Protesters during the Finance Bill 2024 demonstrations along Cardinal Otunga Street, Nairobi on June 20, 2024.
In the Second Coming, the famous poem by William Butler Yeats, there are several lines that are truly striking. Let me reprise several. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre.” “Things fall apart.” “The centre cannot hold.” “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” And this – “the falcon cannot hear the falconer.”
Methinks we are at the juncture of one of those epochal moments of global rupture. No – I am not talking about the “end-times” because that’s not my spiritual proclivity. I am referring to a seismic moment in history when, it seems, everything is up for grabs. We could end up somewhere really good, or we could go to hell in a handbasket. It’s black and white.
I know many false prophets have predicted a global cataclysm where everything evaporates into nothingness. That’s nonsense on stilts. But I do think there could be a nuclear Armageddon. I mean, just look into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and you get chills. Or the once boy-king of North Korea.
You get the sense that theirs isn’t just strategic brinkmanship. That they could actually pull the kinetic trigger. Because you wonder, why the utter recklessness. The suffering they’ve inflicted on their people, and others. Something is wrong. Deeply unnerving. But that’s just one data point. There’s climate change, and the burning inferno that our planet is becoming. Wherever I look, I see demons converging on a fragile planet.
Gargantuan egos
Look around. In Sudan, the worst is happening. A senseless war between two men with gargantuan egos have collapsed a country killing tens if not hundreds of thousands. Millions have fled to god knows where. Mass starvation. Genocide. Bombs fall everywhere and bullets fly all over. Life, as we know it, has stopped. Even trees are dying. Vegetation has wilted.
You can see with thine own eyes the world is giving up, one painful breath after another. It’s as if we are ready to breathe our last. I know we won’t if for nothing else but that we are too many – over 8 billion on earth – to commit mass hara-kiri. We are a stubborn species and will stagger on.
In the United States – the global superpower with the most formidable military and economy the world has ever seen – a literal madman could be elected President in November. Imagine that. A person who calls others vermin and roots for naked revenge. How’s that possible and how did we get here? The man has burned through every norm of civilisation known to democracy.
He calls openly for the purge of opponents, imagined and real. He says black and brown immigrants will “poison the blood of America.” He calls for mass deportations. Never mind two of his wives were immigrants themselves, as was his mother. He aims to collapse America. How can one very wealthy man be consumed by so much hate?
Dictator
Hordes of mostly white Americans worship the man. They live in a post-truth world, a fact-free planet. They look normal, but they are anything but. Who are these people? Where did they come from? Have they always been there? They clamour for the dictator, the unapologetic racist who would return America to an era of outright White Supremacy before civil rights, before democracy, before civilization.
There’s a rising tide of fascism in America and Europe. In Germany, Italy, Britain, The Netherlands, Austria, France, Hungary, and others. In the name of country and god, they call for a Europe of only white people. We are at a tipping point. A very cold chilling political winter is in the offing.
In the Middle East, hell hath broken loose. The October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel was followed by a genocidal campaign against large numbers of Palestinian women and children, the total destruction of Gaza, and a scorched earth policy despite a ruling by the International Court of Justice to cease the carnage.
We have seen images that the mind can’t bear as children have borne the brunt of the Israeli assault. The war has deepened divisions across the world, especially in America where college students carried out dramatic protests. The war threatens to collapse President Biden’s attempt to hold together the mosaic collection of people of color, progressives, and liberals that swept him to power in 2020.
What do I see when I look over the horizon? In Kenya, an organic anti-tax movement of young people has stoked discontent. In South Africa, the mighty African National Congress lost its majority in recent elections for the first time since the end of apartheid. In Britain, the Conservatives are likely to suffer a massive defeat because of public opprobrium to their catastrophic rule. In India, voters shocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi when they denied him a majority. Is liberalism tired and passé? Can, or will, fascism replace it? What will fill this moral and political vacuum in an era of discontent? Or are we in a prolonged period of political purgatory?
Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua
