democracy

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a national unity government – at least among Jewish Israelis – during the swearing-in of Israel’s new parliament, or Knesset, on Tuesday, hoping to cling to power. The opposition to him, which now has a majority of seats but has yet to form a government, reacted with heckles, catcalls, and walkouts.

Citing supposed internal and external threats, Netanyahu called for unity with the opposition bloc that has been tasked with forming a government to replace him. Netanyahu pointed to the threat posed by Iran and the increased number of democratically elected lawmakers who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, whom he accused, without evidence, of seeking Israel’s destruction.

“We must do one thing – set aside every other consideration and form a national unity government. Only such a government will be able to meet challenges of this magnitude. It is impossible to handle them with a narrow government,” he said of the potential for a minority government that many analysts consider likely after coalition negotiations are complete.

“I say this because here in this parliament they are seriously talking about forming a narrow government like this, a government that includes within it terror supporters, haters of Israel, or that would be dependent on them,” he said, referring to the parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Even by the standards of Israeli politics, where analysts say personality has long overshadowed party and policy, Tuesday’s session was unusually contentious.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett heckled Netanyahu while trading barbs with the latter’s wife, Sara, and his hard-right ally Itamar Ben-Gvir, while many of the Palestinian lawmakers attacked by the prime minister during his speech walked out in protest.

Gadi Eisenkot, who has been given the first chance to form a new government, subsequently cancelled previously scheduled coalition talks with Netanyahu and declared him “unfit for office”.

Personality politics

Netanyahu has long played an outsized role in Israeli politics, helping transform the political system into one that is highly based on personalities, with voters typically identifying a leader they like first, and then focusing on policy discussions. Nevertheless, despite having contributed more to that change than any other politician, Netanyahu now finds himself fighting for his political life.

If Eisenkot is able to form a viable new government – which still hangs in the balance – Netanyahu faces being frozen out of power, and a future in which his corruption trial continues without the protection of the prime minister’s office. There will also likely be an inquiry into his and his government’s failings in the run-up to the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.

His potential downfall, however, does not mean an end to personality politics in Israel. Instead, it may be one of the most lasting parts of his legacy, said Roi Zur, an Israeli specialist in voting behaviour and election strategies at the University of Essex.

“Netanyahu Americanised the party system in Israel and made Likud a populist party,” he said of the influences the country’s longest-serving prime minister has had on Israel and his own party.

“It is a clear case in Israel that the person at the head of the list or the head of the party is very important, and politics evolve around the head of the party,” Zur said. “We see it in how people think about political parties or voting in general in Israel. When you ask people, ‘Who are you voting for?’, they say, ‘I vote for Netanyahu, I vote for Bennett, I vote for Eisenkot,’ whilst in the past it was ‘I vote for Likud, I vote for Labor,’ and so on.”

Toxic populism

Dahlia Schneidlin, an American-Israeli pollster, noted that Israeli political campaigns had become more personalised in the past few decades even though elections in the country are almost all based on voting for a party slate, and not individuals.

That had led to many cases where voters focus on the personality rather than the party, and vote accordingly.

However, the Israeli electoral system almost always leads to coalition governments. And bringing other parties into a coalition often needs leaders to demonstrate “political neogitiating and bargaining skills”, Schneidlin said, as they try to encourage others to join them.

Eisenkot, Schneidlin said, will have to demonstrate those skills if he is to form a government, rather than simply being focused on his own personality.

But the emphasis on differences in political personality over policy positions has fuelled a culture where personal differences, such as those between Netanyahu and opposition stalwart Avigdor Lieberman – whose shared animosity is well known but whose right-wing political positions are in some ways very close – contribute to a populist politics easily understood by a public eager to see itself as politically engaged.

“The stress on the personal makes everything so much worse,” Yossi Mekelberg, a senior fellow at Chatham House, said. “With party structures so centralised, leaders can become almost dictatorial and get to act without constraint. This is how it becomes possible for a prime minister to accuse 19 elected members of the Knesset of being terrorist sympathisers and nobody thinks it’s extraordinary. It’s become toxic,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Corruption topped the list of concerns for voters who ousted Republicans and handed Democrats control of Congress in the midterm elections. Now, the newly empowered Democratic Party is putting the issue front and center as its leaders chart their course for investigations and policymaking.

Senior Democrats in both chambers of Congress have vowed to marshal the subpoena powers and larger investigative staffs that come with their soon-to-be majorities to probe what they say is the self-enrichment that President Donald Trump and people in his orbit have done at the public’s expense. The Republican president and his White House have long denied any wrongdoing.

House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda to look at how Trump and his family have become wealthier since he returned to office — and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who’s in line to become House speaker, has not ruled out trying to impeach Trump for a third time.

Months ago, Jeffries tasked the ranking Democrats on the Oversight and Judiciary committees, Rep. Robert Garcia of California and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, with leading the effort, as Democrats work to link the costs of public corruption to the affordability concerns hitting Americans’ pocketbooks.

“Lawyer up,” Garcia posted on X as election results favoring Democrats began coming in on Tuesday night.

The Senate is expected to conduct similar investigations.

“Americans want us to clean up corruption in government,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is poised to return as Senate majority leader next year. “No American should have to make tradeoffs at the supermarket while Trump is making inside trades on the stock market.”

Investigation targets could include ICE raids, Epstein and DOGE

Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has outlined five priorities, including Trump family business dealings, the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, said he wants to dig into Trump’s White House ballroom and other construction projects, as well as the Trump family’s role in mineral deals.

With the House majority comes an infusion of congressional committee staff and resources, and the effort is expected to be sprawling, involving House committees with authority to conduct oversight on Cabinet officials and the agencies they lead.

In the Senate, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who is expected to become the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said his panel will want to look into Trump’s real estate projects around the nation’s capital and his crypto dealings with special envoy Steve Witkoff. Witkoff is a longtime ally who partnered with Trump on the president’s family cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial.

“The tentacles of corruption reach deep in this administration, and they have added costs to everyday Americans,” Blumenthal said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. The senator added that he also wants hearings on ICE raids, the actions of the Department of Government Efficiency and Medicare plans he says are too restrictive and have cost some patients care.

Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is in line to become Senate Finance Committee chairman, ticked off several investigative targets that he describes as part of an “accountability” agenda, including banks that he contends ignored red flags about the financial dealings of Epstein and pharmaceutical companies that have profited from their ties to the Trump administration.

“When I am chair, they will be forced to answer to the Senate Finance Committee for their role in hurting the American people and enabling Trump’s corruption,” Wyden said in a statement Wednesday.

The issue of corruption resonated for voters, The AP Voter Poll shows

Many U.S. voters in Tuesday’s elections expressed deep concerns about government corruption and the state of democracy, according to The AP Voter Poll, which surveyed more than 100,000 voters nationwide.

While roughly 4 in 10 voters said the economy was the top issue facing the country, about 3 in 10 said that “the state of democracy” was the top issue. About half of U.S. voters said government corruption was “crucial” to their vote for Congress, and most of those voters supported the Democratic candidate in their local U.S. House race, while about one-third said they voted for the Republican.

About 8 in 10 voters who said “the state of democracy” was the top issue facing the country supported the Democrat, while about 2 in 10 supported the Republican.

Older voters, those age 65 or older, were more likely than voters under 65 to say “the state of democracy” was the most important issue facing the country. About 4 in 10 older voters pointed to this as the nation’s top problem, compared with about 3 in 10 who said the economy. That view was reversed with younger voters, who were more likely to call the economy the top issue.

That explains why anti-corruption played such a central role in Democratic campaigns this cycle, with candidates accusing their Republican opponents of looking out for themselves or their donors rather than a broader constituency. They embraced stock trading bans and bans on former members of Congress becoming lobbyists and promised to be part of an effort to root out corruption.

Democrats’ challenge: Focusing on corruption without ignoring cost-of-living issues

In his public comments since his party lost the elections, Trump has taken a conciliatory tone toward Democrats, conceding that they “did a good job” in their campaigns as he’s tried to skirt personal blame for the GOP’s midterm thrashing. That could change as investigations ramp up.

“As the president has said, he’s willing to work with anyone to continue delivering victories for hardworking Americans,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said Wednesday. “If Democrats choose to pursue sham investigations and radical left policies, they are choosing to work against the American people.”

Schumer insisted that congressional Democrats will be able to balance legislating on key issues, such as affordability, while launching investigations to target “rampant corruption.”

In a letter to Democratic lawmakers announcing his candidacy for House speaker, Jeffries said the “days of the House functioning like a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump administration are over.”

“The massive corruption the country has experienced from the Trump Cartel explains why very little is getting done to help everyday Americans,” Jeffries wrote as he promised to target price gouging and push for a stock trading ban for lawmakers. “That changes immediately.”

The challenge for Democrats will be to continue to tie corruption to the affordability issues that topped the list of concerns for voters.

The Congressional Integrity Project, an advocacy group initially created to combat Republican investigations into President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, is now shifting its focus to help Democratic lawmakers make that connection. In a memo, the group urged congressional Democrats to trace the Trump administration’s actions to people in and outside government, as well as corporations, who may be profiting from those moves.

“Corruption is not just corruption,” said the group’s senior adviser, Jack Miller. “It is costing taxpayers and costing Americans in their everyday lives.”

Some Democratic lawmakers are already stressing that congressional investigations have to be directly tied to affordability issues, while urging restraint.

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said that Democrats need to earn voters’ trust, and while investigations are an important part of the Democratic agenda, “we can’t turn this into just a vengeance tour.”

“We have to be careful, cautious and judicious about that,” Welch said.

Kim and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro and polling writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

Wong, in prison since 2020, was found guilty of colluding with foreign entities in violation of the city’s national security law.

Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, who has been in prison since 2020, has been jailed for an additional 10 years.

Hong Kong’s High Court found Wong guilty of colluding with foreign entities in violation of the city’s national security law on Thursday.

The sentence comes just two months before he was expected to be released in January 2027.

“The punishment must fit the gravity of ⁠the crime,” High Court Judge William Tam told a packed courtroom while delivering the sentence.

“It is also necessary for the court to express the community’s abhorrence of the defendant’s scheme and acts with others to collude with foreign forces or external elements to endanger national security.”

Wong, now 30, was accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and others to ask foreign countries, bodies or individuals outside China to impose sanctions or blockades, or engage in other hostile activities against the government.

He pleaded guilty to the charge in September. Tam said he considered a 13-year prison sentence as a starting point but reduced it to 10 because of Wong’s guilty plea and mitigation.

Wong was once the face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and has been in jail since 2020. He was imprisoned over his role in protests held a year earlier.

The demonstrations were prompted by plans to allow extradition to mainland China but soon evolved into a wider pro-democracy movement. Wong became a prominent representative of the movement, regularly appearing on news channels. He later pleaded guilty to inciting and organising an unauthorised antigovernment assembly.

‘Endless political persecution’

Governments and rights groups criticised the court’s decision on Thursday.

The United States consulate in Hong Kong said that it “strongly condemns” the additional sentence handed to Wong, and called for his “immediate release”.

“Wong has been unjustly imprisoned since December 2020, demonstrating that Beijing will go to extraordinary lengths to silence those who advocate for fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong,” a consulate spokesperson said in a statement to the AFP news agency.

After his sentencing, Taiwan also criticised the “endless political persecution” of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.

Beijing and the Hong Kong government use “authoritarian tools” to “fabricate charges … engage in endless political persecution, and suppress the people’s legitimate rights to pursue freedom, democracy, and human rights,” Taiwan’s top China policy body said.

Human Rights Watch denounced the latest charge against Wong. “The harsh sentence on baseless charges against Joshua Wong is cruel and unjust. Young people promoting social change are an asset for any vibrant society, but the Hong Kong government puts them behind bars,” said Elaine Pearson, the group’s Asia director.

Amnesty International also criticised Wong’s additional sentence, saying it was “another grim reminder of how Hong Kong’s National Security Law has become a tool to punish dissent”.

The symphony orchestra takes its name from the Greek symphonía, meaning sounding in agreement, and orkhēstra which implies a public stage for dance or, in ancient Rome, where senators and other big shots sat. Democracy comes from dēmokratia, rule by the people. Even though the modern orchestra originated three centuries ago as a plaything of princes, there has always been an implicit connection — and tension — between orchestras and democracy.

Despite the orchestra never having been a financially sustainable model, dependent on some form of patronage, the symphony orchestra was embroiled in political activism by the early 19th century. Beethoven brazenly yanked the dedication to Napoleon from his “Eroica” Symphony when the “hero” proclaimed himself emperor in 1804, a betrayal of the democratic ideals of the French Revolution.

More than two centuries later, the orchestra continues to be a potent reminder of power to the people, a community of exquisitely trained artists marching to a beat, staying in tune and on message. In this year’s election season orchestras have been practicing the call for democratic thinking on a global scale, including in Los Angeles, Boston and Leipzig, Germany. Strikingly, this comes at a time when beleaguered orchestra musicians have also been demanding a more democratically minded workplace.

Throughout October and up to election day, Wild Up in L.A. has taken the lead in orchestral electoral activism. Its “Democracy Sessions” are an ongoing procession of interdisciplinary concerts, theatrical events, interactive gatherings, environmental presentations and gabfests in theaters, museums, libraries, parks, on neighborhood streets and around the L.A. River. Wild Up winds up its call for democracy with “Music to Vote By,” lunchtime solo acoustic sets, noon to 2 p.m., through Tuesday at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum Plaza in Little Tokyo.

Wild Up, itself, is a uniquely egalitarian collective, a chamber orchestra of composers and soloists, although one that nonetheless requires traditional leadership of its visionary founder, conductor Christopher Rountree. Rountree’s interdisciplinary “sessions” run from the musically sophisticated and accomplished to ad hoc and participatory funkiness, less designed to change minds than to relieve democracy anxiety.

A democracy zeitgeist, for instance, pervaded a performance at REDCAT of Louis Andriessen’s “De Staat,” a Dutch minimalist masterpiece from the mid-1970s. To intense rhythmic propulsion of piano and winds, four women vocalists intone excerpts from “The Republic,” in which Plato calls for rule of the people not the rule of music, fearful of a music that can alter “the most fundamental laws of the state.” Andriessen set out to show how mistaken Plato was.

Elsewhere, Rountree acted as an assembler, demonstrating democracy in action. In British composer Oliver Leith’s “Garland,” a kind of musical and theatrical tool kit, Rountree created a spectacle of song, dance, instrumental mayhem (whirly tubes, button whistles and the like added to the mix) and included amateur performers from the community hymn singing with the pros. It ended with a lovely appearance by a black horse all in the expanses of MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary. What does this have to do with the price of gasoline? Nothing more than a reminder that the quotidian world around us can be a hymn all by itself.

Wild Up’s performance of “Garland” at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

(Josh Rose / Wild Up)

Germany is having its own brush with democracy with a recent election in which the far-right Alternative for Germany party won power in the central state of Saxony-Anhalt. The city of Leipzig borders that state, and its historic Gewandhaus Orchestra marked the days preceding the election with a democracy weekend it called “Reading the Signs.” The suggestion here was rather than falling for oversimplification and conspiracy theories when it comes to examining the interaction of “music, discourse and social action,” look to Beethoven.

That included a performance by Stegreif, an improvising orchestra that functions as a kind of German Wild Up. For Democracy Weekend, Stegreif “exploded” Beethoven’s “Eroica.”

It so happens that the Boston Symphony and Gewandhaus share a music director in Andris Nelsons, who has strived to bring the two orchestras together in joint projects. Sure enough, the BSO has been living up to its calling as the orchestra in the birthplace of American democracy. At Tanglewood, the orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshires, the orchestra celebrated the semiquincentennial with the premiere of Philip Glass’ “Lincoln” symphony and Yo-Yo Ma’s weeklong “We the People” residency, which offered a widely varied look at our democratic musical roots.

Then barely two weeks before the midterms, the BSO channeled Boston’s revolutionary spirit with explosive AI. At a time when much of the country sees artificial intelligence as a significant threat to democracy, the premiere of Tod Machover’s “already and not yet,” a concerto for orchestra with electronics bathed in AI, begs otherwise.

Machover’s brilliant new half-hour orchestral score asks AI for agency. It does so by treating the technology as stupid, musicians as creative artists and the audience as capable of opening its collective mind. It handles democracy not as a done deal, but a series of scary questions — and doesn’t trust the heartless machines for answers.

A commission in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the MIT Media Lab, “already and not yet” challenges us to make the world more beautiful by looking deeply into ourselves. The Media Lab is an unprecedented electronic playground born of AI. For one of the optimistic developers of AI, the musically minded computer scientist Marvin Minsky, the Media Lab functioned akin to a surgeon removing blockages to the imagination.

The interior of MIT’s groundbreaking Media Lab.

(Mark Swed)

Minsky was also a mentor to Machover, who has been at the Media Lab since the start and now heads the faculty. Machover’s AI is not a data collector in the sense of the commercial, data-gobbling, mind-numbing monstrosities lately foisted on the public. It becomes a new tool in his piece, not a way of life, something merely taught to listen and analyze in hopes of giving musicians a new idea or two.

With the help of an AI operator, Manaswi Mishra, who is embedded in the orchestra, the AI becomes the “already” in “already and not yet.” It doesn’t have much use in the tumultuous first movement, “SMASH UP,” when the world is a mess and that’s our problem. In the ethereal second movement, “WAKE UP,” players become individual and AI spits out responses that read as ordinary electronic mimicry, but the players, if game, take that as a challenge. Weirdly the machine brings them to life and as individuals. In the last movement, “STAND UP,” the machine is tamed! We frolic in a new, sonic wonderland. Even Thoreau might approve!

Can AI-assisted utopian art save democracy? That’s a tall order. Let it first try to do something about the BSO. As conductor, Kent Nagano was the ultimate listener (he can cut off the AI when it’s not interesting). After the performance he told me the orchestra was always game. And he sandwiched Machover with lithe, colorful Mendelssohn performances (including the Fifth Symphony).

But this is an orchestra in revolt, and it looked it. Grim of mien, many players on the night I attended sported red flowers on their lapels, a sign of their dissatisfaction with the administration for not renewing Nelsons’ contract when it expires this summer, after 13 years leading the BSO. The orchestra claimed it was broadsided by the announcement that management and Nelsons did not have a shared vision. The players want a say, an orchestra as democracy and more than just AI’s version of agency.

Ironically, Nelsons, who signed a nondisclosure agreement, doesn’t seem to show much vision when it comes to democracy. The Latvian conductor did not participate in Tanglewood’s democracy concerts (although he did conduct excerpts from John Adams’ “Nixon in China,” which sounded, in the radio broadcast, as having such a heavy hand that there was no room for free thinking).

In Leipzig, Nelsons’ contribution to the Gewandhaus democracy weekend was no democracy at all, only an irrelevant program of Tchaikovsky and Dvorak standards. Leipzig, bursting like Boston with young people, has become a German tech hub, it too could have used a whirl with democratic AI.

Swed is The Times’ former classical music critic.