Gezi Park and the Turkey Protests; Erdogan and the "Turkish model"

The so-called "Turkish model" has been said to have been the main inspiration for the "Arab Spring". Turkey's political model of marrying Islam within a democratic state was supposed to be the exemplar for the Arab world. In the space of a few days, that "exemplar"'s political model has been seriously shaken, if not shattered.

It's worth remembering on what basis Turkey's political system operates. Turkey was founded by Ataturk, who wanted to create a secular (non-religious) state out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. As Turkey was a Muslim country, this required an authoritarian government to bring about this social change, and a multi-party democratic system only came properly in practice years after Ataturk's death.
It was only after the Second World War that Turkey began to experience a functioning multi-party system, although this also included intermittent periods of military rule. Religion and politics were still kept well apart. Prior to the "breakthrough" of the AKP in 2002, there had only been one government by an openly-religious party: that of the "Refah" (welfare) Party in the mid-nineties, which was quickly removed after only a year in office for overstepping the lines between secularism and Political Islam.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist AK Party "broke the mould" in 2002. After the mistakes made by the "Refah" Party in the nineties, Erdogan realised that to gain a real breakthrough, his party had to find a balancing act between adhering to secularism while still appealing to the views of the many Turks (perhaps as many as half) who were practising Muslims. This "balancing act" has paid-off at the ballot box, by keeping Erdogan in power for a third consecutive term, something unprecedented in contemporary Turkish politics.

But by "breaking the mould" of secular Turkish politics, Erdogan was also able to effectively re-cast a new one that would give him and his party an in-built advantage. As the AK Party was the only major party that was moderately religious, and whose standpoints were generally moderate, this meant the AK Party ruled the roost over a crowded field of secular parties. In other words, while the "Muslim vote" could well remain united behind the AK Party and Erdogan (as long as they appealed to them), the "secular vote" was effectively splintered - by leftist, centre and rightist parties.

This is a simplification, though, because in reality many secularists have also voted for the AK Party as they approved of their economic policies and tolerated the AK Party's (seemingly) mild Islamism. But over time, Erdogan has shown more overt signs of Islamism and authorianism, as well as an intolerance for criticism. In his first term, Erdogan seemed eager to look as harmless as possible, but over time it seems his true nature underneath gradually began to appear. Laws began to appear to remove some of the "secular restrictions" on freedom of religious expression (such as wearing headscarves in public buildings); this then turned to restrictions on freedom of speech and a covert censoring of the press. Journalists became covertly harassed and some jailed. The military were also "reformed" so they were more acceptable to Erdogan's liking. Abdullah Gul, Erdogan's former foreign minister, became President. And then there were also the more obvious signs of "creeping Islamisation": the government making laws to restrict certain types of public behaviour and more conservative social policy, and finally the laws to restrict the sale of alcohol. Which leads us to Gezi Park.

This was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was the brutality of the police response to a peaceful "sit-in" by environmentalists in a small leafy park in the middle of Istanbul's modern centre (next to the city's main square) that what provoked the mass response.
It would be a simplification to say that the protests are by the "other fifty percent" who are secularists rather than Islamists, but this is still largely true. While there are some devout Muslims who are showing solidarity with the movement, the majority of demonstrators are secularists who want to preserve Turkey's founding values, and also see Erdogan personally as a natural authoritarian who has eroded the rights of Turks during his time in office. A third issue is the anti-Capitalism platform, who see Erdogan and the AK Party as shameless capitalists who have made great strides with Turkey's economy, but at the expense of civic and environmental issues.
So in this way, the "Gezi Park" demonstrators are pro-secular, anti-authoritarian and anti-Capitalist. Or more exactly, their supporters may come from a wide spectrum of political beliefs (from anarchists and communists, to right-wing nationalists, including gay rights and environmental campaigners), but they are united in their acceptance of each other. If there is one thing they all agree on, they would agree that they stand for freedom of expression and respecting each other and the shared environment. They see Erdogan as embodying the opposite.

The protests have been compared to the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, but it would be more accurate to say that the protesters have simply learned from both these past experiences, and applied a strategy and tactics to suit the situation. The widespread nature of the demonstrations, still ongoing in different cities across the country after a week (with no signs of disappearing), is evocative of Tahrir Square and Egypt two years ago, but Turkey is not a dictatorship, and its Muslim population do not feel under-represented.

The protests seem to have a life of their own. There are no leaders. The group of demonstrators are so disparate that it might seem hard to understand what keeps them from arguing amongst each other (as they had been for the last ten years), but as I said, it seems to be the bigger picture - their dislike of Erdogan and the aggressive police - that unites them.
The spirit of "Gezi Park" is that of live-and-let-live, or so it seems. Since the police left Gezi Park and Taksim on Saturday (1 June), barricades were constructed on all the roads leading up from Besiktas (where the police retreated to), leaving Gezi Park and Taksim Square as a virtual "police-free" state. Since then, a self-contained (if crowded!) community has established itself in the park and environs, right in the middle of the city centre; complete with shops, a library, art open-air art galleries, as well as tents. To all intents and purposes, like Christiania in Copenhagen, this looks like the spontaneous creation of a community of free-will and free speech: where people care for each and respect each other, without the need for laws or police (or money) to control them. The difference is that the Gezi Park community is overtly a political forum as well as a place of freedom of expression and behaviour.

In some ways the protests are also reminiscent of the Poll Tax riots against Margaret Thatcher in her last years in office, who - like Erdogan - was a populist demagogue in many ways, using divide-and-rule tactics to run the country, and became more and arrogant, dictatorial and aggressive as time went on. She was finally ousted by her own party. Some claim that she was a psychopath; many populist demagogues are.

Erdogan's style of rule therefore has more parallels with that of Thatcher's in the UK than Mubarak in Egypt. But since then the nature of protest has changed and matured, become more inventive and dynamic. People like Erdogan are left to feel like political dinosaurs of a different age when events suddenly are changed by a new dynamic. Like Thatcher, who was forced from power without really understanding why it happened, Erdogan refuses to see the need to adapt, as he has never needed to before, and would consider it a humiliation to do so.

His populist and divisive tactics may well finally work against him now.

The "revolution" that never happened: the London Riots of 2011, and the Russian Revolution of 1905

Last month I wrote here about the root causes of the riots that swept through London and England in general over five days in August, 2011.
I also recently read an excellent article in "Newsweek" here, assessing the effect (or lack of) that the riots have had on British psyche.

What were "the riots"? We can't assess their effect if we still haven't figured out why they happened. Prime Minister David Cameron said it was an outbreak of "criminality, pure and simple". In other words, there's no explanation necessary, because it was just criminal opportunism.
To an extent, he is is right that there was an element of opportunism: it was the protests and riots in Tottenham that gave the "opportunity" for anarchy to spontaneously break out across London and England in general. Some people seemed to have suddenly realised that if too many break the law at the same time (through looting and violence), then the justice system is incapable of stopping them.

To the extent that the riots represented an "insurrection", as Darcus Howe called it, this was a "revolution" of anarchy. There was no plan, no agenda - looting was the main activity, along with violence against the police. Everyone involved in the riots was getting involved either for their own personal gain, or to "settle scores" with the police. Order was restored only after a mass mobilisation of the police; justice was only restored after draconian and excessive punishments for meted out on those caught. So "the riots" were a classic case of spontaneous anarchy, taking advantage of a specific situation.

One historical comparison that bears considering is the 1905 Russian revolution; not in the sense that there were very many similarities (there are few), but it's worth considering for the underlying causes; the form of the "revolution"; and the aftermath, or legacy it left.
The 1905 Russian revolution is considered a side-show compared to that in 1917, but in 1905, the Tsarist government faced virtual anarchy in many parts of the empire for a prolonged period of time. The prime spark was the defeat to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War, that caused a massive shell-shock to the establishment and the reputation of the conservative and authoritarian government. With respect for the government dissolved, various "revolutionary-terrorist" groups took advantage of the vacuum of perceived authority to wreak havoc and chaos across the empire: mass strikes were the most common method, though there were many political assassinations, some soldiers also mutinied, and this encouraged other disgruntled parts of society (such as peasants) to try and seize land, or just settle old scores. This was also where the Bolsheviks had their first stab at power, with Stalin playing his own role as mischief-maker in the Caucasus, and Russia's source of oil, Baku.
The government eventually responded, as an authoritarian regime does, with a massive show of power to crush the "revolution" - though much of the "revolution" was anarchy and criminal opportunism disguised behind ideology. The Tsar made some democratic concessions by granting a parliament, but the longer legacy, as we know, was the 1917 Bolshevik revolution - because the Tsar learned too little from the experience of 1905.

Zooming forward to 2011, we see a similar pattern of anarchy stemming from opportunism, but there are still underlying issues like there were in Russia in 1905. As in Russia, the UK has a corrupt establishment (of bankers and a corporate oligarchy) that disguises its self-preservation behind a smokescreen of decency and traditional values, but using the full force of the law to protect its interests if it feels threatened. It preaches these same traditional values (that it itself ignores) to the wider population, while privately being indifferent to their fate, and creating a situation that allows them to prosper but slowly bleeds the "lower orders" white.

Yes, Britain is a "multi-party democracy", but we also are the only Western power that still has a fully-unelected upper house, an electoral system that perpetuates a static political establishment of the same two parties (as has existed for the last hundred years); a value system that discourages a challenging of the status quo; and an economic system that has created the most unequal society in the West, except for the USA (which also has a very similar system).
So, put into that context, what's not for a self-respecting, ordinary British person to dislike? Yes, on the surface, the UK is a "civilised" country; our reputation abroad has come from the British culture that we have fed to the world. But this is a rose-tinted illusion that masks the underlying reality, as I described above.

From the 2011 riots, the British government learned nothing; because it was not listening, and didn't want to listen - just like the Russian Tsar in 1905. All the British government (and the media) wanted to say, just like in Russia in 1905, was that this "anarchy" was about people losing respect for authority and other people. The only way to deal with this was through the iron fist of justice. A year on from the 2011 riots, the London Olympics has dissolved the pessimism that had existed in society, at least temporarily. This has had the effect of distracting people from the underlying issues, but changes nothing.
The fact that the "anarchy" by some of the opportunistic "lower orders" was simply a mirror for the much larger "corrupt anarchy" that existed in the establishment was either forgotten or intentionally ignored: the disproportionate response of the establishment and judiciary to the riots was a response out of existential fear, to make sure that the "lower orders" would not dare to challenge the "moral code" that perpetuates their existence. But as I suggested in my article about the riots last month, if there is no morality at the top, then why should anyone lower down have any?
The riots of 2011 were a damning indictment of the moral collapse and corruption of British society; but more precisely, like the "Arab Spring" of last year, this was opportunism. Neither the "Arab Spring", nor the 2011 riots were predicted by the experts; and yet, the signs were all there under the surface - they just needed a spark. While the "Arab Spring" was about introducing Western-style democracy, the 2011 riots were about a more primeval and selfish instinct that had been unwittingly encouraged in the British psyche - if those at the top are living it large and ignoring the rules, then why not me? What makes those at the top "better" than the rest of us? If the London riots displayed an uglier side of British society, it was because British society had allowed itself to become ugly; because the establishment is ugly.

It took the Russians twelve years to make the Tsarist government pay the price for their ignorance and arrogance in 1905. How long will it take the British people to do the same thing after the "revolution" of 2011?

"Neo-liberalism" is the new fascism

I wrote a couple of weeks ago here about the link between the UK government's economic policy, and the economic policy of fascism. More broadly, I have also talked about the link between capitalism and psychopathy. There is a link that threads together each of these ideas - neo-liberalism/ capitalism, fascism and psychopathy - that I think needs more intellectual clarification.

To reiterate what I've said previously, when I talk about "fascism", I'm not talking about the commonly-accepted, narrow and misleading, concept of "fascism": racist, prejudiced and authoritarian. Although these are parts of fascism, the more important part is the economic model of fascism, as this is what actually keeps the system running.
I said in my previous article about "economic fascism" (that type which seems to operate, for example, in the UK) you have a system where the government supports the interests of "big business" at the expense of everyone else, especially the "left wing" interests, such as the unions and employee rights in general. Given this lifeboat by the government, this system encourages inefficiency, irresponsibility and corruption in those corporations themselves, which are necessarily economically supported by the government when the need arises. In other words, you have a system where profit is private, and debt is public - the corporations take the profits, and the government (the taxpayer) absorbs corporate losses.
This system reinforces a corporate oligarchy that is economically supported by the government; the taxpayers/electorate can do little about this if the major parties in the country all support this system. Corporate sponsorship of those parties also encourages political patronage, as do the necessary "connections" (another form of corruption) that political parties need from corporations in order to gain financial support.

This is the essence of the "Anglo-Saxon model" that has existed on both sides of the Atlantic since the early '80s, and has spread to the rest of the Western World on the whole. This is the system that is also at work, with some modifications, in the Eurozone, effectively a German economic protectorate. This system is also at work in a more extreme form in Russia (which is ran as a form of modern feudal state); China, being effectively a capitalist one-party state, has its own version of this system. But the basic point is that the majority of the major economies in the world are now ran according to some version of the "neo-liberal" model.
And the "neo-liberal model" is designed to benefit the corporations most of all. I wrote previously about the links between capitalism and psychopathy: another trait that we see in psychopathy is "parasitic lifestyle" - callously living off the charity of others, and milking it for all you can. As we see from "economic fascism", corporations (and banks) do the exact same thing with governments - telling governments to do what they can to maximise corporations' profits, not interfering when they're making a profit, but getting governments to take the fall when corporations make a loss. This is the definition of parasitic behaviour. And this type of corporate parasitic behaviour - economic vampirism - could only flourish under economic fascism, known these days as "neo-liberalism".

So we see that the psychology of neo-liberalism and economic fascism are equivalent to that of psychopathy on an international scale. Another characteristic of psychopathy that I mentioned is that when psychopaths attain power, the result is chaos. This is also true of corporations in general, and through their preferred ideology of "neo-liberalism". Because corporations know nothing of morality (seen as a negative in business), or loyalty and "patriotism", globalisation has resulted in corporations becoming more powerful than countries, and toying with some countries as predators toy with their prey.

"Globalisation" is seen as a great positive for the world as a whole. And yet, while it is true that there are benefits, the biggest winners of all are the corporations that had been lobbying "neo-liberalism". Because globalisation is a result of the successful campaign began by the corporations' neo-liberal project thirty years ago, inspired by the ideology of Ayn Rand and the Objectivists. Monetarism then became the new pet phrase used by Anglophone countries to explain how Objectivism and "neo-liberalism" could be implemented in the real world economy.
Ayn Rand herself was an economic and philosophical theorist who, in essence, devised the basis for the system that exists today. I also wrote an article reviewing the similarities between the philosophy that Rand created (Objectivism) and the characteristics of psychopathy here: the similarities were so unnerving as to suggest that Rand herself may well have been a psychopath, at least at an intellectual level. Her "psychopathic ideology" was then used as the basis for the "Anglo-Saxon model" (also called neo-liberalism) that we know today.
Which brings me full circle back to globalisation. Neo-liberalism was the impetus for globalisation, where corporations and banks saw the world as without borders, unchecked by national frontiers or morality. They saw the world as their stage, and governments as their pawns.
Their "big con" worked in several ways. Corporations and banks used neo-liberalism as a way to urge national governments to implement financial and employment "reforms" that benefited corporate interests to maximise profits, while also getting governments to sell-off national industries as private monopolies that would be economically insured by the government. At the same time, corporate interests encouraged governments to break down barriers between each other to allow corporations to more easily out-source and relocate their operations, thus maximising their profits even further. At the same time, corporations would always use the threat that any other alternative to what the corporations/ banks wanted would result in national economic collapse: in other words, a glorified protection racket. This was showing that corporate interests were not only two-faced and bereft of loyalty or morality, but also supreme conmen and racketeers.

Globalisation was therefore the superseding of national governments by trans-national corporations and banks, for the purpose of profit. This was economic fascism, but on a global scale not seen before, controlled by the corporate elite.
I touched earlier on the point that when psychopaths attain power, the result is chaos. So when the world is ran by a corporate oligarchy that follows a psychopathic economic ideology, the result is chaos on a economically-global scale.

You might think that chaos is the last thing that corporations and banks would want, but if you look historically at the world economy over the past hundred years, you see that "chaos" is built in to part of the economic cycle that these corporate interests have developed, refined even more in the last thirty years since they have advanced their neo-liberal model across the developed world.
The economic model that corporations have promoted in the past thirty years resulted in the Financial Crisis of 2008. But what we saw was that it was governments who went into debt because of the crisis, not corporations: because the banks and corporate interests forced them to absorb the private debts - while at the same time the financial sector insisted that the governments were the one who had to pay off the debts quickly, rather than the private sector.
It was the Financial Crisis of 2008, thirty years in the making, that had given the banks and corporations the opportunity to close the deal with the national governments around the world: the deal that closed the collar around the "slave" neck of government, solidifying the economic redundancy and moral bankruptcy of national government as a meaningful institution, and guaranteed in cast iron terms the untouchable nature of corporate interests in a globalised world.
The chaos of the financial crisis has barely affected corporate interests and the financial sector in real terms; only caused superficial scratches which they can shrug off, for their position is immeasurably stronger now than five years ago. It is the institution of government that has been decisively dragged to its knees; with national governments accepting debts and years of "austerity" for the honour of continued lip service to the amoral corporations. So "chaos" is a relative term.

It is "chaos" for those subservient to the psychopathic interests in control (the corporate oligarchy following their "neo-liberal" ideology): for national governments are the manipulated willing servants to this psychopathic ideology, while they then serve their masters' amoral bidding on to the government's wider population. As Stalin ruled the USSR through years of terror for the sake of his psychopathic "ideology", so the new fascism of "neo-liberalism" perfects the art of terror on a world scale in its most subtle guise - terror masquerading as freedom. While this "neo-liberal" model is entrenched around the world's developed countries, they are told that this is the ideology of true freedom: the freedom to choose your pleasure, to consume as you please. But this "freedom" is a simple smokescreen, for the choices the population make are all owned by the corporate oligarchy.

The real "terror" and "chaos" comes from the lack of real "rights" - you have the right to consume, but only if you have money, and how much money you receive is decided by the corporate oligarchy. For in a true "neo-liberal" society, things like employment rights, welfare rights and social rights are inconveniences to the pursuit of profit ; in a "neo-liberal" society, there are no innate "human rights", except for those that are convenient to the private sector's pursuit of profit. Everyone's life becomes a commodity. No-one has any rights - only the right to die. This is the fascist economic utopia: where government is just a cash cow for the corporate oligarchy, whose Social Darwinism turns everyone and everything in the world into a mere commodity; employees fighting each other for the right to work, while also terrorised into slavish obedience to the private sector.

There is plenty of real evidence to support this point about the degradation of employment rights, by looking no further than the UK Conservative government's policy towards welfare and labour: job insecurity (a euphemism for "employment chaos", or the psychological terrorism of the workforce) has become an almost accepted fact of life for employees in recent years. The changes that the Conservative government have brought about in their approach to welfare and employment rights only intensify this: unemployed being forced to work for free for the private sector, or even prisoners being brought in to work for the private sector, all help to make it easier for companies to sack paid employees and replace them with the unemployed or low-paid prisoners.
All this helps to add to "job insecurity" - all part of ratcheting up the sense of chaos and terror within the workforce, making it easier for the private sector to control their employees (especially when they have little or no union representation). It allows the private sector to reduce their costs towards employees even further, while having the double benefit of reducing employees to slavish lambs desperate to keep their (low-paid) jobs, under the threat of being replaced by the unemployed if things get awkward for the employers. This is the kind of chaos created by an economic system best ran by psychopaths, and for psychopaths.

Because the governments continue to offer no alternative to their populations than this psychopathic "neo-liberal" model that is economically crippling them, the populations have no alternative than accept it, unless they wish to be branded "extremists" or "revolutionaries" for daring to think of an alternative to this global form of economic fascism.

Fascism, apart from the economic model, as outlined above in its present form, also includes an intolerance of other thinking, as "thinking" by definition is dangerous to maintaining the illusion that the populace is actually better-off under economic fascism. It suits the purpose then that most of the right-wing politicians in government around the world who support the neo-liberal model are either also linked to the corporations somehow, or are too ignorant and narrow-minded to consider any other idea.
To some, Conservatism as an ideology is not known for its intellectuals. The word "intellectual" is more likely to be followed by the prefix "left-wing" than "right-wing". Ayn Rand is perhaps the most famous 20th century right-wing "intellectual" that most know today, and as I mentioned earlier, her "ideology" is almost indistinguishable from clinical psychopathy. "Intellectualism" is something that right-wing commentators sneer at far more than their left-wing counterparts: the main reason because smart people scare those who benefit the most from the long-existing hierarchy. As they lack the intellectual capabilities to justify their beliefs, they resort to intolerance and more insidious measures as a shield. Put another way, it is more difficult to "intellectualise" a system based on simple hierarchical thinking and inequality; Ayn Rand's ability to rationalise and provide a moral system for social hierarchy and rampant inequality stands out from the rest of 20th century intelligentsia. Few others were able to provide such a feat of mental gymnastics as "The Virtue Of Selfishness". The philosophy that Rand set out is what "Neo-liberals" have been inspired by ever since, as it is the only one that comes close to providing a philosophical (if ultimately amoral) justification for inequality and exploitation.

People like Romney in the USA and Cameron in the UK are products of this system, born to believe this "ideology" because they are intellectually incapable of justifying it in any other way.
Like Hitler, they repeat the same mantras again and again ("There Is No Alternative!"), so that people will finally grow tired and acquiesce.

Fascism has now been taken to its almost logical conclusion as a economic model - the global subservience of government to the private sector, with the global population and its resources as their plaything. Fascism is the economic system that matches the most closely to the characteristics of clinical psychopathy.

As said before, psychopaths are predisposed to prosper in business and politics, so what better way to take their power to its logical conclusion than by using an economic system - economic fascism, now know as "neo-liberalism" - that allows them to put those psychopathic characteristics into practice on the world?


 

Why Psychopaths are running the world

There have been many articles written, especially over the past few years, about the link between capitalism and psychopathy.
I wrote something similar myself last year here
As a reminder, the twenty common recognised characteristics of psychopaths are:

• Glibness/superficial charm
• Grandiose sense of self-worth
• Pathological lying
• Cunning/manipulative
• Lack of remorse or guilt

• Emotionally shallow
• Callous/lack of empathy
• Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
• Parasitic lifestyle
• Lack of realistic, long-term goals
• Impulsiveness
• Irresponsibility
• Poor behavioral controls
• Early behavioral problems
• Juvenile delinquency
• Revocation of conditional release
• Criminal versatility.

The list above is taken from the generally-recognised "psychopath check-list". In order to be classified as a "psychopath", a person should fit with the large majority of these characteristics, either partially or fully.

Psychopaths, medically speaking, are a human aberration, which are usually born with the "moral" part of the brain not functioning. In other words, they are physically incapable of feeling empathy (i.e. pity or remorse), and have difficulty understanding real human emotion. They are therefore extremely dangerous in wider society, responsible for the majority of violent crime, fraud - and also are disproportionately represented in the higher echelons of business and politics.

Because psychopaths naturally make decisions on an amoral basis, they are naturally advantaged in the area of business, where decisions that can decide the fate of thousands (of employees, or customers) should be for the benefit of the business, regardless of the consequences on the wider world. Free market capitalism, at its heart, is based on an amoral philosophy, and those who are naturally amoral are bound to prosper in it. 

So when characteristics such as amorality are combined with other psychopathic traits, such as cunning, arrogance, a grandiose sense of self-worth, and irresponsibility, in the world of business and politics, they are seen not as human weaknesses, but strengths. "Amorality" is seen as being hard-headed, "cunning" is seen as being practical, "arrogance" is seen as self-confidence, "a grandiose sense of self-worth" is seen as ambition, "irresponsibility" is seen as being a risk-taker. You get the idea.

So psychopaths are therefore more likely to prosper and quickly advance in a corporation than the average human being, as they posses characteristics that business see as "skills". An intelligent psychopath will more easily be able to climb the corporate ladder; an intelligent psychopath will be able to remain "undetected" for longer, even for life, if they can find a profession where their characteristics blend in seamlessly with their social peers. A psychopath has no remorse or sorrow for what they do; it is their nature to be remorseless and merciless. These feelings are beyond their comprehension. There are also the less intelligent psychopaths: these are the ones you're more likely to hear about, because they were caught. These are the serial killers, thieves and fraudsters who were not smart enough to know how to evade detection or know how to get what they wanted without violence. What slightly annoys me about Bret Easton-Ellis' novel "American Psycho" is that his portrayal of Patrick Bateman as a psychopath lacks the full spectrum of psychopathic characteristics - you see his violent urges, but little of his charm, manipulation and cunning.The psychopath serial killers are usually the ones that haven't found a way to repress their violent urges through other methods; a high-powered businessman as a serial killer is therefore an unlikely event.  

The way they usually manage to escape detection for so long is because they learn to be good actors, learning how to imitate human emotions, copying a look, or a mimic, in order to blend in. Naturally charming, persuasive and gregarious, even flirtatious, psychopaths can easily manipulate others to get what they want. Which is why, apart from business, psychopaths are also attracted to public office.
One other thing worth mentioning about psychopaths is that their irresponsibility is often displayed through a flagrant sex life - leaving a string of women with fatherless children, for example. In other words, the desire to callously "spread their seed", means their psychopathic behaviour is more likely to trickle down to the "next generation", through a combination of passing on their psychopathic genetic traits, as well as the environmental factor of children being born into an unstable family unit. One psychopath can breed many more psychopaths because of their amoral sexual behaviour. This tells us that if this is repeated over a long enough time frame, psychopaths can become even more prevalent in human society, creating even more chaos, proliferating over the generations like an unstoppable virus. This makes stories about the many sexual indiscretions of politicians and high-powered business leaders even less surprising.

Look again at the psychopath check-list, and think about the number of politicians fit the description. It's especially revealing to look at the childhoods of politician and leaders. I recently looked at Stalin here as a case study for what happens when a psychopath takes control of the world's largest country.The answer was chaos. Stalin ruled the country through a thousand shades of terror, to the point that no-one knew who to trust or what to think. He manipulated the US President in order to control half of Europe, tried to starve West Berlin to break post-war Germany, and instigated and maintained the Korean War until his death. As we saw from Stalin's childhood, his violent upbringing, living an amoral life in the rough streets of Tsarist Georgia, fits with the common characteristics of psychopathy. And everything else about his life fits the bill exactly. 

There are other public figures, more recently, who also seem to have a worryingly-high correlation with the characteristics on the psychopathy check-list. I do seriously wonder about the metal state of Michael Gove, the current UK Education minister: he seems to lack any empathy at all, and seems intent on creating chaos in the education system, and so on.

But the wider point is this: because corporations and public office are naturally attractive to psychopaths as the skills necessary closely correlate to their own characteristics, is it any surprise that the world is in such a mess? 

The Financial Crisis of 2008 was caused through the irresponsibility and amorality of the financial sector, who encouraged staffers who would take the biggest risks on investments they tricked others into taking. Then when this house of cards came tumbling down, the financial sector blackmailed the politicians into what is effectively a huge protection racket. The politicians then manipulated the wider public into accepting paying for that racket out of their own pocket, while the politicians also set about dismantling the public sector beyond recognition, leaving little left for the public to recognise. Countries like Greece and Spain are bearing the brunt of a vast social experiment organised by the IMF and ECB in Frankfurt; closer to home, the UK government is attempting something similar.

And while all this is going on, those who are at the top 1 per cent are continuing their game of avoiding tax, routinely committing crimes that rob the nations of the world from revenue that would be more than enough to pay off the world's debts. This 1 per cent are responsible for perpetuating a system of "controlled anarchy": a system designed to favour those at the top of the hierarchy to do as they wish, while forcing us "mere mortals" to live off less and less while fighting each other in an increasingly unstable and deteriorating working environment, yet told to follow the rules religiously or face the full force of the law. This is the law (and chronic instability) that the 1 per cent designed.
Technology developed through this Neo-liberal Capitalist system serves two functions: making it easier for the private sector-government symbiosis to monitor peoples' actions; while other aspects of technology act as a sop, deluding workers into thinking that their lives are superficially getting better. "Facebook" conveniently combines these two ideas together.

It is estimated that, depending on where you draw the line, psychopaths make up between 1 and 5 per cent of the general population. It should give those who chant "we are the 99 per cent" some food for thought. Which "99 per cent"? And which "1 per cent"? The ultra-rich, or the ultra-psychopaths? To what extent is there an overlap between the richest 1 per cent and the psychopathic 1 per cent?

When you look at the behaviour of those who are in positions of power, be it in business, finance or politics, you sometimes seriously do have to wonder about the mental state of some of them. When psychopaths are put in positions of power, the result is anarchy. 

Isn't that what the world is facing now?

Welcome to the (anarcho-fascist) revolution

I am quoting a small segment from wikipedia.org, describing an economic situation where the economy is designed on "the basis of private property and of private initiative, but it is subordinated to the tasks of the state. As part of the relations between workers and employers (the system is) guided by the principles of social Darwinism: the strongest support, rooting out the weakest. In economic practice, this means, on the one hand, protecting the interests of successful businessmen, on the other - the destruction of trade unions and other organizations of the working class".

Ignore some of the more emotive language, and examine the situation described in simple economics: sound like anything familiar in the UK?

It should, because the above situation is more-or-less comparable to the ideological position of the Conservative-led government. By definition, they believe that the private sector to be morally superior to the public sector; that the private sector is considered (by definition) more efficient and more cost-effective in providing services; that the public sector, by comparison, is inefficient and its workers of questionable loyalty, liable to be an arm of the unions; big business is to be indulged as much as possible, the barriers to business torn down in favour of businesses' wishes and against excessive employees' rights. And yet, in spite of the government's indulgence and favour towards business, it still feels the need to control some core design: a strong justice system; a strong policy of border control, while at the same time, encouraging business to out-source beyond the country itself. 
In other words, an illogical contradiction is in place: encouraging the free market, while supporting the the "cartelisation" of the market; against immigration, but in favour of foreign out-sourcing; against the inefficiency and innate incompetence of the public sector, but indifferent to the private sector's identical incompetence; the government wants to out-source services to the private sector, but still be in control of who gets the services; for the free market, but also against the free market.

The Conservative-led government may be considered as disciples of Ayn Rand's economic and ideological vision of a pure form of free market capitalism, but this would be a misnomer. The Conservatives in government are not pure free market capitalists, because they believe that the government should still be in core control of some aspects of the decision-making process - which companies get to run which services. A pure free market would see virtually no government as such at all; as Ayn Rand designed, "government" would only control the justice system and the military: the private sector would provide everything else. 

But the Conservatives have no wish to vote themselves out of existence. The Conservatives plan is more long-term, a slice-by-slice destruction of the British welfare state. As the David Cameron's former-key policy advisor, Steve Hilton, said, by the end of a full term, "everything needs to have changed". This is what the Conservative plan is: a virtual revolution under the noses of the electorate, much of what is being done never part of the Conservatives election manifesto.
Education, health and welfare to be redesigned out of recognition from what existed before, with much of the services handed out to large corporations, and what left pared down to the bare minimum to prevent public revolt. The justice system's public sector services to be similarly handed out to large private firms like the now-infamous G4S: police services, the prisons, and so on. 
This is all happening right now. The continual demonisation of the unions, and the continued quasi-religious zeal in the adherence to non-intervention in the free market, means that the government is indifferent and also feels blameless as the unregulated property market slowly destroys the livelihoods of families across the country; as rising property prices (especially in the uncontrolled rental market) mean that many people on what were once considered "average" salaries find themselves as the new "working poor", spending their salary on rising rents, rising bills, rising fuel, and rising high street prices, with nothing left over at the end of the month.
And all the while, the government claims to be fighting for the interests of the "aspirational classes" (whoever they are!), while at the same time doing almost nothing to help anyone earning less double the average national salary. 

The fact that the Conservatives still claim to represent the "ordinary hard-working, honest families" of Britain is typical of the arrogance of their self-belief. What evidence is there that they have done anything at all to improve the lot of the average person, the average family? None whatsoever. The evidence only points to the opposite. 
The "big con" is that the Conservatives, even after the financial crisis, banking scandals, the various corrupt and morally vacuous (or just mindless) judgements made by members of the government, still believe that they are the party best suited to governing the country, and somehow manage to twist the truth to make enough of the "aspirational" classes believe them, as well as the guaranteed votes of the indifferent and amoral rich. 

The Conservative government is in the middle of carrying out a quiet ideological revolution: you can call it an "anarcho-capitalist" revolution if you like - where the government creates a system of blissful anarchy for big business and the rich, and a system of helpless anarchy for everyone else. But that would be missing some important points, mentioned in the quote at the beginning.
The system described in the quote, which seems to similar to the mindset of the Conservative-led government, is the economic system, not of "anarcho-capitalism", but of fascism.
While the racism and prejudice has been carefully air-brushed out of existence by the likes of David Cameron and his "Chipping Norton set" of cosmopolitan Conservative friends, there still remains the economic ideology, which is unchanged, if slightly cleaned up.

This is the real truth: that while the Tories may have given the appearance of cleaning up their act from the days of being the "Nasty Party", choosing a charming but intellectually vacuous leader in David Cameron, behind the scenes the ideology of "Economic Fascism" remains.
With Cameron content to allow his ministers free rein to forcibly put their revolutionary ideas into practice on the living laboratory of the UK, fear is in the air, with ministers revelling in the psychological terror and "creative chaos" they are creating. And all the while, Cameron acts as the vacuous front-man to this amoral revolution, repeating his mantra:
"There Is No Alternative!".

Nearly a year on from the riots, England has learned nothing

Last August, riots enveloped London and various cities in England, the worst civil unrest for decades.

At the time, the rioters were demonised as the worst of our feral youth, epitomising what was wrong with the lack of morals in our society.
In many ways, the young people who rioted and looted did symbolise a lot about our society: but people read the riots the wrong way. The fact that rioters were looting shamelessly was seized upon by politicians and media commentators as a sign that family values had been destroyed; that the younger generations believed in nothing but what they could get for themselves.
That may well have been true; but the resulting judicial backlash, where many looters were given over-the-top sentences, said as much about the mood of the establishment. Many of the establishment couldn't believe that these hordes of young people, from the lowest rungs of society and intermingled with gangs and petty crime, were capable of causing so much anarchy in just a few days. But they did. And so the response from the establishment was as knee-jerk as possible to nip this mood of anarchic uprising in the bud.

At the time, left-wing apologists like Ken Livingstone and others, blamed the cuts, the moral crisis in banking and government indifference as underlying causes for the riots, only to be shouted down as Marxists. But when we look at what has been discovered about the banks, government and the "establishment" since then, those "Marxists" have, if anything, been shown to be over-cautious in their analysis of moral breakdown in society.
Because moral authority and values, by definition, is supposed to come from the top: a value system functions as a top-down system. In other words, expecting those at the bottom of the social order to follow the rules set down by authority, when the country's supposed "moral authority" ignores the concept entirely, is not only absurd, it is completely abhorrent to any concept of civilisation.

This is the reality of the UK in 2012: Britain's establishment allowed the country to to held hostage by a cartel. Mexico has been terrorised and held hostage by a drug cartel for nearly fifteen years. For the past fifteen years, the UK has been held to ransom by its financial sector. The five leading banks who now control the vast majority of the banking sector of the UK have been extorting the UK government: unless you give us what we want and do as we say, the banks have said, we will leave your country to the dogs and go elsewhere. In other words, the banks have simply modified a Mafia "racket" in order to seem respectable. As a result, they have destroyed the UK economy, then terrified the government into a further "racket" called the "bailout" to pay for the banking sector's economic stupidity - for which everyone else in the country is paying for, in the form of public sector cuts.

Let's be straight here: because the UK government has no effective control of the banking sector, as there are virtually no regulations whatsoever, the government cannot send people to prison: you can't be sent to prison if there is no law to break in the first place. This is the financial anarchy that is the UK banking system. And under such conditions, amorality and recklessness are bound to follow as night follows day.

This "anarchy" goes on. Another major factor that led to the UK economic collapse was the banking sector's inflation of the property market. Again, as there are virtually no government controls in this sector, prices can rise as much as the banks or landlords wish. Houses, compared to average earnings, are nearly twice as expensive as they were forty years ago. So banks have forced many onto the (also uncontrolled) rental sector, further pushing up rental prices. Again, because the government has no appetite to interfere to improve the lot of its own people, everyone suffers.

Then there is price inflation, of essentials like food and fuel. Although inflation is on average low, for essentials prices have been increasing many times above inflation year on year since the financial crisis started. Again, the government does nothing.
Then there is the economy and unemployment situation generally, for which the government does little to improve. As the financial sector is a major political contributor to the governing party, the stink of corruption runs deep. Government incompetence piled upon indifference towards the poor, and an ideological war to destroy employee's rights, educational aspiration and the British sense of "fair play", makes it no surprise that people have such little faith or trust in government or the establishment in general. Why should they?

Given that the government is keen to sell-off public assets like our schools, railways, health service to private (even foreign) companies, while also destroying the military and police service in the name of "cuts" (the same cuts that are deemed necessary because the government surrendered its authority to extortion from the banks), what moral authority does the government have left?

The reality, therefore, is this: that the government and the "establishment" of the banking sector, sections of the amoral media sector, as well as those at the tip of the economic hierarchy in general (meaning those who avoid paying their dues to the state by stashing their money off-shore), do not deserve the respect of average people on the street. They deserve our contempt.

Instead of focussing on "benefit cheats" and the "feral youths" behind the riots, the government should be focussing on bringing the real criminals to justice: those like the bankers, who have destroyed the country, yet still hold the entire country to ransom in an extortion racket; who cheat the public purse of billions each year; whose indifference to the plight of the young family trying to get a house or the small business trying to get a loan should be made criminal.
But the government won't, at least not until it is forced to by the public. The truth about politics is this: that politicians only do things they don't like when they feel it is absolutely necessary.

How do you make them listen? Last August, some people thought they had an answer.

The real tragedy about the riots last year was that the raw anger that those young people felt was directed at the wrong targets, at least in terms of getting their point made. Since this government came to power two years ago, we've had student protests that resulted in Conservative HQ being surrounded and damaged; we've had strikes by a welter of public sector workers; we had the riots by young people who felt they had nothing to lose and everything to gain from opportune looting and destruction; we've had police officers marching in protest against the government.
Last August saw young people looting, while others saw a chance to "get even" with the police. In both these actions, their anger was tragically misdirected. Looting local shops only destroys the local economy, while attacking the police solves nothing.

The real source of the country's damnation is the amoral banking sector, the sector which is most responsible for the vast inequality that has mushroomed in the last thirty years, as well as being responsible for the economic crisis, the property bubble, the government's cuts, not to mention the "me" culture and everything that symbolises. The government's moral emptiness, in selling their soul to the banks, indulging the banks whenever they could, at the expense of everyone else, is the other main culprit.

 Both are morally culpable; it would only be fair, then, for them to be made fully aware of their culpability in this crime against the people of Britain. For too long, people in this country have been meek: meek in their unquestioning respect for "authority" and the "establishment".
Every self-respecting ordinary person in the country has a good reason to despise this government and the banking sector it supports: from young people, students, the poor, the "working poor", the public sector, even the military and the police. All these different sections of society have a legitimate grievance against the situation the government has perpetuated. The government, in the past two years, has succeeded in alienating most sectors of society. Only the rich, the heartless, and the indifferent in society support it.
The Conservative government remains in power due to the spineless acquiescence of the LibDems. If all these aggrieved segments of society united, then an unmistakeable point could be made: it is only the meekness of those segments by failing to unite that the government remains in power, and the banks remain beyond the reach of justice, free to continue their reign of terror.

It's time for British people to find their courage again. Last August, the government succeeded in victimising the rioters and looters through divide and rule, placing those rioters against the ordinary law-abiding people struggling to make ends meet. We should not allow the government to pull the wool over our eyes again.

If they want to talk up the threat of "class war", then the government should be careful not to insult our intelligence. Even a man on his knees knows something about self-respect.

A market without regulations is like a legal system without laws

The free market liberals, of both the Tea Party-types in the USA, and the Conservative ideologues in the UK, love the idea of markets ruling everything.

They see markets as being the best way of dealing with goods and services. They see government as getting in the way of the private sector, who should be best to be left alone (where the phrase "laissez-faire" comes from).
Their rationale is very simple: markets are the best way of dealing with goods and services because markets are "self-regulating": in other words, prices are controlled by demand (i.e. customers) and supply (i.e. how much of something there is). so a high supply product (like bread) would be cheap, whereas a low supply product (like caviar) would be expensive. Also, there is naturally more demand for bread than caviar.

The same logic works for salaries: commonplace jobs with a large pool of labour offer lower wages than those with a high skills requirement and this have a far small potential employee pool.

Enough of the economics primer. What happens when you put this into practise?

There are plenty of real-life examples of how this unregulated "free-market" works in real life. In the main, though, it doesn't. Here's why.

Look at the property market in the UK. There are those properties that people can mortgage or rent. This all depends on supply and demand. According to the theory, if  customers alter their behaviour (by wanting more of a product), a supplier should naturally react to customer desire: that's how the market works, by suppliers naturally reacting to customers' demand. Does this happen in the UK property market? No.

The housing stock in the UK has remained far below consumer demand for years, decades. It didn't help when the last Conservative government, under Thatcher, sold off thousands of council houses to the private market, without building any sufficient replacement government housing. But that's a separate matter. The question is WHY does the private sector (the market), fail to react to consumers' demands for a large increase in the housing stock? The answer is because of one of the fundamental flaws in the principle of the "free market": short-termism.

The private sector is often terrible at strategic, long-term thinking and looking at wider economic concerns. As businesses are driven by profit, they find it difficult to set aside money for "investments" which take a long time to set up, can be risky, and the financial benefits cannot be seen until some time in the future. Simply, the incentive for businesses to think long-term is too small. As a result, industries that have been privatised see a gradual decline in things like infrastructure and trying to look ahead to future trends.

This is why housing and construction in the UK has shrunk significantly, especially since the onset of the recession: businesses see too much risk and too little potential gain. Even though it's obvious that consumers need more housing, the "free market" is too fearful of risking money on long-term projects. The same thinking is true of the banking sector where it comes to giving out loans to help small businesses and individual entrepreneurs. Even though it can be rationally explained that any risk would be worth it considering the potential wider gain to the economy for encouraging business and wealth generation, banks, like the "free market" in general, are weighed-down by short termism.
George Osborne, the Conservative government's supposed economic heavyweight, has set his reputation on believing that the private sector will create the recovery. But everything tells us the opposite.

Continuing with the housing market, the rise in the cost of rents can be easily explained. Banks are reluctant to give out mortgages, forcing customers onto the rental market. As a result, although the cost of mortgages overall has gone down slightly, the cost of rent has rocketed. This may well result, for the first time in decades, with many younger people being unable to buy a mortgage and stuck in a high rent property. Again, because the private sector is unable plan strategically, this has meant the rental housing stock has remained static while demand has increased. So here is where the market doesn't work: landlords simply see an opportunity to make more money, and with the customer held hostage by the limited number of rental properties (and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future), everyday people are getting shafted. And will continue to do so for years if things stay as they are.


If the private sector is meant to be so risk-averse, why was there a construction boom in Spain? Because they saw no risk. There was a housing boom in the UK too, but not a construction boom on the same scale. What the housing booms in Spain and the UK had in common was the over-valued inflation of prices; but the reasons behind were slightly different.
 In the UK, the boom was fuelled by mortgage lenders losing their previous aversion to risk and giving mortgages to people who were not financially reliable. They forgot one of the basic rules of the market: not to invest in high-risk ventures.
In Spain, the boom was fuelled by construction firms losing their previous understanding of the demand for housing, and creating a huge over-supply. They forgot another basic rule of the market: that as supply increases, price goes down (and will, eventually).


The property market is just one example that quickly comes to my mind. Another one is education.

The introduction of competition was meant to improve secondary educational standards. But how are those educational "standards" measured? By exam results, because that's the easiest way for the "free market" to measure education. The government therefore supported this method when competition was introduced into secondary education.

The result? Schools have turned into exam-preparation centres, concentrating on the exam results the students get at the end of their education, rather than actually how useful or effective that "education" will be in the real world. Students know a great deal about how to pass exams, but not a lot about how to transfer their education into real-world skills useful to the economy.
Another side-effect of this "results" obsession is that schools focus on encouraging subjects that are easier for  students to excel in, in order to improve the schools ranking (and thus attract further revenue). This is a further reason why you have students leaving school with qualifications that may well be of little use. The "free market" has the opposite effect of that intended, because everything becomes a race to reach the lowest common denominator: to maximise results in order to minimise risk.
One last point is the government's introduction of a free market even in examination boards: schools can choose which "testing centre" they think is the best. That was the theory, anyway. The reality has been the opposite: schools, in order to maximise results and minimise risk, have often chosen the exam board that offers the "easiest" set of exams, to give students the best chance of getting a good result, therefore boosting the school's published results.

So what happens when the "free market" is let loose? You usually get a maximisation of profit at the minimisation of risk. If the government wants the private sector to act in a rational, strategic, open-minded way, then they need to read basic economics again.

To trust that the "free market" is the best way of dealing with economy, is to hand over running your economy to people with the mental age of five-year-olds. Unregulated markets, by definition, are, as a general rule, incapable of thinking long-term or strategically. Yes, the market has an important role to play, but it can only be a sane instrument if it is regulated by government.

The "free market", by definition, is an example of anarchy, because no-one is in control of it; it "controls" itself.  It's like having a legal system without anybody to enforce the laws. The "free market" is a system based on blind optimism.

Any government that supports the "free market" is also blind.

Riots, Damned Riots, and Revolutions

Tottenham, London, can now be added to the list of cities in the Western world (i.e Europe and America) that have seen riots in recent years.

In the last week, even Tel Aviv, Israel (of all places) has joined the ranks of the more famous anarchy-prone metropoli such as Athens an Madrid, to name two.

That's not to mention the riots and civil strife happening on a daily basis in Syria, sporadically in Yemen, Egypt; civil war in Libya etc. etc.

Of course, the riots of the last few years each have there own roots, and are not directly related to each other, and I don't want to go into each set of events in too much detail, for the sake of space. But some things are worth talking about.

Starting most recent first, the riots in Tottenham and around.

It was the shooting of an armed criminal with gang links a few days before that was meant to be the spark. A protest walk in the Tottenham high street became hijacked by what appear to have been gang elements (many of them immigrant origin), and the end result was nearly twelve hours of mayhem in three seperate locations in the Haringey district of North London, resulting in looted and burned out shops, supermakets and retail outlets, as well as burned out police cars and a bus.

It may be tempting to ink these riots to those happening around the same time in places like Tel Aviv, Athens and Madrid. Tempting, but not entirely fair or accurate. The riots/ demonstrations in these other places are people (either young or old, or both) venting their frustration at their respective government's response to the economic and social effects of the financial crisis - unemployment, rising prices, cost of living etc.

In the case of the Tottenham riots, there are direct criminal elements involved. In that respect in bears a closer resemblance to the riots that took place in France several years ago (long before the financial crisis, as I remember); a teenager of North African origin was killed by a policeman; riots broke out across some deprived suburbs of Paris, quickly multiplying to other cities around France (Sarkozy called the rioters "scum" at the time); it got to the extent that by the tail end of weeks of the national riots there were "only" 1,000 cars that had been burned out in one day.

Those riots were also likely instigated by gangs seeing an opprtunity to wreak their own sense of "revenge" on the police and the establishment.

The essential question is: why do gangs exist in these circumstances? The answer doesn't take a PhD in Sociology to get to. Gangs exist as social networks to occupy a wider social vacuum (i.e. through dysfuctional family networks, community networks, lack of other connection to the social ladder etc.).

Am I making excuses for criminality? Of course not. I'm simply looking at the issue through a cause-and-effect rationality, in coming to understand why it happens. The police do the same thing: that's why when there is proper engagement with a community; when there are real opportunities for community improvement; when a community works together; when families work together, the levels of gang activity usually go down. That has been proven to be the case in Glasgow (the police did a successful programme there a couple of years ago).

So, back to Tottenham. As was reported, over the last few years, the suburb has seen rising levels of unemployment and falling levels of police interaction. You go figure what happens. Create the vacuum, and see who takes up the space.

So in an indirect way, yes, there is a link to all these riots over the "post-crisis years" (I just invented that phrase). The seperate make-up and triggers are different, but the underlying causes remain somewhat similar.

It is fair to say that without the financial crisis, the Arab Spring may well not have happened (as it took everyone, even the "experts" by surprise); the demos and riots across Europe are all direct consequences of the crisis. While the Gangs Of Tottenham can never dare to claim to hold the same legitimacy for their openly criminal behaviour, the gangs exist indirectly because of the social vacuum in the community in Tottenham itself, which has been exacurbated by the effects and government policy since the financial crisis.

Of course, the same community vacuum exists in other parts of London; exists in other inner cities around the UK; and exists in other inner cities around the Western world as a whole. Let me say again: there can never be a justification for the criminal behavior that we have seen in Tottenham.

The problem is that if these "community vacuums" are allowed to fester while the government continues to cut back on sevices like law and order and investing in social cohesion, the only growth economy we can expect in these places is further gang warfare and anarchy.

Ayn Rand: She´s The Devil In Disguise

In a second hand bookshop I recently found a book (published in the 1960s) which was a series of essays in praise of capitalism, by Ayn Rand and a few others.

The most striking thing about her ideas is how they became so popular. Rand was a Russian immigrant who fled the Bolshevik Revolution, and thus became an ardent anti-Communist and arch-capitalist. Considering her traumatic early life experience, it´s not hard to see why.
Her school of thought can be traced through the 20th century to today: from the the actions of financiers that led to the Great Depression; to the formation of the Chicago School; to the establishment of Monetarism and "Reaganomics"; to Newt Gingrich´s "Contract with America" in the 1990s; to the actions of the "Neocons" during the Bush II administration; and finally to the beliefs of the Tea Party.

What all these successive "belief systems" share is a core value that government (and collective action) is by nature evil, and that individuals (human beings) are by nature good. Looking at this viewpoint from a different, moralistic, way: altruism and selflessness (according to Rand´s logic) is precisely what led to Communism, therefore the only way to defeat this "evil" is to abolish government and allow private individuals the right to figure things out for themselves.

From Dante´s description of Lucifer as the fallen angel who fell in love with humanity and loathed the collective moralising of God, Rand´s moral compass seems very close to the beliefs of Lucifer. Because, in essence, it could be argued that Lucifer was humanity´s first model for anarchism: to destroy all things that hold humanity back from the unrelenting pursuit of self.

This, then, is the conclusion of Rand´s creed: the ultimate, individualistic pursuit of selfishness. Rand argues that human progress only happens in societies which are rational and free - by which she means free of government regulation, government welfare (because she sees "welfare" as an intrusion into the lives of individuals) and so on. She argues that all human discovery happened when people were free to pursue their goals free of government influence.
All this sounds idealistic and appealing to an extent (as it is meant to), but it disguises a ruthless truth: that unregulated capitalism in the real world leads inevitably, not to a free market heaven, but to an oligarchic hell. Companies, by their nature, are psychopathic: they care about the profit motive, and are very far from "rational". Short-termism, making a quick buck, cutting corners, downsizing, these are all words that abound in the capitalist world created by the disciples of Ayn Rand like Alan Greenspan and the like. Let´s not forget that now there are only a few major banks left in the USA, thanks to the deregulation that Rand promoted, and created the conditions for the financial crisis. Goldman Sachs is now the primary shareholder of the USA; many of its former employees now run the government, or ran the last one.

So the primary economic model that runs the largest, most important economy in the world, was devised by....well, you know what I mean.

The Devil Votes Republican

The popularity of the Republican is a true work of art. It is a political organisation whose continual success and re-invention can only be explained through the kind of cunning that Satan himself would be proud of.

First of all, a brief history.
Created around the time of the Civil War, the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln (who has been admired by many ever since). Although he was assassinated, the party went on to dominate US politics for the rest of the 19th century, being in power almost continually throughout the Gilded Age, all the way up to the Great Depression (excepting Woodrow Wilson and Grover Cleveland). Its low point was the twenty-year absence from power while FDR and Truman ruled the roost at the White House.
The modern Republican Party came about through the efforts of Ronald Reagan (for Eisenhower and the Nixon-Ford administration ran the country as moderates in the traditional Republican mould). Since the time of Reagan, the GOP has morphed into something else; an altogether more fearsome creature.

What does the Republican Party stand for?
A good question, considering its continual success and re-invention. First of all, who votes for them, and why?

A short answer could be average God-fearing, socially-conservative patriots, who fear the government, want to pay low taxes, have the right to earn their money and defend the "average guy on the street", be fiscally responsible, and to be defended against foreign enemies. In other words, traditional Protestant values that have existed in the American psyche since Washington´s day.

The beauty of the Republican Party is that they have successfully been able to persuade people that the country´s best interests are best served with them, and been able to persuade them that this is still true even when faced with clear facts that show them the opposite.

"The country´s best interests" though, depends on how you define them. Where most people might see "the country´s best interests" as meaning "the people´s best interests", the Republican Party sees this as meaning "the best interests of those who own the most in the country".

Foreign policy is an instrument of trying to expand the commercial interests of its funders. This does not equate to the same thing as the people´s interests, as the companies that fund the GOP simply want to expand abroad; if that means closing a factory in Michigan to relocate abroad, then great, as money knows no borders. In this logic, there is no such thing as the "national interest"; as these companies own or buy influence over the nation´s assets, these companies are the "national interest". Patriotism is nothing more than a

The Republican Party´s Foreign policy is, in fact, it´s only real "policy".
What stands for "Domestic policy" is nothing more than another instrument to make the conditions best for those who control the most; deregulation of banking (as first pushed by Merril Lynch´s Don Regan, who acted as Ronald Reagan´s Treasury Secretary and later Chief of Staff) is essential to this function. As are all forms of deregulation. For the companies with the most can only flourish the most if there are no rules holding them back.

"The government does best when it does the least" - this is the Republican slogan. A beautiful logical absurdity: by definition government exists because there is an absence of something. If government exists only to destroy then government by definition is no real government at all. In its place there is a vacuum; anarchy.
The Republican Party seems to want to create a form of anarchy whereby the American people simply pay taxes to fund the "defence of the nation" (meaning "commercial expansion of the elite´s foreign interests"). Taken to its logical conclusion, domestic policy would no longer exist: the government has outsourced all its domestic operations so that it no longer needs to directly spend money on any of its citizens. The people fend for themselves while the "government" uses its taxes to expand its foreign operations. And as the government´s interests expand abroad, this necessarily leads to a further degradation of the conditions at home.

There is a word for this. It´s called tyranny.

This is the Republican dream. To allow this dream to become a reality, vote Republican. Vote Satan