Week 28: How populist leaders muck things up, each in their own individual ways - a comparison between Trump, Modi and Bolsonaro

 

The problem

It is easy to assume that one right wing populist dictator will be very like another. This blog will make no such assumption, but will argue that each dictator will have his own distinctive ways of

making a mess of things. 

 

The covid comparisons, and leader’s behaviour

	Cases/M	New dly cases.	Tests	Deaths/M	New dly deaths	Med experts opposed.	Face masks by leader
Trump	7.08M	45,368	5.0M (april)	601.9	372	yes	not worn
Modi	5.99M	88,600	7.4M	62.8	1,053	yes, poor adv.	yes
Bolsonaro	4.72M	28,378	no data	642.3	377	yes	not worn

 

Some other comparisons:

 

	GDP	Popln.dens.	Gini coeff.	Does Crime reduce inlockdown?	Internal migration
USA	20,500	33.3/km2	.434	yes, but dom.v.goes up	yes from mexico
India	2,850	411.6/km2	.339	as above	bias agnstmuslims
Brazil	19,000	24.3/km2	.540	murder rates go up	The poor suffer++

 

 

Donald Trump 

1. His decision to remove funding from the WHO in the middle of a pandemic has been described by the Editor of the Lancet as a crime against humanity, as WHO exists to protect the health and well-being of world’s peoples. By attacking and weakening WHO while the agency was doing all it could to protect peoples in some of the most vulnerable countries of the world, Mr Trump has met the criteria for the act of violence the international community calls a crime against humanity (Richard Horton, The Covid-19 catastrophe, Polity Press 2020).

2. Trump initially selected an inexperienced Cabinet which has progressively worsened, as he has replaced many members whom he fired or who resigned with those ever less qualified and more beholden to him . As a result he has no one to advise him whom he cannot ignore. Hence his insistence on promoting an antimalarial drug that in an initial uncontrolled trial seemed to show some promise, but in later more rigorous testing proved harmful. Initially when the corona virus began to manifest he had the acknowledged expert, Dr Anthony Fauci by his side in his frequent television appearances ostensibly to inform the public about the virus. However it became apparent that these press conferences were more like promotional exercises for himself, and as Dr Fauci’s message was at odds with the president they were discontinued abruptly and Fauci effectively silenced. Trump now spoke alone on the virus. 

3. He consistently underplays the seriousness of the virus, saying  that the virus was ‘harmless to 99% of its victims’, ‘it is not serious’, ‘it is under control’. The ‘US is testing more that’s why there are more cases’.  In addition Trump has modeled not wearing a face mask, not taking the pandemic seriously and encouraged those who have opposed restrictions. Recordings of transcripts of his 18 hours of interviews with Bob Woodward, revealing that he downplayed the dangers of covid-19, while privately conceding the dangers, admitting that it is 5 times more lethal than flu. “I wanted always to play it down, because I don’t want to create a panic”.

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4. The only people he worried about panicking were stock market investors (Los Angeles Times). Democrats were exaggerating the dangers to scare the markets and make him (Trump) look bad. 

He was happy to sacrifice thousands of American lives to prop up the Dow. ‘His response to the virus wasn’t incompetent, it was immoral bordering on criminal’ (Paul Krugman, NY Times). In fact, his behaviour made matters worse, he ignored good medical advice, & discouraged masks.

 

Narendra Modi:  

1. A good example of a major blunder was the deal to end corruption by cancelling 500 and 1000 rupee bank notes, on the assumption that corrupt money was held in these notes. At a stroke 86% of Indian currency had been rendered worthless outside a bank. The assumption that suspect currency was held in these notes was itself naive:  corrupt money has been converted to other forms of investment, and can readily be converted back as currency if need be. 

2. The lockdown imposed in March ‘managed to be both too tight and too porous’ (The Economic Times, Mumbai). Imposed with just 4 hours notice, it put tens of millions of Indians out of a job instantly, and led an army of migrant workers to scatter from cities to their rural homes. 

This has seeded Covid outbreaks across the land, and devastated India’s economy (down 29% in the last quarter). India is registering in excess of 90,000  new cases/day, and with its tally of Covid cases running at 4.8M, India has overtaken Brazil to have the second highest number of infections in the world.  

3. Ever since it came to power in 2014, Modi’s government has revealed an anti-Muslim bias, stated expressly and repeatedly by ministers… and through discriminatory legislation… and silences whenever Muslims are attacked. India’s anti-Muslim bias …. given fake news and febrile imagination (S Halarnkar, Quartz india   13 April 2020).  Muslims have been demonised in the past for being sympathetic towards terrorism… today, many face discrimination in every aspect of daily life – shunned by co-workers and neighbours, pushed out of jobs or communities because of their religion. Their future looks bleak in India, andmost fear speaking in public  (Sameer Yasir, April 22nd 2020, FP).  Modi was criticised for taking medical advice from ordinary  physicians, rather than experts in epidemiology. His government has criticised muslims consistently. He has made serious errors, but they are quite different from the  other two.

 

 

Jair  Bolsonaro: 

1. He has been prepared to turn a blind eye to the very high death rates produced by covid-19 in the predominantly disadvantaged working class population. This has been tolerated in order to allow him to plunder the wealth of the amazon rain forest, and allow farmers to cultivate new areas.

2. He has ignored pleas by environmentalists both Brazilian and foreign about the loss of a precious resource needed by other countries.

3. He has also ignored any responsibility for the native population of these forests who came to shelter in them long before Europeans came to Brazil.

4. In order to sustain his popularity he has done two quite different things. His critics mention the free government money distributed to the poorest Brazilians, but these payouts are not mentioned by his supporters, who only mention an improving economy and a falling crime rate. This year his popularity has improved, reaching 34.5% from the 29.4% it was in April 2020. Only 31% now think his government is ‘bad or terrible’, down from 39% it was in August. The proportion thinking Bolsonaro is governing badly falls to 47% from the 53.7% it was in August. But even this may not be correct: one of the most respected polling organisation in Brazil reports that in the last 4 quarters his approval ratings progressively fell from 45% to 32%, and his ratings of ‘bad’ rose from 10% to 25%. There can be no easy solution when the data is conflicting.

5. He also enjoys making shocking remarks, telling his supporters that he approves of torture, disapproves of homosexuality, and is in favour of a dictatorship. His own behaviour is unhelpful, and he has made a bad situation much worse.

 

Conclusion

While all three have behaved badly, they have each adapted their bad behaviour to the special features in each country. Tests are neglected wherever the principles of ‘test and trace’ are not well understood, and are equally poor in many European countries including the UK. In the USA, 5.0M was spent during the month of April during a peak in disease prevalence, in india there was no peak, as testing was inadequate at all times, and there is no reliable data for Brazil. If he loses the election,

Mr Trump has split the US population in ways that may make it difficult for his successor to repair the damage he has produced. The constraints of the constitution have limited the damage he has produced, in ways that do not exist in Brazil.  Mr Modi has made serious errors due to inexperience, tempered with severe prejudice towards muslims. Mr Bolsonaro is proud of being “the trump of the tropics”, but his own behaviour is that of an inexperienced soldier with strong racist views. Alone of the three, his behaviour has damaged the rest of the world.

 

David Goldberg

3rd October 2020.

A gloomy blog to write, with the world looking very bleak indeed at present. Will it ever end?