the official figures indicate, and it’s still at 30% for a modern economy. The Turkish economy may be in better shape structurally, but I think it is still fairly dynamic. You go to Europe, you see Turkish exports everywhere—and I’m not just talking about tomatoes and agricultural products. I’m talking about sophisticated products, industrial products, electronic products. The Turkish economy has a number of advantages that probably would do a lot better with improved economic management from Ankara. But it has still managed to perform not poorly, given the circumstances.

Biden, or a Democratic president, or even a Republican president who cares about this—I mean, George Bush would have been up in arms about it. Trump has given Erdogan essentially carte blanche. And this is why we have not seen any major Turkish incursions into northern Syria.

Now, it’s not that Trump is attached to the Syrian Kurds. He couldn’t care less about them. But Trump would like to take American troops out of Syria, while also realizing that ISIS is on the mend, ISIS is getting stronger, and he doesn’t want a major ISIS insurrection again like what happened back in 2014. So he’s probably still thinking about it and has decided to reduce the number of troops, but not pull them out. As a result, Erdogan hasn’t gone into Syria.

But the truth is, the Syrian Kurds do not threaten Turkey. It’s just something in some Turks’ minds, and it’s a way of galvanizing the population behind you. The Kurdish problem in Turkey is a long-standing one, and there are many people who still don’t trust the Kurds. And Syrian Kurds are Syrians—people forget that. The Turks complain that Syrian Kurds control a large chunk of territory. Yes, they do. They happen to be Syrian Kurds, by the way. Turkey itself controls an enormous chunk of Syrian territory in the northwest—as big as Lebanon. But that’s okay, Turkey can do that. So you have these anomalies.

Erdogan is careful, because with Trump you don’t know from one day to the next how he might turn on you. So Trump is letting him do everything he wants to do in Turkey, but doesn’t want him to go into Syria and mess things up there. Fine—Erdogan can live with that. So Erdogan is quite happy.

Erdogan Thinks He Can Withstand European Pressure

The Europeans are very unhappy with what’s happening in Turkey, because they realize what Erdogan’s aims are. And you’ve had a huge exodus of Turks who’ve gone to Europe, escaping the Erdogan regime. The immigration problem from the rest of the world through Turkey to Europe has always been Erdogan’s carte majeure. But whatever Europeans do or threaten, Erdogan is going to ignore, because he essentially thinks he has maybe 6 to 12 months in which he has to focus on defanging or demolishing the opposition party. Once he is done with that, he won’t do anything else. So he thinks he can withstand European pressure for this long.

The interesting thing about Trump is that there’s a way in which people are also afraid of him because of his unpredictability and his very tough talk. It doesn’t always mean anything—the Chinese have seen it, and the Russians know exactly how to react—but they’re big powers. Everybody else is afraid. I’ll give you an example. It’s a minor one, but the day before yesterday, the Iraqi Shia militia released an American researcher, Elizabeth Tsurkov, whom they had been holding for two years. They kidnapped her. And I think the only reason they released her—and this is why Trump’s craziness pays off—is that he probably threatened the Iraqi government and said, “You don’t get this person out…” And the Iraqi government said, well, they are the Shia militias, we don’t have control over them. And he probably said, “I know you have control over them, I know you can do it, do it now.” Biden and the Kamala Harris government have not tried very hard to get her out.

So Trump’s unpredictability is why Erdogan has to be careful. As long as Trump gives him, as I said, carte blanche at home, Erdogan is very happy, and he can get away with it. What’s more important to him? Winning the election, staying in power for another term. That’s all he cares about.

So the answer to your question is that not much is going to happen. The Europeans are not going to be very successful. Now, if Turkey were to go through a major economic crisis again, with major demonstrations and instability, that could be different. But given how the whole region is at the moment, I don’t think that’s in the cards right now. The Europeans are going to continue doing some business, they’ll put some constraints on Turkish economic exchanges, but there’s only so much they can do. They can criticize the Turks, but the Turks don’t care. Or I should say, the Turkish government doesn’t care. Erdogan has essentially won.

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy

Dr. Bjånesøy: FrP Turns Economic Frustration in Norway into Populist Momentum

by Editor’s ChoiceHomeInterviews

In Norway’s September 8, 2025, general election, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre’s Labour Party narrowly held on to power — but the real story was the historic surge of the populist Progress Party (FrP), which doubled its vote share to 24% and became the country’s second-largest party. In an interview with ECPS, Dr. Lise Bjånesøy (University of Bergen) explains how FrP converted economic grievances into populist momentum, capitalizing on anger over wealth taxes, cost-of-living pressures, and distrust of “wasteful elites.” FrP also mobilized younger men through social media, a trend Dr. Bjånesøy calls a key driver of Norway’s new political divides.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In the wake of Norway’s September 8, 2025, general election, the country’s political landscape has been reshaped by growing polarization and the unexpected strength of the populist radical right. While Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre’s Labour Party narrowly secured another four years in power with 87 out of 169 seats, the populist right-wing Progress Party (FrP) achieved a historic breakthrough, doubling its vote share to 24% and becoming the second-largest party. This surge signals deep currents of economic dissatisfaction and changing voter dynamics, especially among younger men.

In an exclusive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Lise Bjånesøy, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Government, University of Bergen, offers insights into how FrP transformed economic frustration into populist momentum. “Economic issues, such as wealth tax and the cost of living, have been central in this election,” explains Dr. Bjånesøy. “FrP has strongly profiled itself against wasting taxpayers’ money, attracting voters dissatisfied with Labour and consolidating support among those frustrated with rising living costs.”

FrP’s success, however, goes beyond economics. Dr. Bjånesøy highlights the party’s strategic mobilization of young voters, particularly young men, driven largely by social media dynamics. “For young men who get their news from social media, there’s a 28% likelihood of voting FrP, compared to just 14% among those who don’t. Social media plays an important role in mobilizing this demographic.”

Despite this populist surge, Norway remains a centre-left outlier in the Nordic region, diverging from Sweden and Finland, where right-wing governments dominate. Dr. Bjånesøy attributes this partly to narrow electoral thresholds and coalition dynamics, as well as Labor’s recovery under Jens Stoltenberg’s return as finance minister, dubbed the “Stoltenback effect,” which boosted Labor’s popularity by 10 percentage points.

Still, she warns against underestimating FrP’s growing influence: “FrP has benefited from reduced stigma around supporting the party and has mobilized nearly all the voters who don’t dislike them. But their ability to expand further will depend on how effectively Labour manages governing alongside four smaller left-wing parties.”

Looking ahead, Dr. Bjånesøy underscores the urgent need for research on social media’s political impact, calling it a “key driver of generational divides” and shifting populist dynamics.

This interview unpacks the interplay between economic grievances, political polarization, and digital mobilization in shaping Norway’s electoral landscape — and what it reveals about the future of populism in Europe.

Here is the transcript of our interview with Dr. Lise Bjånesøy, lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Economic Grievances Fuel FrP’s Surge

Two elderly men sit on the street in front of a café in Oslo, Norway, asking for alms on August 1, 2013. This image symbolizes the indifference of society and the state toward poverty. Photo: Medvedeva Oxana.

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy, thank you so much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: The general elections on Monday (September 8, 2025) saw Labour narrowly retain power while the populist radical right Progress Party (FrP) nearly doubled its vote share to 24%. From your research, what explains FrP’s electoral surge despite being historically the most disliked party in Norway?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: It’s a very good question. I think there are quite a few reasons why the Progress Party (FrP) has been doing so well in this election. First of all, it has been the loudest opposition party to the current government, which helps them attract voters dissatisfied with the Labour government as well as generally discontented voters.

Second, economic issues have been a very important part of this election. It’s been a big, salient topic, and the FrP has benefited from that focus. Another significant factor is that they have gained many voters from the Conservative Party. In fact, a lot of people who previously voted Conservative now support the Progress Party. At least that’s what we’ve seen in earlier data. We’ll have to wait, of course, for the post-election data collection, but when we conducted a large survey in June, we found that 50% of those who said they intended to vote for the Progress Party had previously supported the Conservatives.

Another reason is that they attract more young voters, particularly young men, and social media seems to play an important mobilizing role for this group.

Regarding the Progress Party’s reputation as a very disliked party — which it still is within the Norwegian political system — I think this suggests they may now have mobilized almost all the voters they can. In other words, they’ve consolidated support among those who don’t dislike them, but they remain a highly unpopular party overall.

Media analyses describe the rise of FrP as part of the “MAGA-fication” of Norwegian politics, particularly among young male voters. To what extent does FrP’s messaging reflect a broader Americanization of populist rhetoric, and how much is it rooted in domestic Norwegian grievances?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: That’s a good question. First of all, I think it’s very interesting how a Norwegian election campaign is perceived in other countries. I’ve not heard the word MAGA-fication in any Norwegian newspapers, and I don’t think we would use that term to describe what is going on in Norway. So, I don’t think we can take it that far as being a MAGA-fication. Although the FrP did very well in this election — historically well, indeed — and they are attracting young men in particular, I still don’t think I would use the word MAGA-fication. I think, as you say, the success of the Progress Party in this election can be explained by domestic Norwegian grievances rather than any Americanization of populist rhetoric.

There has been one incident that perhaps comes a little close to the Americanization of populist rhetoric, and that was just a few days before the election, or very close to election night. There was a televised political debate where the leader of the Progress Party, Sylvi Listhaug, blamed the leader of the AUF, the youth wing of the Labour Party, for being a notorious liar, and she repeated over and over again that he is a liar, ‘you’re lying’. This was based on a relatively normal political statement, and yet she labelled him a liar. The Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, who was also part of that debate, responded by saying, essentially, “Okay, so you want to become Prime Minister, but you can’t talk like this.” That, he implied, would represent a new turn for Norway.

So, I think that might be one of those rare events that could be described as an Americanization of populist rhetoric. But other than that, we haven’t really seen this pattern; it hasn’t been a major part of the election campaign, at least in my view.

Norwegian farmers protest government agricultural policies outside parliament in Oslo. Banner targets former Agriculture Minister Sylvi Listhaug. Photo: Dreamstime.

FrP Capitalizes on Economic Anger While Labour Leans on Stoltenberg Boost

The campaign was dominated by debates on the cost of living, wealth taxes, the oil fund’s investment in Israel, and relations with Donald Trump. How did FrP successfully own these issues and deploy populist frames contrasting “the people” with “corrupt elites” or “globalist priorities”?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: The economic issues you mentioned, such as wealth tax and cost of living, are very important political issues for the Progress Party. They attract voters who are against the wealth tax, for instance. The high salience of this issue can probably help explain some of the gains and some of the success of the Progress Party in this election. Another example is that they have strongly profiled themselves as being against wasting taxpayers’ money. On the cost of living, they argue that the current government spends far too much of the taxpayers’ money and simply wastes it away. These have been two key issues for the Progress Party and their voters.

However, issues such as foreign policy and relations with Donald Trump are among the reasons why Labour did so well in this election. It never became quite clear during the campaign whether Listhaug would be a candidate for Prime Minister. She never explicitly said she wanted to be, but she repeated that it was natural for the party with the highest share of votes to take the Prime Minister position. So, it was never a clear yes or no. This created debate about whether she would do a good job as a potential Prime Minister, especially when it came to foreign policy and representing Norwegian interests in relation to Donald Trump, for example. So, I think some of these issues were very good for the Progress Party, but issues like foreign policy worked in favour of Labour and the current government.

Labour’s rebound has been attributed in part to the “Stoltenback effect,” boosting Labour’s popularity by 10 percentage points following Jens Stoltenberg’s return as finance minister. Do you see this as evidence of leadership personalization countering populist momentum, or does it simply mask deeper structural shifts favouring PRR parties?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: There are several reasons that can explain this boosted popularity of the Labour Party. One of the reasons is the one you mentioned — the Stoltenback effect — as we got Jan Stoltenberg back as finance minister. But it’s also important to mention that it was the current Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, who brought Stoltenberg back. So, it was also a boost in popularity for him, showing good leadership skills by bringing Stoltenberg back.

Another important issue is that the agrarian Centre Party, which had previously been in a coalition with the Labour Party, left the government coalition. So now, the Labour Party holds government power alone. It was a minority government, and I think that was very good for Labour.

A third explanation is foreign policy and Trump, as we just talked about. We want competent and highly experienced politicians to navigate this sort of uncertain political world that we are living in.

Finally, I think it’s quite exceptional how the Labour Party — and the current government — was so unpopular for a long time because the economy was performing poorly, yet they still managed to retain power. It makes this quite an exceptional election. A fourth contributing factor is that while the economy had been doing really badly, it is now performing much better. So, they have managed to turn the economy around to a better situation for people.

Norway Balances Populist Surge with Centre-Left Resilience

Despite FrP’s strong gains, Norway remains a centre-left outlier compared to Sweden and Finland. Based on your work on political tolerance, why has Norway diverged from this broader Nordic trend, and what factors have enabled it to resist a full populist breakthrough despite growing polarization?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: It’s important to emphasize that the results of this current election would have looked different if the Green Party, which is part of the left-wing bloc, had not passed the electoral threshold, and if the Liberal Party, which is part of the right-wing bloc, had passed it. In that case, this election could still have been a win for the right-wing bloc. But it ultimately ended up being a win for the left-wing bloc.

One key reason for this outcome is that the Green Party, for the first time, passed the electoral threshold and received what’s called utjevningsmandat — additional seats in the Storting (Norwegian parliament). However, it’s also important to emphasize that the Labour Party, which is now most likely continuing as a minority government, will have to navigate the next four years with four smaller parties. This could prove very challenging and, in fact, represents something of a dream opportunity for the Progress Party, which will likely benefit from Labour having to cooperate with these four much smaller left-wing parties.

Considering how well the Progress Party performed in this election, I don’t think Norway is an outlier, because we see two dynamics unfolding simultaneously. On one hand, there is a clear right-wing wave and a significant boost for the Progress Party; on the other, there is continued support for the current government. These trends coexist, but in the end, the results largely come down to the margins of which parties managed to pass — or failed to pass — the electoral threshold.

In your dissertation, you argue that FrP is both politically tolerated and highly negatively evaluated. How do you reconcile this paradox, particularly in the light of FrP’s breakthrough in the 2025 election?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: I think real tolerance is to allow democratic rights and privileges to those you dislike or disagree with. In that sense, it’s perhaps not a paradox; the Progress Party is still disliked, but we still see high tolerance of the party. However, based on these high levels of dislike for the FrP, the Progress Party might have reached its electoral high at this point. Maybe there are no more voters to mobilize. That said, this can change in the next election. We have seen that the levels of dislike for the Progress Party fluctuate. If I remember correctly, the highest levels were above 60%, and now about 55% of voters dislike the party. So, slightly fewer voters now dislike the party than before. A few more also tend to like it, but this can change.

Still, because of these very high levels of dislike towards the Progress Party, it can be hard for them to mobilize even more voters than they already have. Another important point when discussing the dislike of the Progress Party is that they have to collaborate. If the right-wing bloc had won the election, they would have had to work with parties whose voters dislike them. For the Liberal Party, for instance, many of its voters dislike the Progress Party, which makes collaboration difficult, or at least quite challenging, for a potential governing bloc. For some voters, it would be hard to accept cooperation with the Progress Party. Especially if we go back to the example where Listhaug called the youth wing leader of the Labour Party a liar, a notorious liar — that kind of rhetoric is very difficult for the Liberal Party to accept.

Less Stigma, Digital Mobilization, and a Generational Shift

Norwegian Progress Party (FrP) campaign booth. Photo: Dreamstime.

Your findings show that party institutionalization influences public tolerance of the populist radical right. Given FrP’s long-standing presence in Norway’s political system, does this institutional legitimacy insulate it from the broader backlash against far-right parties elsewhere in Europe?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: This might actually be another reason why the Progress Party did very well in this election. There has been less stigma connected towards voting FrP in this election compared to elections before. It seems like it’s more acceptable to say that you are a Progress Party voter than it has been before. This is not based on data — this is just my hunch — and we haven’t seen this in the data yet, but my hunch says that there is actually less stigma directed towards being a Progress Party voter than there has been before.

One reason might be that the party has moderated itself, particularly after the past government experience. The government experience that they have had might also contribute to less stigma towards them. However, voters still didn’t want Sylvi Listhaug as Prime Minister. That was part of the political debate in this election — whether she was going to be a Prime Minister or not — and most voters didn’t want her as Prime Minister.

So, I don’t think that any political parties are immune to backlash. But I think that the Progress Party benefits a lot from the current political situation, when the Støre government will have to cooperate with these four smaller parties on the left. I think the next election in four years will be extremely exciting. It will be very interesting to see how well the Progress Party does then. Maybe they will get an even better boost of votes — we’ll have to see.

With FrP performing especially well among younger male voters, do you see signs of a generational realignment in Norwegian politics, or is this a temporary reaction to specific economic and identity-based issues?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: In this election, we have seen that young men turn to FrP, while young women turn to the left. That’s a sign of increased polarization among young people — men go one way, and young women go the other. One of the things we’ve seen in our data — we’ve analysed data from the Norwegian Citizen Panel, where we have around 10,000 participants — is that we can look in more detail at how young men and young women vote.

What we’ve found using those data is that both young women and young men actually have an increased likelihood of voting for the Progress Party if they get their news from social media. For young men, there is a 28% likelihood of voting FrP if they get their news from social media. And if you are a young man who does not get your news from social media, there’s only a 14% chance that you will vote for the Progress Party. It’s a huge boost in the likelihood of voting FrP if you are a young man and get your news from social media.

We find the same pattern among young women as well, but it’s a much weaker relationship, so it’s particularly strong among young men. We also find that young men who get their news from social media tend to place themselves further to the right, and they are more dissatisfied with the economy. So, in that case, we can say they’re not being “tricked” into voting for the Progress Party — they genuinely agree with them.

Of course, it might be that those who place themselves further to the right and want to vote for the Progress Party are also those who tend to get their news from social media. But still, I think there’s something going on with social media that is an important explanation for what’s happening among young men.

I also don’t think this is just a temporary shift. But I think we need to learn more about what’s going on, particularly in this case, and also study more closely what’s happening on social media. We’ll just have to wait — we need a lot more research on this particular topic — but there are definitely some very interesting dynamics unfolding among the young.

Positive Views on Immigration Hold

In your 2019 article, you found that public attitudes toward asylum seekers shifted after the 2015 refugee crisis. Has the 2025 campaign, particularly debates on Gaza and Ukraine, triggered similar shifts in threat perceptions and migrant-related framing?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: Immigration issues were not a big part of this election campaign. So, in that case, there was no particular reason to expect any shift in public attitudes based on the campaign itself. But I think it’s interesting how we still remain quite positive towards immigration after receiving a large number of refugees from Ukraine, especially. This means that we did not see the same shift in public attitudes as we did during the 2015 refugee crisis when Norway also received a significant number of refugees.

Looking at trends and opinion data collected in the Norwegian Citizen Panel, we see that 51% of respondents think that immigration is an advantage, which is actually exactly the same level as in 2014. Back then, 51% also said that they viewed immigration positively. So, while the trend fluctuates somewhat over time, at this point, it stands at the same level as when we first started measuring it in 2014.

However, on some other questions we examine, more people today say that they think it should be more difficult to get asylum. We also see an increase in people who believe that the conditions for integrating refugees in Norway are bad, or at least not very good. So, there is some movement and some shifts in attitudes towards immigration and asylum seekers, but I haven’t seen anything specific related to this current election.

Social Media’s Role Needs Deeper Investigation

Illustration by Ulker Design.

Your research suggests media framing can normalize exclusionary populist narratives. To what extent did the Norwegian media in 2025 amplify FrP’s populist discourse, and does this signal a shift toward mainstreaming radical right rhetoric?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: That’s a whole research question in itself. Based on what I’ve seen, we had quite a fair election campaign, where the various political parties participated in debates and were given the same opportunities on the same media platforms to debate. But we have been very interested, both in research and in the media, in what’s going on with young men in this election. However, I haven’t seen the same level of interest in young women. So, we have some shifts in the media that affect our focus, I guess. Maybe I would like to see more attention paid to what’s going on with young women as well. 

FrP has gained a lot of media attention, particularly because they were doing very well in the polls, so it was natural to be interested in that, but also because they were performing strongly among young men. So, we’ve seen this increase in media attention, but I do think that, if anything, we should pay even more attention to what’s happening on social media. And that would be my hunch, based on your question.

And lastly, looking ahead, what research agenda do you see as most urgent for understanding the evolving relationship between populist radical right parties, public opinion, and democratic resilience in Norway and across Europe?

Dr. Lise Bjånesøy: I’ve probably also given away what I think is one of the most important areas to focus on now. One of the key research agendas going forward is to learn more about what is happening on social media — how we are affected by it, or not affected by it, and how our experiences on these platforms differ. The algorithms give us more of the content that we already like, and we need to understand what effects this has on political participation, both in Norway and across Europe. I believe this is a very important research agenda, as we currently know too little about the effects of social media on politics.