Introduction

Jared Huffman is the Democratic representative for California’s 2nd congressional district and the only open non-believer in the US Congress. He is also at the forefront of the fight against Christian nationalism in America. He helped found the Congressional Freethought Caucus and the Stop Project 2025 Task Force. Andrew L. Seidel, constitutional attorney and author of The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American and American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom (and Freethinker contributor) had this to say about Huffman:

Rep. Jared Huffman is unafraid to publicly declare his belief in church-state separation and his lack of religion. That fearlessness is something we rarely see in American politicians, and it gives me hope for our future. There is no more stalwart defender of the separation of church and state than Rep. Huffman.

I recently spoke with Huffman over Zoom about his career and his opposition to the theocratic agenda of a future Donald Trump administration. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Interview

Daniel James Sharp: You are the only open non-believer in Congress. Could you tell us about that, and your personal background regarding religion?

Representative Jared Huffman: I had no intention of being known as the only open non-believer in Congress when I got elected back in 2012. I have been without religion for most of my adult life and in recent years came to sort of loosely identify as a humanist. But that was something I largely kept to myself. I had never been asked about it in politics. I’d spent twelve years in local government and six years in the California State Assembly and I could not imagine that it would ever come to be something I was known for in Congress.

But what I learned pretty early on is that there are all of these publications that want to know about the religious identification of people when they get to Congress. The Pew Research Center does this ongoing study about religiosity in Congress and there are all of these Capitol Hill publications that do surveys and ask you to choose your religious label. For the first few years, I essentially declined to answer those questions. I thought it was none of anyone’s business.

That changed when Donald Trump won the 2016 election and brought into government a growing number of strident Christian nationalists and an agenda that troubled me quite a bit and which I saw as deeply theocratic. I decided that this was something I needed to push back on.

However, it was hard to do that when I was keeping a little secret about my own religious identity, so I came out publicly as a humanist, making me the only member out of 535 in the House of Representatives and the Senate who openly acknowledges not having a God belief.

Do you think there are many other nonbelievers in Congress?

I know there are many more, but I’m the only one dumb enough to say it publicly!

Has coming out affected you politically?

I think that’s been an interesting part of the story. Conventional wisdom holds that you should never do that. And even in some of our more recent polls, atheists tend to rank lower than just about every other category in terms of the type of person Americans would vote for. So there was a lot of nervousness among my staff and from a lot of my friends and supporters when I came out in the fall of 2017.

But the backlash never came, and, if anything, I think my constituents appreciated me just being honest about what my moral framework was. I think they see an awful lot of hypocrisy in politics, a lot of fakers and people pretending to be religious, including Donald Trump, and I found that being honest about these things is actually pretty beneficial politically, and it also just feels more authentic, personally speaking.

Since Trump was elected in 2016, you have become very involved in resisting theocratic tendencies in government. You helped to found the Congressional Freethought Caucus in 2018, for example. Could you tell us how that came about?

Yes, that came next, after the Washington Post wrote a story about me coming out as a humanist. I think it was the next day after that piece was published that my colleague, Jamie Raskin, came to me on the House floor and said, ‘Hey, I think that’s great what you did, and I share the same concerns you have about the encroachment of religion into our government and our policies, we should think about some sort of a coalition to work on these secular issues.’ Conversations like that led pretty quickly to the creation of this new Congressional Freethought Caucus that we launched a few months later.

And what does the caucus do?

We support public policy based on facts and reason and science. We fiercely defend the separation of Church and State. We defend the rights of religious minorities, including the non-religious, against discrimination and stigmatization in the United States and worldwide. And we try to provide a safe place for members of Congress who want to openly discuss these matters of religious freedom without the constraints our political system has traditionally imposed.

It seems important to note that the caucus is formed of people from all different religious backgrounds. It’s not an atheist caucus.

Yes, it’s a mix, and it’s a mix that looks like the American people, which is different from Congress itself as a whole. The American people are getting less religious all the time and they are getting more religiously diverse, but Congress is stuck in a religious profile from the 1950s.

Do you think these changing demographics are part of the reason why there is this renewed Christian nationalist push?

I do. Religious fundamentalists correctly sense that their power and privilege are waning and that has caused them to become more desperate and extreme in their politics.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is an extreme takeover plan for a second Trump presidency to quickly strip away many of the checks and balances in our democracy to amass unprecedented presidential power and use it to impose an extreme social order. It’s a plan to take total control over not just our government but also many of our individual freedoms. And the Christian nationalist agenda is at the heart of it.

Do you believe Trump’s statements distancing himself from Project 2025?

No, they are deeply unbelievable and implausible. Trump is inextricably intertwined with Project 2025 and until very recently both Trump’s inner circle and the Heritage Foundation, who published the plan, were openly boasting about the closeness of that connection. As Americans have come to learn more about Project 2025 and what it would do to their lives, it has become politically toxic to be associated with it, and that’s why you see these sudden attempts by Trump and his team to distance themselves from it.

How did people become more aware of it? It flew under the radar for quite a while.

Indeed, it flew under the radar for over a year. But our Freethought Caucus and others in Congress founded the Stop Project 2025 Task Force two months ago and, thanks to our efforts and the efforts of many others in the media and outside advocacy groups, more people have come to know about Project 2025 and the threat it poses to our democracy. Project 2025 went from being an obscure thing very few had heard about to, just a couple of weeks ago, surpassing Taylor Swift as the most talked about thing on the internet.

Quite an achievement! So, how exactly do you stop Project 2025?

It starts by understanding it, by reading the 920-page document that they arrogantly published and proclaimed as their presidential transition plan. That document lays out in great detail exactly what they intend to do. Our task force has been doing a deep dive into that, working with several dozen outside groups and leading experts to understand what some of these seemingly innocuous things they’re proposing actually mean in real life.

They hide beyond technical terms like ‘Schedule F civil service reform’ and we have been able to understand and help spotlight that what that really means is a mass purge of the entire federal workforce, rooting out anyone who has ever shown sympathy for Democratic politics, anyone who has ever been part of a diversity, equity, and inclusion programme, anyone who has worked on climate science—or anyone else who has offended the sensibilities of MAGA Republican extremists. They want to reclassify these employees and summarily fire them. This would affect well over 50,000 people throughout the federal workforce.

And then, as creepy as that already is, these people would be replaced by a cadre of trained and vetted Trump loyalists who are already maintained in a database housed by the Heritage Foundation. Essentially, they plan to repopulate the federal workforce with their own political operatives. This is not self-evident when you read the technical stuff in Project 2025, but that is exactly what their plan entails.

Can you give another example of their plans?

Yes. There are several ways in which they plan to impose their rigid social order. One of these is to dust off old morality codes from the 1870s using a dormant piece of legislation called the Comstock Act. The Comstock Act criminalises things that can be seen as obscene or profane and one of the things it criminalised back in the 1870s was anything that could terminate a pregnancy. Using this dormant legislation, which many believe is unconstitutional, Project 2025 are proposing what would amount to a nationwide ban on abortion, strict nationwide restrictions on contraception, and the criminalisation of in vitro fertilisation—very extreme and dystopic things.

It seems that the best way to stop Project 2025 is to stop Trump from being elected in November.

That’s the best way. That’s the most definitive way. But even if we beat Trump in this election, now that we have seen the Project 2025 playbook, we are going to have to build some policy firewalls against their plans in the future. The threat won’t go away. We need to build our defences against this kind of extreme takeover of government. But that is going to be much harder to do if Donald Trump is in the White House and his sworn loyalists are populating the entire federal workforce and they have broken down all of the checks and balances that stopped Trump’s worst impulses in his first presidency.

In essence, that’s what Project 2025 is: a plan to remove the obstacles that prevented Trump from doing many of the things he wanted to do or tried to do the first time around and to allow him to go even further.

Do you have a ‘doomsday scenario’ plan in the event of a Trump victory?

Yes, but it’s less than ideal. It relies on a lot of legal challenges in a legal system that has been well-populated by Trump loyalists. It relies on mobilising public opinion in a system where democracy and the democratic levers of power will not mean as much, because, frankly, Project 2025 is about accelerating the demise of a functioning democracy. Of course, there is no scenario under which we would just let all of this bad stuff happen without putting up a fight, but the tools that we would have to stop Project 2025 would be much less reliable if Trump wins.

How would the implementation of Project 2025 affect the rest of the world? What would be the consequences for America’s friends and allies?

I think that’s an important question for your readers. There’s no doubt that Project 2025 is hostile to the rules-based international order and our alliances that have kept Europe mostly free of war for the past half a century and more. It is hostile to globalism, as they refer to it, meaning free trade and the kind of trade relationships that we have with the European Union and many others around the world. It is hostile to confronting the climate crisis and even to acknowledging climate science. All of these are things that I’m sure folks in Scotland and the UK and throughout Europe would be deeply concerned by.

And there’s no doubt that Project 2025 is fundamentally sympathetic to strongman authoritarian regimes. In fact, it was inspired by Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The folks at the Heritage Foundation took a little trip to Hungary to learn about how Orbán had advanced all of these conservative, nationalist, authoritarian policies. Orbán has influenced the American right wing in a big way. He’s a bit of a rock star in Donald Trump’s world.

And so is Vladimir Putin, to an extent.

Indeed.

What are the chances of beating Trump in the election, now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic candidate?

A heck of a lot better than they were two or three weeks ago. My hope is that America is about to do what France did very recently. The French stared into the abyss of a right-wing authoritarian government and they realised what a scary and terrible prospect that was. In a matter of weeks, they united around a broad alliance to keep the far right out of power, and they succeeded. I think we are seeing a similar realisation and pivot from the American people. At least, I hope that is what’s happening. It certainly feels that way to me.

Looking in from the outside as an admirer of America, one thing I would like to see more of from the Democrats in particular is the patriotic case for secularism. The Christian nationalists and their ilk have claimed the mantle of patriotism, but their ideals are very far from the ideals America was founded on.

I think that’s a great point. And I know that you have worked with Andrew L. Seidel and others who are doing heroic work to recapture secular thought as part of what it means to be a patriotic American. I’m certainly all in for that. But the truth is that, though we did an incredible thing by separating Church and State in our Constitution, we have never done a great job of upholding that ideal. We have allowed Christian privilege and Christian power to influence our government for a long, long time, and in some ways what we’re struggling with now is a reckoning between the written law and the desperate attempts of Christian nationalists to hang on to their power and the founding premise of separating Church and State.

I suppose in some ways that’s the story of America. The battle between competing visions of America and trying to live up to those founding ideals.

Yes, that’s true. And the other thing that’s going on, I think, is that Christianity itself is in many respects changing around the world. I’ve spoken to secularists in Europe, in Scotland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, and it does seem that there is a strain of fundamentalist Christianity that has become more pronounced in recent years, a strain that is hyper-masculine, focused on power, and militaristic. The old ‘love thy neighbour’ Christianity is falling out of favour. People are fleeing traditional Christian denominations and identifying with these extreme, fundamentalist versions of Christianity. And they even mock what they see as soft Christianity. There’s a violence to these strains, which we saw with the January 6th insurrection in a big way.

So there is a lot happening, and it is more than just a fight between secularists and religionists. It’s also an internal struggle within Christianity itself over some pretty core values.

Going back to your point about the influence of Orbán, it seems to me that it also works the other way around. You have American fundamentalists pouring money into right-wing groups in Europe and funding fanatics in Israel and Uganda. So what can people outside of the US do to help in the fight against American fundamentalism?

It’s hard to compete with the mountains of dark money spread around the world by billionaire Christian nationalists, but we’re not powerless. The good news is that most people don’t really want to live in an authoritarian theocracy. I think lifting up education and science and civil society around the world is essential, as is promoting the idea of keeping religion out of government, of letting people make their own private religious choices without being able to impose their morality codes on everyone else. It’s a huge challenge, but I welcome the influence of secularists in Europe and elsewhere to try to counterbalance this wrong-headed phenomenon that, unfortunately, is emanating from my country.

That seems like a good place to finish. Good luck in the fight, and in November.

I appreciate that very much. I hope to talk to you again after we have saved our democracy.

Related reading

Donald Trump, political violence, and the future of America, by Daniel James Sharp

Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, by Jonathan Church

Can the ‘New Theists’ save the West? by Matt Johnson

Against the ‘New Theism’, by Daniel James Sharp

A reading list against the ‘New Theism’ (and an offer to debate), by Daniel James Sharp

The post ‘Project 2025 is about accelerating the demise of a functioning democracy’: interview with US Representative Jared Huffman appeared first on The Freethinker.

In the Netherlands, House of Representatives elections were held on 22 November 2023. This turned out to be a great victory for Geert Wilders’ party (Party for Freedom; PVV), which gained 37 seats out of 150. Other parties with a significant vote share included the Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which won 24 seats, New Social Contract (NSC), which won 20 seats, and Farmers and Civilians (BBB), which won 7 seats. PVV is generally considered to be a populist party and VVD a traditional liberal party, while NSC is a Christian democratic party and BBB is for the protection of farmers’ interests.

On 28 November 2023, the Speaker of the House of Representatives assigned an informateur: Ronald Plasterk. An informateur investigates which parties can form a coalition in the wake of an election and presides over negotiations between the party leaders to draw up a program of policies. Here is a description of Plasterk’s rather broad assignment:

‘1. To investigate whether agreement is or can be reached between the parties PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB on a common baseline for safeguarding the Constitution, fundamental rights, and the democratic rule of law. 2. If, in the opinion of these four parties, agreement is reached on point 1, then subsequently investigate whether there is a real prospect of reaching an agreement on issues such as migration, security of existence (including care, purchasing power, permanent jobs and sufficient housing), good governance, security, and stable public finances, international policy and healthy business climate, climate, nitrogen agriculture and horticulture, and fisheries.’

The first task is rather striking since no Dutch political party has as its basic premise the view that the Constitution may be violated, or that fundamental rights or the democratic rule of law should be threatened. No party denies the value of fundamental rights or the model of the democratic rule of law. So, reaching a consensus on these principles ought to have been very easy. But was it?

In fact, reaching a consensus proved more difficult than expected. Indeed, it has recently become clear that one of the named parties wants to abandon negotiations: Pieter Omtzigt’s NSC, a relatively new party that emerged from a split with the Christian Democratic Appeal party last August.

Background to the informateur’s brief

We must understand the specific nature of Plasterk’s assignment against the background of a situation that the Netherlands shares with other countries in Western Europe, including Germany, the UK, and France. That background is that, for more than 20 years, Western Europe has been affected by violent terrorist attacks in which the terrorists have invoked their religion as a motivation. This religion is not Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or Jewish, but Islamic.

Of the four political parties that have recently been exploring whether they want joint government responsibility, one party is wholly focused on this particular issue. That party is Wilders’s PVV, which essentially won the election.

Islam as a problem and a breaking point

Wilders takes the motivation given by terrorists themselves very seriously and concludes that ‘Islam’ is thus a challenge to Europe.

He also proposes measures to stop the growth of Islam. Wilders and his party have proposed measures like banning the Qur’an, expelling ‘radical Muslims’ from the Netherlands, closing mosques, and denying Islam the status of a religion (and thus excluding it from the constitutional right to freedom of religion). The PVV even made a legislative proposal to settle these things. These measures are—to put it mildly—at odds with the Dutch constitution, fundamental human rights, and the democratic rule of law—and also with the European Convention on Human Rights. Nevertheless, PVV’s most extreme ideas have been ditched by Wilders in the recent negotiations.

Contrary to what he has been accused of, Wilders does not discriminate based on skin colour. He is only vehemently anti-Islam. He is very critical of Moroccan youth but not because of their ethnicity; rather, he is concerned about the overrepresentation of Moroccans in the criminal statistics.

In any case, the negotiations for the formation of a new government are in a critical phase now. Two weeks from now (4 May 2024), the four parties involved in negotiations will tell the public whether they will make the jump. Is there still hope?

Two clashing perspectives

I think there are still chances for a settlement. Let us first put the question: what should the conversation between the four parties mentioned at the beginning of this article be about? There are two opposing perspectives.

First, that of journalist Peter Oborne, as set out in his book The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam (2022). Oborne argues that throughout the Western world, people are needlessly worried about Islam. Islam is an ‘ordinary religion’, and all stories about Islam as inherently violent or impossible to integrate into democratic conditions are based on false assumptions.

Second, there is Anne Marie Waters’s perspective, as set out in her Beyond Terror: Islam’s Slow Erosion of Western Democracy (2018). The title speaks for itself.

Geert Wilders, in his book Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (2012), took a stand supportive of Waters’s point of view and illustrates this with numerous examples. Not least the example of his own life: he has been on the hit list of jihadist terrorist organizations for decades.

In my view, Oborne is naïve. But Waters (and Wilders) are too pessimistic. What we should do is focus on Islamism, or political Islam, not on Islam as such.

The significance of this debate

This debate is also of great interest to freethinkers and atheists. If Waters and Wilders are right, then it is not only permissible but urgent that restrictive measures be taken to protect the democratic rule of law from the forces that undermine it. And if Oborne is right, anything Wilders proposes is out of order, discriminatory, and contrary to the Constitution, the democratic rule of law, and the fundamental rights of citizens.

France as a guiding country

The most interesting developments on the status of Islam and its practitioners in Europe are currently taking place in France. This is not surprising. France has the largest Muslim population compared to other Western European countries, and it has also been hit by the most horrific jihadist attacks. Think of Charlie Hebdo (2015), the Bataclan (2015), and the beheading of Samuel Paty (2020). These events, together with France’s century-long tradition of thoroughgoing laïcité, have unleashed an unprecedented intellectual energy in finding solutions to the related problems of Muslim integration and Islamic/Islamist terrorism.

The most recent development is the struggle against ‘Islamist separatism’. In 2020, President Emmanuel Macron vowed to tackle this phenomenon, which he described as the attempt of France’s Muslim community to supplant civil laws with its own laws and customs derived from religious practice. The Macron administration opposes this because it essentially creates two parallel societies.

In my view, the solution lies in recognizing that Islamism poses a challenge to Western European countries, but that, at the same time, one should try to respect the rights of all citizens, including Muslim citizens, as much as possible. One way to do this is to avoid creating privileges for religious minorities, e.g., granting Muslims the right to wear headscarves in situations where this is forbidden for all citizens (such as in the army or the judiciary).

One finds this line of argument defended, for example, by the French philosopher Sylviane Agacinski in her Face à une guerre sainte (2022) and by the French lawyer Richard Malka in Traité sur l’intolérance (2023). What these approaches have in common is targeting Islamism, rather than Islam itself.

So what Wilders will have to convince his interlocutors of is that Islamism is a real problem, not just in the Netherlands but in all of Europe—and the world.

Wilders is also a well-known Dutch politician in other parts of the world. Indeed, he is so well known that jihadist-motivated murderers have travelled from Pakistan to the Netherlands to kill him. In 2019, Pakistani Junaid I. was sentenced to 10 years in prison for an attempt to kill Wilders, while last year, the Pakistani ex-cricketer Khalid Latif was sentenced to 12 years for incitement to murder Wilders.

The Netherlands as a test case

The Netherlands could become a test case for developments in other parts of Europe. At present, in Germany and Belgium, parties similar to Wilders’s are on track for steep gains in 2024. These parties are critical of Islam and mass migration and in favour of national sovereignty. This is generally characterized as the ‘far-rightisation’ of Europe or the ‘normalisation of the far right’. It is a matter for debate whether this increasing drift to the right among the populations of these European countries ought to be of serious concern. Personally, I think the so-called right-wing parties have some good points to consider; above all their critical attitude towards the Islamist undermining of democratic institutions. Nevertheless, it is essential that Europe finds a liberal path forward. What happens in the Netherlands will be a sign of what is to come.

Further reading on religion in the Netherlands

Judging the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Derk Venema and Niko Alm

The Enlightenment and the making of modernity, by Piers Benn

The post Geert Wilders, Europe, and the threat of Islamism appeared first on The Freethinker.

Six months on from 7 October, the Israeli war on Gaza continues. The recent withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from Gaza should not be misunderstood. It is a tactical decision, made in response to the ongoing hostage negotiations taking place in Cairo, as well as growing international pressure on Israel to temper its bellicosity towards the civilian population.

Last month, Israel killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK). These deaths brought the number of aid workers killed in Gaza to over 196, but since then the number has risen to 203. Israel apologised for the strikes on the WCK convoy, declared them to have been a mistake resulting from significant errors and protocol violations, and removed two senior officers from their posts. However, there is reason to think the strikes were a deliberate targeting of the aid convoy as a means of undermining humanitarian efforts in Gaza. Firstly, the WCK convoy had agreed and coordinated its movements with the IDF beforehand. Secondly, the IDF launched three separate strikes on the WCK vehicles in turn. Finally, the convoy was marked with the WCK logo, and all the passengers were civilians. Another example, taking place earlier this year, illustrates why this incident cannot be considered in isolation.

In January 2024, Israel made unsubstantiated claims about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA); Israel claimed that a dozen or so employees of the agency were members of Hamas. The US, alongside the UK and several other Western countries, decided to suspend their funding to UNRWA based on Israel’s word alone. Even if the accusation against UNRWA was true, the organisation employs 30,000 people across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The complicity of a negligible amount of people in atrocities would not justify the suspension of funds to an organisation responsible for the provision of humanitarian relief to millions of people.

The United States admitted its inability to verify Israel’s claims. Moreover, the EU’s humanitarian chief said in March that there was no evidence from Israel to back up its claims about UNRWA. A UN-led review likewise found no evidence to support Israel’s claims, but, as the title of Julian Borger’s Guardian articles ruefully notes, the ‘damage to [the] aid agency is done’. Most recently, the German government announced that it would resume the funding to UNRWA that it had suspended. This is especially telling, given the virtually unconditional support Germany has otherwise provided Israel.

We therefore find ourselves in a situation in which Israel is responsible for the destruction of the healthcare infrastructure of Gaza and makes unfounded claims about the only relief agency able to provide significant help, while simultaneously urging its allies to suspend funding to this very same agency. In doing so, Israel has denied itself the right to be trusted when it declares that attacks against aid convoys are mere accidents. The BBC reported on 5 April that:

‘The Erez Gate in northern Gaza will be reopened for the first time since the start of the war, and the Israeli container port of Ashdod—which is close to Gaza—will accept humanitarian supplies. More aid from Jordan will also be allowed to enter via the Kerem Shalom Crossing.’

If Israel could reopen the Erez crossing and begin to use the port of Ashdod before, and had chosen not to do so, despite the displacement of 1.7 million Palestinians, the logical implication is that it has been intentionally withholding aid. A Palestinian physician, Dr Duha Shellah, commenting on the distribution of aid into Gaza, told me that the ‘Volunteer committees responsible for coordinating and delivering aid have been targeted by the Israeli military.’ Likewise, hearing from colleagues, family, and friends, she speaks of ‘people eating grass, animal food, anything to survive.’ Israel’s claims about UNRWA led to $450 million worth of funding being suspended; in light of the dire plight of many Palestinians, this shows the fatal consequences of false—or at the very least unfounded—claims.

Recent revelations about the Israeli military’s application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs in the war on Gaza by the IDF also provide a sinister window into how Israel has been conducting its war. The Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham, writing for +972 Magazine, has reported that ‘The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties’. The system is called ‘Lavender’ and its existence and use in the current war was revealed by six Israeli intelligence officers. The obvious question arises—are these Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants being targeted? And, even if they are, would using AI to target them be justified?

Well, Abraham reports that the six Israeli officers say ‘the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes—usually at night while their whole families were present—rather than during the course of military activity.’ The explanation for this was simple. One of the intelligence officers declared that ‘We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.’

In The Guardian’s report, one Israeli officer said that, in using Lavender, ‘I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.’ In the field of AI the idea of the ‘human in the loop’ is a cornerstone of ethical and practical thinking. The idea is that human beings, informed (and constrained by) their reason and ethics, can be accountable for the actions of AI. The essential negation of the human in the loop in the use of Lavender shows the depths of callousness the IDF have reached in their war on the people of Gaza.

The figures for the dead in Gaza are unlikely to be exact. However, given the ID numbers provided to residents in the small enclave and the corroboration of figures from various sources, it seems probable that the figure of over 30,000 dead is accurate. As of April, Save the Children reported that over 13,800 children had been killed in Gaza. In the face of this catastrophe, what role have Western powers played?

It is without a doubt true to say that virtually unanimous and unconditional support has been provided to Israel, particularly from the United States. A recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report documents that ‘The US has approved more than 100 weapons transfers to Israel since October 7, and exported 8,000 military rifles and 43,000 handguns in 2023’. The BBC, in an article documenting where Israel gets its arms from, reported that ‘The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.’

The exact percentage figure of Israeli imported arms coming from the US is 65.6%. Trailing in second place is Germany, responsible for 29.7%. Although the United Kingdom does not provide as much as the other two powers, it nonetheless sold £42 million worth of arms to Israel in 2022 and since 2015 has granted arms export licences to Israel worth £442 million. This includes helicopters, aircraft, missiles, grenades, armoured vehicles, and tanks. Whatever drop in the larger ocean this constitutes, the UK has armed Israel and continues to provide it with diplomatic and political support at the United Nations.

Apologists for Israel tend to recycle the well-worn phrase that ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’. Ahmed Benchemsi, the MENA spokesman for HRW, however, described the situation differently to me: ‘What is happening in Gaza now is more like a mediaeval siege, in which the whole population is punished in retaliation for crimes committed by a small minority of combatants.’ Collective punishment is illegal under international law, so all of Hamas’s crimes on 7 October notwithstanding, Israel’s actions against the population of Gaza are illegal. A recent HRW report covering the West Bank also noted that:

‘Israeli settlers have assaulted, tortured, and committed sexual violence against Palestinians, stolen their belongings and livestock, threatened to kill them if they did not leave permanently, and destroyed their homes and schools under the cover of the ongoing hostilities in Gaza.’

This is corroborated by Dr Mahmoud Wohoush, a doctor working in the West Bank, who told me that ‘Settler violence in the West Bank tremendously increased after Oct 7th and…the Israeli forces protect them [the settlers] and provide any needed support as many of the settlers are their relatives and friends.’ He goes on to say that ‘This escalation has been fostered by the politicians, particularly the extremists in the current right wing government. They are following the instructions from their religious leaders to kill the Palestinians to uproot them from their land.’ We often hear of the fanaticism of Hamas, sometimes generalised to the Palestinians at large, yet how often do we hear on Western airwaves of the fanaticism of Israeli settlers in the West Bank who think, by divine right, that the land of ‘Judea and Samaria’ should be granted to them alone?

These accounts, by HRW and by Palestinians on the ground, are crucial to note for two reasons. Firstly, the Israelis are committing crimes in the West Bank, where there is no Hamas, nor any seriously organised armed Palestinian resistance group fighting them. Secondly, the war in Gaza is giving cover to the dispossession and abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank, something which has been ongoing for decades, long before 7 October.

The war in Gaza represents—and is—a war on the Palestinian people. The high civilian death toll, combined with the suspension of funding to UNRWA, the application of AI, and increasing settler violence in the West Bank, prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.

Further reading

Religion and the Arab-Israeli conflict, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Bloodshed in Gaza: Islamists, leftist ideologues, and the prospects of a two-state solution, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

An Islamic (mis)education about Israel, by Hina Husain

Is the Israel-Palestine conflict fundamentally a nationalist, not a religious, war? by Ralph Leonard

Young, radical and morally confused, by Gerfried Ambrosch

The post Israel’s war on Gaza is a war on the Palestinian people appeared first on The Freethinker.

Since 31 January 2021, a new BNO visa has been available to Hong Kong residents holding Hong Kong British National (Overseas) passports. The BNO allows such people to come to the UK with their close family members and stay for five years. After five years of residence in the UK, they will be entitled to apply for settlement (also known as ‘indefinite leave to remain’), and after one further year of residence, to apply for British citizenship.

Oliver and his wife, Jenny, applied for the new visa immediately in July 2021 after getting all the documents and money ready. Oliver was an engineer and Jenny was a primary school teacher. Both were born and educated in Hong Kong.

The cost of applying for a visa to stay for five years is £250. In order to use the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, applicants each need to pay the healthcare surcharge. It costs £3,120 if one is staying for 5 years. For each child under 18 it costs £2,350.

‘We had to get quite a large sum of money ready,’ Oliver says. ‘Apart from the application costs and flight tickets, we also needed to prove we had enough money to pay for our housing and to support ourselves and our family for 6 months.’

‘We have two boys,’ Jenny adds, ‘Adam was six and Bobby was four. You can imagine how much money we needed to get hold of before we start our journey.’

‘But it’s all worth it,’ Oliver continues with a sigh. ‘We are now safe. We didn’t want to see our kids continue with their schooling in Hong Kong, where they have changed the whole curriculum – including all sorts of misinformation trying to brainwash children into believing that Communist China is a “progressive, selfless and united regime”, while denouncing democratic government as a “fierce inter-party rivalry that makes the people suffer”.’

The Chinese Communist Party-backed National Education curriculum required schools to spend up to one quarter of their study time during six years of primary education on activities and talks about patriotism. Oliver was worried that, with this in force, his children would succumb to the negative effects of brainwashing.

Back in May 2011, the Hong Kong Education Bureau announced the introduction of  a ‘Moral and National Education’ (MNE) as a compulsory school subject in primary and secondary schools. ‘National identity’ was one of the priority values that the curriculum reforms proposed should be promoted. The whole MNE programme aimed at instilling in the students a ‘blind patriotism’. Assessment examples included students’ reporting on whether their peers showed emotions, such as tears in their eyes when singing the national anthem and watching the hoisting of the national flag.

‘The learning of the national situations emphasises “affection”, focuses on “feeling” and is based on “emotion”.’  (MNE Curriculum Guide)

Realising the danger of the many elements of indoctrination in the MNE, in 2012, parents, teachers and students formed a ‘Civil Alliance Against the National Education’. They organised protest marches and occupied the Hong Kong government headquarters, where they staged a hunger strike and other demonstration events. Tens of thousands of supporters joined in the occupation, and the Hong Kong Government had to shelve the MNE and proposed a revised version – which, however, included elements similar to the MNE.

‘We know the Communist China Regime and the Hong Kong Government would not give up on controlling what is taught in schools and what to censor,’ says Jenny. ‘So for the sake of our boys, we had to come here to provide them with a more objective style of education. The boys are happy here in local schools, and I don’t have to worry about their getting brainwashed and not being able to develop critical thinking with an open mind.’

Oliver and Jenny are amongst the many young couples with children who have realised that Hong Kong is no longer the city with civil liberties they were promised by the CCP’s regime, as stipulated in the Hong Kong’s Basic Law. The ‘one-country-two-systems’ promise has been nothing but empty words, and the city has very quickly developed into an authoritarian state, just like any other Chinese city on the mainland. Worst of all, freedom of expression has been suppressed and any voices of dissent stifled.

Eva, an accountant clerk, came to reside in the UK all alone because she could not endure the stifling atmosphere in Hong Kong. ‘I felt suffocated in Hong Kong,’ she explains. ‘Every day when I opened the newspapers or turn on the television, I couldn’t help but feel despair.  Sometimes my anger was so intense I wanted to smash the TV screen.’

News of political dissenters being arrested and jailed has never ceased since actions to curb civil liberties began in 2015. In that year, five booksellers disappeared and later found out that they had been ‘arbitrarily detained’. They were ‘ill-treated and forced to confess’ by the CCP’s special forces.

In the past, there were protest marches every year on special days. Millions used to take to Hong Kong’s streets to voice their frustration and anger with government policies, and to shout out their demands for freedoms and democracy. Slogans were always chanted asking the Chief Executives, Leung Chun Ying (2012-2017) and Carrie Lam (2017-2022) to step down. The history of these protests is well documented in Antony Dapiran’s A City of Protest, published in 2017. But when the protests and demands fell on deaf ears, Hong Kong escalated into a City On Fire, as Dapiran chronicled, taking us to the 2019 scenarios when violence surged, and injuries and deaths become more horrifying. 

‘By the end of 2019, over the course of seven months, Hong Kong police had fired over 16,000 rounds of tear gas onto the streets of Hong Kong.’ (Dapiran, City On Fire, 2019)

‘I could smell the tear gas even in my flat three storeys high above the street,’ says Eva, recalling the battles between the protesters and the police. ‘When a protester died after falling off a building, when a young girl died mysteriously and her naked body was found floating in Hong Kong waters, and when another young student protester died during a demonstration, I made up my mind to leave this city.’

Like Eva, many young people in Hong Kong have been pondering the options for leaving this city where civil liberties are diminishing, where control of the citizens is the government’s top priority, and where the separation of powers – legislative, executive and judicial –  is quickly being eroded. 

Hong Kong used to be called the ‘Pearl of the Orient’, a vibrant and lively city in which Chinese and Western cultures merged harmoniously. It was one of the most successful capitalist economies in the world, staying consistently near the top of global economic rankings. Hong Kong people could enjoy freedom of expression, of the press and of publication; freedom of association, assembly, procession and demonstration; and the right and freedom to form and join trade unions, and to strike. Although all these freedoms are still enshrined in the Basic Law of Hong Kong, most of them have gradually become empty words. 

Similarly, Article 35 of the Constitution of People’s Republic of China states that ‘Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.’ This sounds grand and democratic. But we all know these are just slogans, if not blatant lies, to deceive the people.

Nowadays Hong Kong citizens, who have experienced the erosion of civil liberties in their beloved city, can no longer see the magnificent glow of the ‘Pearl of the Orient’. 

Another vital blow to stifle dissent and silence pro-democracy activists was struck only last year.

On 6 January 2021, 53 Hong Kong activists including former legislators, social workers and academics were arrested by the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force under the National Security Law. The charges concerned their organisation and participation in the primaries for the subsequently postponed Legislative Council election. This was the largest crackdown under the National Security Law. Its effect was to leave the Legislative Council completely controlled by pro-government legislative councillors.

‘What do you expect of these “hare-brain’d slaves” who have now infested the Legislative Council ?’ says Leo. ‘They all behave after an “undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion” – and they know nothing but kowtowing to their leaders.’

Leo was until recently a professor at a Hong Kong university, teaching English Literature. In 2018, before the 2022 mass exodus to the UK, he already knew he would no longer be able to call Hong Kong home. Together with his wife, Mary, he came to the UK to pay a visit to a close friend of his and to search for possibilities for emigrating. The couple eventually decided to buy a house here for their retirement. They both hold British passports which they attained by way of the Right of Abode arrangement, an agreement offered to some Hong Kong citizens after its handover to China in 1997.

‘We decided to stay here for good,’ Leo continues. ‘My wife is worried that I might be arrested if I return to Hong Kong.’

‘Almost one hundred percent!’ Mary says with confidence. ‘You will be arrested right at the airport. Look at all those publications of yours! Criticising government policies, condemning the Communist China regime, establishing Non-Governmental Organisations, participating in protests and demonstration marches. They can easily charge you with crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign organisations.’

‘Yes, I can’t disagree with you, Mary,’ Leo sighs. ‘Most of my activist friends have been arrested and are now detained awaiting trials.’ He points out that the largest pro-democracy paper, Apple Daily, announced closure on 24 June, 2021 and the chief editor and five other executives were detained. All vociferous pro-democracy NGOs were disbanded. ‘Where else can we publish any criticism or voice our opinions? Who else dares to take to the streets and risk being dumped into the ocean or thrown off buildings?’

Leo and Mary have academic friends who have also migrated to the UK. Some have found jobs and many are trying to settle in, looking for a place to live, getting their children integrated into local schools, and adapting to British culture. In short, starting a new life here. 

Up till now, statistics from the Hong Kong Immigration Department have recorded the daily statistics on Passenger traffic. In the UK, government figures published in March 2022 by the Home Office have revealed that since the introduction of the BNO visa scheme, 113,742 Hongkongers have been granted visas to the UK. The daily reports of Hong Kong citizens leaving for the UK from the Hong Kong International Airport have clearly indicated that a mass exodus is taking place. There must have been and will be many Olivers, Jennys, Evas, Leos and Marys amongst them. Hopefully, many children too will be able to escape the brutal brainwashing education system and enjoy their liberties and schooling here in the UK.  

The Hong Kong diaspora to the UK is most likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Other residents may consider other free countries, with other reasons for emigration. (As to the effect of the Covid lockdowns, their absurdity and disruption to people’s lives, that would require a whole article of its own.) Wherever they plan to go, for many Hongkongers, the exhortation, ‘Let’s leave this town,’ will long be in their thoughts and dreams, awaiting realisation.

The names of some of the people mentioned in this article have been changed to protect their identities.

More on China’s creeping totalitarianism: Jackboots in Manchester 暴政踐踏之下的曼徹斯特, by Simon Cheng

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