More migrants will suffer under the wave of populism

It is first a humanitarian and political disgrace – an ongoing one I know – but one that we have become disgustingly inured to.

Survivors from the overcrowded fishing boat that capsized and sank on Wednesday off the Greek coast in one of the worst disasters in the Mediterranean in recent years have told doctors and police that women and children were travelling in the hold of the vessel.

“Right now everything is guesswork but we are working on the assumption that as many as 500 are missing,” said Nicolaos Spanoudakis, a police inspector. “Women and children, it seems, were in the hold.”

It’s a desperate desolate story that’s met now, across Europe by a thuggish fascist populism that makes capital out of misery and discounts both the humanity of those taunting and those suffering.

Some reports said they were trying to get from Egypt to Italy.

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“They’re from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Egypt,” said Giorgos Farvas, Kalamata’s deputy mayor.

It’s the same everywhere as people flee the chaos that manifests across the world. In this sense, we’re all migrants and refugees of something, somewhere. What are you fleeing?

But this has become so mundane it barely registers.

As Irish journalist Sally Hayden writes: “How has the mass drowning of people become in any way normalised?”

I mean, it’s a good question, but the sorry answer is much the same way that routine police violence, endemic poverty, school shootings, drug deaths, or political corruption have become completely normalised.

The horrors of capitalism have become banal.

Hayden reminds us that more than 27,000 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014, though researchers say those numbers may be greatly underestimated.

Hayden cites Ylva Johansson, the EU’s commissioner for migration and home affairs, tweeting saying she was “deeply affected” by the tragedy. “We have a collective moral duty to dismantle the criminal networks,” she wrote.

But Johansson’s rhetoric suggests that this is some kind of terrible mistake, a tragedy, a mishap, some false “accident at sea”. It’s nothing of the sort.

Hayden writes: “The fact is that human smuggling networks only exist – and will likely always exist – because there are no safe and legal routes to safety for a large proportion of the world’s population. There are no visas available for them; there is no ‘queue’; there is no chance for assessment; there is no way to claim their right to protection, which is guaranteed under international law, without reaching the territory of the safe country first.

“This is not a meritocracy, even when it comes to suffering. Europe’s role in all of this is often painted as one of inaction. But there has been prolonged and decisive action.”

AS Italy mourns Silvio Berlusconi’s death with a grotesque pageantry, it’s worth remembering his role as the founding father of what we still call – cutely – “populism”.

Berlusconi’s playbook of playing on racist fears and tropes, ultra-slick marketing and media campaigns, retaining power to avoid accountability, delegitimising the judiciary, and suing and threatening journalism can be seen across the world.

That it’s also peppered by some horrendous misogyny and retreat to traditional gender roles is not a surprise in what American writer Frank Bruni has called “The Brotherhood of the Philandering Oligarchs”.

We’ve just seen our version of the brotherhood – and I mean “our” in the same sense as you could call any abusive distant relative that you had the misfortune to have to spend time with, Boris Johnson – leave the stage.

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But in his departure, he left all the hallmarks of hubris, contempt and narcissism that these figures seem to exude.

Another characteristic of Berlusconi’s legacy – and this is true across the horrors he has spawned – is the legitimisation of neo-fascist groups within centre-right coalitions and governments.

In Italy and England, this means people actually in the heart of government, in France, this is an imminent certainty.

The “other story” pressing (unsuccessfully) for your attention last week was the spikes in sea water temperature and the panic it produced in scientific communities across the globe.

This is the classic climate scenario; an event takes place of huge significance and normally dignified and placid scientists lose their shit, and nobody really listens because nobody’s really there and nobody really witnesses it.

This is a question of lived experience and knowledge and a profound one for us humans, all on this unstable boat together.

BUT the point is that no-one is really connecting these two stories: the terrified people on overcrowded boats and the terrible weather springing up everywhere on your timeline, or enjoyed in your back garden.

The Tories’ answer, this won’t come as a surprise, is to go all Dickensian, shifting people from small boats to BIG boats. Hulks they were called in 1776.

Just to show how far we’ve progressed it’s worth noticing that: “To increase London’s prison capacity, in 1776, Parliament passed the Hulks Act (16 Geo III, c.43). Although overseen by local justices of the peace, the hulks were to be directly managed and maintained by private contractors.”

We’ve been deporting people for 300 years. It just used to be called transportation.

But back to the insufferable heat, the record-breaking temperatures, the melting ice caps, the moron media and the movements we still insist on calling “populist”.

If you think the refugee crisis is something now, you aren’t paying attention. When another “Phew what a scorcher!” headline hits in 2025, watch them drown.

Last week also saw the passing of the novelist of our time, Cormac McCarthy.

This was something he wrote a few years ago now – though it could have been written yesterday – and it’s always stuck in my mind: “The stone drops into the pond and a second later, it is smooth again. You will turn the page and carry on with your life.

“Last week, we learnt that climate change could eliminate half the world’s species; that 25 primate species are already slipping into extinction; that biological repositories of carbon are beginning to be released, decades ahead of schedule. But everyone is watching and waiting for everyone else to move.

“The unspoken universal thought is this – if it were really so serious, surely someone would do something?”