In Ancient Greece, citizens were expected to fight to protect their city states or even to expand their city’s influence, but little was considered more inglorious than killing the unarmed. Zeus was as shocked as anyone by the massacre in New Zealand and not best pleased that there’s such a lack of honour amongst people nowadays. He’s even been muttering about the need for daemones to do something about the far-right. It’s all very well, but thoughtfulness doesn’t fare very well in times when social media is used to inspire extremists and even broadcast bloodbaths and executions.  

Poverty and civil wars are leading to mass migrations but it’s impossible for everyone to move and settle wherever they want, so there have to be restrictions – although many Mauritians might leave for North America or Western Europe tomorrow given the chance, even if Australasia looks slightly less attractive for the moment. A state’s first job is to protect its citizens and its borders. There’s an inevitable clash between people’s right to maintain an identity built up over hundreds of years and the effects of migrations, although in these days when multi-cultural societies are all the rage, cultural identity is not very politically correct. However, white or black extremists, Hindu nationalists in India, Buddhist nationalists in Myanmar and the Taliban are all racial or religious supremacists – bounders and beyond the pale.  Even more dangerously, jihadists long for world domination and are even prepared to kill co-religionists who disagree with them or come from the “wrong” branch.  

As this Motherland has no millennium-old original inhabitants, the waves of immigration have somehow gelled into a multicultural society out of sheer necessity, but that’s not the situation in many other countries. There’s bound to be a backlash and negative sentiments are re-enforced when some immigrants want to set up their own religious-based parliament or introduce their religious rules, even when in contradiction with the local culture and law. Mind you, there are always problems when a government is subject to religious views or there is interference on issues of a personal nature like abortion, same-sex relationships and recreational substances. Thucydides’ views better suit a democratic society even today: “We are free and tolerant in our private lives.”

While people mutter about the rise of the far-right, even in so-civilised Western Europe, it’s unclear whether the gilets jaunes in France are far-right or far-left. When some of them demand more state benefits and others lower taxes (at least for themselves), the situation becomes even more muddled. Ambiguously as ever, Pythia says there is wind behind populist extremist movements in Europe, as May will show. In any case, when there have been free and fair elections, it weakens democracy when the street tries to dictate policy by force. It smacks of the days when the Roman masses went berserk. 

How many journalists are persecuted or assassinated is a good guide to the state of democracy in a country. There are many officially left-wing countries where elections of a sort are held but opposition opinions suppressed. It’s hard to differentiate them from Italy’s fascist party, led by a revolutionary socialist called Mussolini. There’s conflict and chaos everywhere, not helped by modern state boundaries that don’t help those who feel they have a separate identity. Tibet has been swallowed by China. Kurds are spread across Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria and can only dream of a Kurdistan state.  

Incidentally, you might wonder if The Donald is aware that parts or all of California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico were bought from Mexico in the 19th century at a very cheap price. That might make some think of a nearby archipelago, although he may find it difficult to build a wall around it…

Yours sincerely
Epi Phron