Barack Obama warns against nationalism, says the “world is at a crossroads” in Indonesian speech

Speaking at the Fourth Congress of the Indonesian Diaspora in Jakarta while on vacation with his family, Former President Barack Obama touched on the rising wave of nationalism across the globe, and the dangers of intolerance.

“The world is at a crossroads,” Obama said in the country where he lived for fours years during his childhood. Obama said that the world needed to confront the threats of “discrimination against people based on race or ethnicity or religion.”

“We start seeing a rise in sectarian politics, we start seeing a rise in an aggressive kind of nationalism, we start seeing both in developed and developing countries an increased resentment about minority groups and the bad treatment of people who don’t look like us or practice the same faith as us,” he said.

Obama pointed to the Paris climate agreement as a promising strategy the world was willing to undertake.

“In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change,” Obama said. Although President Trump withdrew from the accord, Obama said the agreement “will still give our children a fighting chance.”

- Salon