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...read about how the media can drive hate crimes.

In a new working paper [[link removed]], political scientists Sascha Riaz, Daniel Bischof, and Markus Wagner dig into the role media plays in inciting xenophobic hate crimes. They looked at crime reporting in Germany, comparing instances where German media ascribed a crime to migrants to data on hate crimes. They found that, in the days after local media says migrants committed a crime (regardless of whether they actually did commit the crime in question), the likelihood of a xenophobic hate crime in the area doubles. The power of local media to shape local responses is remarkable — the researchers found no evidence that ascribing crimes to migrants in one county increased the likelihood of hate crimes in neighboring counties. Instead, a localized feedback loop of bias seems to drive spikes in violence against migrants.

The fight to defund police in Nigeria

Nigeria has been in tumult recently, as Nigerians have risen up to demand the abolition of the police Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), long known for its brutality and the impunity with which officers have killed and injured civilians. The government has reacted badly to the protests, using the military to confront peaceful protesters. Both military and police forces have been videotaped shooting at unarmed marchers, and an unknown number of demonstrators have been killed. Johns Hopkins University scholars Chiedo Nwankwor and Elor Nkereuwem questioned [[link removed]]the role the US government’s silence on the protests has had in the ongoing government violence.

Nwankwor and Nkereuwem point out that the anti-SARS protests mirror protests against police violence in the US, and that the Nigerian government’s rhetoric demonizing the protesters is similar to President Trump’s attacks on the Movement for Black Lives.

Ultimately, Nwankwor and Nkereuwem are quick to point out, the Nigerian government is responsible for its own actions. But the widespread normalization of violence against protesters in democracies like the US and Nigeria is hard to ignore.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Credit and blame in civil-military relations

President Trump’s preference for appointing military officers to national security positions traditionally held by civilians has made many civil-military relations experts nervous. A new working paper [[link removed]]looks at one of the reasons it might make the military officers themselves a bit uneasy. Political scientists Michael Kenwick and Sarah Maxey ran a survey experiment to see who people blame when military operations go wrong and the news for military advisers wasn’t great.

When a leader relies on advice from military counselors saying that they should go ahead with a risky operation, people support the decision more than if the advice came from a civilian expert.

If the mission goes badly, the leader who relied on military advisers gets blamed less. On the other hand, they also get less credit if it goes well. This, unsurprisingly, drives leaders to emphasize their military advisers if things go wrong, but to limit military leaders’ time on camera when things go well.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Getting at the vote: Part II

Last week, Deep Dive deep dove into why countries choose to expand and contract voting access among diaspora communities. Of course, actual ballots aren’t the only things political parties need access to in order to compete in elections. Candidates need money, they need a field organization, and — as though it was oxygen itself — they need media coverage to get their message to the people. Incumbent regimes are well aware of the need for media attention, and they often act to restrict access to it for their opponents in the same way that they restrict access to the vote itself.

Some more autocratic regimes just take control of the media entirely, but a more common strategy is to limit media access at the margins, making coverage harder to come by while still maintaining a veneer of press freedom. A new article [[link removed]] in the journal Electoral Studies, by Kyong Mazzaro, examines when and where regimes actually implement those restrictions, and how they play into incumbents’ overall electoral strategies.

Mazzaro gathered data from Venezuela, and put together a database of media restrictions in Venezuelan municipalities between 2002 and 2015. Media restrictions played a major part in Venezuelan elections during that period, which came after many media outlets supported an unsuccessful 2002 coup attempt against then-president Hugo Chavez, who was in office from 1999 until his death in 2013. Opposition media dominates the Venezuelan media landscape, with state television channels holding [[link removed]] just a 5% market share in 2010, so the threat they posed to the regime was real. Opposition writers and broadcasters were often threatened with legal and extralegal sanctions by the Chavez government, and public accusations of media malfeasance were frequent.

It isn’t news to any election observers that incumbents take action to preserve their power around election time, but Mazzaro suspected that the Venezuelan government functioned more strategically than just implementing blanket press repression around election time. She looked at the specific locations and times that the government lashed out at opposition media, and found some noticeable patterns. Local-level media restrictions — that is, restrictions on certain local outlets, intimidation of particular reporters, and other small-bore, targeted acts of press repression — varied between locations, but was heavily dependent on the state of Venezuela’s national politics.

In times when the Chavez government was effectively unchallenged, press repression was delegated to lower levels of government and responded mostly to local grievances between pro- and anti-Chavez factions, which varied from town to town. Once national opposition politicians began to look like a threat to Chavez, however, local press repression became more systematic. Media restrictions would be imposed in opposition strongholds and in districts where local elections are close.

This interaction between local and national conditions in determining where and how press restrictions are implemented suggests a complex relationship between the needs of the regime at the national level and the wielding of power by local officials. The national government felt that it needed to retain the power to restrict the press during times of electoral danger, but the price for doing so was that local officials could use that power capriciously during times of national political calm. In order to maintain the ability to limit the media, in other words, the national government could only afford to maintain control over those limits when it mattered to them most.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS

Shirin Jaafari reported [[link removed]]on the increased pace of ISIS attacks in Afghanistan during peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. ISIS gunmen killed 22 students attending classes at Kabul University in one recent attack, shortly after an ISIS suicide bomber killed 30 in an attack targeting Hazara high school students. The Taliban has also stepped up its attacks, with all parties attempting to demonstrate their strength as the political future of Afghanistan is being determined.

Jon Letman spoke [[link removed]] to journalist Jon Mitchell about Mitchell’s new book, “Poisoning The Pacific: The US Military’s Secret Dumping of Plutonium, Chemical Weapons, and Agent Orange.” For decades, US military installations on islands across the Pacific Ocean have dumped huge volumes of toxic and radioactive chemicals into the areas around the bases. Okinawa, in particular, has borne the environmental cost of US military basing. The US military tested chemical weapons on Okinawa in the 1960s, dumped herbicides on the island in the 1970s, and released 100,000 liters of toxic firefighting chemicals into the local community just this April, among many other incidents. Mitchell’s book chronicles both these episodes and the local environmental justice movements that have grown around the Pacific to combat US-driven environmental degradation.

Ariel Oseran examined [[link removed]]the future of the US-Israel military relationship in the wake of the recent normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The normalization deal paved the way for the US to be able to sell F-35 fighter jets to the UAE, a deal currently under consideration in Washington. Under US law, Israel must be consulted on any arms sales to Middle Eastern countries, and some Israeli officials claim that the sale would weaken their country’s strategic position. One possible outcome is that the UAE will receive the F-35s but that the US will then sell more sophisticated F-22s to Israel.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

Thomas Friedman got improbably rich by, among other things, peddling the idea that countries that have McDonald’s franchises don’t go to war with one another because McDonald's customers prefer paying for burgers to paying for bullets. The so-called “golden arches theory” has already been disproved multiple times, but the ongoing war between Armenia and Azerbaijan offers a final nail in the coffin. Not only are coAmericans weren’t the only ones who spent last week waiting impatiently for one state [[link removed]]in particular to get its act together and count its votes.

Between the blindfolds, the wild flailing, and the target being in a stationary orbit around the Earth’s surface, this party gimmick [[link removed]] is a surprisingly good dramatization of American anti-satellite capabilities.

Arguably, all two-year-olds should be required to answer “yes” on question 4.14. [[link removed]]

Congratulations to Hasbro on their unorthodox viral marketing [[link removed]] for Clue: Expanded Edition.

Consultants who claim to be able to algorithmically predict political violence tend to market their wares to government and major multinational corporations, but perhaps should consider going after designer concertina wire [[link removed]]sellers instead.

An electoral Ford Nova. [[link removed]]

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media.

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Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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