❧ [CONTENT WARNING: Violence, Racism] Over the past week, far-right lynch mobs have been attacking migrants and racial minorities across the United Kingdom. Earlier in the week, an assailant stabbed three young girls to death and injured several more children at a dance class in Southport, England. In the immediate aftermath of the heinous attack, right-wing social media influencers falsely claimed that the attacker was a foreign migrant. And by the time the true assailant, a man born in the United Kingdom, was identified, violent riots had already begun outside a Southport mosque.
The riots have since ballooned across Britain and Northern Ireland, leading to at least 400 arrests. New reports continue to flow in of blatantly racist and Islamophobic attacks that feel like something out of a previous century. One video from Manchester shows a large group of young white men—some wearing masks and another carrying the English flag—surrounding a lone black man, knocking him to the ground, beating and kicking him. Another video from Hull shows a gang dragging an Asian man out of a car and shouting the racial slur “paki” at him while smashing up his vehicle. Another video out of Liverpool shows a vendor offering free Qurans being beaten with rods and having his stand destroyed. And in Rotherham, hundreds of rioters gathered outside a Holiday Inn that housed asylum seekers, chanting “get them out!” as they lit the building on fire, broke windows, and pelted the building with bricks and bottles.
Even as immigrants have faced violent attacks, prominent figures on the far right have continued to stoke xenophobic fears of them. Tommy Robinson, an infamous figure who once led the anti-immigrant street gang the English Defence League, has become a sort of unofficial figurehead for the rioters. As his followers have unleashed violence on defenseless people, he has been encouraging them in their “civil war” from the safety of a luxury hotel in Cyprus, where he is currently hiding from charges after libeling a 15-year-old refugee boy. Robinson has continued to make Islamophobic posts, including that “innocent English people [are] being hunted down” by Muslims and that “our women are not halal meat.” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who got the ball rolling on blaming migrants for the Southport attack, has tried to argue that the racist rioters have some legitimate grievances, blaming the “fracturing of our communities as a result of mass, uncontrolled immigration, whether legal or illegal.”
We have seen how far-right rhetoric has led to attacks on immigrants before. Mass shooters like the one in Christchurch, New Zealand and El Paso, Texas, among others, have echoed “Great Replacement” rhetoric from political leaders that they used to justify attacks on their non-white victims. But for violence like this to emerge on such a broad scale suggests a deeper illness at the heart of British society. As Oxford political scientist Vicente Valentim writes, anti-immigrant sentiment, once confined to the fringes, has been normalized within mainstream U.K. politics, particularly during the most recent election:
It is often a pattern that, as the far-right parties grow, other parties (both left and right) move closer to their position – as Werner Krause and Tarik Abou Chadi have shown. The July election in the UK was a textbook example of this pattern. The Conservative Party veered to the right, making migration one of its key topics and focusing on prototypical far-right policies and rhetoric – like the “Stop the boats” slogan or the infamous Rwanda plan. Even the center-left party Labour campaigned on migration reductions.
That the political mainstream moved closer to the position of the far-right is a crucial point when it comes to normalization. These parties are larger and perceived as more legitimate and, as such, their rhetoric can be very important in shifting perceptions of what is acceptable…In a context such as this, it is plausible to think that far-right individuals will have felt emboldened to act on their views. Indeed, one of the findings in my book is that, in the aftermath of elections where far-right views are more normalized, more xenophobic protests take place. It is plausible to think that the same extends to the riots and violence witnessed over the last week.
PAST AFFAIRS
In June, after President Joe Biden halted the right to claim asylum at the U.S. border, Stephen Prager wrote that the move “normalizes right-wing immigration policy, giving the Right permission to get even more draconian.”
Two female boxers in the Olympics— Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan—have been met with widespread harassment after they were wrongly accused of being transgender, including by the Boston Globe. Even though the two competitors were born female and there are no transgender women competing in the Olympics this year, right-wing influencers have been telling their followers that a “man” was allowed to compete in women’s sports. (Erin in the Morning)
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For the record, there's nothing wrong with transgender women competing in women’s sports. As Nathan J. Robinson argued back in 2021, “The Arguments Against Trans Athletes Are Bigoted and Irrational.”
The risks of war between Israel and Iran have never been higher. After Israel assassinated a lead Hamas negotiator in Tehran and a Hezbollah military chief in Beirut last week, Iran has vowed to retaliate, but it remains to be seen how sweeping the response will be. In the meantime, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu held a meeting with his security chiefs to discuss waging a pre-emptive attack on Iran. (Times of Israel)
Meanwhile, atrocities in Gaza continue. On Sunday, Israeli airstrikes hit two schools and a hospital complex, killing at least 30 people including children. Gaza is also being ravaged by outbreaks of Hepatitis A and polio as its health infrastructure lies in total disrepair. (The Guardian)
The United Arab Emirates, a United States ally, is helping to fund the RSF militias that have been committing genocidal acts and blocking food aid in war-torn Sudan, where more than 2.5 million people are on the brink of starvation. As John Prendergast and Anthony Lake write for Foreign Affairs, “The UAE has been able to act with impunity, as its oil reserves, its strategic importance as a counterweight to Iran, and its role in diplomatic efforts to end the war in the Gaza Strip make Western leaders hesitant to lean too hard on Abu Dhabi.”
The United States imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country and now sanctions more than 60 percent of low-income nations. For the Washington Post, Jeff Stein and Federica Cocco write that “[sanctions] have become an almost reflexive weapon in perpetual economic warfare, and their overuse is recognized at the highest levels of government. But American presidents find the tool increasingly irresistible.”
The global stock market crashed on Monday, with the Dow Jones tumbling more than 1,000 points. The most recent U.S. jobs report saw a jump in unemployment to more than 4.3 percent, from record lows in April. Economists are now saying that the risk of a recession is dramatically higher. (New York Magazine)
We're not market gurus or anything, but we're pretty sure it's not supposed to do this.
After at least 91 people were killed during an anti-government uprising over the weekend, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has resigned and fled the country, ending her 15-year rule. The military is now scrambling to set up an interim government until new elections can be held, at some unspecified point in the future. (Al Jazeera)
The U.S. has declared opposition candidate Edmundo González the winner of Venezuela’s election, supporting his claims that president Nicolas Maduro’s victory was fraudulent. For its part, the opposition has provided its own slate of paper ballots to the Washington Post, which concluded that Maduro lost. Maduro has promised to release precinct level results, but claims that a cyberattack has prevented him from doing so.
As Greece has dealt with 100F degree heat waves, workers have continued to labor in dangerous conditions. One of the country’s unions has asked the Ministry of Labor for new requirements, including drinking water for employees, mandatory breaks, and stoppages during the hottest parts of the day and during heat waves. (Jacobin)
Unionized copper miners at Chile’s Escondida mine—the largest in the world—have rejected a proposed contract, and are set to strike if a five-day government mediation process doesn’t resolve the dispute. (Mining.com)
THE REVIEWS ARE IN!
Publisher’s Weekly has just reviewed The Myth of American Idealism, co-written by Noam Chomsky and Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson, and the word is good:
“Safeguarding democracy, the long-standing stated aim of American foreign policy, is actually cover for America’s desire to control other countries’ resources, according to this blistering polemic… This offers rich food for thought.”
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “what's going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
❧ Even as global temperature records continue to be broken each month, nearly a quarter of the U.S. Congress still denies the existence of climate change, according to a new study by the Center for American Progress. The study found that 123 members—100 in the House and 23 in the Senate—either dismiss or downplay the existence of man-made climate change, even as virtually everyone who studies the topic (and even fossil fuel executives themselves) agrees it is happening. But while this reality stares them in the face, congresspeople are being paid to look the other way. Using data from OpenSecrets, the CAP found that over their careers, the 123 climate deniers in Congress—all of whom are Republicans—have received more than $52 million in direct contributions from the fossil fuel industry, which has sought to obstruct climate legislation for decades.
The climate crisis is becoming more urgent each year. This past summer, we have seen four of the hottest days in recorded human history. And last year, the U.S. experienced a weather event that cost more than a billion dollars every three weeks on average. Global temperatures have, for the first time, exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, which many scientists consider a point of no return for avoiding the worst impacts. We’ve seen the consequences of this around the world. In late July, as the globe saw record temperatures, Sarah Kaplan writes for the Washington Post…
If there is any good news to glean from the CAP report, it’s that the number of climate change deniers in Congress has steadily decreased as the severity of the problem has grown increasingly undeniable: In the 116th Congress, 150 members denied the existence of climate change, compared with just 123 in the 118th. But rather than admit they were wrong, many of those who seek to obstruct climate policy to merely adopt subtler rhetorical tactics. Rather than outright calling climate science a hoax, deniers have taken to calling scientists “alarmists” who are exaggerating the severity of the problem, redirecting responsibility to other nations or individuals, and claiming that in order to fight the climate crisis, we’ll have to give up everything that makes life enjoyable. (No more hamburgers!)
As Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” That is the case here. Climate denial is not so widespread amongst our leaders because the ideas are correct, or even because the propaganda is particularly sophisticated. (It’s often utterly clownish.) The deniers aren’t even in line with the American public, which is much more likely to accept the scientific consensus on climate change than members of Congress. The biggest problem is that the U.S. has essentially legalized bribery, which allows malignant industries like Big Oil to pay legislators to do their bidding.
In other news…
Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. The Associated Press reports that Walz emerged as the clear favorite after an intensive vetting process, conducted by a “team of lawyers and political operatives led by former attorney general Eric Holder,” along with an interview with Harris herself.
Already, Republicans are freaking out, with failed GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis blasting the Harris/Walz team as the “most left-wing ticket in U.S. history.” He might actually be right about that, if only because pastDemocraticcandidates have been so right-wing. Walz was definitely the most progressive choice on the Harris shortlist, having said in the past that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness,” passed free school meals for all Minnesota children, been uniquely good on trans rights, showed up at a lot of labor picket lines, and earned the support of Senator Bernie Sanders. Of course, Vice Presidents don’t typically make policy (unless their name is Cheney), but they can reveal the direction a campaign intends to go. Picking Walz is an encouraging sign from Harris—especially in contrast to her disappointing abandonment of Medicare for All and other left-wing policies last week.
(Meanwhile, Politico has compiled 55 fun Tim Walz facts, including #9: He speaks Mandarin Chinese thanks to a year spent teaching in China, and #48: He signed a bill restoring voting rights to 55,000 former prisoners this March.)
In a truly bizarre revelation, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has admitted he dumped a dead bear cub and an old bicycle in New York’s Central Park in 2014 (although, according to him, he didn’t actually kill the bear.) Maybe the brain worm told him to do it. (New York Times)
North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who vehemently opposes abortion, also admits that he and his wife “made a very difficult decision” to have the procedure in the past. Talk about a case of “do as I say, not as I do!” (NBC News)
Although he claims to be a family-loving economic populist, Senator J.D. Vance did not vote to expand tax credits for families with children last Thursday, contributing to the bill's failure by a vote of 44-48. (Republican opposition to the policy was led by the aptly-named Senator Mike Crapo.) (NBC News)
While the FBI was looking into the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to the Russian government, they were also investigating attempts by the Egyptian government to funnel $10 million into the campaign. This transaction was not publicly known until this week, when the Washington Postreported on it. The Post also reported that investigators “were blocked by top Justice Department officials from obtaining bank records they believed might hold critical evidence.” Attorney General William Barr then unceremoniously shut the probe down. Hmmmm…
A federal judge has ruled that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly” over online search engines. It’s a landmark victory for the Biden Justice Department in what’s being called “the most important antitrust case of the century”—although Judge Ahmit Mehta has yet to specify any penalty for Google’s monopolistic practices, and the company is set to appeal. (New York Times)
❧ As heat waves grow more common and more intense, U.S. landlords are resisting any legal requirement to provide air conditioning. As a new Reutersreport notes, heat-related deaths in the United States are on the rise, with “approximately 2,302 in 2023 versus 1,602 two years previously.” In New York City alone, the 2024 Heat-Related Mortality Report recorded an estimated 350 “premature” deaths from extreme heat. Meanwhile, Maricopa County, Arizona—one of the few areas of the U.S. to differentiate its data between indoor and outdoor heat deaths—recorded 156 indoor deaths from a total of 645 in 2023, a dramatic increase from 86 indoor deaths the previous year. In almost all of these indoor cases, there was either a broken air conditioning unit or none at all.
Astonishingly, Reuters found that only “nearly half” of state governments require landlords to repair their AC units and keep them in working condition, and none require landlords to actually provide air conditioning in the first place. Around the country, there’s currently a legislative push to change that. Several cities have introduced bills that would force landlords to keep their properties below a “maximum temperature”—78 degrees in New York, 85 degrees in Austin, and so on. It’s an obvious measure to ensure livable conditions for everyone, and it should have been taken years ago, nationwide. (Realistically, even 85 degrees is still too hot for comfort!)
However, there’s no quality-of-life measure so basic and obvious that landlords won’t try to weasel out of it. In Hot Springs, Arizona, the city Board of Directors was considering a policy to require a “maximum temperature” of at least 15 degrees below the one outside—but it was quietly shelved after landlord groups claimed the expense would cause rents to rise. Similarly, a bill that would have mandated air conditioning statewide in Texas never even reached the committee stage after the Texas Apartment Association opposed it. In Los Angeles County, too, landlord associations are preparing to resist a proposed mandate, saying that window AC units could theoretically fall on people or be “kind of unsightly.” To them, that’s reason enough to keep people in life-threatening high temperatures. That’s exactly why tenant unions and other kinds of organizing are increasingly necessary—and why landlords shouldn’t be allowed any role in making housing policy.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating the death of a worker at the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, apparently from cardiac arrest. (KVUE)
California’s Park Fire is now the fourth-largest wildfire in state history, covering more than 400,000 acres. It’s one of 89 large wildfires currently burning in the U.S., a phenomenon that’s been made noticeably worse by climate change. (AccuWeather)
Police in San Diego have put up a large metal “surveillance tower” on Roosevelt Avenue, which will film everyone in the area in order to catch and arrest sex workers. For Reason Magazine, Elizabeth Nolan Brown calls it “a waste of money and manpower and a violation of privacy, free association, and bodily autonomy.”
Definitely not creepy. Go about your business, citizen.
Six prominent news outlets are suing the State of Louisiana over a new police “buffer” law, which allows criminal charges against anyone who disobeys a cop’s order to stay 25 feet away. They argue that the law violates their First Amendment rights as journalists, since it makes filming the police more difficult or impossible. (Times-Picayune)
In Oklahoma, school districts are resisting Superintendent Ryan Walters’ orders to keep a Bible in every classroom and teach from it. One parent has already sued for an injunction against the policy on First Amendment grounds, in a case that may well end up at the Supreme Court. (The Guardian)
Elon Musk’s pro-Trump “America PAC” is under investigation in Michigan and North Carolina. Its website claimed to be a hub to help voters get registered. In most states, it merely directed them to the appropriate voter registration page. But in battleground states, it brought them to a long form where it collected personal information. After the information was entered, it still didn’t help them register to vote. (CNBC)
Indiana’s nonprofit healthcare providers have stalled in providing care to low-income Hoosiers. At the same time, their revenues have increased and they are bringing thousands of patients to court to claim unpaid debts sometimes as small as $250. (Indiana Capital Chronicle)
In Arkansas—the state that already has the lowest voter registration rate in the country— the state election board rejected the registrations of hundreds of mostly young, black voters who registered electronically after they were previously told that their signatures would be accepted. (Popular Information)
A museum in St. Louis, Missouri just unveiled the world’s longest shoelace, which stretches more than half a mile and took more than 24 hours to weave. We just thought you should know about that. (FOX 2)
If you see purple paint on a tree, your life may be in danger. Nearly two dozen states allow land owners to use purple paint to signify private property rather than putting up “costly” signage telling people not to trespass. “Depending on where in the United States you are, landowners could be heavily armed,” the New York Post warns.
Robot dentists have arrived: A dental robotics company claims to have performed the first ever fully autonomous tooth surgery at Columbia. They claim that it has the ability to replace a crown in 15 minutes while a lowly human dentist can take two whole hours. (Futurist)
ANIMAL NAMES IN CHINESE ARE HILARIOUS
There is a common meme out there, which claims that the Chinese phrase for “penguin” ( 企鹅) roughly translates to “business goose.” For a non-Chinese speaker, this seems to make sense, as penguins do appear somewhat like little businessmen in black and white suits. But according to actual Chinese speakers, it is a misunderstanding of how the language works, and the real translation of “penguin” actually comes out to mean “standing goose.”
We were very disappointed to learn that “business goose” was not real. But rest assured, there is still plenty of whimsy to be found. This is because, unlike English, which uses a couple dozen letters to construct all of speech, the Chinese language has thousands of characters that are put together based on meaning. (For example, the word for “tears,” [泪] is comprised of the words for “eye” [目] and “water.” [氵] ) This logic applies to naming animals too and the literal translations are often quite amusing to Anglophone ears.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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