Rescuers in Nepal find two more people alive after flood disaster
Emergency responders rescued a Chinese man and a Nepali woman in two separate operations on Saturday, as authorities continued to search for thousands of people missing 10 days after massive floods hit Nepal. The Nepali military said a joint team comprising personnel from its army and South Korean disaster experts rescued the man from a 225-metre (740ft) tunnel in the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower project, and that he was undergoing a health assessment. Pictures showed him being evacuated by helicopter after being carried out of the tunnel. Rescue efforts have focused on a dozen hydropower projects across Nepal, where about 900 workers are missing, 500 of whom are thought to be trapped in huge tunnels. International rescue teams from India, China, South Korea and the US have been searching through debris and damaged structures at the projects to try to find survivors. Two Nepali workers were rescued from another tunnel in a hydro-station on the Trishuli River on Friday. Experts have said that as time passes, the possibility of finding missing people alive in the tunnels is diminishing. The Nepali woman, 64, was rescued from a damaged house in the devastated town of Nuwakot. Photos published by the Nepali army showed rescuers discovering the woman submerged in mud before she was pulled to safety and airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment. Members of Nepal’s police force cheered as she was pulled from the home, the lower half of which was buried in thick sludge. Emergency responders have been working to find survivors from the devastating floods in Nepal, which were triggered by a glacial and rock collapse on 26 August. Their work has been complicated by the massive infrastructural damage caused by the floods, with more than 40 bridges having collapsed and rivers swelling unpredictably. At least 1,375 people have been killed in the floods, with more than 5,000 missing, according to Nepal’s disaster management agency.
‘Guilt by association’: why seven international aid workers were killed in Israeli airstrike
Seven aid workers killed in an airstrike in Gaza were marked as targets under an Israeli military practice of establishing guilt by association, a Guardian investigation shows. A top Israeli military prosecutor announced last month that he would not pursue criminal proceedings for the April 2024 incident in which drones fired missiles at three clearly marked World Central Kitchen (WCK) cars soon after they had escorted a food aid delivery to Gaza. Three British humanitarian workers along with an Australian, a Palestinian, a Pole and a dual US-Canadian national were killed. The official Israel Defense Forces (IDF) version of events pointed to specific mistakes made by a handful of officers. The victims of the strike were also blamed for hiring armed guards to protect a food aid convoy and for allegedly “deviating” from their agreed route. However, interviews with senior Israeli officers involved in the incident or familiar with the official Israel investigation suggest it glossed over the role played in the killings by a common IDF practice used to designate targets, which endangers aid workers and civilians in general, especially when combined with the army’s open-ended mission to end Hamas’s civil control in Gaza. More than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military in the three years of the Gaza war. The army’s own internal data suggests more than three-quarters of the dead have been civilians. The reserve colonel who ordered the strikes, Nochi Mendel, said the WCK workers became potential targets after they had a brief encounter, lasting just minutes, with armed guards assumed to be from Hamas (an assumption later shown to be groundless). He deemed them to have “mixed together” with alleged Hamas militants, where mixing together was defined as being “near them, talking, playing, hanging out and so on”. Asked whether the presence of armed men made the entire convoy a target, Mendel replied: “Certainly.” He concluded: “They were not innocent because they were connected to Hamas.” Mendel was referring to a general policy of haflala, “incrimination”, which gives commanders in the field wide discretion on designating someone as a “terrorist”, including those “incriminated” by association. The manner in which haflala is to be applied in a given sector is often conveyed in a commander’s mission brief delivered verbally to other officers. He said his unit had been commended by the army hierarchy for its involvement in several strikes on what were deemed to be Hamas attempted commandeering of aid. “They applauded us and were pleased with our action,” he said. The difference in the WCK incident was that foreign nationals were killed, he said. “That’s the whole difference. Not a substantive difference.” When the WCK convoy was destroyed, it was nowhere near Israeli troops. Several Israeli officers familiar with the incident said the strikes were not ordered on the basis of an imminent threat to Israeli lives, but to fulfil the mission to thwart Hamas attempts to control aid deliveries. An IDF statement said the airstrikes were a result of an “erroneous assessment that Hamas military operatives were present in the vehicles, rather than from an intention to target the organisation’s personnel”. The statement added that “this assessment was compounded by serious failures to comply with applicable orders and procedures”. However, it said: “Following an in-depth examination of the findings and in light of the standards applicable under criminal law, it was determined that, despite the aforementioned failures, the circumstances of the incident did not give rise to a reasonable suspicion of a criminal offence warranting the opening of a criminal investigation.” The WCK said the Israeli decision not to pursue criminal proceedings was “inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive”. “At the time of the lethal attacks, our team in Gaza was unarmed and posing a threat to nobody,” the WCK said. “The IDF had full visual clarity on our clearly marked humanitarian vehicles during the extended, multiple airstrikes. It knew our team’s movements, identities and activities in advance.” Britain, Australia and Canada denounced the prosecutor’s decision as “shameful”, saying they would “continue to seek answers” on behalf of the slain aid workers. The UK opened an inquest in 2024 into the deaths of the three British team members: James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman. Saifeddin Abutaha, a Palestinian, Australian Zomi Frankcom, Damian Sobol, a Pole, and a dual Canadian-US citizen, Jacob Flickinger, were the other victims. The UK inquest was adjourned pending the outcome of the Israeli investigation. Mendel, who is the only officer of such high rank to have been dismissed for his actions in the Gaza war, has been portrayed in army command briefings as a rogue operator. Questions have been raised about a political motive. Mendel is a settler who is reported to have been one of the 130 signatories of a 20 January 2024 letter to the IDF calling for the flow of aid to Gaza to be restricted. However, the way the Israeli army operates in Gaza – rules of engagement are made contingent on local circumstances and passed on, often verbally, down the chain of command – gives officers at Mendel’s level wide discretion in subjective judgments as to who is a “terrorist” and therefore a target. The IDF statement said its activity in the Gaza Strip was “regulated by a broad range of binding written orders and standing directives governing the use of force, the approval processes for strikes, strikes against sensitive sites, and other matters” and that these incorporated “the rules of the laws of armed conflict, including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack”. The statement said that “a person does not become a lawful target merely because they are in the vicinity of an armed individual, come into contact with them, or travel alongside them”. The IDF said: “Carrying a weapon may be a relevant factor in such an assessment, but is not sufficient on its own without meeting the definitions described above. In particular, and in the context of the incident in question, security personnel hired to protect a humanitarian convoy from looting do not become lawful targets merely because they are armed.” An IDF officer familiar with the WCK killings said that given the circumstances and the standing IDF procedures, the overwhelming majority of officers would have acted in the same way. “There were armed men next to them,” the officer said. “If you took qualified people and put them on the call, in 90% of cases this is what would have happened,” the officer said. “In my guess, 99% of the time the first bomb would have been dropped; 90% of the time the second; 80% of the time the third.” Reserve Brigadier General Oren Solomon, the battle manager of Gaza Division, said that a mistake had been made in determining that an armed man had entered one of the vehicles, but added that once that error had been committed, the incrimination procedure led inevitably to the three missile strikes. “If I incriminated this vehicle beforehand as Hamas – anyone who escapes from it and enters another vehicle: death comes,” Brig Gen Solomon said. “Together with him they will die. That meets the incrimination rules, no problem.” A senior officer involved in the initial Israeli military investigation into the WCK case, argued Mendel overstepped in interpreting the rules of incrimination. “You can’t incriminate 20 people if there’s one armed,” he said. The officer argued that the first strike could have been justified by the initial misidentification, even at the cost of civilian casualties, but not the subsequent missiles. “You struck someone you suspected, a vehicle you suspected had an armed man in it. The moment two people came out, nobody with a weapon, the second and third strikes are contrary to orders because you don’t know whom you’re striking,” he said. The other systemic factor that contributed to the deaths of the seven aid workers, and potentially countless more civilians, was one of the missions given to the army in Gaza by Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government: to destroy Hamas’s influence and control. That meant anyone deemed to be involved in – or assisting – the Hamas administration, including by distributing aid, could find themselves in the sights of an Israeli drone operator. “I remind you that part of our mission was to crush Hamas’s ability to govern,” Mendel said. “Part of the mission was to hit that [Hamas-controlled aid deliveries], and we hit it.”” Interviews with IDF officers suggest there was a widespread belief in the ranks that Hamas had wrested control of the bulk of aid deliveries into Gaza. That assumption was unfounded, later analysis showed. It was a period of widespread hunger caused by an Israeli blockade, when food convoys were being mobbed by desperate civilians, criminal gangs and Hamas militia. The belief that Hamas hijacks were widespread meant that the appearance of armed men in proximity to the WCK vehicle in April 2024 fitted a “pattern of activity” that helped incriminate the whole convoy in the eyes of Mendel and his unit. The IDF officer familiar with the incident said it was common practice to designate any armed man in Gaza as Hamas or a “terrorist”, as Mendel did. The officer added: “How you define that it’s Hamas – he’s in proximity to weapons, and because he touches the trucks, and because he does all sorts of things that look as if he’s going to take over the trucks.” The role of the incrimination principle in the WCK killings shows how it has become a factor in the historically high proportion of civilians killed in the Gaza war. This sits alongside the routine acceptance of high “collateral damage” in the targeting of Hamas militants, the designation of large and shifting areas as free-fire zones, and the deliberate levelling of neighbourhoods to prevent the return of Palestinian communities. The common factor is that constraints on targeting were minimised in the interests of an open-ended mission. Since the start of the war in 2023, no Israeli soldier has been convicted of wrongful death or war crimes in Gaza operations. “I came to defeat Hamas,” Mendel said. “If such an event came before me again, I would do exactly the same thing.” He also dismissed the significance of the killings. “I think it’s an idiotic side event,” Mendel said. “It really isn’t a serious event.”
‘This is colonialism for clicks’: the influencers attempting to meet and film the world’s most isolated tribes
He set out from the beach around midnight, packing his camera, a coconut and a can of Diet Coke. Mykhailo Polyakov – then 24 and a native of Scottsdale, Arizona – pointed his inflatable dinghy out towards the open water, keeping his speed slow in the hope of avoiding detection. After hours of motoring across the Bay of Bengal, his destination came into view: a low-lying island, narrowly separating sea and sky. With the sun now high above him, Polyakov cut the engine and set his GoPro to record. “So, the goal,” he said, squinting towards the blinding-white beach. “Introduce this Palaeolithic tribe to modernity … Let’s land on this bitch.” Polyakov was nearing North Sentinel Island, part of the Andaman archipelago governed by India. Venturing within 5km (3 miles) is strictly prohibited, let alone setting foot on shore, and authorities routinely patrol the surrounding waters. But Polyakov saw himself as on a mission: to see – and, more importantly, film – the Indigenous people who live there. The Sentinelese are perhaps the most isolated people in the world. They are hunter-gatherers, and believed to number about 100. Beyond that, little is known about them, not even what language they speak. That is how they want it. The tribe opt to live in isolation from the outside world and have fiercely resisted attempts at contact. In 2018, an American missionary was fatally struck by arrows on his third attempt to land on the beach. Earlier, in 2006, two Indian fishers were killed after their boat accidentally washed up on shore. Polyakov, who turns 26 this year and studied finance, believed the risks to be overstated – or at least secondary to his desire to take the first shots in crystalline 4K resolution. “I wouldn’t condone illegal activities but, in my case, the draw to go there was very powerful,” he says, a year after his illicit trip. “You see videos of the Sentinelese and it’s all grainy footage from the 90s … It was a big drive for me to get them on camera.” He took a mirror and a whistle, “to coax them out”, and some goodwill tokens, in the event that he succeeded: the Diet Coke as a “symbol of modernity” and a coconut “because we know they like coconuts”. It wasn’t just clickbait, Polyakov adds, smirking: “It would be bad form not to bring gifts to people you’re visiting.” * * * The human rights organisation Survival International estimates there are 196 Indigenous communities living like the Sentinelese, in voluntary isolation. Most are in South America, in the Amazon rainforest and the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay and Bolivia, with a few more across Indonesia, West Papua and elsewhere in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Though fundamentally diverse, these communities have all chosen to reject outsiders and the industrialised world, and live self-sufficiently. They are known to policymakers and advocates as “uncontacted peoples”. Increasingly, however, outsiders are trying to contact them – and make content from them. Survival and other organisations working to protect isolated peoples report they are increasingly being targeted by influencers chasing exclusive footage of “first contact” – and with it internet fame. For now, their numbers are believed to be few, with Polyakov a rare confirmed case, but advocates believe the threat to be real, growing and warranting action. Influencers were discussed at an international summit held in Jakarta in January, and again at a United Nations meeting in Brazil in June. GTI PIACI, an alliance of 21 organisations working to protect uncontacted Indigenous peoples in the Amazon and Gran Chaco, has put the word out across their network, says secretary Daniel Aristizábal from Bogotá, Colombia. “It’s becoming a trend, and we have to adapt. These people have money.” The UK-based Survival goes further, monitoring social media for influencers who might be motivated to make contact. “It’s all so unnecessary,” says Sophie Grig, head of advocacy and research, over Zoom from her home in Cambridge. She has been with Survival for 30 years, until recently focused on the Asia-Pacific, and is impatient with this “emerging threat” of influencers. The charity tracks a dozen or so accounts across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram with posts about uncontacted peoples. Many of those behind these accounts – overwhelmingly white men – are in the vicinity in South America or Asia and making content about “contacted” Indigenous communities. Their posts may also showcase weapons, snakes and “plant medicine” such as ayahuasca. “It’s very ‘look at me, I’m so macho’,” Grig says with disdain. Though the likelihood of them ever reaching uncontacted peoples may be slim, the potential danger is great: isolated populations have historically been decimated by the introduction of unfamiliar diseases such as measles, to which they have not developed immunity. “Contact with these peoples can lead to their extinction in days,” says Beto Marubo, an Indigenous leader from the Javari valley in the Brazilian Amazon. In 1987, Brazil’s government ended its policy of “forced contact missions” to uncontacted Amazonian tribes due to the devastating epidemics that persisted despite safeguards. For an influencer to argue against the risk and speak on behalf of uncontacted peoples is “an irresponsible, even criminal attitude”, Marubo says. Such western “adventurer types” have long been drawn to places like the Amazon, Grig says, but influencers pose an additional risk with their global reach: those on Survival’s watchlist have a combined audience of more than 40 million followers. Even if they are not actively trying to find uncontacted peoples, by posting about them, Grig says they often affirm damaging stereotypes, spread dangerous misinformation and potentially influence others to try. In interviews, Polyakov has dismissed Survival’s criticism that he endangered the Sentinelese, arguing that he was vaccinated and the risk of transmission low. He also claims trespassers there are more common than reported, and has even questioned whether any truly “uncontacted” people exist. This, Grig says, is self-serving semantics: while “voluntary isolation” may better reflect their position, there is no question they want to be left alone. Often, this is in response to past violence or traumatic experiences. “If you are uncontacted in 2026, that’s because you have made an active decision,” Grig says. “People like the Sentinelese have made it clear: we do not want people in our territory.” To respect their autonomy, Survival, GTI PIACI and other advocates keep up with uncontacted groups at a careful remove, often via former members who have left the jungle or neighbouring Indigenous communities. Some uncontacted people may intermittently interact with outsiders, Grig says, often when forced to by hard times – but, crucially, it’s on their terms. “They’re not reaching out, and we must respect that.” International human rights law supports Indigenous people’s right to choose self-isolation, and requires “free, prior and informed consent” for activity on their land, but national protections do not consistently meet that standard and enforcement is often haphazard. In Peru, for example, unauthorised entry can incur six-figure fines, but with little government presence on the ground, the chance of being caught is low. Content creators, spurred on by platforms’ incentives for exciting and exclusive footage, may deem the risks worth it. “It feels like this is in a long line of colonialism,” Grig says exasperatedly. “People have been after land, gold, rubber, timber, souls – and now it’s clicks.” On YouTube, Polyakov’s primary platform, he goes by @Neo-Orientalist – “because I’m bringing it back” – and a Tintin-style avatar. But he rejects being labelled a content creator, disdaining social media as a means to an end. In setting his sights on the Sentinelese, he sought to progress his goal of making “gamechanging” documentaries. “I wanted to do something that no one’s ever done before,” he says over video call, his face looming large in his phone’s camera. Behind him, the brightly painted concrete wall and harsh light suggest a youth hostel. When we speak in May, Polyakov says he is somewhere in south-east Asia, working on projects. He demurs from giving more detail, lest he embolden his online “haters”: “If you want to know where I’m going, you should subscribe.” Polyakov claims his primary objective was to capture footage of the Sentinelese, not to interact with them, thereby reducing the risks to both sides. “You can always film them from outside of arrow range,” he shrugs. But when he finally made it to North Sentinel, on his third attempt, in March 2025, “ultimately I failed to coax anyone out”, he says. After beaching his dinghy, he walked around for five to 10 minutes, blowing his whistle to no apparent response. He then pushed back out to sea and filmed himself tossing the Coke can towards the shore. “It was anticlimactic … I was a little let down.” He says he was more worried about encountering authorities than the Sentinelese. But in the footage he eventually posted on YouTube, Polyakov seems scared, then a little defensive. “Look, I can’t force the natives to come out,” he tells his audience, once safely back on the water. He made it back to his hotel without being caught, but was later arrested. Authorities had been alerted to a dinghy in the open water, and Polaykov had forgotten to remove his camera’s memory card. “They had me saying, ‘What’s up, guys? I’m at North Sentinel,’” he says ruefully. “From there it’s kind of tough.” Polyakov was charged under two laws, but says he felt confident that, as a foreigner, “I wouldn’t be stuck in India for years.” He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 days’ imprisonment and a fine of about £120. His first “dispatch” from North Sentinel was posted on YouTube this April. The commentary has been mostly negative, as Polyakov concedes. (“Bro’s got main character syndrome,” reads a top-ranked comment.) He blames the “slanted” reporting, and takes every opportunity to speak to the media, partly for publicity, but also to defend himself against criticism from groups such as Survival, who called him “idiotic and reckless”. Polyakov in turn calls Survival an activist organisation pursuing a “misguided” agenda “to keep certain groups stuck in the past”, and says he is acting in the public interest, “bringing information into the world”. He denies he was endangering the Sentinelese, pointing to the plastic refuse he found washed up on their beach. “They are very much aware of the outside world … It’s not like I’ve accelerated globalisation by going there. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.” * * * In explicitly targeting the world’s most isolated people, breaking multiple laws and getting caught, Polyakov is a clearcut case. More typically, content creators posting about uncontacted peoples are harder to pin down, not least because of the potential gulf between what they say online and what they may actually be doing. One individual monitored by Survival (who they requested not be named, believing him to be a serious risk) publicised detailed plans to visit North Sentinel to his six-figure following, but no evidence of an earnest attempt in the two years since. Other influencers boast of travelling through “uncontacted territory”, when they are in fact on widely used routes or even touristic tribal experiences. Some, Survival fear, might be doing the opposite, posing as legitimate while making covert efforts to find and film uncontacted people. With the geographical, legal and ethical lines ill-defined, content creators often operate in a grey area. To his 276,000 followers on Instagram, where he goes by @yankiguayo, 30-year-old Nathan Seastrand bills himself as a film-maker, producing documentaries about Paraguay’s Gran Chaco region and its Indigenous Ayoréo people. From Utah, but based in Paraguay since 2016, Seastrand publicly presents as a champion of the Chaco and its people, telling local media he is motivated by “curiosity and wonder”. But this reputation has recently been publicly challenged, with Seastrand accused of exploitation, a claim he denies. In early August, an influencer who has asked not to be named posted on YouTube about his experiences collaborating with Seastrand on a documentary last year. He said Seastrand seemed “obsessed” with finding and filming uncontacted Ayoréo, making multiple visits to their territory, setting trail cameras and trying to acquire a thermal-imaging drone to search from the air. There are estimated to be 150 uncontacted Ayoréo, living in small nomadic groups in the dwindling areas of the Chaco not yet cleared by deforestation. Local advocates monitor them through traces such as the prints from their tapir-leather sandals, but they have not been photographed in decades. The Paraguayan government signed a protocol in 2018, requiring it to prevent unwanted contact, but it does not specifically outlaw it, while access to Indigenous lands is granted at the discretion of individual community leaders. Having accompanied Seastrand on two journeys into the Chaco, the influencer said he grew increasingly concerned by his “morally questionable” approach. He claimed Seastrand gave money and alcohol to Ayoréo leaders to secure access to their reserve and permission to film, later leading to conflict with neighbours who wanted in on the deal. The influencer said he cut ties with Seastrand not long after, accusing him of “exploiting the poorest and most marginalised segment of Paraguayan society in order to become rich and famous”. In an email to the Guardian, Seastrand rejects the influencer’s account, saying all his activities on Ayoréo land were legal and authorised by community leaders. He calls the claim he had gained access with alcohol “absurd”, saying that he developed friendships over multiple visits. “They were not tricked or coerced … It is normal to invite your friends to a cold pack of beer.” Seastrand confirms he paid money, not unusual for film-making, but dismisses the conflict described by the influencer as “no more than a jealous neighbouring tribe”. As for the camera traps, Seastrand says they were set in a developed area and his goal was to film jaguars. “The likelihood of an isolated tribe living in this zone is extremely small and … there is no hard evidence of their existence. I would have better luck trying to get footage of the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot.” He says his on-camera references to “wild Ayoréo territory” were an effort to engage viewers. “There is no such thing … No one really knows where they are.” Others have spoken out against Seastrand’s activities in the Chaco. An Ayoréo lawyer accused him of sharing a photograph of his late grandfather without consent, and refusing to remove it when asked (Seastrand says he had consent from the grandfather and has since taken the photo down). According to Paraguayan media, Seastrand has also been accused of offering to pay people to find uncontacted Ayoréo. In mid-August, following the intervention of the Paraguyan National Indigenous Institute (INDI), a court granted emergency measures be taken against Seastrand, including removal of his camera traps. Seastrand continues to deny wrongdoing, and is still posting from the Chaco on Instagram. * * * Before he became “one of the most-known influencers in Paraguay”, as he puts it, Seastrand had a different motive: he was a Mormon missionary. According to a 2023 New York Times profile, Seastrand baptised more than 30 people before leaving the church and pursuing content creation. The pathway is less incongruous than it might seem, GTI PIACI’s Aristizábal points out: both influencers and missionaries pursue Indigenous people, rather than their lands or resources. John Allen Chau, the 26-year-old Christian missionary killed by the Sentinelese in 2018, chronicled his travels on Instagram and even had endorsement deals – one with a jerky brand. When word of his presumed death reached Survival, Grig says, “Our first assumption was that he was an influencer.” Chau was allegedly motivated to reach the Sentinelese because their extreme isolation made them more highly prized souls to save. Now, missionary influencers blur roles by openly documenting their efforts to reach Indigenous people in the Amazon and beyond. Earlier this year, footage of uncontacted Mashco Piro (or Nomole) people on riverbanks in the Peruvian Amazon created a sensation online, drawing headlines everywhere from the New York Post and the Sun to social-first outlets such as LADbible and Worldstar Hip Hop. It had been shared by Paul Rosolie, the American founder of Junglekeepers, a nonprofit working in the Peruvian Amazon. Not straightforwardly a content creator, Rosolie isn’t a typical conservationist, either. He calls himself an “explorer”, has 2 million Instagram followers and shares stories about his encounters with uncontacted tribes on high-profile platforms not necessarily concerned with sensitivity, such as The Joe Rogan Experience. His footage of the Mashco Piro was shared exclusively with the podcaster Lex Fridman, trailed as a “world first” and timed days before publication of Rosolie’s new book. The footage had been taken more than a year earlier. Rosolie declined an interview, but a representative of Junglekeepers says in an emailed statement that the encounter was overseen by a Peruvian government official and met no-contact protocols. The spokesperson says Rosolie released the film to call attention to Junglekeepers’ work to save Mashco Piro territory from illegal logging. “We are not in the business of publicity … The world needs to understand what is at stake.” With his Indiana Jones style and showmanship, Rosolie’s intrepid tales capture imaginations, and open wallets: Junglekeepers raised $3.3m in 2024, enabling it to buy and protect more than 135,000 acres of forest. But Survival and other groups working to protect uncontacted peoples say he perpetuates dated and damaging tropes. On Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast in February, Rosolie described his encounter with the Mashco Piro: “It’s like a time capsule, a thousand years between us … this aperture into the history of what humankind used to look like.” His stories emphasised the danger from naked “warriors” with “seven foot-long” arrows and spears, and the simplicity of their existence, “so deep in the jungle that they’ve never heard of a spoon or the wheel”. Later, Rosolie presented Bartlett with a selection of snakes to handle. His other interviews hit the same beats. Grig points out Rosolie first came to prominence with a controversial Discovery Channel stunt in which he set out to be “eaten alive” by a 20ft-long anaconda: “If he’s not an influencer, he has massive influencer tendencies.” She is critical of his characterisation of the Mashco Piro as “not even stone age”: “They’re living in the 21st century, just as much as we are.” Using such “sensationalist, derogatory, dehumanising language” poses a threat to uncontacted peoples, Grig says, amplifying arguments long used to justify stealing their lands, removing them from their communities and imposing so-called “development”. Rosolie has accused Survival of running a smear campaign by grouping him with the likes of Polyakov; there is no evidence of him ever breaking the law, and he discourages attempted contact. A Junglekeepers representative said they view the trend of influencer stunts “with serious concern” and Rosolie’s own position “has always been one of respect”. His comments about the Nomole were “never meant as any sort of judgment”, but to highlight their real and “practical distance … [from] modern global civilization”. The footage was shared as “a reminder of how close the outside world already is, and why protection from it matters”. Junglekeepers’ strategy – protecting rainforest by buying it up – differs from that of Survival and other organisations fighting for Indigenous control of their land, highlighting the different worldviews. The representative said its work was Indigenous-led, and Rosolie was only “the main communicator”. In interviews he has expressed ambivalence about the future of uncontacted peoples, suggesting they might benefit from “basic life hacks” and “a future … where their kids don’t have to worry about eating monkeys” and can work as park rangers instead. To Grig, that is irrelevant. “We’re not saying this is an idyllic life. We’re saying this is the life they have chosen.” * * * Many advocates for uncontacted peoples feel they walk a fine line in calling attention to their struggles without turning them into a spectacle. For contacted tribal Indigenous communities, online visibility can drive valuable tourism, increasingly important to their survival – but it’s not without costs. As Fearless & Far, Mike Corey sells online courses and leads retreats claiming to help men conquer their fears and wake the warrior within – all marketed with videos of his own “tribal adventures” with contacted groups. On YouTube, where he has 3.1 million subscribers, he highlights his “wild moments with lost tribes”, such as the “SNAKE TRIBE of Tanzania” and the “DEATH TRIBE of Indonesia”. Many videos hit 10m views. Canadian-born Corey has visited about 40 tribes globally, spending up to three days living with them and filming for social media. He claims to have pioneered that “immersive” format five years ago with the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania, who now routinely receive tourists and content creators – attention that has been a “double-edged sword”, Corey says. “When I met them, they would never even touch Coca-Cola … They’re slowly becoming less hunter-gatherer.” At the same time, he argues, tribal tourism is supporting their survival, reviving young Hadza people’s interest in their ancient culture and customs, and providing an economic framework through which to preserve them. Though there was “very little” tribal content when he started out, Corey does not believe his videos contributed to its growth. “It would have happened regardless – but I wish people were more respectful, and doing it for the same reasons we are.” “New-gen YouTubers” can be especially unscrupulous, Corey says, scripting encounters for entertainment. Some even pay or coerce Indigenous people to dress up or perform aggression. “That’s where I get butthurt. You are not helping anything, you’re creating a false reality that’s very clickable: ‘I got captured by cannibals.’” Corey says he is motivated by curiosity and a desire to “meet people in all these four corners, and find a human connection”. A former television presenter, he follows a similar process for content production. Stays are arranged in advance by a local fixer, while hosts are well compensated, with supplies if not money (in the communities that use it, alcohol can be a “big problem”). He says he always asks permission to film, in advance and on location, and has only been refused once. More often, tribes want him to stay longer or return, he says, crediting his “documentarian” mindset and sense of responsibility. “We’re trying to tell a story about people that are going to be gone in 10 years.” But it is still packaged up for platforms often resistant to nuance, and some question whether they are his stories to tell. In April, Corey posted a video to Instagram about his stay with the Himba people of north-western Namibia, known for their practice of Okujepisa, or “wife-lending” with guests. A traditional display of hospitality, it has been increasingly controversial within Namibia and misrepresented, sometimes gleefully, by outsiders on social media. Corey’s video emphasises his awkwardness with the Himba women’s “too friendly” approach, but concludes by calling for viewers to comment “MAP” to receive their location: a common digital marketing ploy for engagement. Roughly half the 100 commenters condemned the video as exploitative or sleazy; the other half commented “MAP”. “I was the one uncomfortable,” Corey says, adding his conscience is clear. “I know we’re doing good work.” Content creators argue they seek to spread awareness, build connections or preserve culture, but it is difficult to separate their message from the medium. Some have argued that social media, primarily US-owned, yet shaping global culture, necessarily imposes a white, western gaze and affirms colonial power structures – termed “platform imperialism”. Viewed this way, even the most conscientious content creators’ encounters with tribal people are undone once posted online. Whenever such videos pop up on María José Andrade Cerda’s social feeds, she blocks and reports them. “I don’t want to see those kinds of videos,” she says from Tena, Ecuador. Cerda, 31, is herself Indigenous, belonging to the Kichwa community of Serena. She is also a member of Yuturi Warmi, an Indigenous all-female patrol of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and has addressed world leaders at Cop. But Cerda denies that she’s an activist: “For us, it’s about surviving.” Cerda has been trying to use social media to benefit her community and advance Indigenous rights. Last year she hosted MrBeast collaborator Nolan Hansen in Ecuador for a video partnership with the charity WaterAid. Cerda briefly features, discussing a local water filtration project; the video now has 127m views. Cerda says even well-intentioned content creators tend to conflate distinct communities and cultures, and spread simplistic narratives: “I feel they are not treating the issues how they should be, with respect and the full context.” Yet at times when an international platform would be welcome, “when it’s about our rights, they don’t care”. Cerda compares the widespread silence from influencers on Indigenous-led protests against the Ecuadorian government’s proposed expansion of oil exploration in the Amazon, with the wealth of content on Indigenous culture, traditions and women – at least those deemed to meet western beauty standards, she adds. “They only want the Pocahontas.” * * * With the recent explosion in the creator economy, it is difficult to imagine how influencers might be reined in. Cerda wonders whether they could be interrogated about their plans at airport customs, or if platforms could require them to provide proof of the “free, prior and informed consent” of the Indigenous people they filmed. But even if such measures were practicable, she adds, they would not address the gaping, fundamental inequality. “Influencers have double lives: they can be in the jungle for one month with these tribes, then go back to the US, where they live in big houses and drink potable water.” Sometimes, Cerda says, communities will accept gifts from content creators, then later realise “they were being used: ‘He is making money because of that video. What about us?’” Others, unable to beat the creator economy, have joined it, starting social media accounts to appeal to tourists directly. Members of Ecuador’s Waorani tribe have even struck deals with content creators, offering cheaper stays in exchange for coverage. The Waorani Experience markets itself on Instagram as offering “100% Authentic Tours … As seen on YouTube”. Operator Boya Tegairis, Waorani himself, says over WhatsApp that he was motivated by the memory of his grandfather, who “defended this jungle”. “With the tourist income, we can buy medicines for our families … and take care of the jungle for future generations.” The price, however, is bringing influencers deeper in. On the long journey to the Waorani compound, boats pass briefly through the territory of uncontacted Waorani, known to respond with violence to outsiders – including their contacted relatives. Guests are accompanied by their hosts, briefed and required to sign a waiver; the boats do not stop. Content creators hosted by Tegairis emphasise the danger regardless. For all the lengths Polyakov went to in securing his footage from North Sentinel, at time of writing he has still only just cracked 10k subscribers on YouTube; news of his arrest travelled far further than his videos. But he is not dissuaded, with a forthcoming series filmed in Haiti and a trip to the Middle East. He blames the muted response on his refusal to play to YouTube’s algorithm with a sensationalised or falsified account. “I could’ve gone to some other tribal group and said ‘This is North Sentinel’, but I didn’t. I went for the real thing, despite the risks,” he says hotly. “Maybe in 10 years I’ll sell out – but I actually care about being accurate.”
Europe would not be able to sustain war of attrition with Russia, defence officials say
Defence planners working with Nato fear that if war broke out with Russia, Europe could not currently sustain a prolonged war of attrition owing to a public lack of war readiness, a conference on the future of European military coordination heard this week. The pessimism reflects concern that Russia may be winning a so-called hybrid war with Europe, weakening the options available to Nato war planners in the event of military conflict. The surge in support for the populist forces in Europe’s main military states is also endangering proposals for a group of five European countries, including the UK, to take on a new coordination role as the US prepares to reduce its commitments to the conventional defence of Europe. Defence officials, speaking at a forum convened by the Munich Security Conference (MSC), the leading security foundation, said the European public may not have the appetite for a prolonged war, requiring Nato to focus its plans on a relatively quick conflict. One recent British cabinet member admitted the west had been “crap” at educating its public about the scale of the hybrid conflict with Russia. Another UK diplomat claimed successive British prime ministers had done nothing to explain the scale of the threat. They said this had left ministers locked in an unenviable task of persuading unprepared voters to cut welfare spending to fund defence. “The level of the debate has been at that of a kindergarten,” the UK diplomat admitted. The private criticism has been fuelled by the UK government’s inability to adopt a call in its 2025 strategic defence review to launch a national conversation on the scale of the security threat facing Europe and to build national resilience. A second diplomat said the collapse of the cold war dividing line with Russia had left Moscow free to exploit the anxieties of European publics on the left and the right. The remarks reveal a wider concern in senior European politicians that they may be losing the so-called hybrid war with Russia, and this may be reflected in rightwing populist surges next year in Poland, France and Italy. Most populist parties, including Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), are sympathetic to Russia and want an end to the Ukraine conflict. The MSC discussion – held under rules forbidding identification of the speaker – was given added urgency by the German government this week blaming Russia for an attempted drone attack on Leipzig airport last month. One of the suspected culprits in the attack on 4 August, where an armed drone exploded, has been identified as a Belarusian citizen with a Russian passport who appears to have entered Europe using an Italian tourist visa. The MSC, an independent but influential foundation, has been promoting the idea of the five main European military powers working much more closely: one means of bringing the UK, outside the EU, to the centre of European defence planning. Decisions in Washington on its troop deployments that could effectively leave Europe in charge of its own conventional defences are expected in the next few months. But the scale of hybrid war and the potential impact of next year’s elections, as well as the surge by the AfD in Germany, on plans for a stronger European defence coordination was described at the conference as “the elephant in the room”. One proposal is for the EU to publish a collective statement on the Russian threat that the populist forces would be challenged to accept or decline. The E5 group of European defence ministers already meet regularly, but they are at the early stages of agreeing of how to jointly procure capabilities such as integrated air and missile defence, deep precision strike and space-based early warning systems that are all currently provided mostly by the US. “Europe is stagnating at a time when the external threats were assuming a dimension which is really very serious. These are really huge and existential challenges requiring greater integration in defence,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, the chair of the MSC. He argued the E5 grouping offers a way of including all the European countries with substantial defence industrial capacity and may later be able to incorporate Ukraine in the context of a truce since Kyiv now has the largest and strongest army in Europe. Advocates of the E5 insist it will neither duplicate nor underline Nato, but fears were expressed that the US would nevertheless block a stronger European pillar inside Nato. “The US are better at talking about burden shifting than power sharing,” said one diplomat. Italy is one of the E5 states most concerned about the impact of Russia’s hybrid warfare on its domestic politics as Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing administration – which has governed more moderately than many expected, and cultivated a pro-Ukraine image abroad – becomes its longest-running since the second world war. The Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, warned Italy was suffering daily cyber-attacks, adding it was not immune from potential Russian interference in next year’s national elections, the first time an Italian politicians has warned the election may be manipulated. “There are many ways to wage hybrid warfare, it is not done using bombs, planes or tanks,” the minister said. Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, one of Meloni’s closest political allies, has said it was stupid not to recognise the level of Russian interference. He warned this summer at the Nato summit in Ankara: “We don’t have the antibodies and we’re penetrable: analyse bots and you’ll see it. The increase occurred thanks to social media.” His doubts have grown given Moscow’s ability to operate across so many domains, including social media, AI, cybersecurity, databases and critical infrastructure. On Tuesday, he said the Russian threat was growing all the time. Crosetto also said he recognises Russia is exploiting real problems such as low wages, and so attributing government unpopularity to Russian disinformation risks misidentifying a malaise afflicting western societies, including a general weariness with the cost of the war in Ukraine, In Italy, Roberto Vannacci, the leader of the far-right Futuro Nazionale who has challenged the stability of Meloni’s coalition, is widely seen as the most probable carrier of the Russian message in the coming election, that could come as early as April. Speaking before the investigation into whether his party represents a revival of fascism, Vannacci gloried in the criticism. “Just discovered that I am a ‘Manchurian candidate’ sent by the Russian federation to complain about the unaffordable petrol prices in my country Italy,” he said. “Forgive me, but I still find it hard to accept the idea that dissent from Brussels’ orthodoxy is now, in practical terms, tantamount to disloyalty towards the west.” In an attempt to shift perceptions so Ukraine is seen not as a financial burden but rather as teaching Europe modern warfare, Crosetto has recruited the former Ukraine defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov as his unpaid adviser for innovation. Ischinger praised the decision, describing Ukraine as possessing the best equipped and most modern army in Europe. In Ukraine, 200,000 drones are being built each month, with the goal of producing more than 7m by 2026. To support this growth, 500 small and medium-sized companies have sprung up, assembling drones even in small workshops, using mostly Chinese components.
‘It cost me many friendships’: former Brazil military chief reveals inside struggle to stop Bolsonaro’s coup
The far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro was in his final days as Brazil’s president when, six weeks after losing the election and still refusing to recognise the result, he summoned the heads of the armed forces to a meeting. The defence minister, Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, took out a document from a plastic folder and handed copies to the commanders of the navy, army and air force. It was a draft decree proposing to invalidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s election in October 2022 and keep Bolsonaro in power. “The draft coup decree – which some people still insist to this day never existed – was there, awaiting approval or rejection; consensus or a majority,” writes the then head of the air force, Lt Brig Carlos de Almeida Baptista Júnior, in a new book coming out this month. After learning that the document would prevent Lula from taking office, Baptista Júnior told the defence minister he refused even to receive it: “The air force will not take part in this.” He then stood up and left the room. The extensive investigation and trial that convicted Bolsonaro of attempting a coup concluded that the plot failed to move forward mainly because the heads of two of the three armed forces – Baptista Júnior and the army commander, Gen Marco Antônio Freire Gomes – refused to take part. The navy commander, Adm Almir Garnier Santos, was convicted, as was Nogueira. Both are serving their sentences at military facilities, while Bolsonaro is under house arrest. Freire Gomes has kept a low profile, but Baptista Júnior, speaking to the Guardian by video call, said he had decided to write a book to help prevent history from repeating itself. In the book, the 65-year-old former fighter pilot gives a detailed, first-hand account of the various ways in which Bolsonaro tried to cling to power. Baptista Júnior said he was motivated by the fact that, despite the abundance of evidence presented during the former president’s trial, opinion polls still showed that about a third of the population did not believe there had been an attempted coup. “Keeping in power someone who lost an election is a coup d’état,” he said, speaking from his home in Brasília, where he was dressed in civilian clothes – having recently retired – and about to pick up his grandson from school. The book, the Portuguese title of which translates as I Said No! – An Anti-Coup Bulwark, is due to be published on 15 September, about two weeks before the first round of the presidential election, in which Lula will face one of Bolsonaro’s sons, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Some Bolsonaro supporters have accused Baptista Júnior of trying to influence the vote, although he makes clear that he will vote for neither Lula nor Flávio, and criticises both in the book. He said the timing of the book was simply the result of the writing and editing process. Despite writing that he voted for the far-right populist in the 2018 and 2022 elections, and even recounting a lighthearted moment at a barbecue when he saw the first lady reprimand the president for drinking beer, Baptista Júnior is critical of Bolsonaro, a former army captain who spent 30 largely undistinguished years as a city councillor and then congressman before reaching the presidency. He describes his former boss as someone with “significant limitations in political, institutional and administrative experience” and an “almost total imperviousness to outside opinions or information that did not conform to the ‘truths’ he had already established as his own” – citing his refusal to accept facts such as the scientific evidence supporting Covid-19 vaccination. During the election, Bolsonaro became “entirely consumed by his own efforts to remain in office”, writes Baptista Júnior. After repeatedly casting doubt on the vote, the president ordered the armed forces to investigate the electronic voting system, but refused to accept their reports when they found no irregularities. “He may still not believe the election result even today. Whether that is a matter of character, personality or something pathological, I don’t know,” said Baptista Júnior. The book touches on, but does not go into detail about, one of the most shocking revelations from the coup investigation: a plan drawn up by army special forces to kidnap or assassinate Lula, the newly elected vice-president and a supreme court justice. Baptista Júnior writes that he was not summoned to those meetings and only learned about them through the press. He does, however, recount more than a dozen meetings in which Bolsonaro summoned the heads of the armed forces to discuss ways to remain in power. At one of them, he witnessed the army chief tell the president, after hearing a proposal for an institutional rupture: “If you do that, I’ll have to arrest you.” Baptista Júnior had already given that account in testimony, and during the trial both Freire Gomes and Bolsonaro denied it. But he stands by his account in the book, writing that it was not something anyone present would forget. Saying no to the coup cost the pilot “many friendships”, he said. Even some military personnel still call him a “traitor” or a “watermelon”, a slur for soldiers seen as green on the outside because of their uniforms, but communist red within. The attacks started soon after the air force chief refused to join the plot, when the army general Walter Souza Braga Netto, whom Baptista Júnior considered a friend, ordered other military officers to attack him on social media and “make his life and his family’s hell”. Braga Netto, Bolsonaro’s running mate, was also convicted over the attempted coup. Most of Baptista Júnior’s revelations in the book initially emerged in 2024, when he was summoned to testify to federal police and only then, more than a year after leaving office, revealed that he had witnessed an attempted coup. Juliano da Silva Cortinhas, who worked on the civilian side of the defence ministry between 2013 and 2016, before the Bolsonaro administration, said: “It’s positive that he [Baptista Júnior] and the army chief said no to the coup, but as a matter of duty they should have reported it to the police as soon as it happened.” Cortinhas, who heads a security research group at the University of Brasília, said the armed forces could not present themselves as the “saviours” of democracy because that would be like “tripping society up and then holding out a hand to help it back to its feet”. “It was the commanders who allowed active-duty officers to take part in politics,” he said, noting that the Bolsonaro administration had by far the largest number of military personnel serving in civilian posts since the end of the brutal 1964–85 military dictatorship. Cortinhas sees as positive the fact that high-ranking officers were convicted of an attempted coup for the first time, but noted that others involved in the plot escaped justice, and many were not even identified. “The risk of a new coup is even greater today,” he said. The new factor, he said, was the US president, Donald Trump, who has sought to influence elections across Latin America in support of far-right candidates such as Flávio Bolsonaro. In 2022, when Joe Biden was in the White House, Bolsonaro’s vice-president acknowledged that attempting a coup would leave Brazil in a “difficult position before the international community”. Cortinhas said he feared that if Lula was re-elected and Trump refused to recognise the result, some members of Brazil’s military could feel emboldened. “Coup-supporting groups remain within the armed forces,” he said. Baptista Júnior confirmed that, although it was difficult to know how many, there remained active-duty military personnel who believed a coup d’état would be justified under certain circumstances. “That’s why eternal vigilance is the best path,” he said.
‘Sinn Féin traitors!’: how far-right rhetoric derailed party’s path to power in Ireland
For Siobhán Fenton, the dream of Sinn Féin winning power and leading a progressive leftwing government evaporated the day she was canvassing in Dublin and felt a cold, sharp sting on her neck. She was in the passageway of a block of flats in the inner city, knocking on doors, and looked around for the source. Fenton, a media adviser to the party leader, Mary Lou McDonald, felt another sting on her shoulder, then another on her forearm. They were coins, thrown from a balcony above, where a man’s voice was shouting. “Sinn Féin traitors!” he roared. “Mary Lou Mohammad! Ireland is full!” It was May 2024, and instead of steaming towards victory in local and European elections – widely deemed a foregone conclusion, to be followed by a historic triumph in a general election – the party was experiencing a backlash fuelled by anti-immigrant sentiment in what was usually a bastion of working-class support. The coins left Fenton with gashes and bruises that augured an electoral hammering. “By the time the party realised how bad things had gotten it was almost too late,” she said. “The far right had infiltrated lots of Sinn Féin strongholds and we hadn’t picked up on it.” In a rupture to the party’s reputation for secrecy and discipline, Fenton has written a rare insider’s account, titled Ourselves Alone: Sinn Féin Behind Closed Doors. It lifts the lid on a debacle that ambushed the party on the path to power. Instead of winning a general election and turbo-charging the campaign for Irish unification by ratcheting up pressure for a referendum, the party stumbled and today remains in opposition. It is a cautionary tale for progressive movements across Europe and elsewhere that struggle to reconcile tolerance for immigrants and refugees with clamours for crackdowns on new arrivals. A surge in xenophobia among grassroots supporters had blind-sided and, for a time, paralysed party leaders, Fenton said in an interview. “There was a moment of genuine sheer panic and just not knowing what to do. We were struggling to adapt because it was a sense that things had started to spiral out of control.” The book, published this week, depicts a largely well-intentioned but hapless party, and is also an account from a member of an organisation that many perceive as secretive and still in thrall to former IRA leaders on both sides of the Irish border, a perception Fenton disputes. Fenton, 34, was an atypical “Shinner”, the informal name for party adherents. She came from a middle-class Belfast family that abhorred the violence of the Troubles and favoured constitutional nationalism, not flinty republicanism. Fenton briefly worked for the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP) before studying English literature at Oxford, researching gender-based violence at Cambridge and becoming a London-based journalist for the Independent before returning to Northern Ireland in 2016, where she freelanced for the BBC and other outlets, including the Guardian, and wrote a book on the Good Friday agreement. In early 2020, Sinn Féin offered Fenton a job in Dublin. The party was on a high. It had just won 24.5% of first preference votes in the Irish general election, overtaking Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, two centrist parties that had alternated in power for a century. As successor to Gerry Adams, McDonald, a Dubliner universally known as Mary Lou, offered a fresh alternative, especially to young voters who blamed the political establishment for a housing crisis. Sinn Féin had run too few candidates to capitalise on the breakthrough, so Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael mustered enough seats to form a coalition, leaving Sinn Féin in opposition. Analysts expected it to win power after the next election. After Sinn Féin became the biggest party in Northern Ireland in 2022, which paved the way for Michelle O’Neill to become first minister at Stormont, the onus was on the party’s southern branch to ensure McDonald became taoiseach at Leinster House. “Don’t fuck it up,” a Belfast colleague half-jokingly told Fenton. For three years, Fenton, having relocated to Dublin, experienced the giddy nervousness of a party soaring in the polls while the ruling coalition slumped. The republican mantra – “tiocfaidh ár lá”, our day will come – seemed apt. A section titled “the long fall” chronicles the unravelling amid missteps and a volatile public mood. McDonald appeared to blame police for a riot that rocked Dublin in November 2023, and alarmed middle-class property owners by suggesting average Dublin house prices should fall to €300,000. More damagingly, the party failed to navigate growing xenophobia, the result of a housing shortage, a cost of living crisis, an influx of migrants and refugees, and far-right activism on social media and the streets. “It was a blind spot,” said Fenton. Covid-19 restrictions and a focus on the parliamentary party withered grassroots networking, leaving leaders unaware of the extent to which conspiracy theories and hostility to Muslims had taken hold, she said. The party should have tried to combat racist narratives by peeling people away from smartphones and having “really difficult conversations”, said Fenton. “Go door to door, talk about community concerns but be very, very clear that scapegoating immigrants and refugees is the wrong response.” Instead of gains in the May 2024 local and European elections, the cascade of coins on to Fenton foretold haemorrhaging support, especially in working-class strongholds that branded McDonald a “traitor” for not seeking greater curbs on migration. Months later the party limped into a general election that kept Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in power. Fenton’s contract was not renewed and she returned to her native Belfast, where she now works as a writer and analyst. She is no longer a member of Sinn Féin. Immigration remains a fraught issue for a party squeezed between those wanting a harder line and those who favour solidarity, said Fenton. Leaders may be tempted to sidestep the issue until the next election, then take a stance, she said. “It will be dependent on what the political environment looks like then.”
All eyes on Saxony-Anhalt – what will AfD do if it wins German state poll?
Germany is embarking on a crucial election period this month, with three key state polls that could markedly change the political terrain and make life decidedly harder for the federal government under the chancellor, Friedrich Merz. All eyes are on Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, where about 1.7 million people are eligible to vote, followed by Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin on 20 September. In all three contests, the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is expected to make strong gains. What is the AfD and why is the Saxony-Anhalt vote so significant? Founded in 2013 as an anti-euro force but later morphing into an anti-immigrant party, the AfD has harnessed and amplified the frustrations of voters aggrieved and vexed by economic stagnation, rising immigration and cultural shifts. Latest polls have put it at around 40-42% in the state, placing its ambition to achieve its first absolute majority at state level within reach. Securing power in the state would mark a first for the far-right since the second world war. This matters for the whole country. State governments in Germany are represented in the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, so have broad powers over education, culture and domestic security. For the chancellor, the leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), an AfD takeover in the state could be the biggest disaster yet of a term already marked by seemingly relentless setbacks. The AfD’s leadership see their potential to gain power at state level as a natural springboard to electoral success at the next federal election in 2029. Currently the party is the main opposition in the Bundestag. The populists’ main obstacle is the stubborn resistance of other parties to collude with them, referred to as the Brandmauer, or firewall. However, this approach would be null and void if the AfD wins an absolute majority. What has the party said it plans to do if it gets into power in Saxony-Anhalt? On migration and identity, it has vowed to start deporting “irregular migrants” from “the first minute” and to foster patriotism by replacing the state’s current promotional slogan, “Think Modern”, with “Think German”. Cultural offerings deemed anti-German would be subject to a clampdown and funding to public broadcasters it views as “leftwing propaganda lackeys” would be drastically cut. In the education sector, German flags would replace rainbow flags in schools, students would sing the national anthem, and the children of asylum seekers would be educated in separate classes. Home schooling – long banned as a reaction to the Nazi era – would be allowed again, and the history curriculum would be changed to move away from what the AfD sees as an excessive focus on the Nazi era. Russian teaching would be expanded and programmes focused on combating rightwing extremism would be axed. On the environment, the party wants to ban windfarms. On family, it wants to boost the German birthrate by introducing “welcome money” for couples who have children, reducing childcare costs, and offering free school meals. On security, it wants to push for widespread changes to the domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, which has classified the AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt branch as rightwing extremist. It also wants to introduce “citizens’ watch” groups to assist the police in attempts to clamp down on leftwing extremism. Critics of the last proposal have compared the idea to the auxiliary police structures set up by the Nazis, which led to the creation of a police state. Who is the face of the party in Saxony-Anhalt? Ulrich Siegmund, the party’s photogenic 36-year-old poster boy, has a considerable TikTok following and has been received like a pop star by supporters wherever he goes in the state, often travelling on a moped from East Germany’s pre-unification era. A former air freshener salesman with a degree in business psychology, he embodies a charm and wit that his party colleagues have often lacked. When Der Spiegel magazine recently ran a front page story calling him Germany’s most dangerous man, he gleefully signed the magazine at rallies. What stands between the AfD and an absolute majority? While a win for the AfD is now seen as a given, its prospects of winning an outright parliamentary majority are far from certain and, this being German election law, rather complicated. A lot depends on whether smaller parties reach the 5% minimum needed to make it into parliament. If they fail, the AfD would need less than 50% to form a government. The CDU and other mainstream parties, like the Social Democrats and the Greens, have voiced their intention to form a coalition if they gain enough votes among them. The CDU has repeatedly refused to coalesce with the AfD, and has also refused to work with the far-left Die Linke. However, it may well need Die Linke’s support to form a minority government. Die Linke would probably offer that, but mainly because it will not want to go down in history as the party that let the AfD come to power.