Politics of violence as electoral strategy

Shelley Walia

Professor, Dept of English and Cultural Studies, PU

AHISTORICAL survey of the electoral politics of West Asia and other parts of the world throws up a peculiar phenomenon, indicating that actors who unleash violence often end up becoming the winners. Perpetration of violence is a recipe for winning elections.

Despite the unleashing of atrocities, political parties entrenched in aggressive bodies end up victorious in subsequent polls.

This paradox forms the basis of a study by Sarah Zukerman Daly, Professor at Columbia University, who has addressed this intriguing, ‘counterintuitive’ puzzle: how politicians who commit mass atrocities in war win ‘free and fair’ elections. The thrust is on showcasing ‘blood-stained’ parties and leaders who metamorphose into the most plausible agents of peace in the post-violent period of war, racial discrimination, ethnic riots, etc.

Take, for instance, the bloody war raging in West Asia. It is difficult to believe that the strongest army in the world with a highly developed espionage system did not have the foreknowledge of the attack from Hamas. The most impenetrable border in the world strangely remained wide open, reviving the suspicion that Hamas has always been propped up by Mossad to weaken the Palestinian Authority. It is well known that in the early stages of the conflict, Hamas was allowed to reinforce itself in the occupied territories, a ballast to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Links of Hamas to Mossad and US intelligence have been acknowledged by Republican Ron Paul in a declaration to the US Congress.

Following Operation Al Aqsa Storm by Hamas, Israeli fighter jets carried out massive bombing of the Gaza Strip and Netanyahu immediately confirmed a ‘state of readiness for war’.

It is clear that the right-wingers of Israel will back the Israeli leadership, which is committed to giving to its people the biblical ‘Promised Land’ through the annexation of all Palestinian lands. Netanyahu knows that the insecure public, fearful of surprise air attacks from Hamas, will support his belligerence. People who have lived through this conflict, understandably dejected by instability and the daily mayhem of violence, have reposed complete faith in him.

His promise to the electorate is the exclusion of the Palestinians from their homeland, a colonial project of the Zionist lobby as well as a part of the US foreign policy. Keeping the Palestinians in conditions of deprivation and isolation becomes Netanyahu’s manifesto for any future struggle for dominance. Thus, a disconcerting future is in store with the triumph of right-wing forces and their hegemonising schemes to establish the ‘naturalness’ of a way of thinking that spurs acquiescence in a political system.

Maybe it is this desperate situation that Netanyahu faces within Israel politics, along with the recent demonstrations against his authoritarianism, which has brought on this war. West Asia, therefore, wretchedly faces provocative challenges augmented by the resurgence of age-old animosities rooted in racial, religious and nationalist identities. It’s a do-or-die situation on both sides.

If we move on to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is clear that though Russian President Putin would justify his invasion in the name of atrocities carried out by Ukraine in Donetsk and Luhansk, the reasons are unmistakably geopolitical expansion and gaining favour with the nationalist elements in Russia. Power-hungry leaders like Putin seem to be worried as the past glory of the Russian empire is fading away, with several former republics joining NATO. The final provocation for Russia came when Georgia and Ukraine agreed to join NATO, snowballing its historical insecurity.

Historian Stephen Kotkin calls it the ‘defensive aggressiveness’ of Putin, a trait inherited from Catherine the Great, the 18-century Empress, that the only way of protecting one’s border is to enlarge it. To emerge victorious would lend a sense of pride and security to the Russian public already strained by the war.

Corroborating this paradoxical thesis is General Pinochet’s regime in Chile from 1973 to 1990, replete with massacres, rapes and tortures. Despite all the horrors, Pinochet emerged triumphant in the elections, an outcome that was contrary to all principles of rationality that would apparently dictate an adversely harsh verdict by the electorate. Similarly, in 1994, El Salvador witnessed a victory for the party responsible for instigating violence. Alvaro Uribe won in Colombia in 2018 despite one of the most horrific genocides in Latin American history. Despite the unleashing of atrocities, political parties entrenched in aggressive organisations end up victorious in the subsequent elections. This bestows on them a reputation for competence while discrediting the opposition, enabling them to appeal to voters who are credulous enough to believe the deceptive politics and the hollow promises of peace and ‘better days’ ahead.

One of the most interesting examples of this paradox is Ríos Montt’s victory in Guatemala, where a military officer-turned-dictator served as de facto President from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods in the long civil war, leading to accusations of war crimes and mass extermination. Tactfully, Montt campaigned in army uniform, embodying its powerful potential to terminate the age-old malaise of anarchy. Sarah Daly’s book Violent Victors mentions that 85 per cent of the insecure, victimised people finally voted for Montt.

Another flagrant example was the aggressive foreign policy of George W Bush following the 9/11 attacks and the military intervention in Iraq that paved the way for his second term as the US President.

In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte won the elections on the manifesto of promising to execute, without trial or even arrest, drug users or anyone else whom he deemed as a threat to public order. The wreckage of Duterte’s state-sanctioned violence brought his victory. In recent months, former US President Trump has copiously adopted Duterte’s rancorous or irrational electoral strategy. Day after day, he blares out his deep-seated racism and his lust for authoritarian power. What is rather disturbing is that this insanity and loud-mouthed rhetoric are going down favourably with the public.

The use of such violent tactics is curiously now being followed by leaders across the world to justify loyalty to the redeemer muscleman or, one could say, a street hooligan. Such belligerence is intended to lure the public with a reward in the nature of an electoral victory that would be an antidote to any further escalation of civil disorder. In a post-truth world, leaders spread disinformation and lies to justify the co-option of constitutional institutions for ensuring future stability.

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