Extreme measures: America’s far right

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Hello, and welcome to the intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. In China, mental illness has long lingered in the shadows. Under Chairman Mao, it was a sign of insufficient party loyalty. A mental health push is underway and stigma is thinning. But there are still far too few trained professionals on the case. And one sign that Britain is obsessed with gardening is the huge attendance numbers at the annual Chelsea Flower show this year. It's gone virtual. But in real life, more Britons are passing their lockdown hours by gardening than by cooking. First up, though.

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For the past few weeks, scattered protests have been breaking out across America. The heated debate over when to lift stay at home orders in the US Intensified on Monday with crowded demonstrations popping up in more states. They've been spurred on by tweets from President Donald Trump encouraging them to liberate their states. Hundreds of protesters, many wearing pro Trump campaign gear and some carrying firearms, huddled together outside the state Capitol building, saying their civil liberties have been infringed. But dotted among the protesters are a few people whose colorful clothing is a sign of a troubling trend.

In more than 30 states across America, protesters have gathered in their state capitals to protest against stay at home orders. H A Some of these protests have been extremely small, some have been rather large, numbering in the hundreds of people. And among these protesters, there are a very small number of individuals who come armed, sometimes quite heavily, with assault weapons and dressed a bit incongruously in Hawaiian shirts. Now, that might seem a bit strange, but in the more fetid corners of the Internet, it's a very clear signal, and it's a signal of membership of the extreme.

Ruth Andrew Knox writes for the Economist and has been investigating how the pandemic has been energizing America's far right.

So it's important to remember that only a very small number of the people in attendance in these protests are members of the far right. But among the protesters are certain individuals that the extreme right feel that they can convince to come over to their side by playing on fears that lockdowns will be extended permanently, that government agents will come and confiscate firearms, and this will will lead to an interminable tyranny.

And so is it just at these protests that the far right is making itself known during the pandemic?

It's not a single thing the far right, it's rather a variety of individuals with a variety of different views and therefore very different ideas of how they should engage. But among the activities they've engaged in have been zoombombing. So deliberately interrupting zoom meetings, often meetings held between people of color or Jews, especially around Passover time. They've also been encourag members to deliberately infect police and Jews. Holokoff has been a meme that's been going around a lot. In addition, they've sought to disrupt government activities as much as possible, including a deliberate attack on New York's 311 Non Emergency Information Service line. And sometimes they've even come very close to committing deadly acts of terrorism. So in March, a man with ties to various neo Nazi groups was killed in a shootout with FBI officers who are attempting to arrest him for planning to bomb a hospital in Missouri. So though he had been planning the attack for quite some time and he'd considered a variety of targets, it was really at the outbreak of COVID 19 that he decided to deliberately strike a hospital in order to gain extra publicity for his views.

And so why do you think it is that the pandemic seems to have energized the various factions of the far right so much?

So, actually, if you look at the beliefs of various groups within the far right, they actually lend themselves quite readily to an event of this type. Three groups in particular have been making use of this Time. So the most familiar of these groups is the white supremacists, who have been exploiting the geographical origins of the virus in order to drum up antipathy towards Chinese people among them. There's also a high degree of anti Semitism and they've been using memes that focus around provoking this kind of racial antipathy in order to spread fears about white genocide and argue for a closed border agenda. That it's sort of the first step in their mind down the road towards the white ethnostate. Now, some of these white supremacists are also members of a loose group that calls themselves the Boogaloo Boys. And this is a reference to a concept that's gained a lot of currency in the far right corners of the Internet over the last couple of years. Which is the boogaloo? A armed insurrection against the American government or a race war, or both? It sort of depends on who's using the meme. But the. The Boogaloo Boys have repeatedly claimed that particular events are going to lead to the US government engaging violently with ordinary citizens. That will be the first clash in the outbreak of a new American civil war.

So there are the white supremacists, there are the Boogaloo Boys. What's the sort of third strand of this that you mention?

So the third strand is an ideology that's particularly associated with Neo Nazism called accelerationism. And accelerationism is a strange marriage of the Marxist idea that the internal contradictions of the current economic and political order will inevitably cause it to collapse, and a commitment to engaging in acts that will accelerate this process. So accelerationists have seen the virus both as evidence of the truth of their worldview and as an excellent opportunity to hasten the demise of the system. And it's particularly dangerous and worrisome because as far as they're concerned, any act, whether it be an act of propagandizing or whether it be bombing a hospital, is useful in bringing about the collapse of the system.

And presumably the opportunity here is also to bring more people onside with these ideas.

Absolutely. The far right has been making prolific use of online platforms like Facebook, Gab and Telegram to spread its messaging to an audience that's frankly chained to their screens at the minute. And they've also got a significant presence in the online gaming world, which is especially helpful for them as they try to get young recruits into their organizations.

And is there evidence that it's working?

So Moonshot cve, an organization that monitors extremism online, reports that in America, the average number of daily Searches related to white supremacist content rose dramatically during the pandemic. So between March 30 and April 28, the numbers went up to just over 2,000 average daily searches, whereas prior to the pandemic they were hovering sort of on an average of just below 1500. So that represents a 37% increase. Similarly, Telegram channels and Facebook groups related to white supremacist, neo Nazi and other far right content have grown much larger during the lockdown.

But let's put this in context. It's obviously worrisome and it's obviously repugnant, but how much do you think the current crisis could bring this to the conflagration Many of these people seem to want to happen.

So the idea that this crisis could lead to the apocalyptic civil war that is described in some of the more extreme fantasies seems very unlikely. But it's undeniable that there's been a huge spike in activity surrounding these ideas online and that this has also trickled out into real world activities. As we've seen from other extreme right terrorist acts around the world. From the Christchurch killer to the shoot at the Pow Wy synagogue last year, it only takes one person to pick up a weapon and do real damage. So regardless of the number of people involved, that this is gaining so much traction at the moment is a worrying sign.

Andrew, thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks very much for having me on.

For a lot more analysis like this, subscribe to the economist. To get 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds, just go to economist.com radiooffer. China's government hasn't traditionally focused on mental health issues. But recently, in its long term development goals, it's begun to stress the importance of emotional well being. Now COVID 19 has brought issues of mental health to the fore. The government has been vigorous in its response.

Psychiatrists have been dispatched to help doctors and patients on the front line. Volunteers have set up some 500 psychological hotlines for people around the country who are feeling low to call. And the government pumped out stacks of documents to guide them.

Mark Johnson is the Economist's China correspondent.

Now all of this was some testament to increasing awareness in China of the significance of mental health. And with luck, this crisis will help to push along mental health reforms in the years ahead.

So why is it that China has struggled with issues of mental health in the past?

Well, the modern practices of psychology and psychiatry don't have a very long history in China. Under Mao Zedong, they were completely suppressed. In those days, mental ailments were treated as a sort of deficiency of revolutionary zeal. Nothing that you couldn't cure by reinvigorating your faith in the party. Now, that has changed in the couple of decades, but there have still been quite strong cultural stigmas attached to mental health in every country in the world. Mental health is something that's difficult to talk about, but some of the stigmas in China have been especially strong. And it doesn't help that the government has generally treated people with mental illnesses, from the severe to the quite mild, as potentially risky people who could cause problems for the party by causing disturbances in the streets.

So what's changed? Why have those attitudes changed?

Well, over the last couple of years, improvements to mental health care have generally been pushed along in the wake of big national crises. So one example is that a big push on healthcare that happened following the SARS epidemic in 2002 led to some improvements for people who had quite severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia. And a couple of years later, there was an enormous earthquake that hit Sichuan Province. That was in 2008. And one of its many consequences was to greatly raise awareness of more common mental health problems, things like post traumatic stress that can affect anybody. And in the wake of that disaster, many Chinese began taking short courses in mental health counseling. And that's led to growing availability of therapy for Chinese, at least in the cities. One other thing to mention is that last year, Chinese academics completed a big national survey of mental health in China, which was the first for a decade. And they found that the prevalence of mood disorders such as anxiety and depression, though they weren't completely out of step with international trends, did appear to be creeping up in China. And all that has thrown focus onto this issue of mental health.

And so as those attitudes have changed, then how has the sort of mental health system itself changed?

Well, a big problem is that for many people in China, there's limited primary health care of the sort that in another country would be offered by a general practitioner. So mild mental health problems, there isn't really somebody you can go to to discuss this with. They don't tend to get picked up until they've become quite severe. The problem is that in the public health system, there remain far too few specialists to cope with China's needs. So the country has about two registered psychiatrists per 100,000 citizens, which is only about a sixth of the number that you'd find in rich countries. And in particular, it has extremely few clinical psychologists. So mental health care in Chinese hospital settings, if you can get it, is likely to involve pharmaceuticals rather than therapy, in part because that's what the doctors have more experience giving, and in part because that is where their profit margins lie.

And so what are the plans to close those gaps, then?

Well, the government passed a milestone mental health law in 2012, which, among other things, aimed to reduce the number of people who were being involuntarily placed into mental hospitals. And it's still gradually pushing through reforms that it promised in that law. And in 2016, the government announced a Healthy China 2030 plan about changing all aspects of China's healthcare system. And it called in particular for a stronger mental health service system. And I think this is something that could be pushed along faster by the debates that are now happening in the wake of the COVID crisis in China. And the government's idea seems to be to make counseling services available in all local health clinics and also, indeed, in businesses and in schools and in universities. So one example is the southern city of Shenzhen, which is one of 30 places that last year was asked to start piloting such reforms. One worry is that the government tends to talk of its efforts to help Chinese with emotional problems as a project of social governance, rather than what we would call a straightforward public health initiative. And that raises the specter that this kind of system might not actually provide that many health benefits, but would end up serving as a way for police and other local officials who've generally wanted to keep a close eye on people who have mental health problems to better identify who's unhappy in their neighbourhood.

I mean, you said earlier that the authorities worried that people with mental health issues were potential agitators. It seems that that attitude actually perhaps hasn't changed that much.

There are some dispiriting stories from Wuhan recently about bereaved relatives being treated with suspicion by authorities. Some have been forced to take local officials with them when they go to bury their relative relatives, perhaps to check that funeral services are kept very brief and very low key. Some support groups set up on instant messaging apps have been shut down by police for fear that they were allowing bereaved people to connect with each other in order to complain about the government's handling of the epidemic. The fear of unrest among Communist Party officials seems likely to keep tripping up many of China's efforts to improve people's mental well being being to help them deal with grief.

Thank you very much for joining us, Mark.

Thank you.

Only two world wars have been able to stop Britain's gathering each year. It's a superb riot of color, a feast of beauty that thousands will revel in. In a West London field, surely no better giant delphiniums have ever been seen to visit some of the world's finest garden displays. It really is extraordinary what experts can grow. The whole show gives the impression of being larger than life, so to speak. As part of the Chelsea Flower show.

And by this annual near miracle of organization and enthusiasm, all this beauty for.

A few days is in London itself. Today, for the first time ever, it'll open to the public virtually. This online peek into the show couldn't come at a better time for a nation of gardeners.

Statistics show that it's one of the most popular activities during lockdown.

Tom Rowley is our Britain correspondent.

About 45% are British, according to our Office of National Statistics, are coping with the lockdown by gardening, which is slightly more even than the proportion who are cooking or reading. So, I mean, it truly is a national obsession. At any time, anywhere between eight and nine in 10 Britons live in a home with a garden.

So what explains that? Why is it that Britain has this obsession with gardening?

Well, it's a mix of temperature and temperament, really. On the temperature side, Britain just has a very mild climate. Plenty of rain, of course, but also it never gets too nippy during the winter, which is very good for growing a whole variety of different plants. But it's also just something of a national habit. From the 18th century onwards, aristocrats were competing to hire the best landscapers and to bring back these sort of wonderfully exotic plants that they found from all over the world. And then architects have just sort of mirrored that in much smaller plots for terraces and Victorian villas, which are all built with gardens front and back. And millions of them even tune in to watch flower shows like Chelsea on primetime television.

And so what are the purported benefits of gardening relative to any other lockdown activity, like, I don't know, baking sourdough?

There is some quite good research that shows that it has significant mental health benefits. It's associated with fairly significant drops, both in depression and anxiety. A couple of particularly timely books are out in Britain at the moment, one by a psychiatrist called Sue Stuart Smith. A well Gardened Mind is becoming a sort of an unlikely best seller at the moment in Britain. She sees gardening as fundamentally an optimistic activity at a time when people are cancelling plan for holidays or social gatherings. It requires quite a bit of faith in the future to plant a dull looking seed in the soil and expect it to bloom into this beautiful flower.

But what about those poor Souls, that's between 10 and 20% who don't have access to a garden, are they heading to parks and planting things?

As you might expect, because gardens have become so central to the lockdown experience in Britain, they've become a political issue. Politicians have debated about those who don't have gardens and it's been seen as a sort of prism through which people can experience the inequality of COVID 19, the way in which it's felt differently by rich and poor. Also, the access to garden centres has become political.

Can I ask that in any economic unlock that in phase one, the garden centres will be allowed to open, albeit with careful and considered strict guidelines?

I thank my honourable friend, second plea for garden centres and absolutely right. And I understanding entirely why it's so important, both economically but also socially. The governing Conservative Party draws an awful lot of its support from quite a rural voter base who stereotypically like to spend a lot of their Sunday afternoons hanging out in garden centers.

Well, mercifully for us all, all those garden centers are now open again. What about you? Are you among the lucky owners of a garden?

I am. I'm very lucky. Normally my garden gets sorely neglected in favor of the pub, so at last it's getting the love that it really deserves.

Tom, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here tomorrow.