The dimming lights of democracy under Trump
Even before United States president-elect Donald Trump officially assumes the most powerful position on earth, his impending second term is already reverberating with antidemocratic consequences all over the world.
Meta, the company which owns Facebook and Instagram, has announced that it’s ending its fact-checking program. This means that the social networking giant will no longer employ independent fact-checkers, which has been its way of stopping misinformation on its social media platforms. Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, claims the shift in policy will make freedom of expression flourish instead of being inhibited by fact-checkers, who he claims commit mistakes because of their political bias.
It’s no secret that Trump has long railed against fact-checking by US social media apps. Many groups supportive of Trump are notorious for spreading misinformation and have been exposed as fake news spreaders by fact-checkers. The new Meta policy which ditches independent fact-checking, and which will give more freedom and influence to spreaders of fake news, will be beneficial to Trump. It’s not coincidental at all that Meta’s change in policy is taking place in perfect cadence with Trump’s march into office. It’s deliberate. Meta’s intention is not to make freedom of expression flourish but for its business to flourish under the good graces of the Trump administration.
Russia and China have been widely accused of spreading misinformation through state-sponsored troll farms, especially against their enemies. With a social media landscape stripped of guard rails that restrain the onslaught of disinformation operations, the US is poised to position itself close to Russia and China in the gallery of cyberspace brigands.
Also days before Trump assumes the US presidency, the new US House of Representatives passed a bill that will impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) because of the latter’s issuance of warrants of arrest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister over Israel’s bloody campaign in Palestine. The US is a staunch ally of Israel. With the new US Senate under Republican control, the upper chamber is expected to approve the bill. There’s no doubt that Trump will implement the sanctions as he did in his first term when the US imposed sanctions against an ICC prosecutor because the latter initiated an investigation into US atrocities in Afghanistan.
While the bill was proximately caused by the ICC’s actions on Israeli leaders, the proposed law broadly empowers the US government to sanction the ICC if it investigates, arrests, detains, or prosecutes a citizen of an “allied country” of the US, and which is not a member of the ICC. Former president Rodrigo Duterte is a citizen of an “allied country” of the US. With Trump’s touted closeness to Duterte during the former’s first term in office, there will be a potential opening for Trump to use US sanctions in aid of Duterte, if Trump views such move as in sync with his version of America’s self-interest.
What the US is poised to do (again), if it passes the said bill, is something that even Russia has not done even if the latter’s current ruler, Vladimir Putin, is the subject of an ICC warrant of arrest. The US will place itself at the top of the heap of rogue countries that reject accountability for international crimes.
Before he officially assumed the US presidency, Trump had already fired off statements that were unabashedly despotic. Trump has threatened to forcibly take possession of the Panama Canal that belongs to sovereign Panama. This has shades of China’s grab of ownership of international waters and the exclusive economic zones of countries that border the South China Sea. Trump has threatened to seize control of Greenland to bolster its security. This has shades of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump has threatened to use economic force to absorb Canada as its 51st state. This has hints of China’s attitude toward Taiwan. While Trump’s words on these issues may all be bluff and bluster, they are the kind of incendiary and rabble-rousing words that are associated with dictators and fascist leaders around the world. His words work to diminish, and not foster, aspirations for democracy.
The US is far from being a perfect leader of the democratic world because it preaches democracy only when it conveniently serves its own interests. In the choice of nations that can serve as models in the world, however, the US has more of the elements of democracy that can serve as guiding aspirations for less developed countries compared to other powerful countries who strut on the world stage with their “might makes right” swagger.
If president-elect Trump continues to talk, act, behave, and rule in the manner that he has done thus far, he will dim the lights of the billboard that advertises the US as the leader of the democratic world.
—————-
Comments to fleamarketofideas@gmail.com
