UN human rights chief takes Western populist ‘demagogues’ to task

The United Nations’ human rights chief has blasted populist politicians in the West, calling them “demagogues and political fantasists” and decrying their tactics of using half-truths and oversimplification, “the two scalpels of the arch propagandist”, in an impassioned defence of law.

In an address at The Hague, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein attacked the far-right Dutch leader Geert Wilders as well as US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, accusing them of using the same propaganda tactics as so-called Islamic State.

He said: “I am a Muslim, who is, confusingly to racists, also white-skinned”, adding: “And I am angry, too. Because of Mr. Wilder’s lies and half-truths, manipulations and peddling of fear. You see, twenty years ago I served in the UN peacekeeping force during the Balkan wars – wars so cruel, so devastating, which flowed from this same factory of deceit, bigotry and ethnic nationalism.”

He attacked the vision of far right politicians in America and Europe, who “seek in varying degrees to recover a past, halcyon and so pure in form, where sunlit fields are settled by peoples united by ethnicity or religion – living peacefully in isolation, pilots of their fate, free of crime, foreign influence and war. A past that most certainly, in reality, did not exist anywhere, ever.”

Prince Zeid said that social media, because it is unaccommodating of depth or analysis, has proved the perfect platform for these figures.

He added: “The formula is therefore simple: make people, already nervous, feel terrible, and then emphasize it’s all because of a group, lying within, foreign and menacing. Then make your target audience feel good by offering up what is a fantasy to them, but a horrendous injustice to others. Inflame and quench, repeat many times over, until anxiety has been hardened into hatred.”

The human rights chief ended with an injunction to protect the law, which is “the distillation of human experience, of generations of human suffering, the screams of the victims of past crimes and hate. We must guard this law passionately, and be guided by it.”