It is nevertheless surprising that such conservative obduracy survives into the present in one of Europe’s most dynamic and innovative societies. Perceptive readers might already have guessed who I am referring to here – Jeremy Corbyn, savior of the British Left and prophet for the 21st century. Mr. Corbyn represents one particular strand of the Labour Party, the strand that has ‘forgotten nothing and learned nothing’ from the history of the past 75 years. His pledges to reopen coal mines and redevelop Britain’s heavy industry betray a tragi-comic level of economic illiteracy and an apparently limitless ability to engage in wishful thinking. His foreign policy shows all the nuance that might be expected from a five year old – in his worldview, any opponent of America is deserving of sympathy and support. Substituting ‘America’ for ‘liberalism’ would have been an apt summary of Franz I’s foreign policy. As a self-professed champion for the underprivileged and oppressed, it is somewhat odd to see Mr. Corbyn denying the Kosovo genocide and holding up an endless series of justifications for Hamas, Hezbollah, Putin and a variety of other unsavoury characters who do not bother to hide their intolerance for those who do not fit neatly into their agenda. Much of his policy platforms come straight out of the 1980s – unilateral nuclear disarmament, leaving NATO (and probably the EU as well), nationalisation of key industries and punitive levels of taxation – yet Britain has changed dramatically since Mrs. Thatcher left 10 Downing Street. His intention to tackle inequality, alleviate poverty and increase social mobility is both commendable and necessary, but it is difficult to see how this can be achieved with an economic programme lifted straight out of the immediate post-war era. The dark satanic mills associated with the Industrial Revolution are no longer a feature of Britain’s landscape not because of capitalist greed or Conservative heartlessness but because of the rise of off-shore production. The coal mines of South Wales or the shipyards of Belfast would have withered away even if Mrs. Thatcher had never taken office – as Marx himself recognized, fundamental economic trends are beyond the control of individual politicians or parties. Mr. Corbyn is in truth a reactionary, one worthy of Charles X or Salazar in his sheer ignorance of modern economic realities and dogmatic refusal to evolve with the times. It is thus doubly ironic that many, though by no means all of his most fervent supporters are youthful idealists who evince a near-visceral hatred of the Conservative Party and all it stands for.

The truth is that Mr. Corbyn, like reactionaries of all stripes, has successfully tapped into a deep wellspring of fear and resentment. Fear of a changing world where index-linked pensions, lifelong employment and job security are no longer within reach of all but a privileged minority. Resentment of a global economy which has given rise to ever greater inequality, one in which material rewards are disproportionately awarded to those who are the best-connected, not those who work the hardest. The appeal of a state-socialist platform to those who feel left-out of today’s prosperity is evident – Britain under Harold Wilson was a lot grayer and far less prosperous, but arguably more equal than the Britain of Tony Blair and David Cameron. In the long run though, adopting the failed solutions of the past to tackle the problems of the present is a path towards catastrophe. Subsidies for cottage industry and absurdly high tariffs against British imports did not alleviate the agricultural depression that befell Southern Germany and Austria in the 1830s. Likewise, renationalizing the railroads, imposing punitive taxation and scrapping tuition fees cannot address the fundamental causes behind rising inequality or low wages. Contrary to popular belief, Britain cannot simply choose to seal itself off behind the Channel and ignore global economic forces, and any attempt to do will merely generate economic disruption and chaos. 19th century clerics desperately attempted to ward off the tide of liberalism through censorship and ever more strident public warnings to absolutely no avail, and their spiritual successors in today’s Twitterati can scarcely hope to perform any better. That so many people have opted for Mr. Corbyn’s agenda is a tragedy for both the Labour Party and British democracy.

There can be no doubt that the European centre-left is deeply in trouble – to put it bluntly, it has failed to come up with meaningful answers to the major issues of our time and practical solutions to a seemingly endless series of crises. The Labour Party lost the last election by an unexpectedly large margin because its policies failed to inspire its working-class base, yet came across as too radical for wavering voters in the middle, many of whom had once supported the Liberal Democrats. Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall have all come up with plausible programmes for the party to adopt in the next five years ahead, programmes that should appeal to different demographic groups who defected from Labour in this election. Alone of all the candidates in this leadership election, Mr. Corbyn has opted for the politics of protest. That alone is a large part of his appeal – many of his youthful supporters have little stomach for the compromises which form an inevitable part of governing. Yet those who most fervently desire a party purged of Blairites and ‘Tory-lites’ are rarely those who are the worst-off in this country. Many of them are in fact members of powerful public sector unions which have tried their best to derail the government’s ambitious and genuinely radical reforms. In a country which has always been rather less egalitarian than most of its continental counterparts, it is heartening to see the proportion of state-school pupils applying to and entering top universities increase every year since 2010. State schools in Britain, long a source of despair for parents and experts alike, are being revamped through decentralization and greater accountability. As uncomfortable as that might be for entrenched public sector employees, this cannot but benefit their pupils and the country as a whole.

Democracies function best when the government is effectively brought to account for its actions and policies. The Conservatives are not perfect, and David Cameron has made mistakes in the past, some of which he has to his credit admitted in public. When one party abdicates that role in favour of armchair criticism and ideological purity, it commits a grave disservice to the public as a whole, one that will not and should not be readily forgiven. Portraying the Prime Minister as some ungodly mixture of Enoch Powell, Louis Philippe and Metternich might be great fun, but is hardly what the British public wants or needs. Labour has made this mistake once before – it owes it to the country not to repeat it a second time.

It would be a tragedy for Europe and for Western liberal democracy if the only steps implemented in response to this atrocity were increased data gathering, intelligence sharing, border checks and national security legislation. These steps are undoubtedly necessary to some degree, but only if accompanied by effective checks and balances, and in any case they will do very little to curb terrorism in the long-run. Short of repudiating the very principles of free speech that the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdou steadfastly upheld and constructing a draconian security regime, intelligence agencies will never be able to detect and foil every single terrorist plot. Instead, it is time that we address the root causes of these problems.

The radical right portrays Islam as a warmongering religion and the hundreds of millions Muslims around the world as irredeemably anti-Western, irrevocably opposed to everything we stand for on account of a fundamental clash in values. Such a perspective is frankly speaking intellectually and morally bankrupt. Islamic extremism is not a phenomenon with deep roots in Muslim societies – for most of the 20^th century the guiding principle of Middle East revolutionaries was not Islam, but secular nationalism. Even today, the Syrian Baathists, the Egyptian Nasserites and Fatah continue to subscribe to these doctrines. The likes of Macmillan, Wilson, Eisenhower and Kennedy obsessed over the dangers posed by modernizing, secular nationalists such as Nasser, not jihadist ideologies.

Simplistic and racialist explanations of jihadism are thus uniquely unhelpful for anyone trying to understand the realities on the ground today. They neither explain the roots of the problem nor provide any realistic solutions that could possibly be of use to contemporary policy-makers. Whether we like it or not, the Muslim populations of both the Middle East and Europe are growing and a growing segment of these groups are turning to radical interpretations of the Koran for one reason or another. The question facing us today is why exactly are so many young people across the region increasingly attracted to such ideologies, ideologies that are anything but deeply rooted in their culture and society.

This article will seek to focus on the mechanism of social alienation both within immigrant communities and in the wider Middle East. In the latter, there is a compelling case that the incompetence of the first wave of independent revolutionary regimes in terms of economic management, social provision and foreign policy, gradually fuelled societal discontent. Unrealistic promises of full employment and rising incomes for all went unfulfilled as rising populations, misguided economic policies and rampant corruption undermined the capacity of Arab governments to meet public expectations. At the same time, the inability of these leaders to liberate Palestine after the wars of 1967 and 1973 fuelled the rise of Palestinian terrorism, creating role models for extremist elements in other countries to build upon. Islamic extremists also benefited from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 as America, China and Saudi Arabia diverted vast sums of cash and modern weaponry in their direction so as to turn the conflict into the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. Beyond the thousands of foreign fighters in Afghanistan or Lebanon though were millions more who learned of their exploits through a variety of means and felt attracted to the puritan strain of Islam which they preached. From our perspective, Sharia Law sounds incredibly barbaric, backwards and frankly nonsensical, but in countries with dysfunctional legal systems, widespread corruption, nepotism and crumbling social infrastructure, the prospect of law and order delivered according to easily understood religious principles suddenly sounds rather more appealing. In a societal context where mosques and other religious establishments are the primary sources of education, healthcare and welfare, it comes as no surprise that millions of young people who see no prospects and opportunities in their lives find themselves attracted to a radical interpretation of their religion. It is only natural for human beings who are lost, confused and desperate to become susceptible to extremist and intolerant ideologies.

Homegrown Jihadism should in this context be viewed as a consequence of the marginalization and alienation of Muslim communities across Europe. In countries such as France and Britain, governments have failed to provide adequate education and employment for many of these groups, creating a situation where small minorities become attracted to doctrines that revolve around overthrowing Western democracy. Perceptions of racial stereotyping and stigmatization coupled alongside criticisms of Western foreign policy in the Middle East have unfortunately radicalized vulnerable youth who feel no sense of belonging to the society they currently live in. This suggests that the solution to this problem must invariably involve a wide range of policies across the entire spectrum. On the international level, it is time for us to recognize that countries such as Saudi Arabia are part of the problem. Not only are some of our avowed allies in the ‘War on Terror’ pursuing sectarian agendas of their own and funding organizations domestically across the globe which preach Jihadism, but their lack of internal transparency fosters rampant inequality, creating breeding grounds for extremist ideologies to take hold. In an encouraging move, a bipartisan group of current and former US Senators are pushing the Obama administration to disclose classified documents related to the actions of the Saudi government prior to 9/11. The socio-economic problems which plague the Arab World gave rise to the hope of the Arab Spring, but it is also fostering the conditions for terrorism or at the very least anti-Western sentiment.

What happened in Paris was a tragedy which should also serve as a wake-up call as to the time-bomb which now lies in our midst. The radical right is attempting to capitalize upon this horrific attack and gain broader support for its anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism and anti-Islam narrative. As tempting as it is for mainstream politicians to jump upon this bandwagon and appeal to the baser instincts of voters with ever more draconian measures which will only serve to antagonize an already marginalized community, we should be reaching out to Muslim groups across Europe instead. At the same time, there is a need for us to reexamine half a century of misguided foreign policy in the Middle East. Consumed with the desire to secure oil supplies, we have succeeded in making the region more volatile, more unstable and less democratic than before. In the absence of stable, legitimate states that can uphold law and order, provide basic services and employment for millions of underemployed young people, support for Jihadist ideologies will remain a problem. Disengaging from the world won’t solve our problems in the 21^st century and immigration from the Middle East, whether in the form of economic refugees or asylum seekers, is undoubtedly here to stay.

Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution. Photo by Pasu Au Yeung via Flickr

Of all the places in the world associated with political instability and popular revolution, Hong Kong probably comes quite far down on the list. Until recently, the city had developed a reputation as ‘apolitical’ and heavily materialistic. Behind the imposing skyscrapers lining Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong has become a seething cauldron of anger directed against the gradual erosion of its autonomy and staggering levels of income inequality.

In just over a decade, Hong Kong politics has become increasingly polarised, with young people feeling alienated from Mainland China and the values of the Communist Party. Pro-business moderates are finding themselves marginalised by hardline neo-Communists who fervently believe in an ‘ever-closer union’ between Hong Kong and the Mainland. The city’s insular politics have long been divided into two main camps known as the ‘pan-Democrats’ and the ‘pro-Establishment’, both of which are broad coalitions incorporating a range of political parties from across the conventional left-right spectrum. Ever since the Governorship of Lord Patten in the late 1990s, the primary debate in local politics has been that of universal suffrage and the degree of influence that Peking ought to have over Hong Kong’s internal affairs. Technically speaking, the city is a ‘Special Administrative Region’ of China enjoying full autonomy over all aspects of its affairs except for foreign policy and external defence. In reality, both the legislature and executive are controlled by the Communist Party in defiance of popular opinion, since a consistent majority of 60% of the population have supported the pan-Democrats in every election since the late 1980s – an appropriate parallel would be to imagine David Cameron granting Scotland total autonomy but reserving the right to appoint 55% of all Members of Scottish Parliament as well as the entire Scottish Executive.

Yet, truly worrying is how C.Y. Leung’s administration is using the protests as an excuse to move the city closer towards a police state. Apart from using tear gas against domestic protestors for the first time since the riots of 1967, during which pro-Communist terrorists (some of whom are now prominent members of the government) launched a bombing campaign against the colonial government and local moderates, extrajudicial beatings and unconstitutional strip searches have been systematically carried out by the police over the past few days. The last remaining pan-Democrat newspaper was physically blockaded earlier this week, damaging its commercial viability, especially as leading firms (including British banks such as HSBC and Standard Chartered) have already been pressured into pulling their advertisements. Pan-Democratic lawmakers have been arrested for bringing equipment back to their offices purely on suspicion of ‘abetting illegal behaviour’, while student leaders were kept in solitary detention without just cause. Instead of responding to the legitimate grievances of peaceful protestors, the government has resorted to bribing Hong Kong’s powerful triads and persuading them to attack protest encampments in full view of the local and international media. The apparent frontrunner to succeed C.Y. Leung is a former Security Minister notorious for her hardline approach towards protestors and avid peddling of conspiracy theories.

The room for consensus is shrinking by the day as China seeks to evade its legal obligations towards the people of Hong Kong, who have been repeatedly promised genuine universal suffrage. In recent weeks, a handful of moderates have called for protestors to return home in exchange for beginning negotiations with the government, which were abruptly cancelled a few days ago. Put bluntly, Hong Kong’s youth have had enough of a deeply corrupt status quo whereby a handful of pro-Chinese businessmen reap monopoly profits through vast conglomerates permeating every aspect of daily life in the absence of meaningful competition laws. – the city currently sits atop the Economist’s crony-capitalism index, ahead of Russia, Ukraine and Mexico. Indeed, Chief Executive C.Y. Leung openly declared his opposition to universal suffrage on the grounds that it would grant excessive power to the bottom 50% of the population, for which he has been compared to Mitt Romney by Paul Krugman.  It is to their immense credit that the protesters thus far have remained essentially peaceful and have carefully calibrated the demonstrations in such a way as to maintain pressure on the government without actually disrupting the daily routines of most citizens. With only three (normally congested) tunnels and two underground lines connecting the two main parts of the city, it would have been all too easy for students to totally shut down all business and trade if they really wanted to do so.

However, the Chinese government is in no mood for any sort of compromise, and negotiations will achieve, at best, cosmetic concessions. The student protestors and their supporters across Hong Kong should maintain their resolve and reject any proposal that will restrict electoral choice. Universal suffrage and regular elections are meaningless in the absence of genuine competition – President Putin was ‘democratically’ elected, but hardly anyone considers his Russia to be a truly democratic country. Ever since 1997, Hong Kong has lived under an abnormally tolerant authoritarian regime, but for all its glamour and civic liberties, it remains at its core a dictatorship, its leaders lacking any kind of popular legitimacy. With the legislature powerless and marginalised by the current series of events, the students on the street represent the city’s last and perhaps best hope. The moderate opposition has tried to negotiate with China for the best part of 30 years, and all it has to show for its efforts is a continuous erosion of the city’s civic liberties and autonomy.

When Britain handed back Hong Kong to Peking in 1997, it did so based on the belief that it had constructed a system of legally binding guarantees that would ensure the city’s freedom for at least 50 years. Instead, the Chinese Communist regime has systematically broken these promises to the point that an overwhelming majority of Hong Kong’s people are now demanding their rights. With 60% of the city’s population rejecting Peking’s proposal, the only way forward for the protestors and their allies in the legislature is to ride this wave of popular anger and veto any proposal that fails to comply with international electoral standards. By ensuring that any future government in Hong Kong will lack popular legitimacy and reminding the international community of this fact, the youth who continue to bravely resist an increasingly violent police are able to cause China a considerable degree of embarrassment. Already, there are growing signs of popular dissent in China’s teeming cities as workers protest against a unaccountable government and staggering levels of income inequality. Hong Kong might once again be able to play its historical role as the incubator of revolutionary ideas for the rest of the country. As long as the protestors are able to keep up the  momentum, time and history is ultimately on their side. Accepting a deeply flawed compromise will only strengthen the Chinese leadership and consign Hong Kong to political, social and economic oblivion.