foreignpolicy--2020-07-13--U.S. Preparing to Suspend Extradition Treaty With Hong Kong

U.S .
Preparing to Suspend Extradition Treaty With Hong Kong The Trump administration is readying plans to suspend the U.S. extradition treaty with Hong Kong following China ’ s imposition of a sweeping new national security law that hamstrings the judicial independence of the onetime British colony .
The pending decision—which former officials and congressional aides told Foreign Policy could be made in a matter of weeks—is just the latest escalation in tensions between the United States and China .
U.S. President Donald Trump said in May that the administration would begin altering the United States ’ relationship with Hong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and trade relations—as it fell under tighter control from Beijing .
The abrogation of extradition would come as the United States and China trade diplomatic blows over the coronavirus pandemic and the mass internment of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang and amid still simmering trade tensions and tariffs .
The administration is already escalating its showdown with Beijing in another novel way .
On Monday , Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States would reject some of Beijing ’ s specific territorial claims over the strategically important South China Sea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ China “ has no legal grounds to unilaterally impose its will on the region .
Beijing has offered no coherent legal basis for its ‘ Nine-Dashed Line ’ claim in the South China Sea , ” he said in a statement .
The White House and State Department declined to comment for this story .
But leading U.S. lawmakers have supported the idea of rolling back the U.S. extradition treaty with Hong Kong .
Congress has already passed legislation that would sanction Chinese officials who enforced Beijing ’ s new security law in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ punished protesters and banks whose financial activities were involved in actions that may subvert Hong Kong ’ s independence .
“ The CCP [ Chinese Communist Party ] has destroyed the legal firewall between its legal system and that of Hong Kong , ” Rep. Michael McCaul , the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee , told Foreign Policy .
“ It is no longer safe to extradite Americans there , where they would be subject to sham prosecutions and trials inside China for anything the CCP finds objectionable under the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sen. Jim Risch , the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee , said such a decision would fit in with the administration ’ s wider reassessment of U.S. ties with Hong Kong .
“ The new national security law imposed by the Chinese Communist Party eviscerates the rule of law that Hong Kong was once known for , and that has clear implications for cooperation on extradition and safety of American citizens , ” he said .
Australia and Canada have already suspended their extradition treaties to the territory in recent weeks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sign that , for many in the West , Hong Kong ’ s historically trusted legal system is already a thing of the past .
Before the national security law was passed , Hong Kong had extradition agreements with some 20 countries .
Among those countries that do not also have extradition agreements with China are : Australia , Germany , Britain , the United States , India , Singapore , and Malaysia .
Hong Kong ’ s cruel new law doesn ’ t just affect the city .
U.S. Carriers Send @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sea “ China is just pushing on all fronts , ” a former defense official told Foreign Policy .
“ I ’ m worried at some point that the dam is going to break somewhere.
” Countries Are Opening Their Doors for Hong Kong ’ s Exodus Britain , Taiwan , and many other countries are welcoming Hong Kongers as they scramble to leave before Beijing cracks down .
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson this month again offered 3 million Hong Kong residents paths to British work visas and citizenship in response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government has followed suit and encouraged businesses based in Hong Kong to move their operations to Australia .
The new national security law , passed on June 30 , effectively casts aside Hong Kong ’ s judicial autonomy by giving jurisdiction over political crimes that take place in Hong Kong to mainland Chinese authorities .
The law also grants the Chinese government authority to prosecute nonresidents who criticize Beijing even when in another country—opening the door to foreign nationals being arbitrarily detained in Hong Kong .
And ending the U.S. extradition treaty could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much tougher relationship with what is now a de facto extension of China .
Hong Kong , a trade and financial hub , has long played a special role for China in facilitating access to the global financial system—presenting a vulnerability the Trump administration could exploit .
Preliminary discussions inside the Trump administration have looked at the possibility of limiting Hong Kong ’ s access to dollars , which could undermine the territory ’ s currency peg to the dollar—but which could also roil global financial markets .
“ The big discussion in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not they want to take steps to affect Hong Kong ’ s banks and how easy it is for them to get access to dollars , ” said Bonnie Glaser , the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies .
“ And if we do take that kind of measure again , the existence of Hong Kong as a financial hub would probably erode over a shorter period of time than it might otherwise .
The goal would be to deny China the ability to use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she said .
But Glaser warned that such a step would be painful for Hong Kong ’ s banks and citizens .
“ I think that ’ s part of the debate , at least I hope it is , taking place in the administration .
Do you want to use the nuclear option ?
”

The Trump administration is readying plans to suspend the U.S. extradition treaty with Hong Kong following China’s imposition of a sweeping new national security law that hamstrings the judicial independence of the onetime British colony.
The Trump administration is readying plans to suspend the U.S. extradition treaty with Hong Kong following China’s imposition of a sweeping new national security law that hamstrings the judicial independence of the onetime British colony.
The pending decision—which former officials and congressional aides told Foreign Policy could be made in a matter of weeks—is just the latest escalation in tensions between the United States and China. U.S. President Donald Trump said in May that the administration would begin altering the United States’ relationship with Hong Kong—including the extradition treaty, export controls, and trade relations—as it fell under tighter control from Beijing. The abrogation of extradition would come as the United States and China trade diplomatic blows over the coronavirus pandemic and the mass internment of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang and amid still simmering trade tensions and tariffs.
The administration is already escalating its showdown with Beijing in another novel way. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States would reject some of Beijing’s specific territorial claims over the strategically important South China Sea, a departure from past practice. China “has no legal grounds to unilaterally impose its will on the region. Beijing has offered no coherent legal basis for its ‘Nine-Dashed Line’ claim in the South China Sea,” he said in a statement.
The White House and State Department declined to comment for this story. But leading U.S. lawmakers have supported the idea of rolling back the U.S. extradition treaty with Hong Kong. Congress has already passed legislation that would sanction Chinese officials who enforced Beijing’s new security law in Hong Kong, including police units that punished protesters and banks whose financial activities were involved in actions that may subvert Hong Kong’s independence.
“The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] has destroyed the legal firewall between its legal system and that of Hong Kong,” Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Foreign Policy. “It is no longer safe to extradite Americans there, where they would be subject to sham prosecutions and trials inside China for anything the CCP finds objectionable under the new Orwellian national security law.”
Republican Sen. Jim Risch, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said such a decision would fit in with the administration’s wider reassessment of U.S. ties with Hong Kong. “The new national security law imposed by the Chinese Communist Party eviscerates the rule of law that Hong Kong was once known for, and that has clear implications for cooperation on extradition and safety of American citizens,” he said.
Australia and Canada have already suspended their extradition treaties to the territory in recent weeks in response to the new law, a sign that, for many in the West, Hong Kong’s historically trusted legal system is already a thing of the past. Before the national security law was passed, Hong Kong had extradition agreements with some 20 countries. Among those countries that do not also have extradition agreements with China are: Australia, Germany, Britain, the United States, India, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Read More Riot police in a mall in Hong Kong Riot police in a mall in Hong Kong Beijing Launches a Global Assault on Free Speech Hong Kong’s cruel new law doesn’t just affect the city. Argument | Benedict Rogers A U.S. F/A-18 hornet fighter prepares to land while other fighter jets fly behind during a routine training aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the South China Sea A U.S. F/A-18 hornet fighter prepares to land while other fighter jets fly behind during a routine training aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the South China Sea U.S. Carriers Send a Message to Beijing Over South China Sea “China is just pushing on all fronts,” a former defense official told Foreign Policy. “I’m worried at some point that the dam is going to break somewhere.” Report | Jack Detsch Legal professionals march to the Central Government Offices in Hong Kong to protest against the government's plan to approve extraditions to mainland China, on June 6, 2019. Legal professionals march to the Central Government Offices in Hong Kong to protest against the government's plan to approve extraditions to mainland China, on June 6, 2019. Countries Are Opening Their Doors for Hong Kong’s Exodus Britain, Taiwan, and many other countries are welcoming Hong Kongers as they scramble to leave before Beijing cracks down. Voice | Salvatore Babones
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson this month again offered 3 million Hong Kong residents paths to British work visas and citizenship in response to the national security law. The Australian government has followed suit and encouraged businesses based in Hong Kong to move their operations to Australia.
The new national security law, passed on June 30, effectively casts aside Hong Kong’s judicial autonomy by giving jurisdiction over political crimes that take place in Hong Kong to mainland Chinese authorities. The law also grants the Chinese government authority to prosecute nonresidents who criticize Beijing even when in another country—opening the door to foreign nationals being arbitrarily detained in Hong Kong.
And ending the U.S. extradition treaty could be just the opening salvo of a much tougher relationship with what is now a de facto extension of China. Hong Kong, a trade and financial hub, has long played a special role for China in facilitating access to the global financial system—presenting a vulnerability the Trump administration could exploit. Preliminary discussions inside the Trump administration have looked at the possibility of limiting Hong Kong’s access to dollars, which could undermine the territory’s currency peg to the dollar—but which could also roil global financial markets.
“The big discussion in the administration appears to be whether or not they want to take steps to affect Hong Kong’s banks and how easy it is for them to get access to dollars,” said Bonnie Glaser, the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“And if we do take that kind of measure again, the existence of Hong Kong as a financial hub would probably erode over a shorter period of time than it might otherwise. The goal would be to deny China the ability to use Hong Kong to do business,” she said.
But Glaser warned that such a step would be painful for Hong Kong’s banks and citizens. “I think that’s part of the debate, at least I hope it is, taking place in the administration. Do you want to use the nuclear option?”


foreignpolicy--2020-07-13--QAnon’s Madness Is Turning Canadians Into Potential Assassins

“ Has anyone else been following ‘ Q ’ and the ‘ White Rabbit ’ down the rabbit hole ?
” the caption reads .
A mess of hashtags inscrutable to outsiders are below , from # QAnon to # FrazzleDrip , # PodestaEmails , # SethRich , # WWG1WGA , # AdrenochromeHarvesting , and more .
Weeks later , the account posted another meme : “ We ’ re organising a festival after lockdown ends , ” it reads , the text superimposed onto the scene of some kind of outdoor party .
“ For more info Google ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those instructions would find that Event 201 was a tabletop exercise , held in 2019 , designed to help policymakers think about the prospect of tackling a pandemic .
In the example , which I wrote about in March , the players were faced with a fast-moving novel coronavirus originating from China .
The GrindHouse page reuploaded the Event 201 meme at 6:04 a.m. on Thursday , July 2 .
Less than a half-hour later , a four-door pickup truck crashed through the wrought-iron gates of 1 Sussex Drive in Ottawa .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revolver and proceeded on foot through the long path from the gate to Rideau Hall , where Canada ’ s governor general resides .
As staff radioed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers who patrol the grounds , the man hid in some rose bushes .
Slinking around the building , he is alleged to have broken into an ornate greenhouse that connects to the residence of Queen Elizabeth II ’ s representative in Canada .
A few hundred yards away from the greenhouse is Rideau Cottage , the temporary residence of Prime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gov .
Gen. Julie Payette was home at the time .
Police cornered him in the greenhouse and talked him into surrender .
The man was identified as Corey Hurren , the owner and operator of GrindHouse Fine Foods .
He ’ s now facing nearly two dozen charges , mostly weapons offenses .
He faces one count of making a threat to “ cause death or bodily harm ” to the prime minister .
According to Global News , Hurren prepared a letter warning of Trudeau ’ s attempt to turn Canada @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well be the most high-profile action inspired by QAnon , the sprawling octopus of a conspiratorial cult that has eaten up tens of thousands of Americans , anywhere in the world .
And it speaks to the reach of one of the strangest , and most dangerous , movements to come out of the Donald Trump era .
QAnon is the movement organized around the anonymous Q , a poster on the far-right trolling site 4chan who purported to be a high-level Trump administration official detailing a secret war against the deep state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a boisterous defense of Trump , it has taken on a life of its own .
It has stretched its tendrils into a sprawling , fantastical , and dangerous conspiracy movement that alleges the rich and powerful of the world , from Beyoncé to George Soros , operate an elaborate child-trafficking organization .
The only one standing in their way is the president of the United States .
In recent months , the movement has been boosted by some high-level adherents .
On July 4 , QAnon followers began posting videos of themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fealty to the cause .
They were joined by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn .
Former Trump associate Roger Stone has further went on a QAnon podcast to say he hoped Q was , in fact , out there .
Hurren ’ s actions appear to have been motivated by falling deep into QAnon ’ s waters .
Those who have known him for years called him the epitome of a nice , regular , hard-working guy .
He was a reservist in the Canadian Forces , an active volunteer , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conservative , one friend told me , but not radical .
( “ Everybody here said , ‘ Oh if I saw Justin [ Trudeau ] , I ’ d sure tell him something , ’ ” Hurren ’ s friend and local radio host Bill Garde told me .
“ Sure , we ’ ve all said that , but this is a totally different deal.
” ) In an essay Hurren published to his Facebook page in 2015 , he makes a pitch for recognizing Canada as both a society of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year , he joined a manhunt to track down two teenagers , one of whom had a collection of Nazi memorabilia , who embarked on a killing spree through the remote Canadian north .
Nobody has pointed to any signs of radicalization .
“ I ’ ve never heard that type of stuff from Corey , more than you ’ d hear from any normal person just unhappy with the government and all those people in the east , ” Garde told me .
He posted the white rabbit meme on his Instagram @ @ @ @ @ @ @ having to shut his business due to the lockdown restrictions .
“ Lots of coincidences in all these ‘ Q ’ posts , ” he wrote , wondering “ how this all relates to the Corona virus/COVID-19 situation.
” Hurren isn ’ t the only victim of QAnon poisoning in Canada ’ s lockdown era .
Just a day before Hurren ’ s alleged attack , hundreds of protesters gathered on Parliament Hill , just a few miles away , for a Canada Day rally .
One demonstrator carried a sign showing Trudeau @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the return of the death penalty , just for the prime minister .
Chants of “ Lock him up !
” echoed through the capital as the demonstration marched toward the U.S. Embassy , also on Sussex Drive .
There , the retired firefighter Norman Traversy wielded a binder containing a letter formally requesting that Trump and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador launch an investigation into Trudeau ’ s supposed corruption .
The letter , which asks the Mexican and American presidents to launch the investigation using a clause in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the disregard for our criminal laws ; by our government and private agencies , permits child abduction ; a gateway to child sex slavery .
We must intervene on behalf of our children to stop the multi-billion dollar intercontinental child trafficking enterprise.
” Traversy and the hundreds gathered , including far-right People ’ s Party leader Maxime Bernier , were not expressly QAnon truthers .
Yet their rallying cry about a supposed cross-border child-trafficking ring echoes the conspiracies of the movement .
At the rally , the tell-tale Q and acronym WWG1WGA—Where We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on dozens of signs .
Traversy ’ s letter is just the most recent salvo in an attempt to , in the minds of Traversy and his followers , bring Trudeau to justice .
Traversy had already tried to file a private prosecution of Trudeau , using an obscure legal mechanism to do so , but it was thrown out of the courts .
Some aren ’ t keen to continue using the official channels .
A source within the Canadian government said serious threats , including spray-painted messages scrawled on one minister @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a particularly unhinged and conspiratorial flavor in recent months .
Hurren ’ s alleged crimes do seem to fit into that trend .
The Canadian flavor of the conspiracy shows this isn ’ t so much about a particular government or party but rather about a pernicious and dogged distrust in systems of power worldwide .
It has taken a powerful grip in Canada thanks to a deep distrust , even hatred , for Trudeau in particular .
When Garde ’ s radio station posted the news that Hurren had been arrested , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ radio station cheered Hurren on , suggesting he be nominated for various awards .
Some only wished Trudeau had been home at the time of the attack .
The American culture war plays out in Canada , as well .
But up north , a self-styled progressive is in power , making him a prime target .
Attacks directly inspired by the QAnon ideology are still relatively rare .
Edgar Welch was arrested inside a Washington , D.C. , pizza shop in 2016 , after firing his AR-15 inside the restaurant while insisting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Anthony Comello is alleged to have killed the mob boss Francesco Cali , believing the mob and CIA were working together as part of the deep state , and scrawled “ Q ” onto his hands for the benefit of the courtroom photographers .
Officers in California arrested a man in late 2018 as he assembled bomb-making materials—he had been planning to attack the Illinois state legislature to “ make Americans aware of Pizzagate.
” According to a threat assessment obtained by Yahoo News , the FBI considers anti-government conspiracy theories , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to lead to criminal or violent extremism .
The tenets of the conspiracy theory might seem , on their face , too absurd to take seriously .
Hurren references “ adrenochrome harvesting ” in his late March Instagram post .
From the advent of the conspiracy theory , QAnon followers have believed that powerful people in Washington and Hollywood have abducted and trafficked children , in part , to harvest their adrenochrome , often in a Satanic ritual .
In recent months , QAnon has pointed to the COVID-19 lockdown as either an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s economic gains or a smokescreen put up by Trump himself to effect the arrest of deep state actors and the release of hostage children .
Hollywood actors like Tom Hanks have been spared the worst of the virus thanks to their adrenochrome reserves .
That may seem absurd , but , as Michael Barkun wrote in Foreign Policy in 2018 , “ [ i ] n a culture already saturated with beliefs about plots and cabals—as contemporary America is—these claims were enormously enticing , despite the total absence of external @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a professor emeritus of political science at Syracuse University , wrote that Trump ’ s end-of-the-world political rhetoric dovetails perfectly with QAnon ’ s narrative of good versus evil .
“ If there is any lesson to be taken from this bizarre episode , it is that , in the age of Trump , no claim seems too preposterous to find an audience and that , in the age of the internet and social media , these beliefs and those willing to accept them are only too easy to bring together.
” Maybe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ( “ The adrenaline glands from a living human body … it ’ s no good if you get it out of a corpse ” ) , the theory doesn ’ t account for the fact that adrenochrome isn ’ t produced by the human body .
That doesn ’ t stop its advocates .
Take Agent Margaritaville , a Canadian QAnon YouTube channel and Facebook page , boasting more than a million video views and more than 20,000 subscribers .
In an April video , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his native Newfoundland and Labrador and says : “ Inside those containers : children.
” He goes on to claim that Hillary Clinton organizes the shipments alongside ex-Prime Minister Paul Martin , who owns a shipping company .
“ Justin Trudeau knew about it , ” he alleges .
On Hurren ’ s white rabbit post , someone links to Q Alerts , a dedicated QAnon message board .
On Q Alerts , every follower signs off their conspiratorial conjecture with the Q tagline .
Every follower of QAnon is now Q @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the supposed conspiracy and , in their view , saving children from abduction , torture , and murder .
Most violent extremist movements see attacks or terrorism as a means to a political end .
The Islamic State and al Qaeda hoped to , at various times , draw the West into military quagmires in the Middle East or to break Western countries ’ resolve in order to end current engagements .
Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups want to inflict damage on Jewish , LGBTQ , and minority groups , perhaps to spark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often seek revenge against women for refusing them sex and to wake up fellow disgruntled men to their cause .
While there is significant overlap between QAnon and other far-right , anti-Semitic , anti-LGBTQ , and white supremacist movements , what sets the whole QAnon movement apart is that it does not expressly seek to remake society .
Instead , its followers see themselves as well-informed , law-abiding citizens who are the only ones to recognize the crime and corruption of the deep state .
QAnon believers are firmly convinced that they must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trudeau , Martin , Hanks , and so on .
To that end , bringing an AR-15 into a pizza shop where children are being kept or making an attempt on the life of one of the world leaders at the center of the conspiracy may seem like a justified and even noble act .
Of course some proponents of the conspiracy aren ’ t quite so altruistic and see QAnon simply as a means to an end .
Yet for many adherents , who have spent months in isolation and lockdown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a pandemic , QAnon has been a comforting explanation , one that offers a neat and coherent reason for why everything has happened .
It may look absurd from the outside , but from the inside , it makes more sense than a reality where a simple virus was able to infect millions of people , shut down the global economy , and force people into their homes indefinitely .
And as the consequences of the virus spiral , it ’ s abundantly clear that we haven ’ t heard the last @ @ @

The Instagram page of GrindHouse Fine Foods, a sausage-maker in rural Manitoba, looks exactly as would be expected—at first: lots of pictures of meat, some photos of rural Canada, and a collection of cringey memes. One image, though, offers some clues about the man behind the account. It’s a photo of a white bunny sitting at the wheel of a car, with big white text above that reads: “Just get in the car, Alice. I’ll explain on the way.”
“Has anyone else been following ‘Q’ and the ‘White Rabbit’ down the rabbit hole?” the caption reads. A mess of hashtags inscrutable to outsiders are below, from #QAnon to #FrazzleDrip, #PodestaEmails, #SethRich, #WWG1WGA, #AdrenochromeHarvesting, and more.
Weeks later, the account posted another meme: “We’re organising a festival after lockdown ends,” it reads, the text superimposed onto the scene of some kind of outdoor party. “For more info Google ‘Event 201.’” Anyone who followed those instructions would find that Event 201 was a tabletop exercise, held in 2019, designed to help policymakers think about the prospect of tackling a pandemic. In the example, which I wrote about in March, the players were faced with a fast-moving novel coronavirus originating from China.
The GrindHouse page reuploaded the Event 201 meme at 6:04 a.m. on Thursday, July 2. Less than a half-hour later, a four-door pickup truck crashed through the wrought-iron gates of 1 Sussex Drive in Ottawa. The driver picked up a rifle and a revolver and proceeded on foot through the long path from the gate to Rideau Hall, where Canada’s governor general resides. As staff radioed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers who patrol the grounds, the man hid in some rose bushes. Slinking around the building, he is alleged to have broken into an ornate greenhouse that connects to the residence of Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in Canada. A few hundred yards away from the greenhouse is Rideau Cottage, the temporary residence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Neither Trudeau nor Gov. Gen. Julie Payette was home at the time.
Police cornered him in the greenhouse and talked him into surrender. The man was identified as Corey Hurren, the owner and operator of GrindHouse Fine Foods. He’s now facing nearly two dozen charges, mostly weapons offenses. He faces one count of making a threat to “cause death or bodily harm” to the prime minister. According to Global News, Hurren prepared a letter warning of Trudeau’s attempt to turn Canada into a communist dictatorship.
It may well be the most high-profile action inspired by QAnon, the sprawling octopus of a conspiratorial cult that has eaten up tens of thousands of Americans, anywhere in the world. And it speaks to the reach of one of the strangest, and most dangerous, movements to come out of the Donald Trump era.
A Canadian police officer walks by Rideau Hall near the grounds of the Ottawa estate that is home to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the country’s governor general on July 2, following the arrest of an armed man who entered the grounds.
QAnon is the movement organized around the anonymous Q, a poster on the far-right trolling site 4chan who purported to be a high-level Trump administration official detailing a secret war against the deep state. While the QAnon movement started as a boisterous defense of Trump, it has taken on a life of its own. It has stretched its tendrils into a sprawling, fantastical, and dangerous conspiracy movement that alleges the rich and powerful of the world, from Beyoncé to George Soros, operate an elaborate child-trafficking organization. The only one standing in their way is the president of the United States.
In recent months, the movement has been boosted by some high-level adherents. On July 4, QAnon followers began posting videos of themselves taking the oath of allegiance—a show of fealty to the cause. They were joined by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Former Trump associate Roger Stone has further went on a QAnon podcast to say he hoped Q was, in fact, out there.
We still don’t know exactly why Hurren acted as he did. Those who have known him for years called him the epitome of a nice, regular, hard-working guy. He was a reservist in the Canadian Forces, an active volunteer, and a father of two.
He was conservative, one friend told me, but not radical. (“Everybody here said, ‘Oh if I saw Justin [Trudeau], I’d sure tell him something,’” Hurren’s friend and local radio host Bill Gade told me. “Sure, we’ve all said that, but this is a totally different deal.”) In an essay Hurren published to his Facebook page in 2015, he makes a pitch for recognizing Canada as both a society of immigrants and Indigenous peoples. Earlier this year, he joined a manhunt to track down two teenagers, one of whom had a collection of Nazi memorabilia, who embarked on a killing spree through the remote Canadian north. Nobody has pointed to any signs of radicalization, although he seemed to have a longstanding interest in conspiracy theories — a personal website he created in 2003 recommended readers check out Alex Jones’ InfoWars and David Icke’s personal webpage. He embedded GIFs of Bill Gates sprouting horns and transforming into the devil. That, however, was nearly two decades ago. “I’ve never heard that type of stuff from Corey, more than you’d hear from any normal person just unhappy with the government and all those people in the east,” Gade told me. Even a fellow QAnon adherent who knew Hurren and his family said he never pegged the sausage-maker as a fellow traveller.
Until COVID-19.
He posted the white rabbit meme on his Instagram on March 27, just weeks after having to shut his business due to the lockdown restrictions. “Lots of coincidences in all these ‘Q’ posts,” he wrote, wondering “how this all relates to the Corona virus/COVID-19 situation.” On Instagram, he began following a number of survivalist and right-wing meme pages from both the United States and Canada. A common thread through many are memes of Hilary Clinton, promising to kill her critics and make it look like an accident or suicide. Hurren’s post references two such conspiracies.
Hurren isn’t the only victim of QAnon poisoning in Canada’s lockdown era.
Just a day before Hurren’s alleged attack, hundreds of protesters gathered on Parliament Hill, just a few miles away, for a Canada Day rally. One demonstrator carried a sign showing Trudeau standing in a gallows. Another called for the return of the death penalty, just for the prime minister. Chants of “Lock him up!” echoed through the capital as the demonstration marched toward the U.S. Embassy, also on Sussex Drive. There, the retired firefighter Norman Traversy wielded a binder containing a letter formally requesting that Trump and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador launch an investigation into Trudeau’s supposed corruption.
The letter, which asks the Mexican and American presidents to launch the investigation using a clause in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, alleges that “the disregard for our criminal laws; by our government and private agencies, permits child abduction; a gateway to child sex slavery. We must intervene on behalf of our children to stop the multi-billion dollar intercontinental child trafficking enterprise.”
A QAnon conspiracy theorist holds a WWG1WGA sign and Donald Trump banner during a protest at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem on May 2.
Traversy and the hundreds gathered, including far-right People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier, were not expressly QAnon truthers. Yet their rallying cry about a supposed cross-border child-trafficking ring echoes the conspiracies of the movement. At the rally, the tell-tale Q and acronym WWG1WGA—Where We Go One, We Go All—were scrawled on dozens of signs.
Traversy’s letter is just the most recent salvo in an attempt to, in the minds of Traversy and his followers, bring Trudeau to justice. Traversy had already tried to file a private prosecution of Trudeau, using an obscure legal mechanism to do so, but it was thrown out of the courts.
Some aren’t keen to continue using the official channels. A source within the Canadian government said serious threats, including spray-painted messages scrawled on one minister’s home, have taken on a particularly unhinged and conspiratorial flavor in recent months. Hurren’s alleged crimes do seem to fit into that trend.
The Canadian flavor of the conspiracy shows this isn’t so much about a particular government or party but rather about a pernicious and dogged distrust in systems of power worldwide. It has taken a powerful grip in Canada thanks to a deep distrust, even hatred, for Trudeau in particular. When Gade’s radio station posted the news that Hurren had been arrested, scores of Facebook commentators on the local radio station cheered Hurren on, suggesting he be nominated for various awards. Some only wished Trudeau had been home at the time of the attack.
The American culture war plays out in Canada, as well. But up north, a self-styled progressive is in power, making him a prime target.
Attacks directly inspired by the QAnon ideology are still relatively rare. Edgar Welch was arrested inside a Washington, D.C., pizza shop in 2016, after firing his AR-15 inside the restaurant while insisting the basement housed a dungeon for children. Anthony Comello is alleged to have killed the mob boss Francesco Cali, believing the mob and CIA were working together as part of the deep state, and scrawled “Q” onto his hands for the benefit of the courtroom photographers. Officers in California arrested a man in late 2018 as he assembled bomb-making materials—he had been planning to attack the Illinois state legislature to “make Americans aware of Pizzagate.”
Signs of support hang outside the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 6, 2016, after a man discharged his rifle claiming he was there to investigate a fake news story about a child sex ring.
According to a threat assessment obtained by Yahoo News, the FBI considers anti-government conspiracy theories, like QAnon, “very likely” to lead to criminal or violent extremism.
The tenets of the conspiracy theory might seem, on their face, too absurd to take seriously. Hurren references “adrenochrome harvesting” in his late March Instagram post. From the advent of the conspiracy theory, QAnon followers have believed that powerful people in Washington and Hollywood have abducted and trafficked children, in part, to harvest their adrenochrome, often in a Satanic ritual.
In recent months, QAnon has pointed to the COVID-19 lockdown as either an effort by the deep state to ruin Trump’s economic gains or a smokescreen put up by Trump himself to effect the arrest of deep state actors and the release of hostage children. Hollywood actors like Tom Hanks have been spared the worst of the virus thanks to their adrenochrome reserves.
That may seem absurd, but, as Michael Barkun wrote in Foreign Policy in 2018, “[i]n a culture already saturated with beliefs about plots and cabals—as contemporary America is—these claims were enormously enticing, despite the total absence of external evidence to support them.” Barkun, a professor emeritus of political science at Syracuse University, wrote that Trump’s end-of-the-world political rhetoric dovetails perfectly with QAnon’s narrative of good versus evil. “If there is any lesson to be taken from this bizarre episode, it is that, in the age of Trump, no claim seems too preposterous to find an audience and that, in the age of the internet and social media, these beliefs and those willing to accept them are only too easy to bring together.”
Maybe inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (“The adrenaline glands from a living human body … it’s no good if you get it out of a corpse”), the theory doesn’t account for the fact that adrenochrome isn’t produced by the human body.
That doesn’t stop its advocates. Take Agent Margaritaville, a Canadian QAnon YouTube channel and Facebook page, boasting more than a million video views and more than 20,000 subscribers. In an April video, he stands in front of a shipping container in his native Newfoundland and Labrador and says: “Inside those containers: children.” He goes on to claim that Hillary Clinton organizes the shipments alongside ex-Prime Minister Paul Martin, who owns a shipping company. “Justin Trudeau knew about it,” he alleges.
Trump supporters hold up their phones with messages referring to the QAnon conspiracy theory at a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Feb. 21.
On Hurren’s white rabbit post, someone links to Q Alerts, a dedicated QAnon message board. On Q Alerts, every follower signs off their conspiratorial conjecture with the Q tagline. Every follower of QAnon is now Q, as each takes responsibility for breaking the supposed conspiracy and, in their view, saving children from abduction, torture, and murder.
Most violent extremist movements see attacks or terrorism as a means to a political end. The Islamic State and al Qaeda hoped to, at various times, draw the West into military quagmires in the Middle East or to break Western countries’ resolve in order to end current engagements. Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups want to inflict damage on Jewish, LGBTQ, and minority groups, perhaps to spark a Helter Skelter-style race war. Incels often seek revenge against women for refusing them sex and to wake up fellow disgruntled men to their cause.
While there is significant overlap between QAnon and other far-right, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist movements, what sets the whole QAnon movement apart is that it does not expressly seek to remake society. Instead, its followers see themselves as well-informed, law-abiding citizens who are the only ones to recognize the crime and corruption of the deep state. QAnon believers are firmly convinced that they must save the children being trafficked by Clinton, Trudeau, Martin, Hanks, and so on. To that end, bringing an AR-15 into a pizza shop where children are being kept or making an attempt on the life of one of the world leaders at the center of the conspiracy may seem like a justified and even noble act.
Of course some proponents of the conspiracy aren’t quite so altruistic and see QAnon simply as a means to an end. Yet for many adherents, who have spent months in isolation and lockdown, seeking reason in the existential threat of a pandemic, QAnon has been a comforting explanation, one that offers a neat and coherent reason for why everything has happened. It may look absurd from the outside, but from the inside, it makes more sense than a reality where a simple virus was able to infect millions of people, shut down the global economy, and force people into their homes indefinitely.
And as the consequences of the virus spiral, it’s abundantly clear that we haven’t heard the last of Q.


foreignpolicy--2020-07-13--Pacifists Are Vulnerable to Fascism’s Whispers

“ Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist , ” George Orwell famously wrote in his 1942 essay “ Pacifism and the War.
” Orwell ’ s argument was straightforward ; anyone not helping the war effort against fascism was hindering it and therefore helping the Nazis .
His with-me-or-against-me formulation has been wheeled out to argue for intervention ever since .
Meanwhile , anti-war partisans have pointed out that Orwell recanted his use of the phrase and admitted that it was wrong to lump principled pacifists and fascists together .
Orwell was right to reconsider : Principled pacifists aren ’ t fascists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the debate about it , has served to obscure the fact that unprincipled people , and leaders , sometimes do use pacifist and anti-war rhetoric as a shield .
Anti-war activists and thinkers need to be consciously anti-fascist if they want to avoid being co-opted to the cause of violence , hatred , and war by both bad actors close to hand and authoritarian regimes abroad .
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime famously glorified militarism and hated pacifists—at home .
The Nazis burned copies of Erich Maria Remarque ’ s anti-war novel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made owning it a crime .
Pacifist religious denominations like Jehovah ’ s Witnesses were often sent to concentration camps .
But while they attacked domestic pacifism , Nazi propagandists encouraged it abroad , especially in the United States .
The German agent George Sylvester Viereck actually wrote speeches for anti-war Minnesota Sen. Ernest Lundeen to insert into the Congressional Record in 1937-1939 .
Homegrown fascists also used the language of pacifism .
The anti-Semitic demagogue Gerald Winrod broadcast fiery speeches denouncing communists and warning , “ War never pays.
” Most infamously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the de facto leader of the anti-war movement in the United States during World War II , gave a virulently anti-Semitic speech in 1941 .
Lindbergh claimed that Jewish people were pushing the United States into war , arguing : “ Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures , our press , our radio and our government.
” The stereotype of Jewish people as conspiratorial warmongering profiteers still has currency today ; in 2006 , the actor Mel Gibson infamously claimed that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the world.
” Lindbergh was not exactly a committed Nazi ; following Pearl Harbor , he tried to enlist in the U.S. Air Force to fight Germany .
But that ’ s partly the point .
The anti-war movement in the United States before World War II was thoroughly infiltrated with fascist sympathizers and fascist anti-Semitic propaganda .
People who opposed the war ended up soaked in Nazi ideology and Nazi talking points , even if they didn ’ t start there .
After World War I , pacifism gained many adherents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his book was a massive worldwide hit on its release in 1929 .
The 1930s were a time when “ antiwar sentiment attained unprecedented popular scope , ” according to the historian Hans Schmidt .
But by failing to distance themselves from fascism , anti-war movements during World War II badly hurt their own cause .
Lindbergh ’ s anti-Semitic speech sank his reputation at the time and has associated him forever with Nazism .
It would be decades before a credible anti-war movement was able to gain traction again in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the insanities of the war it opposed .
And , as the continued fame of Orwell ’ s quote shows , the confluence of fascism and pacifism in World War II is still used to undercut anti-war efforts today .
Yet , despite this catastrophic failure for pacifism , some contemporary anti-war voices are arguing that the left should once again reach out to anti-war cryptofascist right-wing populists as allies for peace .
Most notably , the anti-imperialist writer Glenn Greenwald wrote an article in the Intercept last month in which he suggested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the right .
He pointed especially to the Fox News personality Tucker Carlson as an opponent of establishment militarism .
It ’ s true that Carlson opposed airstrikes against Iran and has spoken against intervention in Syria .
But it ’ s important to remember that the far-right is virtually never opposed to war or violence as such .
Winrod and other far-right figures like Charles Coughlin spoke against war with Germany not because they disliked war but because they believed that the United States was fighting the wrong enemy .
Coughlin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fascism had “ evolved to act as a defense mechanism against communism.
” He wanted the United States out of the war because he wanted Hitler to violently crush those he saw as the real enemies : Jewish people and the Soviets .
Similarly , those on the populist right today who advocate against particular wars are not actually devoted to word peace or to decreasing violence .
Carlson is eager to militarize the United States ’ own borders .
He has also specifically said that he wants to de-escalate war abroad in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of America now in progress from the south ” —which is to say , he wants U.S. violence directed at foreign nationals closer to home .
Carlson has called for rapprochement with Russia by “ joking ” about how he hopes that Russia ’ s military defeats Ukraine .
Vladimir Putin ’ s wars are celebrated and defended by far-right movements across the globe because his authoritarian homophobic nationalism seems like a plausible model for others to follow .
In the same way , Hitler and Benito Mussolini were embraced by right-wing movements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they threatened .
And as in World War II , current right-wing movements do not want to end war .
They want their opponents , internal and external , to disarm .
Anti-war advocates need to push all nations toward less violence .
They shouldn ’ t allow fascists to enlist them in picking the worst possible winners .
It ’ s also important to think about who is excluded from anti-war movements when fascists are invited in .
In 2008 , Carlson said : “ Iraq is a crappy place filled with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ semiliterate primitive monkeys—that ’ s why it wasn ’ t worth invading.
” Carlson has also called the Black Lives Matter movement “ poison.
” Josh Hawley , another right-wing populist who has spoken against war with Iran , has made vitriolic attacks on LGBT rights .
A movement that embraces Carlson and Hawley is a movement that is going to seem extremely unwelcoming to many Black people , transgender people , and Muslim people .
Is it safe for marginalized people to have their names on right-wing anti-war mailing lists ?
Is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with violent bigots who hate you and may be jotting down your name and taking pictures of your face for later ?
In order to make Carlson and the populist right seem like reasonable allies , Greenwald is forced to downplay the dangers .
On Twitter , he said it was “ gross and offensive ” to compare Hawley and others to Hitler .
To advance pacifism , the anti-war left is supposed to handwave the genocidal logic of far-right ideology and normalize leading apologists for bigotry and state violence .
Just so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Nazis by justifying war against Jewish people .
A rigorously anti-fascist anti-war movement has to reject allies like Carlson , Hawley , and Putin .
It needs to be as concerned about the victims of Russian troops in Ukraine as with U.S. drone strikes ; it has to care as much about the violence of authoritarianism as it does about the violence of war .
An anti-fascist anti-war movement should hold Bashar al-Assad accountable for waging war on his own people ; it should work to remove Carlson and other rabid , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should recognize that fascism is not compatible with peace .
Fascists have historically used the rhetoric of pacifism to advance their own violent goals .
That means that pacifists need to be very wary when the far-right offers them aid or claims to be on their side .
A world in which fascists seize control of anti-war movements is not a less violent one .
Pacifists have a choice : They can be anti-fascist , or they can be tools of genocide and war .

“Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist,” George Orwell famously wrote in his 1942 essay “ Pacifism and the War .” Orwell’s argument was straightforward; anyone not helping the war effort against fascism was hindering it and therefore helping the Nazis. His with-me-or-against-me formulation has been wheeled out to argue for intervention ever since. Meanwhile, anti-war partisans have pointed out that Orwell recanted his use of the phrase and admitted that it was wrong to lump principled pacifists and fascists together.
“Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist,” George Orwell famously wrote in his 1942 essay “Pacifism and the War.” Orwell’s argument was straightforward; anyone not helping the war effort against fascism was hindering it and therefore helping the Nazis. His with-me-or-against-me formulation has been wheeled out to argue for intervention ever since. Meanwhile, anti-war partisans have pointed out that Orwell recanted his use of the phrase and admitted that it was wrong to lump principled pacifists and fascists together.
Orwell was right to reconsider: Principled pacifists aren’t fascists. But his original article, and the debate about it, has served to obscure the fact that unprincipled people, and leaders, sometimes do use pacifist and anti-war rhetoric as a shield. Anti-war activists and thinkers need to be consciously anti-fascist if they want to avoid being co-opted to the cause of violence, hatred, and war by both bad actors close to hand and authoritarian regimes abroad.
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime famously glorified militarism and hated pacifists—at home. The Nazis burned copies of Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front and made owning it a crime. Pacifist religious denominations like Jehovah’s Witnesses were often sent to concentration camps.
But while they attacked domestic pacifism, Nazi propagandists encouraged it abroad, especially in the United States. The German agent George Sylvester Viereck actually wrote speeches for anti-war Minnesota Sen. Ernest Lundeen to insert into the Congressional Record in 1937-1939. Homegrown fascists also used the language of pacifism. The anti-Semitic demagogue Gerald Winrod broadcast fiery speeches denouncing communists and warning, “War never pays.”
Most infamously, the hero aviator Charles Lindbergh, the de facto leader of the anti-war movement in the United States during World War II, gave a virulently anti-Semitic speech in 1941. Lindbergh claimed that Jewish people were pushing the United States into war, arguing: “Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.” The stereotype of Jewish people as conspiratorial warmongering profiteers still has currency today; in 2006, the actor Mel Gibson infamously claimed that “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”
Lindbergh was not exactly a committed Nazi; following Pearl Harbor, he tried to enlist in the U.S. Air Force to fight Germany. But that’s partly the point. The anti-war movement in the United States before World War II was thoroughly infiltrated with fascist sympathizers and fascist anti-Semitic propaganda. People who opposed the war ended up soaked in Nazi ideology and Nazi talking points, even if they didn’t start there.
After World War I, pacifism gained many adherents. Hitler hated Remarque in part because his book was a massive worldwide hit on its release in 1929. The 1930s were a time when “antiwar sentiment attained unprecedented popular scope,” according to the historian Hans Schmidt. But by failing to distance themselves from fascism, anti-war movements during World War II badly hurt their own cause. Lindbergh’s anti-Semitic speech sank his reputation at the time and has associated him forever with Nazism. It would be decades before a credible anti-war movement was able to gain traction again in the United States, thanks in large part to the insanities of the war it opposed. And, as the continued fame of Orwell’s quote shows, the confluence of fascism and pacifism in World War II is still used to undercut anti-war efforts today.
Yet, despite this catastrophic failure for pacifism, some contemporary anti-war voices are arguing that the left should once again reach out to anti-war cryptofascist right-wing populists as allies for peace. Most notably, the anti-imperialist writer Glenn Greenwald wrote an article in the Intercept last month in which he suggested that the left could find common ground with the right. He pointed especially to the Fox News personality Tucker Carlson as an opponent of establishment militarism.
It’s true that Carlson opposed airstrikes against Iran and has spoken against intervention in Syria. But it’s important to remember that the far-right is virtually never opposed to war or violence as such. Winrod and other far-right figures like Charles Coughlin spoke against war with Germany not because they disliked war but because they believed that the United States was fighting the wrong enemy. Coughlin was a rabid anti-communist who believed that fascism had “evolved to act as a defense mechanism against communism.” He wanted the United States out of the war because he wanted Hitler to violently crush those he saw as the real enemies: Jewish people and the Soviets.
Similarly, those on the populist right today who advocate against particular wars are not actually devoted to word peace or to decreasing violence. Carlson is eager to militarize the United States’ own borders. He has also specifically said that he wants to de-escalate war abroad in order to focus on “the invasion of America now in progress from the south”—which is to say, he wants U.S. violence directed at foreign nationals closer to home. Carlson has called for rapprochement with Russia by “joking” about how he hopes that Russia’s military defeats Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin’s wars are celebrated and defended by far-right movements across the globe because his authoritarian homophobic nationalism seems like a plausible model for others to follow. In the same way, Hitler and Benito Mussolini were embraced by right-wing movements of their time, even in countries they threatened. And as in World War II, current right-wing movements do not want to end war. They want their opponents, internal and external, to disarm. Anti-war advocates need to push all nations toward less violence. They shouldn’t allow fascists to enlist them in picking the worst possible winners.
It’s also important to think about who is excluded from anti-war movements when fascists are invited in. In 2008, Carlson said: “Iraq is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semiliterate primitive monkeys—that’s why it wasn’t worth invading.” Carlson has also called the Black Lives Matter movement “poison.” Josh Hawley, another right-wing populist who has spoken against war with Iran, has made vitriolic attacks on LGBT rights.
A movement that embraces Carlson and Hawley is a movement that is going to seem extremely unwelcoming to many Black people, transgender people, and Muslim people. Is it safe for marginalized people to have their names on right-wing anti-war mailing lists? Is it safe to join in anti-war rallies with violent bigots who hate you and may be jotting down your name and taking pictures of your face for later?
In order to make Carlson and the populist right seem like reasonable allies, Greenwald is forced to downplay the dangers. On Twitter, he said it was “gross and offensive” to compare Hawley and others to Hitler. To advance pacifism, the anti-war left is supposed to handwave the genocidal logic of far-right ideology and normalize leading apologists for bigotry and state violence. Just so did Lindbergh end up opposing war with the Nazis by justifying war against Jewish people.
A rigorously anti-fascist anti-war movement has to reject allies like Carlson, Hawley, and Putin. It needs to be as concerned about the victims of Russian troops in Ukraine as with U.S. drone strikes; it has to care as much about the violence of authoritarianism as it does about the violence of war. An anti-fascist anti-war movement should hold Bashar al-Assad accountable for waging war on his own people; it should work to remove Carlson and other rabid, hateful bigots from public life. It should recognize that fascism is not compatible with peace.
Fascists have historically used the rhetoric of pacifism to advance their own violent goals. That means that pacifists need to be very wary when the far-right offers them aid or claims to be on their side. A world in which fascists seize control of anti-war movements is not a less violent one. Pacifists have a choice: They can be anti-fascist, or they can be tools of genocide and war.


The Anti-American Century

In 1941 , Henry Luce—the founder of Time magazine and its sister publications Life and Fortune—famously announced that “ the 20th Century is the American Century.
” With unparalleled power and unquestioned resolve , the United States would make the world “ safe for the freedom , growth and increasing satisfaction of all.
” And it would do so because of a combination of American power and prestige that would engender a near-universal “ faith in the good intentions as well as the ultimate intelligence and ultimate strength of the whole American people.
” The remainder of the century saw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dominant power , sometimes for better and often for worse .
But Luce was correct that it was the American Century ( or at least half-century ) .
As of 2020 , though , the 21st century has become “ the Anti-American Century , ” an identity already well-advanced before the pandemic but certainly accelerated and cemented by it .
The Anti-American Century may turn out to be aggressively hostile to the United States , but for now it is anti-American mostly in the sense of being antithetical to the American Century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , economic , and political—that defined the last century have each been undermined if not obliterated .
In this moment , those failures may seem like profound negatives .
In his most recent book , the writer Robert Kagan laments that , without American leadership around the world , the jungle will grow back .
In the United States ’ absence , Beijing may be able to define a less liberal world order .
In terms of domestic politics , the left and the right are oddly united in their despair at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the left bemoans the failure of the American experiment in an age of racial divisions and government ineptitude and the right defends to the hilt “ Make America Great Again ” redux .
Yet the dawn of the Anti-American Century may be precisely what both the world and the United States need to meet the particular challenges of today .
A world of nearly 7.8 billion people demands multiple nodes of support , not one hegemon or two jockeying for power .
And a United States of great affluence and great deficiencies needs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to lead and that its past results are , as investors like to disclaim , no guarantee of future success .
The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging that you have one ; failure to do so—to believe only that one ’ s country is uniquely powerful and destined by history and culture for greatness—is a recipe for a fall .
At the dawn of the new millennium , a scant 20 years ago that feels like an eternity , the United States was able to say to itself and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potent formula for how to manage democracy .
It pointed to its role as a global superpower and its resilient and flourishing economy .
It asserted that it had excelled in advanced research , education , and innovation and stood as an example to countries everywhere .
All that was never nearly as true as Americans wished it to be , but those strengths were , relative to much of the world , undeniable .
The pandemic has exposed structural fissures in the United States .
It has also underscored that a country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the three-branch structure of the federal government but also by substantial local and state autonomy is not particularly well suited to marshaling a forceful national effort that isn ’ t an actual war .
But the tut-tutting and eye-rolling abroad about the anemic U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic ( “ The world is taking pity on us , ” went the line in one prominent column and in many other since ) is simply the next iteration of a process that has been unfolding for two decades .
The first pillar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aside was military .
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 enjoyed considerable support internationally as a justified response to the Taliban ’ s sheltering of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden .
But the subsequent invasion of Iraq in March 2003 with a paucity of international support followed by a bungled occupation and years of guerrilla war against American troops evoked the Vietnam War .
Initial misgivings were exponentially magnified by revelations of American-sanctioned torture in Iraq , at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility , and at various sites around the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Conventions that the United States had long defended .
Add to that revelations of spying on domestic citizens in the name of national security and the war on terrorism , and many of the pieties of American strength crumbled .
The United States emerged by 2008 from its Iraq imbroglio with its military still second to none in size and capacity but with its image severely undermined .
The second pillar to crumble was economic .
One of the central conceits of Luce ’ s American Century was that the unique virtues of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a powerful rebuke of communism .
And even after the fall of the Soviet Union , the flourishing American economy was a magnet for talent and innovation , with U.S. technology firms defining the first internet boom of the 1990s and then the next wave in the 2000s .
Meanwhile , the Washington Consensus that coalesced in the 1980s about how to structure free markets was the blueprint for post-1989 reconstruction of Eastern Europe and Russia .
It was also used as a loose framework by both the International Monetary Fund and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries around the world to drop trade barriers , end state-run businesses , and open up their capital accounts to global flows .
While some countries , especially Russia , suffered mightily from this medicine , the sheer economic power of the United States left little alternative for most nations .
China was the notable exception , and its size and the widespread perception that it would eventually move toward the U.S. model after joining the World Trade Organization allowed it to evolve along its own path .
China ’ s economic success @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the financial crisis of 2008-2009 that truly knocked away the economic pillar .
For years , the question in investors ’ minds had been : “ When would the bad loans on the books of China ’ s state-owned banks lead to a crash in China ?
” It turned out that it wasn ’ t China ’ s banks that were the problem ; it was banks in the United States .
And they were a contagion that went global .
The U.S.-led financial system survived , but the economic reputation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a key element of its power—was devastated .
The final pillar was democracy .
For decades , the United States could boast that it was the oldest and most established democracy in the world , with a singular system for preserving individual freedoms and harnessing collective energies .
It routinely nudged and sometimes coerced allies and adversaries to open up and democratize .
That in no way precluded dealing with dictators , but the presumption was that democracy was the best bulwark against autocracy and the best path to affluence .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ got democracy about as right as anyone .
It was never quite the “ strongest democracy ” according to those who measured such things : The Scandinavian countries led there .
But it was undoubtedly the strongest of the large and dynamic democracies , which combined with its other two pillars created the American Century .
Then Donald Trump was elected president .
Already by 2016 , American democracy was showing signs of strain .
Public faith and participation in government had so declined as to put the system on notice .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ability of Americans to say either to themselves or to the world that their process was uniquely able to withstand the pressures of populism and nascent authoritarianism that Americans for decades had preached against .
Arguably , Trump has done much less damage than his many critics aver , and that may indeed reflect a domestic system of checks and balances that makes it devilishly difficult for any one president to commit major abuses of power .
But the strength of American democracy in the world was also as a symbol and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talent because of the opportunities that the United States offered and nurtured .
On that score , the Trump administration dramatically eroded the United States ’ global standing .
Yes , the image of the United States also suffered mightily in the 1970s , with the humiliation of Vietnam and the revelations of American anti-democratic policies in much of what was then known as the Third World .
It is possible that had the economic revival of the 1980s not happened , the American Century would have ended then .
It didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Much as Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai once famously said of the legacy of the French Revolution that it was too soon to make final judgments , it is premature to start ranking nations conclusively by how well they met a pandemic that is still raging .
It is clear , however , that what may be American strengths in other contexts are in this moment a panoply of weaknesses : decentralized domestic governance , highly contested politics , and immense cultural variations across states and regions .
All of those inoculate Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country vulnerable to national crises that require a unified response .
Coming in the midst of the Trump administration , the American pandemic response has utterly crushed the image of the United States as an ambassador for good governance and democracy—and with it , the last pillar of the American Century .
Many in both the United States and throughout the world may believe that the end of the American Century is tragic , but the dawn of the Anti-American Century holds the promise of better times for the globe and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country ’ s structural problems .
After all , unless one believes that the United States has a monopoly on the desire for peace , individual rights , and prosperity , 7.8 billion people and nearly 200 nations large and small are just as capable as Americans of acting in those collective interests .
To believe otherwise is to hold that the only formula for international stability and prosperity is an endless continuation of the American Century .
That inevitably leads to the question of China and its status as an emerging global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ retreats or is forced to .
True , China defines rights differently than the United States , and many outside of China may not find that template an appealing one .
But the Chinese template remains a Chinese one , propagated by a government that seems quite interested in keeping the global peace even while asserting its power .
And whatever one thinks of China ’ s future , it remains true that you ’ d have to think that the United States is somehow a freakish and exceptional nation alone committed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of the American Century spells a backward step for humanity .
As for the United State domestically , decades of global preeminence have not done Americans well at home in recent years .
Standards of living have stagnated and not kept pace with those in numerous other countries .
Racism persists .
None of the countries that have excelled at education , health care , and standards of living are as large or complicated as the United States , but even by its own standards , the country has fallen short @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spends massively on education , infrastructure , poverty alleviation , health care , and defense—but it does not manage to spend smartly .
Yes , material life is better now for almost everyone than it was 50 years ago ; people live longer , have more health care , eat better , are more educated , live in safer cities and towns , but that is true everywhere in the world .
The United States can not toot its own horn here .
The simple fact is that success and strength—military , political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cultural—are not birthrights .
The United States doesn ’ t get to be great or powerful just because it used to be , although it certainly can help to have a head start .
If the country was ever truly exceptional , it was exceptional because successive generations worked and fought and struggled to make it so , not because those generations patted themselves on the back .
There have been acute moments of hubris and overreach during the decades of the American Century , but never has the disconnect between what the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is been so profound .
Out of this moment , therefore , is the promise not of American exceptionalism but American humility , a moment of recognition that , to move forward , the United States has to let go of the American Century , say goodbye to exceptionalism , and accept that it is a normal country like any other , just richer and with a massive military arsenal and multiple wells of strength and multiple areas of self-delusion .
The end of the American Century offers the opportunity to look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ start fixing what is broken .
Whether Americans will seize that opportunity , who knows .
But this is not a tragedy ; it is the beginning of something new .

In 1941, Henry Luce—the founder of Time magazine and its sister publications Life and Fortune—famously announced that “the 20th Century is the American Century.” With unparalleled power and unquestioned resolve, the United States would make the world “safe for the freedom, growth and increasing satisfaction of all.” And it would do so because of a combination of American power and prestige that would engender a near-universal “faith in the good intentions as well as the ultimate intelligence and ultimate strength of the whole American people.”
In 1941, Henry Luce—the founder of Time magazine and its sister publications Life and Fortune—famously announced that “the 20th Century is the American Century.” With unparalleled power and unquestioned resolve, the United States would make the world “safe for the freedom, growth and increasing satisfaction of all.” And it would do so because of a combination of American power and prestige that would engender a near-universal “faith in the good intentions as well as the ultimate intelligence and ultimate strength of the whole American people.”
The remainder of the century saw the United States bestride the world as the dominant power, sometimes for better and often for worse. But Luce was correct that it was the American Century (or at least half-century). As of 2020, though, the 21st century has become “the Anti-American Century,” an identity already well-advanced before the pandemic but certainly accelerated and cemented by it.
The Anti-American Century may turn out to be aggressively hostile to the United States, but for now it is anti-American mostly in the sense of being antithetical to the American Century. The three pillars of American strength—military, economic, and political—that defined the last century have each been undermined if not obliterated. In this moment, those failures may seem like profound negatives. In his most recent book, the writer Robert Kagan laments that, without American leadership around the world, the jungle will grow back. In the United States’ absence, Beijing may be able to define a less liberal world order. In terms of domestic politics, the left and the right are oddly united in their despair at the erosion of the American Century, as the left bemoans the failure of the American experiment in an age of racial divisions and government ineptitude and the right defends to the hilt “Make America Great Again” redux.
Yet the dawn of the Anti-American Century may be precisely what both the world and the United States need to meet the particular challenges of today. A world of nearly 7.8 billion people demands multiple nodes of support, not one hegemon or two jockeying for power. And a United States of great affluence and great deficiencies needs to accept that it is not ordained to lead and that its past results are, as investors like to disclaim, no guarantee of future success. The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging that you have one; failure to do so—to believe only that one’s country is uniquely powerful and destined by history and culture for greatness—is a recipe for a fall.
At the dawn of the new millennium, a scant 20 years ago that feels like an eternity, the United States was able to say to itself and the world that it had found a uniquely potent formula for how to manage democracy. It pointed to its role as a global superpower and its resilient and flourishing economy. It asserted that it had excelled in advanced research, education, and innovation and stood as an example to countries everywhere. All that was never nearly as true as Americans wished it to be, but those strengths were, relative to much of the world, undeniable.
The pandemic has exposed structural fissures in the United States. It has also underscored that a country whose central government is constrained not just by the three-branch structure of the federal government but also by substantial local and state autonomy is not particularly well suited to marshaling a forceful national effort that isn’t an actual war. But the tut-tutting and eye-rolling abroad about the anemic U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic (“The world is taking pity on us,” went the line in one prominent column and in many other since) is simply the next iteration of a process that has been unfolding for two decades.
The first pillar of the American Century to be knocked aside was military. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 enjoyed considerable support internationally as a justified response to the Taliban’s sheltering of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. But the subsequent invasion of Iraq in March 2003 with a paucity of international support followed by a bungled occupation and years of guerrilla war against American troops evoked the Vietnam War.
Initial misgivings were exponentially magnified by revelations of American-sanctioned torture in Iraq, at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, and at various sites around the world, in clear contravention of the Geneva Conventions that the United States had long defended. Add to that revelations of spying on domestic citizens in the name of national security and the war on terrorism, and many of the pieties of American strength crumbled. The United States emerged by 2008 from its Iraq imbroglio with its military still second to none in size and capacity but with its image severely undermined.
The second pillar to crumble was economic. One of the central conceits of Luce’s American Century was that the unique virtues of the American economic system would act as a powerful rebuke of communism. And even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the flourishing American economy was a magnet for talent and innovation, with U.S. technology firms defining the first internet boom of the 1990s and then the next wave in the 2000s.
Meanwhile, the Washington Consensus that coalesced in the 1980s about how to structure free markets was the blueprint for post-1989 reconstruction of Eastern Europe and Russia. It was also used as a loose framework by both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in their efforts to push countries around the world to drop trade barriers, end state-run businesses, and open up their capital accounts to global flows. While some countries, especially Russia, suffered mightily from this medicine, the sheer economic power of the United States left little alternative for most nations. China was the notable exception, and its size and the widespread perception that it would eventually move toward the U.S. model after joining the World Trade Organization allowed it to evolve along its own path.
China’s economic success eroded American dominance, but it was the financial crisis of 2008-2009 that truly knocked away the economic pillar. For years, the question in investors’ minds had been: “When would the bad loans on the books of China’s state-owned banks lead to a crash in China?” It turned out that it wasn’t China’s banks that were the problem; it was banks in the United States. And they were a contagion that went global. The U.S.-led financial system survived, but the economic reputation of the United States—the prestige that Luce understood as a key element of its power—was devastated.
The final pillar was democracy. For decades, the United States could boast that it was the oldest and most established democracy in the world, with a singular system for preserving individual freedoms and harnessing collective energies. It routinely nudged and sometimes coerced allies and adversaries to open up and democratize. That in no way precluded dealing with dictators, but the presumption was that democracy was the best bulwark against autocracy and the best path to affluence. The United States, whatever its flaws, got democracy about as right as anyone. It was never quite the “strongest democracy” according to those who measured such things: The Scandinavian countries led there. But it was undoubtedly the strongest of the large and dynamic democracies, which combined with its other two pillars created the American Century. Then Donald Trump was elected president.
Already by 2016, American democracy was showing signs of strain. Public faith and participation in government had so declined as to put the system on notice. But the election of Trump severely eroded the ability of Americans to say either to themselves or to the world that their process was uniquely able to withstand the pressures of populism and nascent authoritarianism that Americans for decades had preached against. Arguably, Trump has done much less damage than his many critics aver, and that may indeed reflect a domestic system of checks and balances that makes it devilishly difficult for any one president to commit major abuses of power.
But the strength of American democracy in the world was also as a symbol and a beacon, one that drew immigrants and talent because of the opportunities that the United States offered and nurtured. On that score, the Trump administration dramatically eroded the United States’ global standing. Yes, the image of the United States also suffered mightily in the 1970s, with the humiliation of Vietnam and the revelations of American anti-democratic policies in much of what was then known as the Third World. It is possible that had the economic revival of the 1980s not happened, the American Century would have ended then. It didn’t, but then came the pandemic.
Much as Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai once famously said of the legacy of the French Revolution that it was too soon to make final judgments, it is premature to start ranking nations conclusively by how well they met a pandemic that is still raging. It is clear, however, that what may be American strengths in other contexts are in this moment a panoply of weaknesses: decentralized domestic governance, highly contested politics, and immense cultural variations across states and regions. All of those inoculate Americans against autocracy and government overreach but leave the country vulnerable to national crises that require a unified response.
Coming in the midst of the Trump administration, the American pandemic response has utterly crushed the image of the United States as an ambassador for good governance and democracy—and with it, the last pillar of the American Century.
Many in both the United States and throughout the world may believe that the end of the American Century is tragic, but the dawn of the Anti-American Century holds the promise of better times for the globe and the opportunity for Americans to finally confront their country’s structural problems. After all, unless one believes that the United States has a monopoly on the desire for peace, individual rights, and prosperity, 7.8 billion people and nearly 200 nations large and small are just as capable as Americans of acting in those collective interests. To believe otherwise is to hold that the only formula for international stability and prosperity is an endless continuation of the American Century.
That inevitably leads to the question of China and its status as an emerging global power, especially as the United States retreats or is forced to. True, China defines rights differently than the United States, and many outside of China may not find that template an appealing one. But the Chinese template remains a Chinese one, propagated by a government that seems quite interested in keeping the global peace even while asserting its power. And whatever one thinks of China’s future, it remains true that you’d have to think that the United States is somehow a freakish and exceptional nation alone committed to peace and prosperity to believe firmly that the end of the American Century spells a backward step for humanity.
As for the United State domestically, decades of global preeminence have not done Americans well at home in recent years. Standards of living have stagnated and not kept pace with those in numerous other countries. Racism persists. None of the countries that have excelled at education, health care, and standards of living are as large or complicated as the United States, but even by its own standards, the country has fallen short of what it once achieved. It spends massively on education, infrastructure, poverty alleviation, health care, and defense—but it does not manage to spend smartly. Yes, material life is better now for almost everyone than it was 50 years ago; people live longer, have more health care, eat better, are more educated, live in safer cities and towns, but that is true everywhere in the world. The United States cannot toot its own horn here.
The simple fact is that success and strength—military, political, economic, and to that add cultural—are not birthrights. The United States doesn’t get to be great or powerful just because it used to be, although it certainly can help to have a head start. If the country was ever truly exceptional, it was exceptional because successive generations worked and fought and struggled to make it so, not because those generations patted themselves on the back. There have been acute moments of hubris and overreach during the decades of the American Century, but never has the disconnect between what the United States is and what Americans say it is been so profound.
Out of this moment, therefore, is the promise not of American exceptionalism but American humility, a moment of recognition that, to move forward, the United States has to let go of the American Century, say goodbye to exceptionalism, and accept that it is a normal country like any other, just richer and with a massive military arsenal and multiple wells of strength and multiple areas of self-delusion. The end of the American Century offers the opportunity to look at where the country falls short and start fixing what is broken. Whether Americans will seize that opportunity, who knows. But this is not a tragedy; it is the beginning of something new.