Dark horizons

It was a report by a BBC correspondent, Rajini Vaidyanathan that triggered my search urge. She is covering the US elections and she was at a Trump rally in Fort Lauderdale from where she made, as she often does, a Tweet. It got picked up by a local talk-show anchor and matters went swiftly downhill Tweet-wise. She was subjected to a string of abusive comments with racist elements — one advised her to go back to India — and many were sexist. It seems she was not alone in being trolled and her BBC piece notes others that have been on the wrong end of the Twitterverse.

‘All part of the job’ you may say. If you choose to use a public space such as Twitter or Facebook then you are fair game for whatever is out there wanting to have its say about you, your face or other bodily attributes, how you speak accent-wise or just the way you stand for a to-camera piece. Journos in a live and interactive environment need to have thick skins. But it was something beyond the ‘simple’ racism and sexism that Ms Vaidyanathan was pointing to and it was something I had noticed in the course of the EU Brexit campaign in the UK — that large historic events such as the American elections and the Brexit campaign are bringing to the surface some very unpleasant realities.

As somebody who has lived and worked in Pakistan for almost a quarter-century my awareness of ‘fear of the other’ is acutely honed. Humans are deeply tribal creatures, pack-animals as well for the most part. They are mistrustful of those outside the pack, indeed threatened, and though the actual threat may be less than the reality the sense of threat is rapidly communicated to fellow pack members. It runs on the surface sheen of my adopted country, and as one of ‘the other’ it can be profoundly discomfiting. ‘Others’ can come to a very sticky end in Pakistan — ask any member of a religious minority.

It was there in the UK Brexit campaign that had strong undercurrents of fear-of-the-other, and it is no coincidence that one of the leading lights of that campaign should turn up on the same podium as Donald Trump. Trump and Nigel Farage press all the same buttons when it comes to ‘the other’. Immigrants from Eastern Europe were the particular ‘other’ in the UK; they are Mexicans or Muslims in the US election — or any other strand of humanity that is outside of the Trump campaign paradigm. The ‘other’ is a powerful chord to strike and it possibly swung the Brexit vote more than any other single factor.

There are still two months to go before the Americans go to the polls (…two months! Heaven help us!) and the Trump playing of the ‘other’ card may not have the legs to sustain him on the trek to the White House; and America is probably going to elect its first woman as president who is also the most unpopular candidate in generations — next to Trump himself that is.

Even if Trump loses, and the polls are indicating that is the most likely outcome, there are going to be millions of his pack members that now feel threatened by having a woman in the White House, just as they felt and have continued to feel threatened by having a black man and his family in what they see as theirs — literally a White House, not a black. Their White House. Which has been stolen from them by The Other — which now gets capitalised so great has it become.

Historically The Other, particularly if they are not heavily armed and martially inclined, have tended not to do too well. They become the forever-victims with their own iconographies and martyrs, forever unable to step out of their assigned role. The victimhood of The Other is universal and not confined to developed (Developed!) nations and it is the trigger for much of the violence we see and experience every day. If the Trump pack loses and itself becomes The Other then it is quickly going to turn on lesser Others, with consequences that almost do not bear thinking about. 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2016.

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