Midweek Review

‘NICE RACISM’

Published

3 years ago

2021/11/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

‘NICE RACISM’ by Robin DiAngelo, 2021

By Charles Ponnuthurai Sarvan

What follows is not a review of this book but, rather, a sharing of some thoughts that arose from reading it: DiAngelo is white and her focus is on the United States. Besides, the so-called ‘race problem’ in the USA, and in some other countries, translates into one of skin colour: In an article, ‘The term racism and discourse’, I suggested, tongue in cheek, that this kind of racism more accurately be termed ‘colourism’. The phrase ‘nice racism’ appears to be an oxymoron because racism can never be nice. On the contrary, racism is nasty, and inflicts great pain and suffering on its victims. To the shame of our species, there’s no dearth of examples of racism, and of the cruelty it unleashes: the instances are as many as they are horrible.

Racism has been present in all ages and in all parts of the world. To cite just one example at random, here’s Tom Fletcher in ‘Prospect Magazine’, July 23, 2018. I’m sorry, I don’t know in which country and when: “What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother’s milk? And for the mother to witness this murder while she is being gang-raped by security forces?” I recall a student objecting to the word “inhumane”, arguing it implied the opposite, namely, that humans are generally humane. One of the most horrific and distressing accounts of cruelty I have read is by Bartolome De Las Casas, 1484-1576, a Spanish monk. The work is translated into English as ‘A Short History Of The Destruction Of The Indies’ and is available in the Penguin Classics series.

As I pointed out in the article alluded to above, there’s no race but racism flourishes. There are no scientific grounds for believing in race. Race is a human construct or, if one prefers, there’s only one race: The human race. Admittedly, thinking on the lines of the human species can lead to another avatar of racism known as ‘speciesism’, and to the cruel exploitation of all other species. As Genesis 1: 26 of the Bible expresses it, we “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” We have used this dominion to the detriment of other species and, finally, to ourselves. It must be acknowledged that some so-called ‘primitive’ folk did not think of domination but of living in cooperation and harmony with nature and all other beings. Darwin showed us that, rather than being separate and superior to nature, we are very much a part of it. Consequently, if we damage nature, we injure ourselves.

Shlomo Sand, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, wrote a book titled ‘The Invention Of The Jewish People’. The term ‘invention’ conveys his main contention. “It is as if a Sinhalese professor, teaching at a Sri Lankan university, were to write a book – not in English but in Sinhala – which questioned the fundamental assumptions of Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism”: (Sarvan, ‘Groundviews’, Colombo, 07, March 2013). In what immediately follows, I draw from this article. Sand argues that there is no biological basis for Jewishness, and that belief in a Jewish race is nothing but “racist pseudoscience” (page 257). No Jewish gene has been found. The UNESCO document, ‘The Race Concept’, completely rejects any connection between biology and national culture. Race is a social myth and not a scientific fact, but “Zionist pedagogy produced generations […] who believed wholeheartedly in the ethnic uniqueness of their nation” (page 273).” ‘Jew’ referred to a religious affiliation, and not to an ethnic, group. (Somewhat similarly, “Arya” meant “noble” and did not refer to all Sinhalese. Tamil kings described themselves as “Arya”: See Professor R.A.L.H. Gunawardana’s article in ‘Sri Lanka: History And The Roots Of Conflict’, edited by Jonathan Spencer.) Ta-Nehisi Coates in his ‘Between The World And Me’, states that race is not the father of racism but its child. To express it differently, it’s those who think on lines of race who create, believe in and practice racism.

It has been said that while a patriot loves her or his own, a nationalist hates all others. (Racists almost invariably describe themselves as nationalists.) While religious doctrine is of a divine or semi-divine origin, religion being a human construct, can be co-opted in the service of racism. Yet another book by Professor Sand, ‘How I Stopped Being A Jew’, repeats the now familiar claim that it is we, human beings, who created God or the gods. If so, ethnoreligious nationalism is not surprising. Religion, contrary to religious doctrine, can serve to sanctify discrimination and even cruelty. Perhaps, Sand’s title should have been ‘Why I stopped being a Jew’. I quote from pages 26 to 27: “My own place is among those who try to discern and root out, or at least reduce, the excessive injustices of the here and now. The persecuted and victimized of yesterday seem to me less a matter of priority than the persecuted of today or the victimized of tomorrow.”

Digressing to thoughts on identity, Bernard-Henri Levy, incidentally, also of Jewish ethnicity, writes in ‘The New Statesman’ (22-28 October 2021, page 36): “You are a free woman or man if you rebel against your identity, not if you are cocooned in your identity.” Our legal name signals a single and singular identity, but in reality our identity is not simple but multiple. Among the many aspects of his identity that Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel-Prize winner, lists in his book, ‘Identity And Violence: The Illusion Of Destiny’ are: Asian, Bengali, an American and British resident, an economist, a believer in secularism and democracy, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of gay and lesbian rights and a non-believer in an after-life, as in an earlier life or lives. It follows that if, for example, someone says, “He’s a Sinhalese” or “He’s a Tamil” then the speaker has chosen to prioritise one element out of a multi-faceted identity. It may tell us more about the speaker than the person spoken about. Flannery O’Connor has a short story titled ‘The Artificial Nigger’. (The word ‘artificial’ indicates that the concept of ‘Nigger’ is not natural but a human creation. In a train, a white grandfather asks his little grandson, Nelson, who was the man who just walked down. The innocent boy, and innocence can mean ignorance, answers that it was a man, but the grandfather is not satisfied. Nelson then offers other answers such as an old man, a fat man until the grandfather triumphantly ‘educates’ him: That was a nigger. It’s the only feature that matters to the old man. Often, those infected with racism infect others. Children are not born racist.

Professor Sen admits that a sense of group-identity can strengthen and warm our relations within the collective – even as it leads to exclusion which, in turn, can result in the mal-treatment of the ‘Other’. Indeed, this sense of belonging can be so strong that the group seems to be an extension of one’s own self. Perhaps, we could here turn to Erich Fromm’s ‘Escape From Freedom’. Reinhold Niebuhr in his ‘Moral Man And Immoral Society’ argues that when we are in a group, ‘other-than-self’ attributes are vitiated, if not entirely destroyed. There is then little reason to guide our conduct, less check on our impulses; less capacity for transcending our individual self. Accepting generalisations (and myths) which, though an oversimplification, are very potent, our behaviour as a group is often a shame to our morality as individuals. In other words, as members of a group, we are ready to act in ways in which we, as individuals, would not.

Returning to DiAngelo, leaving aside a racism that is overt and proud, she concerns herself with more subtle forms of the disease, unrecognized or unacknowledged by the infected. When ‘nice racists’ are confronted with evidence of racism in them, rather than pause and undertake self-scrutiny, they react with denial and dismissal; with hurt and indignation, even with anger. We do not like to think badly of ourselves: It damages our self-image. A frequent proof adduced by ‘nice racists’ is: “I have friends from the under privileged group. Therefore, I am not a racist.” But proximity, superficial contact, even social interaction, don’t mean, ipso facto, freedom from prejudice. Going back in time to London and the 1960s I, as a young man, was friendly with a middle-aged English couple. One day, I asked them whether they ever came to the West End and received the emphatic reply: “Oh no. There are far too many foreigners there.” Having become a friend, I had also become an individual, and was no longer seen and reacted to as one of their foreign (coloured) group. Consciously or unconsciously, the racial minded make exceptions of certain individuals known to them, and so keep their group prejudice intact.

DiAngelo argues that racism more than being personal and of the individual is a system. Racism being a system, members of the dominant group profit from it in several aspects of their daily lives. To believe there’s no racism in them leads ‘nice racists’ to think they are outside the problem; have nothing to do with it and, therefore, need do nothing about it. The cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker, in his book ‘Rationality’, takes up the argument that even reason, truth and objectivity are social constructs that justify the privilege of dominant groups. The ringing, and often cited, assertion of the American Declaration of Independence that all are equal was signed by men holding a pen in one hand while with the other hand they brandished a whip over their cowering slaves. We human beings have a remarkable ability to live with contradictions, and so lofty words can go with sordid practice; pious religiosity accompany, even justify, cruelty.

During the years I taught at the University of Zambia, the exile headquarters of the ANC was in Lusaka, and I knew several of their cadres. I noticed that then, as used by them, the phrase ‘a liberal’ meant a person who was aware of the cruel injustice of apartheid, were sympathetic but did nothing at all to help combat it. So it is elsewhere. ‘Liberal’ was a reproachful, regretful, term. It certainly wasn’t a compliment: Adapting words from T. S. Eliot, “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” As Martin Luther King wrote from prison, more than the words of those who hate us, what hurts us most is the silence of our friends. And as Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, if in a situation of oppression you remain silent then, in effect, you have sided with the oppressors.

But we are creatures of our place and time, and often are unaware of our own contradictions and failures. Marcus Aurelius is far better known as a Stoic philosopher (there are significant similarities between Buddhist doctrine and Stoicism) and as the author of the world famous and perennial ‘Meditations’ (written for himself, and not meant for publication) than as a Roman emperor. The words of Marcus Aurelius have been of great help to me and, to adopt what Ben Jonson wrote of Shakespeare, I honour his memory on this side of idolatry as much as any. With Aurelius, it was not a case of high living and commonplace thinking but of simple living and lofty thought. He was strict on himself while being tolerant of the failures and failings of others. He constantly monitored his thoughts, words and actions to see if they accorded with his notions of justice and morality. When told by his physicians that death was near, rather than desperately and futilely trying to prolong the inevitable, the Emperor thereafter declined food and drink so as to sooner free himself from existence. He died true and faithful to his beliefs. Noli timere. Yet being a man of his times, this ‘philosopher emperor’ did his best to preserve and extend the Roman Empire. To express it bluntly, building or maintaining an empire meant attacking other lands and peoples; taking away by force from those less able to defend themselves. It involved killing and destruction, occupation and exploitation, all for the glory and benefit of Rome. Rather than stay in the comfort and safety of Rome, Marcus Aurelius went with his troops and camped with them. Pax Romana was a ‘peace’ enforced by brutal military might. Despite noble protestations and pretensions, empires go against morality; against humanity and justice. It seems to me that, doing his duty as a Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius betrayed his Stoic principles and ideals.

DiAngelo addresses those who complacently assume they are free of racism. She urges a more honest and rigorous self-examination; a moving away from the easy and ‘easing’ assumption that we have cleansed ourselves of all taint of racism.

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Midweek Review

Millennium City raid: A far reaching SC judgment

Published

1 day ago

2025/04/9

Sahan Weerasooriya

Shirani Bandaranayake

The late IGP Mahinda Balasuriya, who had been the Senior DIG in charge of the Central Province at the time of the ASP Kulasiri Udugampola’s raid on the DMI safehouse at the Athurugiriya Millennium City housing complex, in January 2002, categorised it as an excellent operation. Having commended Udugampola, Balasuriya directed SSP Kandy, Asoka Rathnaweera, to provide the required support to Udugampola. Rathnaweera issued the detention orders in terms of Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). Accordingly, six men, including Captain Shaul Hameed Mohammed Nilam (he now lives overseas with his family), and Subashkaran, were detained first at the Kandy Police Station and subsequently at Katugastota. High Court judge Patabendige mentioned this in his ruling, dated March 27, 2025.

Last week The Island examined the circumstances leading to a high profile police raid on a safe-house run by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) way back in early January 2002.

The article headlined, “Raid on ‘Millennium City DMI safe-house: A forgotten story,” dealt with the controversial but legitimate police action against the DMI in the backdrop of Colombo High Court judge A.K.M. Patabendige issuing an order to exonerate former Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Kulasiri Udugampola accused of leading the raid that undermined national security.

At the time of the Millennium City raid, Udugampola had been the senior officer in charge of the Kandy unit of the Police Kennel Division.

The raiding party included Major Clifford Soysa of the Military Police. Major Soysa’s inclusion in the raiding party should be discussed, taking into consideration magisterial blessings to do so as he accepted police a complaint that the Army didn’t cooperate with an investigation into the killing of 10 Muslims and causing serious injuries to four more at Udathalawinna in the Wattegama police area on Dec, 5, 2001. Therefore, the raid on the DMI safe-house had been mounted, believing Chanuka, one of the then Deputy Defence Minister Anruddha Ratwatte’s sons, was hiding there. The police earlier searched Minister Ratwatte’s residence, Sinha Regiment camp at Yatinuwara road, Mahanuwara, and the Boyagane Army camp, in Kurunegala, looking for Ratwatte’s son.

The Millennium City case in which the State moved court against Kulasiri Udugampola was heard over a period of 20 years.

The acquittal of now frail Udugampola cannot be discussed without taking into consideration a far reaching Supreme Court judgement in respect of a fundamental rights application filed by five military personnel who had been attached to the raided safe house.

The SC bench consisted of then Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, Justice Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake, who wrote the ruling with the other justice P. Edissuriya, also agreeing. Justice Bandaranayake said that due to the actions of Kulasiri Udugampola, and several other personnel under him, those who served the country at the risk of their lives were killed and others faced death threats. Kulasiri Udugampola was represented by Shibly Aziz and Faiz Musthapha.

Having ruled that the fundamental rights of the soldiers had been violated, the SC in January 2004 -two years after the raid – ordered ASP Udugampola to pay Rs. 50,000 each to Mohamed Nilam, P. Ananda Udalagama, H. M. Nissanka Herath, I. Edirisinghe Jayamanne and H. Mohamed Hilmy. The State was ordered to pay Rs. 750,000 to each of them as well. The State and Udugampola paid that amount within three months after the SC order. Each received cheques written in their names to the tune of Rs 800,000.

They received the cheques from the Registrar of the Supreme Court. The full extent of the damage caused by irresponsible action on the part of top UNP leadership as well as those in the Army and police, who callously undermined national security due to political reasons, professional jealousies as well as enmity caused by disciplinary action, has never been fully assessed, even after over two decades.

Arrested Army men and an ex-LTTEer Subahskaran were detained in early January 2002 at Kandy and Katugastota police stations. According to court records, the then Defence Secretary Austin Fernando refused to authorise Udugampola detaining them in terms of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) for a period of 90 days. However, they had been held under Detention Orders issued by Kandy-based senior law enforcement officers. But, Austin Fernando’s refusal to authorise invoking the PTA compelled Udagampola to hand them over to the Army.

This particular DMI operation involved both regular personnel, particularly Muslim officers, those who had switched their allegiance to the Army and informants.

The January 2 raid led to the arrest of Captain Mohamed Nilam, Staff Sgt. P. Ananda Udulagama, Staff Sergeant I. Edirisinghe Jayamanne, Corporal H.M. Nissanka Herath, Lance Corporal H. Mohamed Hilmy and a suspected LTTE operative, identified as Niyaz/Subashkaran. Others involved in that particular operation had been living in the East and were called into join operations depending on the requirement. On the instructions of Lt. Gen. Balagalle, those tasked with carrying out attacks on selected targets had an opportunity to train under Special Forces instructors from Maduru Oya. They underwent training at the Panaluwa Test Firing Range, where firing special weapons was a key element in the training schedule.

In a bid to ensure secrecy, those operatives mostly operated on their own, and had their own arsenal, which included a range of weapons, including claymore mines. In fact, those involved in the operation functioned on a need-to-know basis. Even senior DMI officials, as well as the Army top brass, except a few, weren’t aware of what was going on. Even the then powerful Deputy Defence Minister, Anuruddha Ratwatte, hadn’t been aware of the Millennium City safe-house, though he knew of the ongoing hits behind enemy lines.

“Those entering LTTE-held territory wore LTTE uniforms to avoid detection in case of coming across terrorists or civilians. We had about 100 uniforms, though the number of those conducting hits in LTTE-held areas was very much lower than the number of uniforms we had,” a person who had been with the DMI, said. “The operation was a new experience. It was to be a sustained assassination campaign, something we had never tried before. Had the politicians allowed it to continue, it could have had a devastating impact on the morale of the LTTE’s fighting cadre. The UNP never realised the dynamics of the DMI action.”

Shortly after the exposure of the DMI operation, Lt. Gen. Balagalle sought a meeting with then Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe to explain the secret operation against the LTTE. The Army chief had been accompanied by officials, including Hendarawithana, while one-time Attorney General Tilak Marapana, National List MP holding the Defence portfolio, and Minister Milinda Moragoda, too, were present.

“Except for Minister Moragoda, the others obviously didn’t realise what we were doing. They acted as if we were conspiring to do away with the political leadership so as to undermine the Norwegian initiative,” he said “We quickly realised we were up against a government, which simply wanted to negotiate a deal with the LTTE at any cost. The LTTE and the Norwegians exploited the situation to the hilt.”

A section of the media, too, campaigned against the Army, particularly the DMI chief Hendarawithana, who played a pivotal role in the intelligence set-up. He remained high on the LTTE hit list for over a decade. The LTTE went to the extent of exploring the possibility of having him assassinated in Colombo, with the help of an Army officer, who allegedly conspired with terrorists to kill Lt. Col. T. N. Muthalif in May 2005. The DMI head was constantly portrayed as a threat to the peace process and an obstacle to the UNP’s efforts to reach an understanding with the LTTE, regardless of the consequences.

In the run-up to the raid on the DMI safe house, an officer attached to the organisation had aroused suspicions due to his attempt to obtain the address of the safe house. He had casually made inquiries from those who were believed to be involved in the operation. Although not being successful, initially, the detractor had finally managed to secure the required information.

Having won the parliamentary election in Dec. 2001, the UNP unceremoniously terminated operations inside enemy lines, which could have helped the government debilitate the LTTE. The DMI never conducted operations involving ex-LTTE cadres again, though Lt. Gen. Balagalle got the DMI to launch an operation which enabled the Special Forces to carry out some devastating attacks on the enemy.

It would be pertinent to examine an operation launched in July 2001 by the DMI until its conclusion in December, 2001. In spite of the failure of the first and second operations in Batticaloa South to eliminate the intended targets, subsequent strikes sent shockwaves through the LTTE.

The first targeted assassination attempt was directed at an LTTE cadre, identified as Jim Kelly, on July 18, 2001, followed by a foray on September 12, 2001. The second operation targeted a military wing cadre, identified as Jeevan. On September 17, operatives carried out a successful attack on ‘Major’ Mano Master, who was at that time in charge of the communications network in the area.

The LTTE curbed movements of its senior cadres as it struggled to thwart infiltrators causing havoc in areas under its control. Despite a major surveillance operation, undercover operatives successfully ambushed Karikalan’s vehicle on October 18, 2001. The destruction of the vehicle fuelled speculation of Karikalan’s demise, with a section of the media reporting him killed in a special operation. Shortly after the attack on Karikalan’s vehicle, the Army intercepted a radio conversation between Karikalan and his wife, a medical doctor by profession, serving in the Northern Province. “She simply begged him to leave Batticaloa and take refuge in the North to avoid the Army’s deep penetration operations.

“We scored a significant success on Prabhakaran’s birthday on Nov. 26, 2001. Troops finished off ‘Major’ Swarnaseelan and ‘Captain’ Devadas in the Pulipanjikkal area. It was the last operation before the Dec. 5 General Election. In fact, we weren’t too concerned about the political factor,” the official said.

Unknown to the Army, the Norwegians, the LTTE and the government had been engaged in serious negotiations, with the Norwegians eyeing a comprehensive agreement. Due to unprecedented success in their strategy, the LTTE pushed for a specific clause, prohibiting forays by Deep Penetration Units.

Amidst a furore over the UNP allegations that the Army was conspiring to assassinate Wickremesinghe, operatives blew up a truck killing five LTTE cadres on Dec. 11, 2001. Then again, they destroyed an LTTE bunker, at the entrance to a base used by Karuna, in the Kokkadicholai area, on Dec. 21, 2001.

Some of those officers involved in special operations and ex-LTTE cadres had mutual trust and friendship. One of the ex-LTTE men, holding the rank of a ‘Major’ killed in an LTTE attack at Kalubowila, sometime after the exposure of the Millennium City safe house, had played a pivotal role in the DMI operations.

Having failed to persuade the ‘Major,’ known as Suresh, to poison one of the intelligence officers spearheading covert operations in the East, the LTTE sent a hit squad to finish him off. “In spite of being outnumbered, Suresh fought back courageously. When Suresh refused to open the door to admit strangers, whom he swiftly identified as assassins sent from the East, one of the armed men shot at the door lock. Reacting to the threat, Suresh had thrown a hand grenade at the raiders, though one of them swiftly picked it up and flung it away. The hit squad fled the scene after taking the target. During a routine search, we found a diary maintained by Suresh. According to his diary, Suresh’s wife had been in touch with the LTTE for some time. On the instructions of the LTTE, she had asked him to invite the officer, whom the LTTE considered as a major threat, to their Kalubowila home, where she planned to offer him poisoned cake. Suresh had met the intended target and made an attempt to brief him on the LTTE plan. Unfortunately, the officer had reacted angrily when Suresh sought a private meeting to discuss the issue. According to the diary, Suresh had left without revealing his secret.”

Suresh wrote in his diary that he didn’t want to carry out the LTTE order as the Army looked after him and his family well. Even after his killing, the Army continued to look after his children for some time, though they were subsequently handed over to their mother.

Despite the setback suffered due to the Millennium City raid, the Army gradually redeveloped its capability in conducting operations behind enemy lines, with significant success during General Sarath Fonseka’s tenure as the Commander of the Army. With the expansion of security forces’ frontlines as troops advanced on several fronts against the LTTE held Vanni region, those conducting operations behind enemy lines had a wider area to operate and relatively easy access and exit after a major hit as the enemy no longer had any respite to plan counter measures.

Perhaps the most important target that had been taken out on information received by the DMI before the UNP put an end to such operations was Vaithilingam Sornalingam alias Col. Shankar Sornalingam, a close confidant of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Special Forces targeted Shankar’s vehicle with a claymore mine on the Puthukkudiyiruppu – Oddusuddan road on the morning of Sept. 26, 2001. Nothing could have shaken the top LTTE leadership more than Shankar’s killing by Special Forces. That particular operation stunned the LTTE as it had come to consider itself as invincible, helped by supporting propaganda, especially from the West, and by willing so called defence experts at a stage of the conflict where the then government clearly, out of fear or lacking any feelings for the country, was literally suing for peace on its knees and busy negotiating with the LTTE through the Norwegians. This was clearly revealed by the one-sided ceasefire agreement, advantageous to the Tigers drawn up by the Norwegians and signed blindly by then Premier Wickremesinghe even without the knowledge of the then Commander in Chief President Chandrika Kumaratunga and much of his government. Not that she was more suited for the job as she being more or less like a proverbial busybody with no sense of time and only good for idle chatter most of the time. The intelligence needed for the hit on Shankar had been provided by an informant working for the DMI, who, in fact, accompanied the patrol tasked with the operation, though not being present at the time the target was taken, those who were involved with clandestine operations said.

During Eelam War IV (2006-2009), the Army expanded operations behind enemy lines. Special Forces veteran Major J.A.L Jayasinghe, who had spearheaded the attack on Shankar, was killed in what a colleague described as a suicide mission on the Vanni east front on Nov 26, 2008 in the Oddusuddan area. At the time of the death, Jayasinghe was attached to the 3rd Special Forces Regiment, which specialised in action deep inside the LTTE-held area. Twice honoured with Weera Wickrama Vibushana (WWV), Jayasinghe was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, posthumously.

Since its inception, the DMI has steadily grown into a large organisation that played a critical role over the years. At the time the combined security forces brought the war to an end, the DMI had six units deployed.

The country’s premier wartime intelligence setup DMI suffered irreparable damage as a result of the January 2002 raid. Of the five men who received compensation in 2004, retired Sgt. Major Jayamanne committed suicide in Oct. 2016 at his Kegalle residence by hanging himself. He left a note accepting responsibility for the assassination of The Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrematunga in January 2009. P. Ananda Udalagama has been investigated for the abduction of Wickrematunga’s driver and the attack on one-time Divaina Editor Upali Tennakoon.

(Concluded)

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

Inequality is killing the Middle Class

Published

1 day ago

2025/04/9

Sahan Weerasooriya

Gary Stevenson

Diary of a CitiBank Trader:

“I would like to have kids one day… and I’ll have to tell them, I made my money betting on the collapse of society, that’s the truth…”

–– Gary Stevenson

Gary Stevenson is a highly successful financial trader formerly employed at Citibank, in London’s historic central business district (CBD), colloquially called “The City”. A talented mathematics student, he earned a full-scholarship to the London School of Economics (LSE) and recalls noticing immediately that there were not many students at LSE with his background: “poor, working class” and even fewer at Citibank, where Stevenson earned an internship by winning a national mathematics contest. The 38-year old carries a strong East London accent that he admits made him stand-out quite a bit. Early on during his time at Citibank, somebody asked him “where’s that accent from, I love it”, he had to tell them that he was from East London, where they were standing, in Canary Wharf.

Speaking on a UK television interview show from February 2025, Stevenson says: “My YouTube channel, we got 1.2 million views yesterday in one day, ONE DAY… there’s a reason why I used to get paid 2 million pound-a-year to do this, because I’m [very] good at this okay, I shouldn’t be on YouTube, I shouldn’t be here, it doesn’t make no sense, I should be working for a hedge fund making 5 million pound-a-year… I’m here talking to you, talking to your audience because I can see… that the middle class, ordinary people, are going to be driven into desperate poverty…”

At Citibank in 2008, Stevenson earned a basic salary of GBP 36,000 but his first full-year bonus was GBP 400,000; he had amassed more money in 18 months than his father had in his entire lifetime. “Listen … these guys that tell you economics on the news, they get paid one hundred, two hundred grand a year, I got paid millions of pounds a year to do it because I’m the best at it and I still beat them, every year…The best economists in the world are all traders… the best-paid ten thousand economists in the world are all traders …”

By some estimates the Bank of England, the UK’s Central Bank, has injected around One Trillion Pounds (over GBP 1,000,000,000,000) into the UK economy since the 2008 financial crisis, during which period, living standards in the UK have been steadily deteriorating as a stagnant middle class struggles amidst a cost of living crisis.

The Uk are not alone, Governments and Central Banks around the world have injected hundreds of billions of dollars into their economies in the past two decades in response to extreme economic and social crises; eg: 2008’s financial crisis and the Covid19 global pandemic. The broad instruments were (1) quantitative easing (QE) – Central Banks purchasing financial assets such as government bonds and (2) direct fiscal ‘stimulus’ payments to business sectors and even individuals, usually funded by the Treasury.

In early 2011, Stevenson got called into a meeting with one of the Citibank’s top economists who went through the financial situations of a lot of the world’s major governments “so Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland but also the UK, US, Japan and what he said was basically, all of these governments are effectively bankrupt, they spend more than their income every year and they’re going further and further into debt… they’re being forced to sell their assets ….”

Where did all that Money go?

In response to the Covid19 pandemic of 2020, the UK Government engaged in QE using a 2009 program called the ‘Asset Purchase Facility’ (APF) and a fiscal stimulus called the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) popularly known as the Furlough Scheme. The CJRS subsidised employee wages (up to 80% capped at GBP 2,500 per month), totalling GBP 70 bn from March 2020 to September 2021. The APF totalled GBP 450 Bn of UK Govt Bonds (and a small amount of UK Corporate Bonds) from 2020 onwards; the total portfolio peaked at GBP 895 Bn in late 2020 and was around GBP 680 Bn by end 2024.

Stevenson’s analysis suggests that QE has led to funds flowing into financial markets, inflating asset prices, be they stocks, bonds or property, thus disproportionately benefiting the owners of these asset classes – mostly the wealthy and ultra-wealthy.

Having graduated to a permanent position on the Trading Floor of Citibank in 2007, Stevenson’s job was to analyse and trade on interest rates. In the aftermath of the collapse of Lehmann Brothers, the US Federal Reserve slashed interest rates from 5% to 1% by October 2008 and before the end of the year rates were cut to a target range of 0.00% to 0.25%. In the UK, a similarly dramatic collapse of interest rates: 5% in October 2008 down to 2% in December 2008. Stevenson recollects that “suddenly, we’re all betting on when will the economy recover… bringing rates to zero is like an emergency measure… and the economic theory tells you this should cause a massive economic recovery and we obviously know now, it didn’t happen but at the time, every single year, the economists, the traders, the markets said: ‘next year rates will go up, which means next year the economy will recover’, literally every year 2009, 2010, 2011 all the way until 2020 and it wasn’t until Covid when they finally said, ‘okay rates will stay zero forever’ and then of course, rates immediately went to 5% ….”

This sequence of events suggested to Stevenson that, other than the elite Trading Desks of the world’s largest banks and hedge funds, most economists and market participants were not very good at predicting what would happen in their economies. “The way I became a millionaire is, after the financial crisis, I realised that because of a massive growth in inequality, we would basically never come out of that crisis and I started to put massive bets… that the economy would get worse and worse… and within a year of doing that, I became Citibank’s most profitable trader in the world ….”

The ‘Living Standards Outlook’ for 2023 by UK-based think-tank, Resolution Foundation, stated that “Absolute poverty is set to rise in the short-run, from 17.2 per cent in 2021-22 to 18.3 per cent in 2023-24 (or an additional 800,000 people in poverty). Child poverty in 2027-28 is forecast to be the highest since 1998-99, with 170,000 more children in poverty than in 2021-22”. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation states that “More than 1 in 5 people in the UK (21%) were in poverty in 2022/23 – 14.3 million people. Of these, 8.1 million were working-age adults, 4.3 million were children and 1.9 million were pensioners. A 2024 report by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) highlights that Real Household Disposable Income (RHDI) per person had grown at the slowest pace for the poorest 50% of the population and income inequality is widening, those in the lower 20% of the income distribution have seen stagnant or even falling real incomes over the last two decades.

A 2018 Bank Of England report titled, ‘The Distributional Impact of Monetary Policy Easing in the UK 2008 – 2014’, (Bunn et al) states that while in percentage terms, the gains were evenly spread, there were still major distributional issues such as wealthier households gaining more because they held more assets that appreciated due to QE: “the overall effect of monetary policy on standard relative measures of income and wealth inequality has been small.

Given the pre-existing disparities in income and wealth, we estimate that the impact on each household varied substantially across the income and wealth distributions in cash terms ….”

From Progress to Poverty

In 2014, ThinkTank, Centre for American Progress (CAP) released a report titled ‘The Middle-Class Squeeze’ submits that American “middle-class share of national income has fallen, middle-class wages are stagnant, and the middle class in the United States is no longer the world’s wealthiest… The cost of being in the middle class—and of maintaining a middle-class standard of living—is rising fast too ….”

In his 2019 book, ‘Third Pillar’, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan discusses the impact of the middle-class squeeze on communities: “The anxieties of the moderately educated middle-aged white male in the United States are mirrored in other rich developed countries in the West… moderately educated workers are rapidly losing, or are at risk of losing, good ‘middle-class’ employment, and this has grievous effects on them, their families, and the communities they live in… as public anxiety turns to anger, radical politicians see more value in attacking imports and immigrants. They propose to protect manufacturing jobs by overturning the liberal rules-based postwar economic order, the system that has facilitated the flow of goods, capital, and people across borders”.

Stevenson notes that “we increased inequality at the fastest rate in the history of this country during a time when the economy was closed. Only luxury and non-essential spending reduced during covid; they gave money to furloughed workers, who… then had to spend most of it immediately to pay bills”. Furlough was not a gift but a replacement of a portion of wages of working people who transferred that to: landlords through rent, shareholders of Banks through mortgage payments and shareholders of energy companies through higher bills. Stevenson says the wealthiest in society earn massive amounts of passive income from the assets they own; monthly incomes so large it is impossible to spend it all on consumer goods so instead it leads them to hoard wealth by buying assets.

This correlates to rising house prices, which Stevenson analyses as occurring in a context where almost all other asset classes have seen broad and significant appreciation over the last 20 years: major stock indexes such as S&P 500, FTSE 100 and FAANG (tech stocks), Real Estate, Bonds (until the 2022 crash), Gold etc. Stevenson’s basic claim is that the ultra-rich are buying up all the assets with the excess liquidity and driving up the prices of those assets. “If you have the wealth of the rich going up 5% and an economy that’s growing at 1 or 2%, there is nothing they can do, they outgrow the economy. The rich are squeezing the middle class out.”

A Betting Man

Sri Lanka’s own growing wealth and income disparities are well-established. A December 2022 report by the Department of Census and Statistics (Dharmadasa et al) notes that “the highest 10 percent of the population shared 32 percent of total income in 2016 while the lowest 10 percent of the population shared 3 percent in the same year”. The World Inequality Lab states that the “top 10% of Sri Lankans… own 64% of all personal wealth; the top 1% have 15% of all income and 31% of all wealth. The bottom 50% of Sri Lankans have just 17% of all income and only 4% of all personal wealth”.

A report by the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) from January 2021 prior to the economic crisis and the worst impacts of the pandemic, states that, “more than half the total household income of the country is enjoyed by the richest 20%… while the bottom decile (poorest 20%) gets only 5%, with share of household income being just 1.6% for the poorest 10%.”

Dr. Vagisha Gunasekera, an Economist attached to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), was quoted in a poverty report from 2023: “The top one percent of Sri Lankans own 31 percent of the total personal wealth, while the bottom 50 percent only own less than 4 percent of the overall wealth in the country. This provides us with a snapshot of how unequal our country is”. The UNDP report called Sri Lanka one of the most unequal societies in the South-East Asian region.

Gary Stevenson is part of a group of UK-based high net-worth individuals called Patriotic Millionaires who are campaigning for a minimum 1% wealth tax on wealth over ten million pounds: “if you were worth 12 million pounds you pay 1% on 2 million pounds, which is 20,000 a year”. This would only impact a very small portion of tax payers and would raise between 10 and 20 billion pounds annually; in a context where the new Labour Government under Prime Minister Starmer has announced plans to cut more than five billion pounds from its welfare budget by 2029/30.

Sri Lanka, almost 3 years after a once-in-a-generation economic collapse and an IMF-backed revenue-based fiscal consolidation program, has barely been able to improve its income tax to GDP, depending instead on VAT and other indirect taxes as well as excise duty on alcohol and cigarettes. Corporate Tax to GDP on average was 1.5% for ten years before increasing to 2% in 2024, woefully below what more successful countries in our development peer-group tend to generate. While the government lost some Rs. 950 Bn in tax revenues from corporates in the last 21 months due to incentives, the working people of Sri Lanka continued to carry the burden of government revenue growth through VAT. Health, education systems are crumbling, more than 50% of households receive cash stipends from the government while demand for luxury vehicles remains, with depreciating assets like luxury SUVs priced at the same level as a luxury condominium unit in central Colombo. The prevalence of these dynamics and what it says about the internal economic distribution systems point to unsustainable economic arrangements and asset bubbles amidst rising income and wealth inequalities.

Stevenson notes that “My dad lived in an era of house price two-times income, I live in house-price 20-times income, my kids will live in 40-times income…” The point is simple: inequality is driving a historic concentration of wealth at the top of income and wealth structures. “Nobody likes paying tax, but the fact of the matter is, the wealth of the middle class and the wealth of the government is being drained by this super-rich group, how do we get it back? Rishi Sunak is worth 700 million pounds, that means he has a passive income every year of 30 million pounds… they use their passive income to buy more assets… tax is the only way that you, a regular working person, can protect yourself from the superrich”.

What makes Stevenson a fascinating and effective messenger is that he is still trading, making bets on the economy: “I don’t get paid to have opinions… I was one of the best paid and most successful traders in the world at one of the biggest banks in the world, I place bets and l’ve been betting for 14 years that the working class in my country and the working class in your country will collapse into desperate worsening poverty year after year and, I’m a multi-millionaire from doing that… I don’t just say this, I don’t just come on here and give my opinions, I’m betting on everything I’ve told you today….”

The writer has 15 years of experience in the Financial and Corporate sectors after completing a Degree in Accounting and Finance at the University of Kent (UK). He also holds a Masters in International Relations from the University of Colombo.

He is a media presenter, political commentator and Foreign Affairs analyst, invited regularly on television broadcasts as a resource-person.

He is also a member of the Working Committee of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

By Kusum Wijetilleke
kusumw@gmail.com
Twitter: @kusumw