Serfdom With Pink Gin

Internal Subversion and External Injustice

A note from the editor: Welcome back, friends. This week we have an article from Stefan Thompson, the Founder of Visegrad 24, on Qatar and its role in subverting the West, along with its merciless labor policies. I have been taken with some sickness or another this week and couldn’t make it through the recording, so that will be up as soon as I am better. I apologize for the delay, and hope you enjoy this very welcome article.

Stefan Tompson is a Polish-South African journalist and the founder of Visegrad24, a Warsaw-based social media news company. He has covered conflicts in East Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Vassalage to corporate interests is easily assuaged by powerful company cars, foreign holidays, and uptown penthouses. Even if these luxuries are bought on credit, owned by a bank, or hang by the thread of an employer’s approval, the modern corporate worker can be as satisfied as his 10th Century counterpart that he is taken care of, ascribed certain liberties, and participating in a stable, predictable society. Yet he still lives paycheck to paycheck and owns very little. 

In the developing world, workers driven by the same aspirations into the same social contract face exponentially harsher consequences when the law fails them. But how can we criticize the failures of a nation such as Qatar (a glittering example of modern feudalism complete with fundamentalist Wahabi Islam and monarchist absolutism) when its successes are in compliance with our own values?

Forged in 1971, Qatar derives its vast wealth from gas exports and its diplomatic position from collaboration with the West. For their help in evacuating Western troops from Afghanistan and their Al Udeid air base joint venture, they have been awarded the status of a Major Non-NATO Ally.

Although Qatar is criticized for its close links, funding, and diplomatic ties with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Taliban (yes - the same Taliban from whom they were evacuating American troops), all seems to be forgiven on an election cycle by election cycle basis provided that the ruling Al Thani dynasty upholds the perception that America is still in control. So much for their political alliances, then, what about Qatari civil society?

Qatari citizens are born into the top of the feudal system. The wealthiest people on Earth, they pay no income tax and are given most of their public utilities - such as water and electricity - for free. Land is given to Qatari citizens for free and interest-free loans are issued by the state to build on it. The Qatari government pays for their citizens’ healthcare and education, even when they go to study abroad. Anyone wishing to set up a business in Qatar must have a citizen sponsor who receives a cut without making any investment.

What this does not disguise, of course, is the Qatari proprietorship of a workforce that flocks, albeit consensually, to sell itself into comparatively well-paid, for the region, indentured servitude. Resident migrant workers - including over a million Indians and Nepalese - outnumber Qatari citizens six to one but have no citizens’ rights and no legal redress if they run afoul of local laws.

The 2020 execution of Anil Chaudhary, whose trial was as shocking in its correct observance of Qatari law as it was in its breach of international law, went strangely unnoticed by the same factions that demanded what they called justice for George Floyd. This points to the Qatari blackmail of not just Western governments, but Western civil society itself. 

Aside from bribing European officials to censor debate about their human rights abuses, in one of the most brilliant PR stunts of the 21st Century, Qatar has managed to patronize the crucibles of civil activism in America, throwing its weight behind causes that are banned in its own jurisdiction (such as LGBTQ activism), often in order to woo campus protest movements. The iPhone generation, often the first in their families to qualify for white-collar work and middle-class prosperity, face an uncertain future of unaffordable housing and debt. That makes them easy prey for those wealthy interests that have cash to throw around and influence they’d like to buy. By allowing American universities to franchise themselves on its territory and donating $5.6 billion to 81 American universities since 2007, Qatar has yoked progressive activism to its medieval society in order to drive Western public policy in its favor.

In the name of emancipation which much of the West might well seek for themselves, Qatar’s Al Jazeera network provides positive coverage of students who openly back not just Pride, Black Lives Matter, and Occupy movements, but also Hamas and similar proscribed terrorist organizations. These are being celebrated on US college campuses while Harvard’s president has had to resign over rampant anti-semitism, instances of which are around three times higher at Universities that receive Qatari funding than those that do not. 

We need to talk about the ownership of people. Not the Atlantic slave trade that America and England abolished centuries ago, not the kidnapping, human trafficking, and brutality that heroes work tirelessly to eradicate to this day. These are travesties - but at least we can name them and take issue with them. The problem, rather, is that the state of Qatar’s indentured servants is miserable, and at odds with how most in the West believe labor ought to be treated, both in terms of conditions and in restrictions on liberty when nothing wrong or illegal has been done.

Qatar has reasons for its policies, and perhaps those can be defended in a realist world, but it is ridiculous to pretend we share its values. Why pretend our society shares its feudal values? What interest is served other than normalizing such conditions as the poor treatment of migrant labor in industries like American farming and meat-packing becomes ever more common?

If we desire to properly criticize places like Qatar, we must first understand their hold over our own civil society, their ownership of our narratives, and the weaponization of our own malaise. The signs are that a feudal, Wahabi state is using its Western-derived wealth to entrench its ideals in the institutions that drive our Western public policy, including protest movements and university thought, and our governments are too frightened to push back. This is how a fifty-year-old monarchy of 350,000 citizens gets NATO and America to forsake their charters and constitutions in order to bend over in craven appeasement.

The West presents itself as an entity that behaves in a responsible, moral way and demands others do the same. Such is the attitude behind the hectoring of Bukele, bombing of Libya, and demands made of Israel in its Gaza war. If the West desires better behavior of those nations with which it is deeply involved, that could be defended. If it wishes to remain neutral and let other countries do as they please, that could be defended. But to present itself as the paragon and enforcer of virtue while simultaneously ignoring the brutal behavior of those who slip it cash under the table is indefensible in every way.

Featured image credit: By Mat Kieffer @ Flickr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattkieffer/32185195197/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77434867