An editorial from the Winnipeg Free Press, published Nov. 21:
In a year already overwrought with historical comparisons, it’s nevertheless worth asking: what will be this century’s Franz Ferdinand moment?
Possibly, as with that assassination of the Austrian archduke in 1914, most people will dismiss it as unimportant when it happens. But hindsight is 20-20, and the unfolding of surprising results in Great Britain’s Brexit vote as well as in the United States presidential election have led some to make comparisons to 20th-century developments that were downplayed at the time, only to take on great significance later.
On the campaign trail, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump targeted identifiable groups, claiming Mexico was sending its rapists and other criminals to the U.S. and calling for a ban on Muslim immigration. Comparisons to Germany’s Adolf Hitler dogged Trump, and Trump’s support from white supremacists, such as the Ku Klux Klan, did little to assuage people’s fears. And the former head of the U.K. Independence Party, Nigel Farage, was one of the leaders stoking anti-immigration fears and tying them to Britain’s membership in the European Union.
So what does this mean? Academic Tobias Stone argues that humans periodically go through periods of great destruction. He points to the Black Death, the First World War or the famines that were the direct result of government policies in the Soviet Union and Communist China.
The First World War, touched off by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, cascaded into catastrophe in large part because of numerous military pacts between European powers that drew them into the conflict. There was no European Union or United Nations to serve as a buffer; in fact, those treaties may have served as a deterrent to stave off aggression.
Now, thanks to globalization and economic neo-liberalism, the countries of the world are more interconnected economically than ever. This time around, with a world population several times greater than it was 100 years ago, and resources scarce, disaster could take a different form, and cascade quickly through a globalized economy.
For all our thoughts that we could never let a third world war happen, we should listen to the signs. When xenophobia plays well in national politics, it’s a sign people are more ready to fight for what they think they’re losing rather than for what’s right. And with other global problems facing us, not the least of which are climate change and economic inequality, a global war would be disastrous and cause untold suffering.
In 1914, the Napoleonic wars had largely passed out of living memory. Today, the same has happened for the First World War and, increasingly, the Second.
It’s well to remember every Remembrance Day the sacrifices made in those conflicts, but we should also be vigilant against what led to them: militarization, deep social inequality and a tendency for a country’s leaders to find an easy target for its citizens’ rage.
When a potentially pivotal moment comes, even though it’s unlikely to involve an archduke this time, if we aren’t already working to solve the huge problems that face us, we may find the desire for a scapegoat plunges us into an even worse catastrophe.
Winnipeg Free Press
