Once upon a time there was a …
That ever so often start to fables and fantasies … often painful and dark journeys that end brightly … but these dystopian voyages sometimes have dystopian endings …
Once upon a time there was a dictator who had a daughter. The dictator, who came to power vowing to make his country great, enacted a series of repressive policies under the guise of nationalism. He persecuted the media and
the opposition, used “war on terror” rhetoric to justify a clampdown on civil rights, maintained a close but complicated relationship with Russia, and built a kleptocracy that ensured the country’s riches lined his pockets.
The daughter seemed different – or at least, she wanted to be seen that way. She was an Ivy League-educated cosmopolitan socialite who married into a powerful business family before making her mark as a fashion designer and businesswoman. Like her father, she encouraged an avid personality cult; and like her father, she hid her own brutal practices under the pretext of a soft “feminism”, claiming to represent the ideal modern woman of her country.
As we contemplate this opening dystopian vision of a kleptocratic, nepotistic kakistocracy (government by the worst & most unethical in society), the author asks us:
- Is this the United States?
- Is this Uzbekistan?
Well, I add into the equation two additional questions:
- Is this the opening to a dystopian childhood fable?
- Or, is it all three …
Changed reading patterns in 2016 and Kendzior ...
Now, for tiny background, we have all likely seen our reading and engagement patterns change over the past year. While my academics and career, every some many moons ago, focused on Eurasia, it has been awhile. Concerns over Trump-ista links to Russia and autocratic tendencies opened, even before the election, my aperture to a number of new voices lending insights based on substantive work and experience.
One of those I began to follow and read was Sarah Kendzior. Kendzior, author of The View from Flyover Country, has a PhD in anthropology and her professional
work focuses on the authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union and how the internet affects political mobilization, self-expression, and trust.
Combining substantive knowledge and experience with some of the ugliest government entities in the world, thoughtful insight, powerful writing, and great concern over the path the United States is taking/could take while Trump occupies the White House, Kendzior has been a sometimes painful but often eye-opening read. (For example, our kids may never have a chance to know America.)
There was a dictator who had a daughter …
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the answer to Kendzior’s question: this is a story about the Uzebekistan ‘dictator and his daughter’.
I’m talking, of course, about Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov and his daughter Gulnara Karimova. That this description evokes the burgeoning Trump political dynasty should concern you.
Yes, that the shining light of open, ethical, democratic governance that was Uzbekistan under Karimov has such a clear parallel story line to Donald, Ivanka, and Jared “should concern” us all … greatly.
Kendzior’s Once upon a time there was a dictator is — as with much of what she writes — truly worth the read. I leave you with these Kendzior points:
While novel to the US, the Trump family dynamic may be familiar for citizens of authoritarian kleptocracies. One has seen it in Central Asian states like Uzbekistan and in countless other countries where rulers consolidate power and strip the country’s resources for their personal benefit.
Adult children of authoritarians are useful in three ways:
- First, they tend to be trustworthy confidants in regimes rife with paranoia, as corrupt authoritarian states usually are.
- Second, they are excellent vessels for laundering money, creating enough distance that assets stolen from the state are harder to track.
- Third, they tend to have a warmer public profile which offsets the brutality of the dictator by distracting the population with pictures of their happy families or glamorous lifestyle.
With that list of ‘utility’ functions and watching what is happening in the United States, does Ivanka sound like a “useful adult child of [an] authoritarian” to you?