The untouchables

US President Donald Trump’s less than artful dodging of responsibility for the events unfolding around his country is neither surprising nor unique to the United States, unfortunately.

Even as white supremacists brandish confederate and Nazi flags, in Kenya, despite the horrific violence that followed the disputed elections a decade ago, Raila Odinga has found it difficult to curtail his bitterness at losing the elections earlier this month. Furthermore, his pre-election statements roused his supporters by predicting rigged elections and, while ballots were being counted he claimed the electoral commission had been hacked.

A strategy of hedging your bets at the expense of people’s lives, much like Trump’s unhelpful response to the violence in Charlottesville. His whitewash of the facts that placed blame on “all sides” was aptly described in an editorial in the (UK) Guardian as “slippery, banal and morally compromised.” It is deeply disappointing to be part of a world where symbols of bygone hatred once again fill the news, as if the immense global efforts to overcome this passage in human history have had no effect.

From the Nuremburg Trials, the International Criminal Tribunals of the former Yugoslavia and of Rwanda, to the ongoing work of the International Criminal Court, there are significant global efforts to deal emphatically with leaders who take their people into war to achieve ethnic cleansing.

Leaders who commit crimes against humanity stand a real chance of being brought to justice in the modern world. Crimes against humanity are a specific category of crimes usually condoned or carried out by the government on a large scale. They are criminal acts, like genocide, that target a group of people based on their religion, ethnicity, or some other trait.

That, of course, is not what we are talking about here. The issue is not the active involvement of some leaders in targeted violence.

The issue is the rousing up of people knowing, or disregarding, the likelihood of their committing violence against each other of the kind we have been witnessing recently.

What recourse is available for the victims of such morally reprehensible behaviour? Such leaders can presumably be voted out of office, but otherwise, they are largely untouchable.

There are leaders also whose failure to act is motivation enough to bolster violence by one group against the other. Can Aung San Suu Kyi not be accused of doing too little, too late to protect the Rohingya while securing her base amongst the ethnic Buddhists community of Burma? What does it take for a leader to take charge of a moment in the way that gives people such pause that they withdraw from the brink of violence, from which it is hard to step back? Nelson Mandela famously rallied all sides around the common love of rugby, choosing eventually to wear the “Springbok” colours to demonstrate his commitment to oneness.

In 1968, faced with having to deliver the news of the assassination of Martin Luther King to a restive crowd, Robert Kennedy delivered a stirring speech. He validated the feeling of anger and then asked them to choose wisdom and compassion over violence.

Barack Obama faced similar interracial tensions in the early days of his presidency, which caused him at first to chastise a white policeman for acting “stupidly.” He quickly stepped back from his statement and invited the two men to have a beer together, effectively diffusing the situation.

Strangely enough, the moral counterpoint to Trump is Germany’s Angela Merkel. His most ardent supporters salute Hitler and wear or wave the defunct swastika symbol. Her position is equally clear: far-right violence is “absolutely repulsive” and “diametrically opposed” to the political goals of the German people.

She speaks on behalf of right thinking people everywhere.