It is hard not to laugh at Americans’ indignation over Russia’s alleged meddling in the US elections. For at least a century, the US has done everything possible to influence the outcomes of other countries’ elections. After WWII, the CIA lavished money on Italy’s Christian Democrats, inventing sex scandals to discredit left-wing leaders. In Iran in 1953, the CIA launched a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh. In Chile in 1964, it spent $4m on ‘covert action projects’ to stop Salvador Allende winning an election, and [later] organised a coup to oust him. Americans should be thankful that they are unlikely to suffer a coup because, as the Latin American joke has it, there’s no US embassy in Washington.”
(Peter Wilby in the New Statesman)
He has a point. I would only add that to help to the US Presidency a man who is so manifestly ill-equipped for the job, and whose principal, maybe only, interest is himself, is particularly galling to those of us who will now have sit and watch Trump make fools of the people who voted for him.
But Obama’s brilliant, stirring oratory during his farewell speech last night should encourage us to have faith in the basic goodness of our fellow citizens and guard and protect our basic freedoms which are fragile, and, if carelessly given away, are irreplaceable. There is perhaps little this particular writer can do except continue to advocate kindness, consideration and understanding towards all fellow citizens, and moderation in all things. Younger people can, I hope, be more proactive than he in standing up for our basic rights and freedoms. Epicurus eschewed politics and stayed in his garden. No! Don’t do that – get involved. We have a crisis on our hands.
Of course there’s a certain irony to Americans complaining about their elections being rigged. But at least today, they acknowledged they rigged them. Sometimes it was to stop the spread of communism, sometimes it was over access to resources. That doesn’t justify the rigging, but it does explain why it happened.
Neither the acknowledgement of the rigging, nor the justifications for it, are the case with Russia hacking the US election. Trump denies it even happened, denying the forensic evidence put forward by the intelligence agencies, some of which is publicly available online. America is not trying to spread communism or prevent Russia from controlling resources. So while a comparison with past American hacking is certainly valid, there’s a danger in creating a false equivalency between it and Russian hacking today.