Politics
The Pleasure of Hating
It is always a good idea, I think, to resist the temptation to regard the politics of one’s own time as especially awful, but recent history does seem to have provided no shortage of prima facie evidence that there is something a bit unhinged and perhaps even pathological about contemporary conflicts. As Pankaj Mishra and Kenan Malik both argue, the volatility and irrationalism of the present are expressions of widespread feelings of alienation, resentment, anger and hatred. This much, at least, seems obvious enough. The difficult question Mishra and Malik set out to answer is why this should be the case.
Bad Hombres
Why did people vote for Trump? That is the question we should be asking ourselves, and it’s one that’s given extra urgency by the fact that his ascendency is not an isolated case, but the most spectacular instance of a more general phenomenon. In Europe, a veritable basket of deplorables is now angling for the votes of the disaffected. If liberals and leftwingers are serious about wresting momentum from them, they will have to understand their appeal.’
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part Five
‘Mike has worked with enough Westerners to know to get blunt. “‘Matt, if you cannot get military protection, don’t go to Jolo. Do you understand? You are a marked man. The only white civilians in Jolo are hostages in pits.”’ The final instalment of Matthew C. Thompson’s reportage from the Sulu Archipelago
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part Four
‘Henry, the policeman with the invisible support squad of jinns, wants to help expose me to the views of Muslims during my stay in this protected enclave. Indeed, he expresses the hope that I will embrace Islam, the way of the Sunni, and convert.’ Matthew Thompson meets the Mufti of Basilan as he tries to broker a trip to the troubled island of Jolo in the Sulu Archipelago.
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part Three
‘“I look at them as a criminal group posturing as Islamic radicals,” says “Tiny” Perez, the battalion’s muscular commanding officer, as we have chocolate wafers and coffee in an open hilltop hut.’ This is the third instalment of Matthew Thompson’s account of his 2014 journey into the Sulu Archipelago, a violent, beautiful and contested region of the southern Philippines.
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part Two
The second instalment of Matt Thompson’s reportage on the resistence to terrorism in the Sulu Archipelago of the southern Philippines, during which he performs badly at a karaoke session with the Vice-Mayor of Lamitan City, Oric Furigay, descendent of ‘the last Conquistador’, and accepts his offer of a heavily armed escort to visit the outpost of Tipo Tipo, ‘the capital of the terrorist’.
Don’t Go To Jolo – Part One
The War on Terror that George W. Bush declared in 2001 (in which he included the Philippines as one of three fronts, the other two being Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa) may feel to America like a bad dream that is dragging on too long, but empires have come and gone during the dream of Jolo and its surrounds. The War on Terror is nothing new in the Philippines. It’s more a state of nature.