Anti-Semitism, and a history of the "International Jewish Conspiracy"

From the USA to the UK, it seems that Anti-Semitism is on the rise (again) in the developed world. Evidence points towards the truism that while not all Donald Trump supporters are Nazis, all Nazis are Trump supporters; and equally, while not all Brexit supporters are Nazis, all Nazis are Brexit supporters.

The history of Anti-Semitism is a long one, and for the purposes of this article, I'll restrict things to the last hundred-and-fifty years or so, as this is when the idea of a "Jewish World Conspiracy" first really came into general parlance.


"A Jewish plot to take over the world"

In a way, it was Marx's misfortune that the founder of Communism was also a Jew, for this has ever since coloured how people (both its supporters and its detractors) saw it: Communism was seen as attractive to some of Jewish extraction (in Russia in particular) precisely because it was international and anti-establishment in its outlook and aims, and offered a political haven from persecution. It is also true that when the successful Bolsheviks took power in Russia, they did include a disproportionate number of Jews. Thus this fed into the belief that Communism was a Jewish plot to take over the world. This was certainly Tsar Nicholas II's point of view when he was forced from power, and was so insidious in enveloping much of political thought across the developed world during and after the First World War, and up to the present day (more on that later).

The odd aspect of this is that Marx himself had ambiguous feelings about his own Jewish heritage, and this then fueled the belief amongst some Anti-Semites at the time that Marx himself saw Capitalism as a kind of "Jewish Conspiracy", and that he was somehow fighting against Jewish domination of Capitalism. How this also squared with the understanding that Communism was also a "Jewish Conspiracy", is hard to understand.

The two main "centres" of Anti-Semitism by the second half of the Nineteenth century were Russia and Germany. Jews had been persecuted for centuries in Russia, being send to live in the "Pale" in the 18th century, and by the late Nineteenth century were trying to flee abroad to places like the USA. In Russia, this period also saw an unprecedented rise in political violence, which culminated in the anarchy of 1905. As an absolutist, deeply religious state, the Russian Empire was deeply paranoid of "Godless" Communism, which was then exacerbated by the document "The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion", a forgery by a fanatical Russian priest, which tied the anarchy in Russia with a Jewish conspiracy.
In Germany, Anti-Semitism had become almost "fashionable" in the social circles of the upper class and in the arts (such as Richard Wagner), which spread to the paranoia of its emperor, Wilhelm II. It's unclear where exactly this stereotype of the "corrupting Jew" (earlier seen in Grimm's fairly tales) came from, but the fact that Marx's ideas were initially influenced by the 1848 Year Of Revolutions may have been a factor. Again, the fact that Marx himself was German may have sent alarm bells ringing in some people's minds.
Like in Russia, much of Europe held the long belief that as Jews were "stateless" and "heathens", they were therefore deeply suspect in their allegiances (if they had any). The social and political tumult of 1848 had long-lasting effects on many parts of Europe. While many of the revolutions failed, the fact remained that the major European powers (Britain excluded) rolled on through a series of wars and upheaval for the next twenty-odd years, culminating in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. Not long after this, in 1877-78, there were the wars between Russia and the Ottomans that led to Eastern Europe's boundaries being radically redrawn. And behind all this was the growing paranoia against a "Jewish Conspiracy". So by the time of the Bolshevik Revolution forty years later, and the end of the war in Germany a year after that, blaming the Jews had become a very convenient scapegoat.

Through all of this, its impossible to omit the rise in the influence of Zionism, an idea that largely came from East European (i.e. Russian) Jews who longed for a permanent homeland. With the re-drawing of the Middle Eastern map at the end of the First World War, Britain took control of the former Ottoman territory of Palestine, and the "Balfour Agreement" allowed Jews from Europe to settle in Palestine. The fact that the Jewish population was heavily outnumbered by local Arabs seemed a minor detail. Britain was used to ruling its colonies by "divide and rule", like in its "crown jewel", India.

The Bolshevik Revolution, and the immediate threat of Communism spreading across Europe and the developed world, led to a spike in anti-Semitism infecting political discourse. In Germany alone, political violence spiked dramatically in the years after the war: the short-lived "Munich Soviet" of 1919 eventually led to violence from the other end of the political spectrum; the infamous "Munich putsch" of 1923, which Hitler took part in. In these few years, political assassination became the norm, such as the assassination of Germany's foreign minister, the Jew, Walter Rathenau. A Bolshevik government, ran by Jews, was seen as the main threat to the world order, and thus every Jew became seen as a threat to the world order.
This would have remained a fringe obsession in the developed world, but for the Great Depression. In Germany, the views of the Nazis that were once considered outlandish paranoia were held by many as established fact. When the world was so unstable, it made sense that there must be some complex reason for why it was happening. It couldn't simply be due to simple human greed and arrogance; there had to be a more sinister motive - some kind of Jewish conspiracy. And if some sacrifices had to be made to re-establish order, then it was worth it.
As in Germany in the late Nineteenth century, in the years after the Wall Street Crash, this Anti-Semitic view became common in social circles across the developed world, including in the USA and Britain. Fascism was seen as a "necessary evil" to combat the threat of Communism, which seemed all the more possible after economic chaos of the Great Depression. Besides, it could be argued, not all Fascists were Anti-Semitic; Mussolini wasn't, for instance. These "apologists" argued that fascists were "good people with a few bad ideas", rather than the opposite. We all know how that ended for Europe's Jews.

Anti-Semitism in the Arab world, meanwhile, had long been a part of life, but on the whole the two communities had got on pretty well. The change of rulers in the Middle East, from the Muslim Ottoman dynasty to the Christian British and French "mandates" after the end of the First World War, had caused them to re-think their perspective, which led to the rise of the "Muslim Brotherhood" in Egypt and elsewhere. By the 1930s and the rise of Fascism in Germany as well as already in Italy, Muslim leaders in the Middle East were getting tired with Britain's perceived preferential treatment towards the Jews (regardless of the more complex reality), and began to fraternize with Fascists. This Anti-Semitic connection between Islamic Extremism and the politics of Fascism lives on to this day.


New neighbours, more problems

The end of World War Two began to see a different form of Anti-Semitism coalescing. The Second World War led to the defeat of Fascism in Germany and Italy (Spain's, with its own form of Fascism, lived on to the 1970s). The aftermath of the Second World War also resulted in the implosion of Britain's control over the Middle East, with Palestine's Arabs being evicted and the territory turned into Israel, the Jewish people's first homeland for two thousand years.
For the Arabs of the Middle East, the shock of the Jews being able to carve out a state from the Palestinians was comparable to that which Europe's elite felt with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The Second World War had destroyed the poison of Anti-Semitism in Europe (for a couple of generations, at least), but had inadvertently replanted it in the Middle East with the creation of Israel.

As Bolshevism had become a convenient Jewish "hate figure" in the developed world after the First World War, Israel became a convenient Jewish "hate figure" in the Middle East after the Second World War. This quickly became apparent with the rise to power of Colonel Nasser in Egypt in 1953. Coming to power as part of a cabal that had overthrown the pro-British (and thus, by implication, pro-Israel) King Faruk, Nasser quickly established his credentials with the Arab "street".
Israel's war of independence in 1948 was known simply as "the disaster" to the Arabs. Nasser quickly established himself as the moral leader of the Arab world, and sought to create a united Arab front against the Jewish homeland, by 1967 pushing for combined Arab war to "drive the Jews into the sea". The Six Day War of that year was an Israeli "preventative war" that quickly gathered its own momentum and exceeded their own wildest expectations in massively expanding their territory at their Arab neighbours' expense.
This second Arab humiliation, followed by the failure of the surprise Yom Kippur War of 1973, simply left a gaping hole in Arab self-esteem. The answer was Political Islam and Islamic extremism, which both grew in scope from the 1970s onward, turning the earlier Anti-Semitism of the likes of the "Muslim Brotherhood" into an even more dangerous sort of beast. Like with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Islamic Revolution in Iran was followed by other attempts at uprisings elsewhere: an attempt to take control of Mecca, and the assassination of Egypt's leader, Sadat, by a Muslim radical, due to his policy of peace towards Israel. Using Israel and its support from the "Great Satan", the USA, Arab leaders have sown the belief that world government is controlled from the Jewish homeland.

Since the founding of Israel, we have seen the politics of the Middle East become consumed by Anti-Semitism. Used as a cynical weapon by both secular and Muslim leaders alike, in the modern day, it has become a staple: a "self-evident fact" that doesn't even need to be supported by evidence.
It is the cynical "feeding the crocodile" of Anti-Semitism that has also led to the growth of extremism in the Middle East, and the "Nazis Of The Middle East", ISIS. But now that the genie has been let out of the bottle, no-one knows how to put it back. While they may finally be on the verge of defeat on the battlefield, in the battle of the mind, they are an ever-evolving and tenacious enemy.


"Re-branding" Anti-Semitism

In the USA, the onset of the Cold War quickly led to Anti-Semitic paranoia of Communist infiltration of the highest levels of society. Encouraged by Joseph McCarthy and supported by the head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover, its most infamous case was against the Rosenbergs. As it became an all-consuming obsession for the best part of a decade, it was only truly cauterised by the fall from grace of McCarthy himself and the gradual marginalisation of J Edgar Hoover, who still had an insidious influence on domestic affairs up until his death in 1972.

While the Anti-Semitic hysteria bound up with the "Red Threat" receded, and the USA eventually became a strong supporter of Israel, Anti-Semitism in the developed world, and in Europe in particular, began to be associated with anti-Imperialism. The Soviet Union had already took advantage of this, and struck out into the Middle East. While before the Second World War being linked with the "Jewish Conspiracy", by the 1950s it began to court the Arab powers' campaign against Israel.
Stalin himself had played a large part in gradually purging the Communist Party of its "Jewish" elements, the last act of this being the "Doctor's Plot" in the last years before his death in 1953. In this way, while Anti-Semitism had been an obsession of Fascism's up to the Second World War, after this it increasingly became one of the extreme left's, supported by the Soviet Union under the banner of "anti-Imperialism". This explains how the Anti-Semitism of the Arabs (supported by both secularist governments and Islamists) became to be so strongly associated with the European Leftism: the link was the Soviet Union. Again, this Anti-Semitic link between Arab nationalism, Islamic Radicalism, and radical Leftism, continues to this day; a legacy of the USSR.

We have seen that even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia still did what it could to maintain its influence in the Middle East, with the common thread of Anti-Semitism. Inside Russia itself, while some of the most powerful "oligarchs" are Jewish, others have been forced into exile if they have been able to escape prison. Since the rule of Russia under Putin, a culture of nativism, nationalism and crude Anti-Semitism has been encouraged, even if not officially endorsed. This explains why so many Russian Jews emigrated to Israel as soon as they could (and radicalising the make-up of Israeli society in the process).
Russia's influence in the Middle East, thanks to the common thread of Anti-Semitism, is now a given. Russia has courted the favour of Iran since the end of the Cold War, thanks to their "common enemy", the USA, and by extension, Israel. This influence in the Middle East has only grown since the Arab Spring; while the initial beneficiary of the "Arab Spring" looked to be Turkey, in the longer-run, this "Great Game Of The Middle East" has turned out better for Russia. While having little obvious historical heritage in the region, unlike Turkey, Russia has played its hand much more cleverly, being on the side of Iran and Syria, and understanding the fluid and fickle nature of the forces that brought about the "Arab Spring". Its Cold War ties served as a good enough bond of trust to its allies, who now look as if they have weathered the worst of the storm.

Coming Full Circle

The modern-day version of the "International Jewish Conspiracy" is meant to be that of the "Imperialist forces" arranged against Muslims, the forces supporting Israel and its "Capitalist stooges" in Washington and elsewhere. This also explains how the EU, in being seen as a supporter of Israel (however easily it is to qualify or debunk that assertion), is part of the conspiracy, and thus considered a legitimate (and "soft") target for Islamic extremists. In a different manner, this linking of Israel with the USA and the EU suits the agenda of Russia, in creating a false equivalence between the growing violence of Islamic extremism and the growth of decadent "Jewish" values in the West.

Those decadent "Jewish" values are what was mentioned earlier: that Jews were seen as "stateless", and "Godless" i.e. people of the world, and thus a threat to national cultures. For the obsession with Israel is only one side to this. In the same way that the Great Depression created the conditions necessary for Anti-Semitism to become prevalent in the developed world, the Financial Crisis helped to create the conditions for its revival in the those same, highly-developed societies. The only reason we didn't have a second Depression in 2008 was that the banks were bailed out. In the same way that a scapegoat was needed for the greed and arrogance that caused the Wall Street Crash, the same is true today. "Globalisation", and its agenda of internationalism, is now seen by the Anti-Semites as the same "Jewish Conspiracy" that was once used when talking about Bolshevism. A hundred years ago people talked darkly of the Federal Reserve; now they talk darkly of Goldman Sachs.

Populism's rhetorical link with Fascism stretches from over a hundred years ago to the present day: it has always been about "country" values versus "city" values, and this is where the link to Anti-Semitism comes in. The Jews were seen as stateless nomads who therefore would thrive in city life, and thus do their best to promote Capitalist values. In this way, returning to "traditional values" is as much about fleeing the "corruption" of the city and all that is "bourgeois". It is a flight from Industrialisation.
The rise in Anti-Semitism in today's society comes from the same re-emergence of "nativist" values in the West; a softening of the Fascist rhetoric of the past, but with the same cultural implications. Theresa May, Britain's Prime Minister, at her party's conference last year, decried "people of the world" who have no national allegiance, and thus are a threat to cultural values. This is the same kind of rhetoric that was used decades earlier against the Jews: it is "Fascism by other means". This is what Brexit represents: a modern reincarnation of nationalist values in Britain. It is for this reason why the strongly Eurosceptic elements of Britain's media lambasted the "EUSSR"; implying it was some kind of quasi-Communist plot, seeing it (like Russia) as a "decadent" organisation that was somehow against "national values". While in Britain and the USA the rhetoric is often more Islamophobic in nature that Anti-Semitic, that simply depends on who you are talking to.
The Anti-Semitism that exists in the developed world today, in an evolution of the term, is often meant by its advocates in an "ironic" sense, so they claim. In this way, the Anti-Semitism of the far-right - with its roots in Fascism - has "plausible deniability", in spite of its earnest hatefulness; meanwhile the Anti-Semitism of the far-left - with its roots in Anti-Imperialism - can be excused as "over-exuberance" coming from a well-meaning intent.  

This is what Britain, the USA, Russia and Turkey all have in common in a different kind of way: their leaders are in hock to the same forces of discord, feeding the same crocodile.

The nature of power: from Feudalism to 21st century Capitalism

The word "feudalism" evokes images of slavery: medieval serfdom, peasants bound to serve a class of landed gentry. By definition, feudalism was a form of slavery. In the modern world, "feudalism" is considered as dead as the age of knights that is associated with it. But perceptions can be misleading.

Feudalism was mainly concerned with two things: property, and freedom of movement. As land was considered property, so were the people who tilled the land of the person who owned the land. These "serfs", or slaves in other words, were bound to the landowner, and any attempts by serfs to flee their fate could be punishable by death.

The first part of the world that began to change this system was Europe, with the growth of the professional merchant class, skilled professions that allowed individuals freedom of property, movement and so on. The Republic Of Venice was an early medieval example of this. Gradually, more and more European states moved in this direction: the last major European power to formally abolish serfdom was the Russian Empire in the middle of the nineteenth century; over in North America around the same time, the southern states of the USA fought for secession from the USA in order to continue their own form of serfdom on African slaves and their descendants. They lost.

A land of milk and honey?

Karl Marx famously wrote about the path of feudalism to Capitalism, in the end equating the "satanic mills" to a form of "industrialised serfdom".

Industrialisation brought a transformation of society to those it affected. The serfdom of the land was transformed into the subservience to the factory. Proponents of Capitalism would argue that this was an inevitable stage of the process of mankind's advancement, and unless people wish to live in tree-houses and tilling the fields in an agrarian commune, this logic is hard to refute.

In a more basic way, feudalism was about power, who controlled what, and how. And this is where the argument for feudalism's death becomes more complicated.

In the 21st century, in 2014, who holds power, and how? In a great many cases, the way that nation-states are ran is really not so very different from five hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago, or more. Certainly, technology has changed life in many ways beyond recognition, but human nature is unchanged, and the nature of power is fundamentally unchanged also. This is a point that Jonathon Swift explained very well in the last part of his famous novel, "Gulliver's Travels", all the way back in the early 18th century. The TV series "Game Of Thrones" is famous across the world, but one of the main reasons is that human nature and the use of power is represented by the characters in a very accessible way for the viewer. In other words, medieval politics and power are fundamentally no different from the modern-day.

A handful of examples can easily express the point.

The UK is held up as an exemplar for the rest of the world to follow. As the mother of modern democracy (apologies, Greece...), the rule of law, and a sensible balance of power, an education system that is the envy of the world, and so on. And yet, this "exemplar" is one of the most feudalistic modern states in the developed world.
While the UK has no "serfs", its "citizens" are still legally subjects to the crown. The UK has no constitution. The British crown is one of the biggest landowners in the world. While the British royal family may well seem harmless enough, one half of the electoral system (The House Of Lords) still consists of individuals who are either from centuries-old landed gentry (i.e. landowners), or are there by the favour of a bygone government. The House Of Lords has few contemporaries in the developed world as a temple for feudal values. The British establishment also propagates itself through the UK's education system, which is one of the best methods in the developed world for maintaining the untouchable position of Britain's peculiarly-modern form of feudalism. This system has done wonders for preserving the elite, while the lot of the average Briton has suffered, especially since the financial crisis. Needless to say, like any feudalistic institutions, this system isn't even very efficient; it is simply is very good at doing the best for those in positions of power.

Aside from the UK, many of the most developed countries in Europe are still monarchies: in Scandinavia, Sweden, Denmark and Norway; the Low Countries are all monarchies; as is Spain. Yes, they are "constitutional monarchies", but while the power they wield is only theoretical, it tells us more about the psychology of the people themselves: they like having a monarch. The interesting question is "why?", and this tells us that while many people in the modern world are far more educated (and the world they live in technologically-advanced) they still want to believe in fairy tales.

Modern-day feudalism?

Crossing the pond, many political commentators like comparing the modern-day USA to the Roman Empire of the past. The "Land Of The Free". Few objective economists would argue that the USA is the most unequal nation-state in the developed world, and that is a result of the way it is managed. While health care is considered a human right in the rest of the developed world, in the USA it is considered something you can only have if you can afford it. While Obama's controversial health care reform has claimed to have helped (a little), any objective observer would look at the private health care system as a grossly-inefficient and amoral answer to the world superpower's health problems.

But the American model of running the country was never meant to be "fair": it was meant to be "laissez-faire". Ayn Rand was the most famous proponent of modern-day neoliberalism, which idolised the gains of the rich as a way to motivate the poor. The rich in the USA, in the last thirty years have reached a level of wealth so far from that of the average person that they may as well be considered aristocracy in their own right. No-one in the know seriously doubts that the elite of America are the ones who decide how the game of power is played every four years for the White House. The Koch brothers, who funded the "Tea Party", are simply the newest (and most polarising) set of characters on the scene.
While the USA rid itself of legal slavery, it advocated an economic model that created a new riddle: a slave may be fed and housed, but has no freedom; a freed slave has freedom, but no house nor food to eat. Since the the USA became an imperial power at the turn of the 20th century, it has been exporting this riddle across the world, spreading its own "riddle of freedom".

The USA's "riddle of freedom" was taken in by the UK under the tutelage of Margeret Thatcher, which is these days known as the "Anglo-Saxon Model" by some, and has been implemented ruthlessly by the Conservative government since 2010 under the excuse that "there is no alternative"(!). Since 1979, the UK has been ran like a multinational company, if symbolically headed by a feudalistic establishment: the asset-stripping mentality has turned the UK into a vulture market even for foreign governments.

Since 2008, in the Euro-zone, it's "Club Med" that are being treated to a similar kind of treatment. As Germany holds the purse-strings, it has the right to dictate the economic affairs of Southern Europe. It has already toppled governments in Greece and Italy to do so. While in the latter case, the sitting premier (Silvio Berlusconi) was hardly going to be missed by most Italians, it is hard to deny that the European Union itself is an unaccountable bureaucratic behemoth (not unlike empires of old) that seems to grow with ambition year-on-year. The EU's ambition has been laid bare with its efforts to bring Ukraine into the fold.

At the end of the Cold War, the "Anglo-Saxon Model" was exported to Russia and the former Communist bloc.
Some commentators have described Putin's Russia as a "modern feudal state", or worse. But in reality it was always likely that once the Soviet Union was gone, Russians would revert back to their old way of thinking. Modern Russia and the battle for who controlled the Kremlin in the 1990s became another version of the "Game Of Thrones" seen on TV. Putin was simply in the right place at the right time, and was the most effective player of that oldest of games: power. "Capitalism" in Russia simply became a battle for who controlled the most property, and who controlled the most had the most leverage (or so he hoped). The Kremlin is run as the supreme "court" that it has been for centuries, ruling the largest realm in the globe. Technology is just a detail; all freedom is relative.

A number of other post-Soviet states are also ran as "modern feudal states" in the same manner, with ruling families or oligarchies; come to think of it, almost all the the Middle East is run in such a manner. Given the blessing of oil, and what does an emir need to keep power over his modern-day feudal state than sprinkling a little of his wealth around? Give enough of the population enough money to afford an "iPad" or an off-road vehicle for the desert, and what would any person care about "democracy"? China is living proof of that logic, and both it and Russia are the two biggest countries in the world, by population and area respectively. The USA's dominance looks transient compared to the many centuries that these two states have thrived.

The third world (e.g. most of Africa) is hopelessly corrupt, inefficient and sunk deep in poverty. Investment by aid charities will not change that. Some say you get the government you deserve. But you cannot change human nature, and for all the technological advances made since the time of "real" feudalism, some people still want to live in a "real" feudal society (with "wifi", of course!). The establishment of a trans-national "caliphate" in the heart of the Middle East by the Islamic extremists of ISIS (regardless of how long it lasts) is a very definitive endorsement of that view. Feudalism and power struggles will be around in one form or another as long as people have a feudal mentality.

And that doesn't look like it will disappear very soon.

UK PLC: How Britain is ran like a corporation

Back in October the latest "success story" that the UK government declared was that a new generation of nuclear power station would be built at Hinkley point in Somerset, ran by the French energy giant EDF with Chinese support.
Around that time I mentioned that this event was simply another in a long line of government actions that are meant to improve Britain's fortunes, but achieve the opposite.

There is a tendency in Britain for foreign companies to run essential services and national assets, more than in any other comparable Western developed country.

The term "UK PLC" became widely-used during the Blair years, when the government was looking for a way to turn "Cool Britannia" into a brand that they could advertise the UK to foreign investment. Britain was marketed as "a good place to do business". Laws were loosened so that foreign companies could have a greater and greater role in The UK.
The spate of privatisation of government assets from the eighties onwards has led to segments of the energy industry and other utilities being owned by foreign companies (in the case of EDF, a government-owned foreign company).
When the transport network was sold off, buses and trains were sold off to whichever company offered the lowest price, regardless of if this meant effectively selling national assets to foreign governments. This was the case with companies such as "Arriva" (owned by Deutsche Bahn); the Dutch national rail carrier also owns rail stock in East Anglia and Merseyside.

I made these points in my earlier article on the subject, so don't want to repeat myself. The main observation to note here is that the actions of the British government, and even more the actions of the current Conservative-led government, are the same as those seen in the boardrooms of multinational companies.

Working in the "national interest"

The key here is how government ministers define "national interest". To the electorate, the "national interest" is would be what is in the electorate's best interest. To the government, the "national interest" is what will create the most money for the government. They are not the same things.

To understand how "UK PLC" works in reality it's easier to have a thought experiment and to imagine the British government as "a corporation that happens to operate within a national border", or a wannabe multinational company.
Like all multinationals, it has shareholders and employees. Who are they?

Its shareholders are the ones that really matter, because this is they who UK PLC's revenue is aimed at. The shareholders are the private businesses that have invested money into the UK, for it is they who really generate the income for the British government (as far as they see it). Therefore, the more future investment the government can generate, the more UK PLC's "shareholders" (private companies) will be willing to invest further in The UK. The happier the "shareholders" (i.e. investors) are, the better the fortunes of the British government. The "shareholders" want to make sure that their investment is a sound one; otherwise, they will sell their shares and go elsewhere.
In this description, it may not sound a lot different from a Ponzi scheme.

UK PLC's "employees" are its electorate. Multinationals are not renowned for treating their employees well; almost all of them seek the cheapest workforce possible. UK PLC, like other multinational companies, doesn't care where its employees come from. Limited by the resource of land, UK PLC's workforce is still constrained within the territory it contains, so therefore over-population would bring disadvantages to UK PLC over time. But apart from the long-term threat of over-population, it is to UK PLC's advantage to have a workforce that is composed of immigrants from poorer countries, in order to help limit wage demands and keep down overheads.
Of course, there will be some employees that are also shareholders, as in any multinational. But this is incidental. The main point here is that, like employees working for any multinational, those at UK PLC are expendable, and can be easily replaced. Fundamentally, they have no rights of their own, and UK PLC owes them no loyalty.

Why UK PLC loves Europe

Seen through this lens, a lot of what happens in the UK today makes much more sense. The rise of UKIP in recent times has been a result of the (correct) perception that the mass influx of East Europeans to The UK has brought about a labour crisis for some parts of the "native" population.
The government has blamed the freedom of movement around the EU for this, which is accurate, but fails to mention that it is also part of the government's intention. Much of UK PLC's "shareholders" (British and foreign investors) are strongly pro-EU because it helps them to lower wages by using workers from elsewhere in the EU (from Southern Europe as well as Eastern Europe).
At the same time, however, British people are far less likely to have linguistic ability compared to foreigners. Lulled into a false sense of security by the government, the electorate were led to believe that their economic stability would last forever because English is "the world's language". Now the UK government blames their own electorate for not taking advantage of the EU's freedom of labour mobility by not bothering to learn foreign languages.

It is not surprising that some people are left feeling "betrayed" by their own government.

The future of Britain looks more and more like that of a multinational company looking for new ways to find foreign investment and "partnerships". David Cameron's recent work with China demonstrates that is really what he sees The UK as. Rather than invest in "native" resources, it is cheaper and easier to ask foreign companies to do the work. This explains why an ever larger part of Britain's assets and services are being offered to foreign companies: because they are cheaper.
Rather than invest in Britain's assets and make them more efficient (which would be a longer-term project, but obviously better for the native workforce), it is easier and faster to simply hand them over to foreigners; like how multinationals "out-source" their services because it's cheaper.

In this way, the government has little real sense of loyalty to its own electorate: they are just "employees", and can be easily replaced with others who are more suitable to their needs.

It is the multinational cartels that are calling many of the shots because it is they who are the real "shareholders" in UK PLC, and other governments like it. UK PLC is far from alone in this regard; much of 21st century government across the world runs on the same principle.

Why Cartels run most of the world

I wrote previously about how "government service agencies" like Serco run many aspects of government service provision in The UK and elsewhere. But it is only when you take a step back and look at different aspects of how the world works, that you realise that much of the world is effectively ran by various types of cartels.

Cartels are most famous in crime, such as the drugs cartels that exist in Columbia, and more recently in Mexico.

But they exist in almost every major aspect of the private sector; drugs is simply a more infamous example.

An article here provides a chart that explains how ten (multinational) companies produce almost everything that we buy.

Pharmaceuticals are produced by a small number (i.e cartel) of "Big Pharma" companies, the results of which have been examined in a book of the same name.

"Big Oil" has become amalgamated into an ever decreasing number of mega-corporations: ExxonMobil (as the result of a merger in the late nineties), BP, Chevron, Conoco Phillips and Shell are the main ones in the West. The mergers that happened in the nineties and earlier were partially a result of the entrenchment of nationalised oil companies that previously were in the clutches of Western multinationals. Since that time, Western oil companies have entrenched themselves by expanding into previously uncharted territory; exploring shale gas and oil sands due to advances in technology.
Before the oil crisis of the early seventies, the so called "Seven Sisters" produced the vast majority of the world's oil. The advances of "Big Oil" into new forms of oil and gas exploration are also a result of the rise of the "New Seven Sisters", which are effectively nationalised industries of various developing and non-Western nations. In other words, while in the West oil is concentrated into the hands of a handful of private corporations, in the "East", it is consolidated into the hands of government through government-ran oil companies.
And over all this is OPEC, which itself is a cartel (or oligarchy) of nations that has huge influence over the price of oil.

Technology is another area dominated by a small number of companies. Computer software is dominated by Microsoft and Apple. Other domestic technology (TVs, stereos) is dominated by Far Eastern companies; "White Goods", to a lesser extent also.

Multinationals are everywhere. A telling story is when the former head of ExxonMobil in the nineties quickly put down another colleague for calling them an "American" company. ExxonMobil wasn't an "American" company as far as the CEO was concerned; it was a global one , and as such, owed no loyalty to any one nation.

The nature of the market

But the creation of an oligarchy/cartel is even more frighteningly evident in finance. In the Victorian era, there were hundreds of banks across every major developed nation in the world. The USA and The UK are the best examples of this. But since that time, and from every major economic downturn or depression, banks have either gone under or been bought out.
Each time this has happened, the power to control finance has fell into a smaller and smaller number of private banks; so that by the time of financial crisis of 2008, there are only a bare handful of banks that control much of the world's finance, Goldman Sachs being perhaps the biggest. BearStearns' sale to JP MorganChase in March 2008 was the precursor to the panic following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September. Following from this, other banks merged to consolidate assets, and the creation of the concept of them being "too big to fail", necessitating the infamous bailout out of the public purse.

The acceptance of the "too big to fail" cartel (TBTF) effectively legitimized the concept of "Corporate Socialism": one rule for the rich, another for the poor. It meant that national governments effectively accepted control of the world economy was no longer in their hands, but in that of the cartel of international investment banks.

In the five years since that event, the cartels of finance, of oil, and of foodstuffs have presided over a collapse of living standards in the West, especially in the economies of Southern Europe, and parts of The USA and The UK. Costs of living have increased year after year, while governments freeze wages and spending in order to repair the damage done by the banks from the financial crisis.

Cartels are the enemy of freedom; they are as dangerous now as they were when the ancient Greeks talked of an "oligarchy" in the time of Plato and Socrates. But cartels are a natural result of neo-liberal economics. While Ayn Rand and the Chicago School of economics argued that free market Capitalism would naturally result in more choice for the consumer and therefore lower prices, the result has been the opposite in the long-run.
In the dog-eat-dog world of free market liberalism, when applied on a global scale (creating "Globalisation") the result is that this creates larger and larger companies that literally eat up their rivals (through mergers), while killing off the competition. Because small companies cannot possibly hope to compete fairly in such an environment, the result is a lack of choice for the consumer, or price-fixing. The Libor rate scandal in the financial industry, the role of OPEC in the oil industry, and the various tariffs and subsidies set up against the interests of the developing world, are a testament to that.

Only a handful of huge companies can most efficiently operate as pan-national entities in order to find the cheapest methods of production for the greatest profit. This therefore has the effect of depressing wages overall, while increasing the share value of the companies themselves, and massively boosting the incomes of the fractional percentile at the top. This may sound quite a lot like Marxist theory, but it is the reality today.

In this way, cartels are a natural result of free market Capitalism. When applied on a global scale, you simply get a global cartel, independent of government control: independent of accountability, and in control of the global supply chain. 

How to blackmail the government

The history of the last hundred years or so has seen a gradual breaking down of the power of the nation-state, and a transfer of power to ever-larger multinational cartels of private companies. In effect, this is a transfer of accountability from governments ultimately accountable to their electorate, to private companies only accountable to their shareholders.
Because modern-day multinationals are trans-national entities, laws from individual governments hold less and less authority. In the end, the multinational can always up sticks and transfer operations to nation with a more amenable government; this is how globalisation works.

In this way, "government" in the 21st century has become less and less relevant to everyday life, as private multinationals (often working as part of an informal cartel or oligarchy) dictate much of what happens. Governments have become beholden to the interests of "big business" because they hold fewer and fewer means to hold these private oligarchies to account. In the end, a powerful private corporation can always threaten a dissatisfied government with economic blackmail: "what are you going to do if we leave the country?", the multinational can say. "Where will you get your revenue and jobs from?".

This is what happens around the world, and has happened as recently as the financial crisis when then banks were asking for help from government. In the end, such as in The UK, there was always the threat to take their business elsewhere. After the financial sector had encouraged the political class to think that manufacturing and traditional industries were secondary compared to finance in the modern world, they made The UK government their "bitch": with the financial sector the main thing propping up The UK, there is little else left to keep the country running - it runs mainly on deluded self-confidence, and reliance on the wisdom (and mercy) of the financial oligarchy.

This is how the world works in the 21st century: governments worldwide effectively blackmailed by a group of differing cartels, whose only loyalty is to themselves and the increase in their share price.

Psychopathy, Capitalism and evolution: the triumph of the hunter instinct

I've written before about the main aspects of psychopathy, and its effects on the human condition. As a psychological syndrome, psychopathy occurs due to a combination of hereditary and environmental factors, and affects a small percentage of the population.

These are the bare facts, but a more exact calculation of the extent of psychopathy in the general population is near impossible, so even these facts are disputable. The vast majority of known (i.e. medically diagnosed) psychopaths are convicted criminals, since diagnosis usually only possible after a person has been convicted of a crime, and shows some signs of psychopathic "behaviour". As no "self-aware" but formally non-diagnosed psychopath would ever voluntary submit himself to clinical testing, this is what makes it so difficult to measure psychopathy's extent across humanity.
Not only is there the problem of "psychopaths in hiding"; there is also the problem that many psychopaths are able to successfully mask their "true nature" from the rest of society. Furthermore, psychopathy is tested by a scale -  the generally-used "Hare Checklist" is the most reliable method to date; it is more a question to what extent a person is psychopathic, not whether they are or are not.

Hunters versus farmers

In this way, psychopathy has probably existed in humanity since at least prehistoric times. Psychopaths are humanity's "predators", so were therefore likely to have prospered in the nomadic hunter-gatherer societies that existed before farming and agriculture brought about settlements and "civilisation" in the formal sense  - city life. Not only that, but psychopaths are by nature somewhat restless and always looking for new challenges, so would have felt at home in the "adventure" of nomadic hunter-gatherer society.

Thinking back to a concrete example, the wars between the ancient Germanic tribes and the Roman Empire can be called "clash of civilisations" - albeit, where Rome was a city-dwelling civilisation, and the ancient Germans were more faithful to the "hunter-gatherer" society that more closely aligns with the traits of a psychopath. The tribe of Atilla the Hun also fit into the nomad, hunter-gatherer society, as did the migrating Turkic tribes just over a thousand years ago, and most famously, that of Genghis Khan and his Mongol successors. For the Huns, the Turks and the Mongols, the horse was an integral part of their society, symbolising their nomadic instincts, even if their cultures became integrated into those absorbed into their larger empires. The rituals of the hunt and the ethic of total warfare (that the Mongols were most famous for) was what made these three tribes equally feared and respected by their more "civilised" rivals. Before the "Pax Americana" of the modern day, its closest equivalent of a "world empire" was the "Pax Mongolica", which spread across most of Eurasia like a human plague, decimating any populations that resisted.
But for all its seemingly-barbaric (psychopathic?) flaws, the "Pax Mongolica" was an extremely efficient political structure; in ways that a modern-day multinational company would probably recognise. In spite of its enormous scope, communications across the Eurasian landmass became more efficient than they had ever been until the modern era. Peace and trade flourished within the empire itself. The "empire" was divided up into spheres of influence, and ruled accordingly, in much the same way that a modern multinational has regional branches. In other words, the "Pax Mongolica" was brutally-efficient: it was unflinchingly brutal when it was necessary to be; but it was also very efficient at leadership and organisation.

The psychopath as Capitalist predator

The (psychopathic) example of the "Pax Mongolica" is a demonstration of medieval power politics. But the success of the "hunter-gatherer" model of the Mongols was unusual compared to most other medieval societies, which were almost always ruled as agriculture-based societies ruled through a system of serfdom; a poor environment for psychopaths. Unless a psychopath found a niche to use his talents or a way to gain access to power (e.g. through military glory or ecclesiastical advancement), he was doomed to a (short) life of frustration. Most medieval societies tended to be socially and economically static, where movement (and therefore trade and socio-economic independence and entrepreneurial thought) was very difficult.
These deeply fixed and hierarchical societies were socially-geared to suppress the environmental factors that are understood to encourage psychopathy today. Instead, those at the apex of the social hierarchy may well have tended more towards aspects of psychopathic behaviour than otherwise due to its dysfunctional and self-enclosed nature. A modern-day comparison would be the regime of North Korea.

Capitalism in its rudimentary form began to flourish in the mercantile empire of Venice, which reached its zenith at around the same time as the Mongols. What Capitalism shares with the mentality of the hunter-gatherer is the instinct for self-advancement and self-preservation, and a natural curiosity for the next challenge or opportunity. Both Capitalism and the hunter-gather society are inherently anarchic, and reward behaviour that would elsewhere be seen as cold-blooded and selfish, which fits the psychology of the psychopath. The brutal efficiency of the Mongol Empire also had the upside that it served as a conduit for Far Eastern innovations and trade to Europe, and vice versa. So the Capitalist embryo that was formed from the likes of the mercantile Venetian Republic, also provided the ideal environment for psychopaths to flourish. 

I've spoken before about the links between psychopathy and the mindset of Capitalism. But it is also evident that many of the aspects of the renaissance were at least an indirect result of factors such as trade, exchanging ideas, and independent thought and creativity. And psychopaths in such a social situation are hard-wired to excel, having all the natural attributes necessary. In other words, while in hunter-gatherer societies, psychopaths would become the natural leaders, in proto-Capitalist societies like the Venetian Republic and its neighbours, psychopaths would have the natural attributes to become the most successful entrepreneurs and merchants. In other words, Capitalism replaced the function of hunting in human society, allowing psychopaths to successfully adapt to the situation.

As psychopaths are hard-wired with all the attributes that are an advantage in hunting and war-like societies, this also gives them some added social attributes in regard to the opposite sex. Psychopathy may be considered more of a genetic aberration, but natural selection and the role in society of the hunter-Capitalist (predator) therefore makes psychopathy more likely to spread over generations. This explains the potentially massive under-measuring of the true scale of the psychopathic condition in society. It also explains a lot about why globalisation works the way it does.

When people talk about "Social Darwinism", the reality is that this model of Capitalism as envisaged by modern-day Neo-liberals is ideally-suited for psychopaths. In an almost literal dog-eat-dog society, because psychopaths are amoral, sexually-promiscuous, adaptable, self-confident and guiltless, they are capable of almost anything; unfortunately, this also means whenever psychopaths gain positions of power, the result is chaos for everyone else.

Then again, there are some cultures for which psychopathy becomes almost a prerequisite for survival.

Zero-hours contracts and employee rights: Why the Coalition's dishonest austerity strategy is working

I wrote an article the other week about how a government's self-confidence can easily fool the electorate that its strategy is working, regardless of the facts.

An article by Owen Jones in "The Independent" reiterates the point I mentioned: that it's difficult for an opposition to have a coherent strategy when the government's strategy is about having a simple, dishonest and distracting message, and repeating it again and again. As Owen Jones says, the government's devastating and disorienting line against the opposition is:

"We’re clearing up Labour’s mess. Labour overspent and now we’re balancing the books. A national deficit is like a household budget. Welfare is out of control and lining the pockets of the skivers. The unemployed person or immigrant down the road is living off your hard-earned taxes. Labour is in the pocket of union barons".

This is politics at its most cynical and divisive, not to mention dishonest. The reality of the Coalition's strategy is very different, as Seamas Milne says here. Austerity Britain is really about:

"payday loans, food banks, the bedroom tax, G4S and... zero-hours contracts"

This is all part of the government's plan. The Conservatives' plan is nothing less than a revolution by stealth; to undo the social progress that was made through the "postwar consensus", and a final completion of the Thatcherite (Neo-liberal) economic vision. It is a vision of hell for many employees.

The systematic erosion of employee rights is part and parcel of that. Anecdotes about the reality of zero-hour contracts abound: about how it is creating a growing workforce of virtual slaves, on top of the culture of internships that has proliferated.
The Tories claim that unemployment is going down and that the economy is improving. Even if this claim was taken at face value, there is a very simple reason why that might be true: because employers are offering jobs at far worse conditions than before, and with the ever-increasing cost of living, the unemployed have little choice. This is especially true of young people. So employers are able to "create" four jobs on zero-hours contracts, for example, where one "real" job would have existed before. This is the basis of Britain's so-called "recovery". So companies are improving their books by creating a new type of working regime.

The article about zero-hours contracts also describes the type of working regime. It has been said that private companies operate like dictatorships; it is government regulation that forces them to abide by humane and fair working conditions, otherwise it is a matter of the employer's whim. With the Conservatives intent on throwing those "restrictive" regulations out of the window, it is clear that employees working on zero-hours contracts are working in companies that operate like miniature Fascist dictatorships: where an employee's hours from one week to the next depend on currying favour with the boss, and a wrong word can get your hours and pay reduced to zero (while still being "employed"), until you are back in the boss' good books. Employees therefore need to compete with each other to get the most hours, while the employer treats his employees like serfs.The employee's contract bans him from finding other part-time work elsewhere to boost his earnings, so the only option he has is unemployment (and then having to explain to the job centre why he voluntarily gave up work).

Lack of control is the key to fear. In "Austerity Britain", the rise of unpaid internships and the instability offered by zero-hours contracts are symbols of the government's attack on employees' rights. While the economy might be technically "improving", the figures say nothing about how the "recovery" is made possible: by destroying employees' rights. As always, when those at the top screw up, it's those at the bottom that take the hit. This is what can also be called "Corporate Socialism".

The financial crisis was seen by Neo-liberal supporters as a failure of government interference, rather than the true corruption of the market system created by globalisation, that gathers control in markets into huge cartels of multinationals, unaccountable to government. As this system creates a cartelisation of the world market on a macro level, it creates an incentive to make labour markets more and more flexible, and more and more uncertainty for employees. And creating uncertainty is the key to power.

The financial crisis therefore serves two useful purposes: as a way to instill fear and uncertainty (i.e. compliance) into the workforce; and as an opportunity to erode employee's rights.

The Neo-liberal model that the Coalition supports therefore has used the financial crisis as an opportunity to further extend the Neo-liberal "revolution". While the British economy may make some small recovery on paper, this hides the truth that the UK economy is massively weighted in favour of the financial and service sector in the South-east of England, as I've said before. The neo-liberal model is naturally weighted against all other parts of the country, as the various regional economies have never been able to fully adapt after the collapse of Empire fifty years ago. Parts of the north resemble parts of the former Soviet Union because some towns and cities (like in the USSR) specialised in one industry.

So while those responsible for the financial crisis - the corrupt financial institutions who created a credit time-bomb - remain unpunished, they pass the debt burden onto the taxpayer (via the government), who is then told that in this new regime, government cannot afford to do what it did before, and that employees must accept increasingly serf-like working conditions (that financially benefit those responsible for the financial crisis). 

But this is ignored by many. As long as capitalism provides new forms of technology to pass the time between the destruction of their human rights, who cares? 

Globalisation, neo-liberalism and Fascism

Last year I wrote an article describing the links between neo-liberalism and the creed of Fascism. More recently, I wrote about the ideological links between Fascism and Political Islam.

What is Fascism? Apart from its ideological beliefs, it is, primarily, an economic system. Its economic aim is to consolidate economic and political power into the hands of an unaccountable elite of private interests, who use the government as an instrument for their aims. This also involves the erosion of employee rights, and the destruction of union power. This is then enforced through a total control over the use of force and psychological control over any opponents, by the use of state authority (e.g. police and the manipulation of the law) when necessary, or by covert surveillance and political marginalisation.

I explained last month about how authoritarianism has morphed over time. Before the Second World War, those on the political left decried authoritarians as Fascists, while those on the right decried the authoritarianism of Communism. But what is more telling is the definition that the left and right give for Fascism. When the right decry Fascism, they talk about total state control of the economy and the population; when the left decry Fascism, they talk about a corrupt elite taking control of the state and the population.
While those on the right decry Fascism when it means the private sector loses control of the economy and influence over the state, those of the left decry Fascism when democratic accountability is lost in the running of the state and the economy.
The reality is that it is the left's definition of Fascism that is much closer to the truth; the right's historical "fear of Fascism" was simply anger at losing their position of primacy.

From Fascism to Neo-liberalism

After the Second World War, economic Fascism in the developed world learned to adapt. While the USA defeated Fascism in Europe, it emerged as the world's military and economic superpower, challenged only by the Soviet Union.
The end of the Second World War saw the USA draw up the rules for the world to follow. With the other Allies financially crippled and dependent on American loans, there was no other option. The main financial institutions that run the world's economy are all children of this post-war economic settlement drawn up by the USA: these include the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO's predecessor, the GATT.

The main purpose of these changes was to free up the world market to reduce tariffs between states, making international trade much easier, and to help the economies of the Third World through the use of loans to restructure their economies better.
These aims are euphemisms for the destruction of the "old order": where Imperial and wannabe-Imperial powers (such as the British Empire, in the first case, and Nazi Germany, in the second) were rendered obsolete by a neo-liberal system that allowed the first stage of the process towards what is now called Globalisation. In other words, nation-states would become vehicles of world prosperity; which would massively benefit big business. The old system of protective tariffs that was favoured by the old Imperial Powers was over; as would be the old idea of Colonialism.
The breaking of tariffs most benefitted companies that were eager to expand their operations abroad, so it was no surprise that big business was pro-American in its stance on free trade. The same was true with big business' attitude to old-style Colonialism; much better for big business that Africa (for example) was a mish-mash of unconnected and squabbling countries rather than belong to just a few Imperial Powers, as it made it easier for multi-national companies to deal with them. And when this occurred, it meant that post-Colonial Africa (and elsewhere) became a living laboratory for this new form of economic Fascism; when entire nation-states were dependant on the whim of a multi-national CEO, or the IMF.
Colonialism by a number of nation-states became replaced by multi-national economic Fascism.

So while there was a "post-war consensus" in much of the developed world that ostensibly caused a temporary reduction in the amount of control big business had over industries and state services, the first steps towards Globalisation as we understand it today were started after the Second World War in the post-Colonial world

The ideological basis for this "neo-liberal" system received a boost with the tract "The Virtue Of Selfishness" by Ayn Rand, and her philosophy called Objectivism. She, and the "Chicago School" economist Milton Friedman, were largely responsible for the creation of Monetarism, which was a huge advocate of free markets, low taxation and the erosion of state intervention. This also included a scepticism towards employee rights and unions, which they both believed were responsible for the ills in the economy. More generally, they were passionate advocates of individualism and against all forms of "collectivism" (such as socialised medicine).
They were both contemporaries who reached the height of their fame in the post-war era in the USA, but their ideas became more commonplace by the sixties and seventies, especially in the Anglosphere. Both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were fans of Rand and Monetarism, as were big business. So when these two came to power, "neo-liberalism" was free to be put into practice as never before.

A Neo-liberal world

The past thirty years has seen an unprecedented leap in the gap between rich and poor across the world. This is a direct consequence of the economics of Neo-liberalism. While the average person in the developed world may feel "rich" due to advances in technology, the reality is that across the developed world people are poorer in real terms that they were thirty years ago.
Having an iPhone doesn't make you "rich"; being able to use Facebook doesn't mean you are "free". These concepts are all absolutes that can be measured to compared to what existed previously. The fact that you have an iPhone, and can use Facebook, but have a job that is an internship and cannot afford to buy your own house, tells you that you are poor in absolute terms. If you cannot save money each month, it means you are poor. If you barely have enough money to pay bills, it means you are poor.

Consumerism and advances in technology help feed the illusion that this "neo-liberal" model brings prosperity to everyone, when the opposite is true: Neo-liberalism concentrates power and influence into the hands of fewer and fewer people, none of whom are accountable to the public. I wrote in my article "Neo-liberalism is the new Fascism" that the financial crisis was a direct result of this economic system: a system where the rules are written by those who have the most to gain from it. Politicians around the world have bought into this system either because they have a personal interest in it, or are too intimidated by the alternative (the withdrawal of multi-national's investment) that they go along with it. In other words, the political establishment is tied to whim of this private sector elite.

In this way, "Neo-liberalism" is the extension of the idea of economic Fascism because it transfers effective government power to a private sector elite who are unaccountable to the public. Privatisation of former state services is a key method of neutering the role of the government in the economy, and transferring it to the private sector; meanwhile, the private sector act as economic vampires on the government, by ensuring that while all profits of privatised industries go to the private sector, any losses are picked up by the government. In the UK, PFI is ran using this model, as are the railways and other privatised industries: it is the economics of Fascism down to a tee.
This ensures that the government becomes more and more loaded with private sector debt, and then encourages the government that the only way to lessen the debt is to either privatise either more services, reduce state spending on the population, or increase taxes on the poor, thus continuing the vicious circle of corruption. It is the perfect formula to binding a government to Fascism. 

The growth of China as a world power and economy grew precisely when, thirty years ago, the leadership decided to buy into the "neo-liberal" model: foreign investment poured in, and the country grew rich. But again, China is successful because it has found a way for "neo-liberalism" to work for them. It is a one-party neo-liberal state, ideal for the purpose.

In the West, "neo-liberalism" has become the only accepted form of economic system; all others are open to ridicule, and dismissed by the political establishment. Neo-liberalism, as a refined form of Fascism, also learned to adapt to a world where freedom of expression cannot be so easily silenced. Therefore, freedom of expression is accepted (at least publicly), but is only indulged for the sake of maintaining democratic legitimacy. You are free to say what you like, as long as those thoughts and words are not put into actions (such as protest). When they are, people find the tools of state power will rapidly fall against them. Any kind of change that the government makes against its own interests, it may accept a small concession simply for the sake of its public image and longer-term survival.

Yet even this "indulgence" of free speech is relative, as people are finding out. The "War On Terror" was used as way to criminalise words that could be interpreted as inciting hatred or violence; in some parts of the world, government criticism can be called illegal by citing any number of obscure laws. In Turkey, as a result of the crackdown after the Gezi park protests, people can be arrested for simply standing still.
Political Islam is simply another branch of the same Fascist tendency, as I wrote earlier this month. The AKP in Turkey is more pro-Capitalist than its secular rivals; again, buying into the "neo-liberal" model for its own purposes, while many of the governing party's leading lights have favourable links to Turkey's "new rich".

These days, it appears that Globalisation has brought the world together as never before. But it's also true that Globalisation has allowed the world to be parcelled-off into spheres of influence, in ways that even former Imperial Powers couldn't quite manage.

Like in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-four", there are a number of spheres of influence that effectively carve up the world, which are in turn effectively controlled by unaccountable elites. Annually, many of these figures meet at the "Bilderberg conference", which has been going on since 1954 (two-thirds of whom are from business, and one-third from government). While those who attend publicly state that what occurs is not consequential, what is discussed remains strictly confidential. So you can draw your own conclusions: to discuss long-term strategy? That remains the most likely answer.

And if the "Bilderberg Group" represents the elite of "neo-liberalism", how does its unaccountable nature make it any different from how Fascism operates?

The state of the British economy and its post-Imperial future

As I wrote in an earlier post here, "The Future Of Britain" is written by its past. Any national economy has to have a valid and sustainable model to grow.

Britain had been struggling to adapt its economy in relation to the world and its own population since the end of the Second World War; by the end of the seventies, the new Conservative government followed the economic thinking of the Monetarist school. An inefficient manufacturing and public sector was seen to blame for many of the problems that existed; the private sector was seen as the most efficient sector, therefore this was promoted by the Thatcher government, while at the same time killing the power of the unions to control employees pay rights.
The Conservatives, due to their background, were naturally more minded to trust the opinion of The City, which up to this point had played a minor role in the British economy. Influenced by the Monetarist, laissez-faire approach, the complacent arrogance and ignorance of the Conservative government led them to believe that the British economy did not need a strongly-supported manufacturing base to the economy. In fact, many of them associated factories and manufacturing with backwardness, union militancy and inefficiency. It was the government's belief that an expansion of a booming financial sector was Britain's way forward in the post-modern age: with a strong financial sector, everything else would fall into place and grow along with it. It would be a sign of progress, therefore, that Britain would no longer need a real manufacturing base.

Up to the end of the seventies, Britain had a large manufacturing base that produced exports. Although it had its inefficiencies, the modest income of these industries was allowed to wither by the government and an ignorant private sector; rather than invest to regain their competitive edge, they were cut down, slice by slice, to maximise profits through minimising costs (i.e. laying-off the workforce and relocating premises). The manufacturing base became an early casualty to "globalisation", as companies moved their factories abroad. As was already said, the government turned a blind eye to this as it saw the financial sector as the future of Britain. The incoming Labour government in 1997 continued with this willful ignorance and complacency, continuing to massage the ego of the financial sector further. By the start of the 21st century, resting the hopes on the financial sector was the only hope to keep Britain's economy going, as there was very little else left to support it. Manufacturing was minimal, as "service industries" had replaced manufacturing. Even the agricultural sector had become unprofitable due to the lop-sided effect on the price of imports from the strong pound (courtesy of The City). All was good, as long as the economy kept booming.

The results of this thinking are clear to see now. Believing themselves to be infallible, the financial sector quickly began to forget the most basic rules of economics (let alone ethics) in order to make the most profit possible. The City and the government encouraged an expansion in credit lending, as well as making people see their own homes as an investment rather than a roof over their heads. By 2007, the whole system in Britain that was creating the financial-backed boom was shown to be the complete fraud that it had been all along. Ireland used an almost identical model, to the same sorry result.

This explains why Britain in 2013 has a completely dysfunctional and lop-sided economy, unsustainable in any real sense of the word. The best way to explain this, apart from in layman's terms, is to compare the British model to other economies and their models around the world.
In order for a nation to grow, it needs growth supported by exports. A few countries can get around this by being financial centres, such as Singapore, Hong Kong (although not technically an independent state) and Switzerland. This is the model that the British Conservatives aimed (and still aim) to imitate. But, by nature, such countries have a generally small, highly-skilled and educated workforce, which fits in well with the financial sector. Britain has none of these, except for London and the South-east (I'll come back to this point later in a moment).
For a country to have exports, there are generally two paths to success: either produce demanded products (such as Germany, the Far East and the USA); or have a demanded resource, such as oil (The Gulf States, Central Asia, the USA, Russia, etc.), precious metals (Africa, Mongolia etc.), coffee beans, whatever. Without either of these paths, the chances of economic growth are limited.

The Conservatives still believe that Britain can be ran like Singapore, but this thinking merely displays their blinkered London-centric mentality and economic ignorance of the rest of the country, never mind their complete ignorance of economics.

I said that only London and the South-east compare economically to places like Singapore; the rest of Britain in 2013 feels more like a neglected colonial appendage to a London city-state - the "Kaliningrad" of London, to use a Russian metaphor. Economically, there is London and the South-east; and then there is everywhere else. Greater London's economy is still flourishing based on the financial sector and related services. Meanwhile, the other regions of the UK are an a different economic country, dependent on the success of London somehow trickling through to them. If nothing changes, the future of Britain will be this: to be the "Empire Of London" in all but name; a wealthy London supporting its neglected and dysfunctional regional "colonies", made economic dependencies of the Imperial Capital.
Fifty years ago, the economy of the UK was far more balanced, as the manufacturing sectors of the North and the Midlands actually contributed much more to the economy. But no longer. Sold a lie by the government thirty years ago, it is Britain as a country overall that is suffering the results of that complacent idiocy.

Germany thrives still because its economy is balanced; its manufacturing sector was continually nurtured by government. Turkey is an up-and-coming power due to the investment thrown into its manufacturing; with a similar-sized population and dynamic approach like Germany, Turkey has a great opportunity to match Germany as a regional power in the medium and long-term.

Britain, sadly, has little future under the economic orthodoxy of its establishment. If you imagine rich Singapore controlling a economically run-down South-East Asia, you might be close to the truth to what future "Britain" as an economic power holds, as a wealthy and ignorant London establishment neglects the unfashionable and depressed corners of its "British Islands Empire".
And some of the establishment have the gall to question why rich London should support its poor regions.
Because you made them poor, that's why!

What the 2011 UK census tells us about post-Imperial Britain

The main points that stand out for me from the 2011 census are:
1) atheism is increasingly the norm,
2) London's white British population is a minority in the city,
3) the immigrant population has increased by around three million in the last ten years,
4) there are now more than half a million Polish people in the UK,
5) the tenant population has increased by more than half.

Britain is a post-Imperial power, and has been since the rapid disintegration of the Empire after the Second World War. In a nutshell, what has happened to the UK since then is the effective implosion of its Imperial society. Whereas in the 19th century, Britain spread its social values to its colonies around the world, after the end of the Empire, its former colonies have sucked back to the "homeland" like a collapsing star sucking matter back in on itself. The "homeland" of the former British Empire is now a teeming microcosm of its former Imperial population.

This was inevitable. And what I write here is neither a condemnation or otherwise: this is simple observation, free of judgement.

An Imperial power the size of the British Empire cannot discard the great majority of its Empire in the space of little more than twenty years and expect to continue unscathed. Until the 1950s, Britain was an island of generally homogeneous white people that still ruled a vast colonial population. But that "Golden Age" of Empire was destroyed by the effects of the Second World War. After the war, the bankrupt "Empire" was shown to be a financial conjuring trick, and suddenly the "homeland" needed more people to re-build the economy. So it turned to the colonial populations.

Britain, like France and Portugal, were European, post-Imperial powers looking for a way to survive when it was clear that Imperialism was no longer financially viable and practical in a Cold War world dominated by two huge continental superpowers, the USA and USSR. For the broken European powers to survive, they pooled their talents around a new Franco-German centre, based on trade. After a couple of false starts,  Britain joined the European club, thus put the final nail in the coffin of Imperialism. Britain's last formal colony, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), was relinquished shortly after Britain joined the European club, the (then) EEC.

Britain, always being largely ignorant of continental politics and society, has been considered the black sheep of Europe. Thus its critical voice was always easy for the others to ignore. The expansion of the former EEC, now EU, into Eastern Europe, has had an immediate effect on the population of the "homeland"; now more than half a million Poles live permanently in the UK - a tenfold increase on ten years previously.

Since the 1990s, Britain's increasing role has been as the "conscience of the world"; in order to replace its middling role in the Cold War, it has largely embraced the American belief in an "open door" policy to immigration. This largely accounts for the unprecedented rise in the immigrant population in the last ten years.

The effect of this on British society in general is clear from the 2011 census. London, like New York, is one half of the Anglophone twin cities of globalisation. These two cities symbolise everything that globalisation represents, and are living examples of it. Boris Johnson is another living example: born in New York, now mayor of London, and a passionate promoter of both cities, and the concept of globalisation generally.

As I've said before, "Globalisation" is the direct result of the Anglo-Saxon economic model propounded by the British Empire and the USA. It is also largely interchangeable with the core ideas of Economic Fascism, as I've also said elsewhere. The fact the "the world lives in London", or New York, doesn't change the fact that the same economic model that brings people around the world together, also makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The story of 2011 in Britain is now of economic stagnation in a society of unprecedented diversity. But what this really masks over is the danger of communities in general slipping apart. I don't mean in stark terms of race, religion and so on, but more in terms of more social insecurity, and more psychological distance between people, exacerbated the socio-economic plan of the current Conservative government. As fewer and fewer people can afford to buy homes, or as more and more jobs become temporary and part-time, it makes it more and more difficult to make real roots and develop a real sense of "community". This is the real danger: people no longer talking to their neighbours because they never know who they are (or when they're at home) for long enough, and people not making real workplace connections because they never see the same people from one day to the next.

This is the other story of Britain in 2011. That Britain, long the arch-proponent of globalisation and economic liberalisation, became a victim to it in 2008. But the culprits were not affected, nor punished. It was everyone else who was a victim to it, and the average person on the street who has continued to suffer. This is what accounts for the rise in tenants in the UK, for the first time in living memory, as people see the "homeland" of the former British Empire become a third-rate nation-state. Britain imports most of its goods, manufactures little, and has a national housing shortage; if it were not for the amoral practices of the financial sector in London artificially flattering the state of Britain's economy as a whole, the country would be on a par with failed state.

That said, it is the amoral practices of the financial sector, who have had the ear of government for thirty years, that are responsible for the economic stagnation and social dysfunction outside of the Home Counties.

 "Strength in Diversity" is a great slogan for 21st century Britain. Another way of putting it is "The Empire Coming Home". Both are technically correct, but the second is heavy with loaded xenophobia. The stark future facing Britain is not of "rivers of blood" as Enoch Powell said, but of "streets of desolation", as whole areas of the UK gradually turn into economic black holes.

Why climate change is good for business: the "new normal" and capitalism

Climate change is in the news in one way or another every week, so it seems. It's more usually called "weather". But even the climate change sceptics (more on them later) cannot deny that all the signs have been there for more than a decade: the gradual melting of the ice cap around the North Pole; increasingly unstable weather conditions (more common and extreme droughts, floods, ice and blizzards); unseasonable weather.

In last five years or so, there has also been a corresponding increase in the cost of food. Fruit and vegetables have seen the greatest increases (many by more than 50% in a year), as well as staples like wheat and corn, fish and red meat. In other words, the cost of even basic food has soared comparative to salaries, while wages have remained static in the developed and developing world. This is a recipe for economic disaster for those at the bottom; it is no surprise that there have been forecasts of food riots in the Third World for some time now. The only ones unaffected are those at the top.

The effect of climate change on the world therefore has had a direct effect on the cost of all forms of food, with the result that food is now more expensive than it has been in living memory. This is the "new normal". At the same time, the same instability from climate change has had an indirect effect on the price of oil: the instability from climate change (droughts in the Middle East or any other extreme weather in an oil-producing region, for example) directly affects other factors that influence the price of oil.

Let's look back again at those climate change sceptics. Who are they? Mostly those who have interests in the energy sector (oil), and their political gimps in parliaments around the world (but mostly in the USA). It is naturally in the interests of "Big Oil" to discredit any scientific theory that might cause damage to their profit margins. Strange, then, how there has been such a huge expansion in oil exploration around the world (from the "tar sands" of Canada to the seas off the Falkland Islands), while the evidence for climate change has been piling up, year after year. And despite this, the price of oil remains stubbornly high; despite the opening-up of the oil sectors into new territories. But again, it is because the oil price is so high, that explains the rationale for the opening-up into areas that were previously seen as unworkable due to the high overheads. And the oil price is so high because of the "new normal" - instability is the "new normal".

This self-perpetuating logic is what feeds on this instability around the world. It also explains why climate change, that keeps the rationale for the instability going, is what keeps those at the top the ones who benefit the most, while they counter-intuitively argue against climate change's very existence. This is the "Double-Speak", like what I alluded to in one of my previous articles here, when I talked about the corporate oligarchy convincing the masses that their virtual slavery was in fact freedom. The climate change that they publicly disavow, is what is making their profits reach new, unsurpassed, heights. Of course, they are well aware of this, and are undoubtedly privately chuckling at this irony.

So, climate change is good for "big business", because it this instability around the world is what keeps them going. Like some kind of "James Bond"-type storyline, the multi-nationals around the world privately rub their hands with glee when there's a hurricane or drought that wipes out a nation's harvest: it means the price will sky-rocket, and the world population has no choice but to pay regardless. If they protest, and create civil instability, this creates a spike in prices elsewhere; thus the multi-nationals will profit in another way. In either case, it's a win-win situation for them, and a lose-lose for everyone else.

This is the "new normal", as our leaders are keen to tell us. That climate change will create permanent "severe weather" around the world; creating further human instability and a permanent increase in food and energy prices. Like a cartel of Bond-like villains, the CEOs of the multinationals are indifferent to the fate of humanity, as they have already "war-gamed" the various potential scenarios, ensuring that they profit from whatever chaos may ensue. This is the environmental chaos that they have publicly denied the existence of for more than twenty years, while privately ensuring that governments around the world do as little as possible to stop it.

The environmental chaos is another effect of the quasi-psychopathic attitude that "big business" has towards humanity and the environment in general. As the corporate oligarchy has created economic chaos through the financial crisis, and yet makes those at the bottom pay the biggest price (in greater job insecurity, the degradation of employment rights, and so on), it is again those at the bottom who pay the biggest price for the corporate oligarchy's public ignorance (but private glee) of the effects of climate change. Ever-increasing environmental and economic chaos is what "big business" dreams of, because it ensures near-permanent high prices, social instability, and an increasing gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The chaos created from this disastrous cocktail paralyses those at the bottom with fear, so focussed on fighting simply to survive and compete against each other that they would not have time to think who had allowed the chaos to happen (and prosper most from it) to begin with.

The "new normal" will continue to be chaos, greater human misery and poverty as long as the multi-nationals, "Big Oil", and all the others, are in control.