As early as Trump’s foreign policy overtures in 2017, then National Security Adviser Michael Flynn led a faction in support of listing the Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organisation by the State Department and the U.S. Treasury. Following his sacking and other legal setbacks, the initial proposal fell by the wayside, as more pragmatic voices prevailed in the executive branch. 

When an emboldened General Abdel-fattah Sisi visited the White House in April, he found more sympathetic ears to bend. Cue John Bolton, Trump’s fourth adviser on National Security – and a President plea bargaining for Egyptian support in his plans for peace between Israel and Palestine. For Sisi, the designation would represent another nail in the coffin of his political opponents, Egypt’s Brotherhood Islamists. 

If the U.S. goes ahead, the impact could be huge. Economic and travel sanctions would follow for entities and individuals even loosely based with the multi-faceted organisation. Strategic allies in the region that share legislative and ideological ties with the Muslim Brotherhood – such as Tunisia and Turkey – would be affected and angered by the move. What would be the impact on now dormant Brotherhood members in Egypt? Would a failed designation embolden or revitalise Brotherhood-affiliated political forces throughout the Middle East and North Africa?

Chair

Azadeh Moaveni is a former Middle East correspondent for Time Magazine, based in Cairo and Tehran, and has written three books on Iran. She is the author of the forthcoming Guest House for Young Widows, about the women of ISIS, and now does gender and conflict analysis for the International Crisis Group.

Speakers

David D. Kirkpatrick is an international correspondent based in the London bureau of the New York Times. From the beginning of 2011 through the end of 2015 he was the Cairo bureau chief. In 2018, David’s book Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East was received to international acclaim.

Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics. Previously she was Professor of Social Anthropology at King’s College, London and Visiting Research Professor at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on history, society, religion and politics in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Middle Eastern Christian minorities in Britain, Arab migration, Islamist movements, state and gender relations, and Islamic modernism. You can read about her publications here.

Mina Thabet is an Egyptian researcher, activist and a human rights defender who is based in London since 2017. Currently, he works as the head of Policy Unite at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), an Egyptian award-winning mainstream human rights NGO. His work focuses on freedom of religion and belief, discrimination and sectarian violence against minorities in Egypt. Also, he co-founded two of Egypt’s most prominent youth movements that promoted the rights of religious and ethnic minorities in post-Mubarak era, Maspero Youth Union (MYU) and the Egyptian Coalition for Minorities (ECM).

Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

Bellicose noises emit from the White House, as President Trump appoints Elliot Abrams special envoy to Venezuela – a US foreign policy hawk involved in the Iran Contra scandal. Alongside the US, significant regional players including the governments of Colombia, Brazil and Argentina have recognised Juan Guaido’s legitimacy.  In Europe, the mood is similar. Our own shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, refuses to ‘strike a pose’ and acknowledge Juan Guaido as president, denouncing ‘outside interference’ in Venezuelan affairs as unproductive for the Venezuelan people.

Join a panel of reporters, broadcasters and experts who’ve been covering the crisis for an in-depth look at the unfolding events. The challenges of reporting in a divided country that faces growing instability and turmoil – for Venezuelan and foreign journalists alike – are huge. Our panel will also be discussing the threats to press freedom and the media workers covering the news in Venezuela in the current crisis.

Chair:

Lindsey Hilsum  is Channel 4 News International Editor, and has covered many of the conflicts of recent years including in Syria, Ukraine and the Arab Spring. She was in Baghdad for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and in Belgrade for the 1999 NATO bombing. In 1994, she was the only English-speaking correspondent in Rwanda when the genocide began. She has won awards from the Royal Television Society and BAFTA amongst others. Hilsum has just returned from Venezuela where she has been reporting for Channel 4 News.

Speakers:

Vladimir Hernandez is a BBC journalist with more than ten years of experience covering Latin American affairs. He’s made documentaries on the Mexico Drug War, reported on the legalisation of cannabis in Uruguay, and worked as a correspondent in Argentina for 2 years. Since 2014 he’s regularly been travelling back home to Venezuela to show the country’s slide into humanitarian crisis and the severe deterioration of human rights by security forces – especially during the 2017 anti-government protests. His documentary for Our World Going Hungry in Venezuela remains one of the most watched videos for BBC Mundo on YouTube and his latest reports for the BBC’s Ten o’Clock News still remain widely shared on YouTube, including a piece from a market where the poor buy rotten meat to eat which has had almost 3 million views. Vladimir was born in France but is a Venezuelan / British citizen.

Ana Vanessa Herrero is the New York Times correspondent in Venezuela who also contributes reporting from across the region. She will be joining the discussion via live link-up from Caracas.

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera is Professor of Political Philosophy and Human Rights, Birkbeck College, University of London, and author of the award-winning “What If Latin America Ruled the World? (2010)” and “Story of a Death Foretold, The Coup Against Allende” (2013) – selected as a non-fiction Book of the Year by The Observer. He’s a member of the Royal Society for the Advancement of the Arts (RSA).

  Watch the video stream of Venezuela in Crisis

The panel discussion ‘What Does Trump’s Presidency Mean for the Rest of the World?’ on 25 November clearly highlighted this as it careened wildly, swerving from the global implications and election autopsies, to passionate debates over racism and fascism.

Journalist and author Laurie Penny damned the evening as a ‘normalising’ discussion about ‘a fascist’. Echoing this, Shelina Janmohamed (a commentator on Muslim social and religious trends) urged the audience to think about the framing of the stories told. ‘The way we talk about identity,’ she argued, referring to the coverage of the trial of Jo Cox’s murderer, ‘…affects real peoples’ lives’. There is a potential ‘ripple’ effect on women’s rights movements globally, she argued, legitimising misogyny as ‘locker room talk’, disregarding women’s place in society, and signalling that it’s okay to talk about your daughter in ‘repulsive’ ways.

Trump’s rhetoric around climate change has some fearing the death of climate politics. He talks about ‘setting free coal,’ says Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief for the New York Times. But, this won’t go far: ‘No one’s going to invest in coal, it’s not worth their money,’ Erlanger argued. Many countries are ‘invested in a cleaner world’ for their own reasons, so ’just because the president thinks it can happen’ it doesn’t mean it will.

Having previously referred to NATO as ‘obsolete‘, will Trump oversee a shift in the global security landscape? Dan Roberts, The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, argued Europe will be ‘looking after itself’: for Trump, world security isn’t ‘an American problem’. Erlanger demurred, pointing out that the USA’s NATO membership isn’t altruistic, but in American ‘interests’. President of the British International Studies Association, Inderjeet Parmar, agreed, ‘I don’t think America’s retreating’.

Author, broadcaster, and the chair of the event, Michael Goldfarb asked if Trump caught a ‘wave’ that’s sweeping the world. There is a ‘systemic’ element, Parmar mused; the populist surge is the ‘unravelling of an order’ unable to sustain the ‘Western’ dream. But did Trump’s supporters see themselves as part of a larger wave? One audience member disagreed, arguing that many who voted for Trump sought a conservative supreme court, and didn’t consider the ‘world economy’ or ‘globalism’.

To what extent Trump fulfils his campaign promises remains to be seen. ‘The office has a moderating influence’ argued Alex Sundstrom of Republicans Overseas UK, he will ‘tack to the centre to get stuff done’. Janmohamed disagreed, arguing that his appointees are ‘proof that he’s going to make good on those statements.’ Parmar, however, saw compromise ahead. ‘The education of Donald Trump is going to be the title of a really great book,’ he quipped, ‘that education began as soon as his election was through.’

Acclaimed journalist and artist Molly Crabapple has drawn and reported on stories from Guantanamo Bay, Syria, the West Bank, Iraqi Kurdistan and across the United States. With her powerful illustrations she has pushed the boundaries of visual reportage – and established an important place for art in hard news.

On the release of her memoir Drawing Blood, which intersperses testimony of her own artistic and journalistic engagement with full-colour illustrations, we welcome Molly Crabapple to the Frontline Club to reflect on recent projects and to share her personal insight into the use of art as a tool for better understanding and documenting current events. With US presidential primaries now firmly underway, she will discuss her ongoing work on topical home turf issues including policing and the justice system, as well as her experiences covering the effects of conflict across the Middle East.

Molly Crabapple is an artist, journalist, and author of the memoir, Drawing Blood. Called “an emblem of the way art can break out of the gilded gallery” by the New Republic, she has drawn in and reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi’s migrant labor camps, and in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE, and has written for publications including The New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. She is the winner of a 2015 Front Page Award for her drawings of Aleppo for Vanity Fair, and was shortlisted for a Frontline Award in 2013. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

This event will be chaired by Natasha Lennard, a British-born, New York-based writer of news and political analysis, focusing on justice, power, biopolitics and dissent. She writes regularly for the Intercept, Fusion and Al Jazeera America, and has written for VICE News, The New York Times, Salon, The Nation and Politico, among others. She is editor-at-large at The New Inquiry journal.

Illustration: Molly Crabapple for VICE: ‘What Life is Like Inside the Besieged, War-Torn Syrian City of Aleppo’