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For people living in close proximity to a war zone, the lack of sympathy for Australian and British expats and influencers in Dubai has been, on the face of it, curious.
Since their adopted home was bombed in the initial days of the war, they have faced mostly ridicule and contempt in their home countries.
In the UK, the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, called out “tax exiles and washed-up old footballers” in Dubai who “mock ordinary Brits” but now expect the UK military to rescue them.
On Good Morning Britain, presenter Susanna Reid asked: if Brits moved to Dubai to avoid paying tax, shouldn’t they pay for their own evacuation?
Shona Sibary, a British writer for the Daily Mail who divides her time between England and Dubai, captured the almost Zoolander vibe of the city, when she wrote a piece titled “I’m trapped and under attack in Dubai – while back home in Chichester my daughters are furious, the labradoodles are sick and, worst of all, I left my Mounjaro pen in the fridge”.
And Australian influencer Louise Starkey was widely mocked for her Instagram video after the bombs started falling. “It’s not meant to be happening here,” she said on her balcony in Dubai, clearly afraid, as missiles sounded in the background.
There is a lot to unpack in that one line. “Here” – where “it” is not meant to happen – is Dubai, a city where you can play mini golf, shop at Marks & Spencer and have all-day champagne brunches at luxury hotels.
And “it”? War. Violence. Missiles. Airports being attacked. No flights out. Having to flee across the desert to Egypt or Oman. Living in fear of a drone attack and your family being injured or killed.
The broadening of the theatre of war has simply made the wider tableaux in the Middle East visible.
The whole social contract of Dubai involves a wilful blindness to the proximity of suffering and violence. After all, Gaza is geographically close.
The Dubai project requires demanding visitors and expats to not think too much about the suffering, or question what goes on beyond the city’s borders. And how that city came to be built in the first place. The construction industry in Dubai has long been criticised for the kafala system, which entails sponsorship-based labour that ties migrant workers’ legal status to their employers, giving employers significant control over their employees’ immigration status, work permits and often living conditions.
Expat influencers on golden visas are part of Dubai’s marketing arm – posting an aspirational version of the city to millions around the world. Influencers are punished by jail, fines or expulsion if they publish content about migrant workers or human rights abuses – and now, the war.
In 2010, the urban theorist Mike Davis published Fear and Money in Dubai. Back then, the city was in the process of becoming what it is today. Davis saw clearly that it had a sickly moral complexion, and in its DNA was the worst excesses of capitalism.
He wrote of Dubai’s “outlandish mega-projects”, luxury hotels, decadent food and designer stores with a sort of woozy wonder – like the feeling you get from eating too much rich food at the hotel buffet.
“Welcome to a strange paradise. But where are you? Is this a new Margaret Atwood novel, Philip K. Dick’s unpublished sequel to Blade Runner or Donald Trump on acid? No. It is the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai.”
More than 15 years later, you could say Dubai has self-actualised into what is was designed to be: the ultimate neoliberal “dreamworld” – as Davis described it, an “evil paradise”, less a place than a backdrop for posts for the thousands of influencers who have flocked to Dubai on so-called golden visas.
The dreamworld part of Dubai was established both by the indentured workers who built the structures, but also social media. Influencers paid by the government told a story of the safest place on Earth, of seven-star luxury and endless parties.
But deep down? “It’s a lonely city,” says a friend of mine who lives there.
The influencers who try to sell the city are working with mirages.
The dreamworld was built by oppressed people and the Maseratis they pose in are borrowed. The alcohol they toast with is illegal, the helicopters rented by the hour, influencers’ faces built through advances in botox, silicone and hyaluronic acid.
We knew all that but chose not to really see. And now we see the wider tableaux too. The dissonance between reality and image could not be more pronounced.
In conflicts, the masks come off. Recent weeks have revealed our lack of compassion for the suffering of Dubai expat influencers, a distaste with the origins of the Dubai project and perhaps our growing lack of trust in the act of influencing itself. It has also made vulnerable workers even more vulnerable. Those that keep Dubai propped up with cheap labour are the ones that can’t afford to flee.
