A recent survey discovered that people in Britain are these days far more likely to identify as a "leaver" or "remainer" than as a firm supporter of a political party. This is just one clear indication of the seismic effects that the EU referendum and Brexit have had on the wider political and social culture of Britain.
Looking back through the various ideological "turns" that have happened in Britain since the creation of the "party" system following the Civil War (more on that in a moment), there have been only a few significant shifts in ideological allegiance since then.
The two-party system
The two-party system of "Tories" and "Whigs" that emerged from the aftermath of the Civil War was the established convention until the Labour Party emerged as a force in the early 20th century. Between the restoration of 1661 and the repeal of the Corn Laws and universal male suffrage around two hundred years later, there were long periods of either Tory or Whig rule, often lasting for decades. The Whigs changed their name to the Liberals, but the interests and ideology they represented did not; the same can largely be said for how Tories became "Conservatives".
Things only became truly "interesting" with significant reform of the electoral system, with the Labour Party only appearing as a genuine electoral force after the end of the First World War. Put in this light, it could be argued it took a disastrous continental war for any significant ideological and social change to occur; the same could be said of the election of the Attlee government in 1945.
That "shift" to the Labour Party occurred relatively quickly during the inter-war period, and the collapse of the Liberals.
This "shift" after the First World War is significant because it marks the period when the political system properly seemed to reflect the modern nature of British society as an industrial power. The Labour Party was formed precisely because it saw the Tories and the Liberals as not being representative of the interests of working people, especially those involved in industries. In this way, Britain was an industrial power, but its traditional political masters were not ideologically sympathetic to industry.
Since the Civil War, the Tories and the Whigs (now Conservatives and Liberals) have represented much the same ideological ground with the same natural interests and inclinations. On the one hand, the Tories were the standard-bearers of the interests of the landowning ruling class, while the Whigs were supporters of the merchant class.
These allegiances were formed from the divisions created by the Civil War, with the Tories the supporters of monarchy and the central power of the executive, and the Whigs the supporters of a restrained monarchy that gave more power to parliament and looser regulation of the economy. To complicate matters further, some Tories were also sympathetic to the Catholic cause even up to the Jacobite rebellion, while Whigs were consistently and fervently Protestant.
Old prejudices
This puts into perspective why many Tories, even today, are dismissive of industrial strategy and the wider concerns of business. Those prejudices go back centuries.
Following the "postwar consensus" that began with the Attlee government, the paranoia that seemed to grip the Tories about industry and the power of the unions by the 1970s led to Margaret Thatcher's ideological warfare on Britain's industrial base.
Using Libertarian ideology as a justification for destroying the power of the unions and - consequently - Britain's industrial base, Thatcher used ideas of free markets borrowed from Liberal thought to implement what was in reality a deeply-Tory aim: to change Britain from being an industrial power (which it had been for nearly two hundred years) to a post-industrial power.
But the term "post-industrial" is itself misleading, as what it really means is creating a modern-day version of a "pre-industrial" society: a society that has modern technology, but no significant industry. The only valued parts of the "economy" are those that can generate growth for the elite without significantly increasing the economic power of the masses, while relying on technology (such as through a complicit media) to keep people ignorant of the truth. The "service economy" that was created by Thatcher is the natural result of this strategy, where the elite use their in-built advantage (e.g. as landowners) to horde ever greater quantities of assets. This is the root of modern inequality in Britain. It is a "class war" by the rich against the poor; a "war" founded on historic prejudices and fear.
In other words, it is about creating an economy that is only interested in "self-sustenance" rather than genuine growth; an economy that just provides the bare essentials to keep the masses from revolt, but equally (through the "service economy") creates the social circumstances to keep them in a state of chronic insecurity; not knowing what the next month will bring, reliance on "the devil you know" is how the ruling class keep the masses in check. It is a modern spin on the psychological relationship between master and servant. How do you get a servant to keep on supporting his master?
The fact that the Conservative government today, in the midst of Brexit, seems to be doing its best to undermine industry, simply is the latest chapter to this story. The Tories' distrust of the EU stems from historic prejudice; the same kind of prejudice that makes them paranoid about industry. Anything that takes power away from the political centre is seen as instinctively dangerous to a Tory. Anything that promotes the rights of workers, anything that might put at risk their own assets or their money-making ability is seen as inherently threatening.
The Tories only supported the EU at first because they thought they could use it as a way to gain influence in Europe and make money themselves. When they realized that the former was based on an inflated sense of their own abilities, and that the latter involved a necessary trade-off of their own powers, their enthusiasm for Europe turned to a feeling of "betrayal". Thus Britain's media had nearly thirty years of negative headlines and criticism of the EU before the referendum happened. At the same time, the government often saw attacking the EU as a "win-win" scenario back home, which provided a convenient scapegoat. That long-stoked sense of the EU as the "bad guy" led to large segments of the British population having a natural antipathy towards Europe.
An ancient divide
The historic division of Tories and Whigs after the Civil War now translates as the division between "leavers" and "remainers".
The referendum, as the survey mentioned at the start explained, seems to have created another historic "shift" in party allegiances. In effect, Brexit has destroyed the two-party system that has existed since 1945. What we are now seeing is a realignment of historic divides, a "culture war" that first appeared at the time of Charles I.
Theresa May's efforts to hold the Conservative Party together are fruitless. As the saying goes "the centre cannot hold". Something has to give somewhere.
Historic comparisons are never exact, and Conservative thinking of the likes of the ERG is fundamentally different from those Tories that supported the monarchy during the Civil War. In many ways, the actions of the hard-right Libertarians within the Tories today mirror the puritanical motivations of the "Roundheads" (later "Whigs"). This is what makes the ideological comparison confusing and complicated.
But in reality, in spite of the ERG's "Roundhead" tactics, their aims are purely reactionary, and in that way, are historically-consistent with Tory ideology. They represent people who are descendants of the landed gentry. Their agenda is to "finish the project" in Britain that Thatcher began, and they can only do that with Britain outside the EU. Their motivations are about "taking back control", but not giving to parliament, but to a centralized government. They are indifferent to the fate of British industry, as they see it more as a threat to their own narrow interests.
Meanwhile, "remainers" represent a social outlook more in common with historic Whigs. As it was the merchant class that were the natural supporters of parliament after the Civil War, it is "remainers" today who see parliament as the voice of moderation. Those that see parliament today as remote and out-of-touch are the same people who see "remainers" as cosmopolitan rootless liberals; similar accusations would have been thrown at Whigs by Tories back in the day.
It is an old divide between an open and closed view of the world; change versus tradition.
Those who voted for "change" by voting to leave the EU are only fooling themselves about their motivations: all the evidence is that it was a vote of desperation, a vote to make things "how they used to be" - in other words, for traditional values.
The only thing for certain now is that the divide that was exposed by the referendum will be there for a long time to come, in one form or another.
Showing posts with label establishment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label establishment. Show all posts
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Sunday, January 13, 2019
"The Hunger Games", and how Britain is ran like an empire
The trilogy "The Hunger Games" tells the story, seen though teenage perspective, of how an exploitative empire operates.
The fictional world of "The Hunger Games" is based in the land of Panem: an essentially "imperial" structure where the various districts all function for the purpose of providing for the "capitol", whose own inhabitants largely live dissolute lives that are disconnected from the other districts, and whose understanding of life in the districts is similarly disconnected. It is a deeply-hierarchical and centralized structure, where even the communications between, and thus understanding of, one district to the next is limited. In this way, the capitol controls Panem through a combination of media control, fear and manipulation.
The story at its heart is a classic description of how tyrannical empires work, which is what makes it a universal tale. Its historical inspiration stems from Rome, but there are deliberately-unsettling parallels with some aspects of modern life in America, which is what makes the story also a warning.
The disconnect between the "Beltway" and the rest of America is a common complaint, but the parallels between the exploitative description of life in "Panem" and life in a real-world "empire" come closer to the mark if we look at a different example across the water from America: life in the UK.
Exploiting the "districts" to indulge the capital
While there are certainly valid complaints about how too much power is held inside the "Beltway", the USA is still one of the most highly decentralized administrations in the developed world, where the states have considerable legal powers, separate from the centre. By contrast, Britain (and England in particular), remains one of the most highly-centralized administrations in the developed world.
At a fundamental level, Whitehall and Westminster are loathe to cede power, jealously guarding it within their claws. Simply, they do not trust local government.
Trained to believe in their own infallibility and the innate incompetence (and malevolence) of those outside of the centre, they have only given out a few crumbs of autonomy to the devolved administrations when absolutely necessary, to maintain the fiction of accountability. The centre's instinct is to horde power relentlessly, jealously guarding information (as it doesn't trust the motives of "outsiders"), with decision-making done in secret. There is little real sense of government being in service of "the people", beyond how government needs the people to be compliant and/or ignorant.
Apart from the deeply-hierarchical administrative structure, the wider structure of the economy is aligned primarily with the interests of the capital in mind. Money raised by the government in taxes is disproportionately spent on the inhabitants of the capital and the neighbouring regions (i.e. London and the South-east), with little going on public works in other parts of the country by contrast. This is then "justified" by to the disproportionate amount of wealth the capital generates, in spite of the fact that this vicious circle of wealth-hoarding only makes the inequalities between the capital and the other regions all the starker. This is what then creates the impression of a capital inhabited by people socially and economically disconnected from the rest of the country, whose interests are simply in the exploitation of everyone else.
As in "Panem", the UK's resources are also designed with the needs of the capital in mind, with an economic model that makes the capital richer and richer while slowly starving the regions of both manpower and resources. This economic model also attracts people to the capital because life in the regions for some has become intolerable, adding yet more to the dissonance between the "rulers" and the "ruled".
In this way, the UK has become one of the most unequal societies in Europe.
The question is:why?
Public schools and "indoctrination" - educating a different class
Britain is still a society where its ruling class (i.e. its top percentile) send its children away from their parents for the large part of their formative years for the purpose of "education". In this very specific way, it marks Britain's (and particularly, England's) ruling class as being self-segregating from the rest of society, using boarding schools as a way to "educate" their offspring in an closed environment through their formative years; away from the opposite sex, away from their family, and away from the rest of society.
It is important to emphasize how much the boarding school system is designed to entrench the cultural separation of a "ruling class" from the wider population. While those who have been part of the system will extol its virtues ("never did me any harm"), it is important to emphasize how this attitude is simply the product of long-term indoctrination - in other words, a form of psychological conditioning and "normalizing".
The "establishment" is a product of the boarding school, and cannot be understood without recognizing this essential ingredient. Until relatively recently, it was debatable whether boarding schools actually gave any meaningful education to its boarders at all. Boarding school was much more about "moral" education than anything else; in other words, about turning children into adults. This was largely done through the "school of hard knocks" approach, and it seems that parents were more likely than not complicit in understanding this reality. They more often than not put it to the back of their minds and saw the boarding school experience as just "one of those things". Then again, there were also some wealthy parents who were simply glad to have their children out of the way for a few years.
One generation's trauma and indoctrination got passed on to the next as a matter of simple tradition, with what we would now call psychological "conditioning" the name of the game. In this way, any memories of psychological and physical abuse are repressed as "character-building"; indeed, building characters that will ideally have hearts of stone.
The wider indoctrination at boarding school was to instill an innate sense of superiority: that the boarding children were there because they were superior, the elite. This was necessary in order to maintain the belief that the "establishment" was in a position of power because it was also necessary; without it, it was implied, Britain would face collapse. This attitude is still ingrained in those in positions of power today.
That superiority is passed on in different ways: such as seeing British education as the best; seeing British traditions as the best ("fair play" etc. etc.); and instilling a general self-confidence that is evident whenever speaking to someone who is a product of the system - the ruling class often excel at sounding as they know exactly what they're talking about even when they haven't got the faintest clue in reality. That breezy self-confidence is then reinforced by those lower in the social order having the in-built assumption that their social superiors must be right in what they're saying to have such self-confidence.
On such ingrained attitudes of deference to the ruling class, an empire is built. The mystique of deference is essential to maintain the illusion.
To prevent the ruling class from being in danger, thus the illusion is fed to the rest of society that their social superiors are more intelligent, more competent and more morally-upright people, while the reality is often the exact opposite. The First World War was the first real evidence of this, and the establishment had to adapt to survive.
On the flip side of this implicit superiority, is fed an innate distrust and arrogance towards those lower down in the social order. If the children at boarding schools are there because they are special, it follows that those who are less fortunate (and less educated) are there through their own failings. This is the essential morality of inequality. Those at the top are there by their own individual merit; those at the bottom are there through their individual failings.
Those less fortunate are undeserving of pity because the moral code instilled in them at boarding school is about "stiff upper lip" and removing sentimentality. This explains such behaviour as burning a fifty-pound note in front of a beggar. Such twisted morals were thought necessary to create a cohort that would take over the reins of power, seamlessly passed on from one generation to the next without any thought to changing the system.
As we can see, the boarding school system is the primary method of indoctrinating a ruling class to perpetuate the established system of inequality.
Destroying hope - neutering the threat through Thatcherism
Apart from a highly-centralized, exploitative system and an indoctrinated ruling class, there are other methods used to ensure that the "lower orders" know their place.
The onset of industrialization created a skilled working class, necessary for the operation of complex machinery. The danger that this led to was that an educated working class might also become more demanding. This became increasingly apparent throughout the 20th century, with strikes becoming more and more frequent as workers demanded a more equitable share in the cake.
The mythology of the "winter of discontent" created a bugbear that the "establishment" could use to reshape society into a form more in fitting to their wishes.
The "establishment" envisaged a society where the capital grew rich not from the output of factories, but from the manipulation of money. Done right, this would benefit the "establishment" enormously; meanwhile, the country's workforce could be restructured to benefit the capital better.
Workers' rights were sharply curtailed. The industries that provided the skilled and reliable work for those that lived in some regions were destroyed. As a result, many towns across those regions lost their primary source of employment, with the only other work on offer being unreliable, low-skilled and low-paid. This has remained the situation ever since.
But those populations did not revolt against the centre. The thing that empires fear most is "hope", and the destruction of industries in those regions effectively killed their hope and self-respect, leaving in its place only a sense of defeat and self-loathing. Those "defeated" populations turned in on themselves, falling back on the dark solaces of alcohol and drugs, turning to crime and violence against each other.
This was how the "establishment" created an underclass and another scapegoat.
Divide and rule - demonizing the poor
After removing the self-respect that skilled employment offered those formerly-industrialized regions, the resulting underclass was the ideal scapegoat in the new "individualistic" morality that the "establishment" were keen to engender.
After being the threat to the "establishment" when they had self-respect, as a defeated underclass, their self-loathing and violence was seen as the ultimate moral evil. After removing their industries, they were further divided by the Thatcher government selling off vast tracts of social housing to those who could afford it. This left "social housing" as the preserve of the dregs of society, creating the implicit connection of social housing with moral failure.
Manipulation from the centre had thus created a sense that the de-industrialized regions, as places of the "feckless poor" were places where nothing good was to be expected; a self-perpetuating myth was created by the centre that the regions were thus incompetent and that only the centre, the capital, was where ideas could come from, where growth came from.
Thus we also had, over the last forty years, a "brain drain" as well as an economic hollowing-out of the regions. Those born in the regions were encouraged to leave and pursue life in the capital as the place where everything happened; thus the formerly troublesome regions became the exploited "slaves" to the capital, in one form or another. Those born into that background had become indoctrinated into associating it with failure, and the capital with success. Exactly as "the establishment" intended.
Creating a false idol - a fake "opposition"
But even people with no hope can only go so long before they look for something else.
As we have seen, the manipulation of the working class began in earnest during the Thatcher era with the reorienting of morality against the idea of social housing and collective workers' rights, in favour of a more individualistic outlook.
This manipulation towards an individualistic morality through the media in the 1980s also coincided with the rising Euroscepticism in the press. The anti-European mood was explained through the same individualist lens; against European regulations that were "stifling" British business.
While the capital grew rich from restructuring the economy in its favour, those regions that remained without any stable industries after the capital's "reforms" simply fell further behind. By the time the financial crisis hit ten years ago, those deprived regions were looking for a scapegoat of their own for their troubles.
As the media had manipulated them into believing that it was somehow the EU's fault that their industries had collapsed thirty years ago and that European migrants were taking their jobs, it suited "the establishment" to use the EU scapegoat for the further inequalities that the centre was inflicting on the rest of the country. Instead of blaming "austerity", it was better that they blame the EU.
In this way, the "hope" that the long-defeated underclass had after decades of economic suffering, was that leaving the EU would somehow make their lives better. The fact that the people spreading this narrative were figures of selfsame exploitative "establishment" themselves was something that the media helpfully glossed over.
The hideous irony over "Brexit" is that during the referendum "the establishment" was in reality acting as both government and opposition. The winning side, while painting themselves as "insurgents", were in reality "establishment" extremists; far worse than even the relative "moderates" who were in government at the time. The "establishment" extremists were exploiting the sense of "hope" that had been kindled from a manipulative media; that manufactured "hope" they would then be able to crush when the time was right.
In the empire of the establishment's creation, they would even have a monopoly on "hope" itself.
The "Brexit" vision that won over many in the deprived regions is one that would create yet more inequality, cement the domination of the capital over the country yet further, with an agenda that seeks to enrich the voracious hierarchy on the backs of others' poverty.
The cruelest form of "hope" is the one that delivers the precise opposite.
The fictional world of "The Hunger Games" is based in the land of Panem: an essentially "imperial" structure where the various districts all function for the purpose of providing for the "capitol", whose own inhabitants largely live dissolute lives that are disconnected from the other districts, and whose understanding of life in the districts is similarly disconnected. It is a deeply-hierarchical and centralized structure, where even the communications between, and thus understanding of, one district to the next is limited. In this way, the capitol controls Panem through a combination of media control, fear and manipulation.
The story at its heart is a classic description of how tyrannical empires work, which is what makes it a universal tale. Its historical inspiration stems from Rome, but there are deliberately-unsettling parallels with some aspects of modern life in America, which is what makes the story also a warning.
The disconnect between the "Beltway" and the rest of America is a common complaint, but the parallels between the exploitative description of life in "Panem" and life in a real-world "empire" come closer to the mark if we look at a different example across the water from America: life in the UK.
Exploiting the "districts" to indulge the capital
While there are certainly valid complaints about how too much power is held inside the "Beltway", the USA is still one of the most highly decentralized administrations in the developed world, where the states have considerable legal powers, separate from the centre. By contrast, Britain (and England in particular), remains one of the most highly-centralized administrations in the developed world.
At a fundamental level, Whitehall and Westminster are loathe to cede power, jealously guarding it within their claws. Simply, they do not trust local government.
Trained to believe in their own infallibility and the innate incompetence (and malevolence) of those outside of the centre, they have only given out a few crumbs of autonomy to the devolved administrations when absolutely necessary, to maintain the fiction of accountability. The centre's instinct is to horde power relentlessly, jealously guarding information (as it doesn't trust the motives of "outsiders"), with decision-making done in secret. There is little real sense of government being in service of "the people", beyond how government needs the people to be compliant and/or ignorant.
Apart from the deeply-hierarchical administrative structure, the wider structure of the economy is aligned primarily with the interests of the capital in mind. Money raised by the government in taxes is disproportionately spent on the inhabitants of the capital and the neighbouring regions (i.e. London and the South-east), with little going on public works in other parts of the country by contrast. This is then "justified" by to the disproportionate amount of wealth the capital generates, in spite of the fact that this vicious circle of wealth-hoarding only makes the inequalities between the capital and the other regions all the starker. This is what then creates the impression of a capital inhabited by people socially and economically disconnected from the rest of the country, whose interests are simply in the exploitation of everyone else.
As in "Panem", the UK's resources are also designed with the needs of the capital in mind, with an economic model that makes the capital richer and richer while slowly starving the regions of both manpower and resources. This economic model also attracts people to the capital because life in the regions for some has become intolerable, adding yet more to the dissonance between the "rulers" and the "ruled".
In this way, the UK has become one of the most unequal societies in Europe.
The question is:why?
Public schools and "indoctrination" - educating a different class
Britain is still a society where its ruling class (i.e. its top percentile) send its children away from their parents for the large part of their formative years for the purpose of "education". In this very specific way, it marks Britain's (and particularly, England's) ruling class as being self-segregating from the rest of society, using boarding schools as a way to "educate" their offspring in an closed environment through their formative years; away from the opposite sex, away from their family, and away from the rest of society.
It is important to emphasize how much the boarding school system is designed to entrench the cultural separation of a "ruling class" from the wider population. While those who have been part of the system will extol its virtues ("never did me any harm"), it is important to emphasize how this attitude is simply the product of long-term indoctrination - in other words, a form of psychological conditioning and "normalizing".
The "establishment" is a product of the boarding school, and cannot be understood without recognizing this essential ingredient. Until relatively recently, it was debatable whether boarding schools actually gave any meaningful education to its boarders at all. Boarding school was much more about "moral" education than anything else; in other words, about turning children into adults. This was largely done through the "school of hard knocks" approach, and it seems that parents were more likely than not complicit in understanding this reality. They more often than not put it to the back of their minds and saw the boarding school experience as just "one of those things". Then again, there were also some wealthy parents who were simply glad to have their children out of the way for a few years.
One generation's trauma and indoctrination got passed on to the next as a matter of simple tradition, with what we would now call psychological "conditioning" the name of the game. In this way, any memories of psychological and physical abuse are repressed as "character-building"; indeed, building characters that will ideally have hearts of stone.
The wider indoctrination at boarding school was to instill an innate sense of superiority: that the boarding children were there because they were superior, the elite. This was necessary in order to maintain the belief that the "establishment" was in a position of power because it was also necessary; without it, it was implied, Britain would face collapse. This attitude is still ingrained in those in positions of power today.
That superiority is passed on in different ways: such as seeing British education as the best; seeing British traditions as the best ("fair play" etc. etc.); and instilling a general self-confidence that is evident whenever speaking to someone who is a product of the system - the ruling class often excel at sounding as they know exactly what they're talking about even when they haven't got the faintest clue in reality. That breezy self-confidence is then reinforced by those lower in the social order having the in-built assumption that their social superiors must be right in what they're saying to have such self-confidence.
On such ingrained attitudes of deference to the ruling class, an empire is built. The mystique of deference is essential to maintain the illusion.
To prevent the ruling class from being in danger, thus the illusion is fed to the rest of society that their social superiors are more intelligent, more competent and more morally-upright people, while the reality is often the exact opposite. The First World War was the first real evidence of this, and the establishment had to adapt to survive.
On the flip side of this implicit superiority, is fed an innate distrust and arrogance towards those lower down in the social order. If the children at boarding schools are there because they are special, it follows that those who are less fortunate (and less educated) are there through their own failings. This is the essential morality of inequality. Those at the top are there by their own individual merit; those at the bottom are there through their individual failings.
Those less fortunate are undeserving of pity because the moral code instilled in them at boarding school is about "stiff upper lip" and removing sentimentality. This explains such behaviour as burning a fifty-pound note in front of a beggar. Such twisted morals were thought necessary to create a cohort that would take over the reins of power, seamlessly passed on from one generation to the next without any thought to changing the system.
As we can see, the boarding school system is the primary method of indoctrinating a ruling class to perpetuate the established system of inequality.
Destroying hope - neutering the threat through Thatcherism
Apart from a highly-centralized, exploitative system and an indoctrinated ruling class, there are other methods used to ensure that the "lower orders" know their place.
The onset of industrialization created a skilled working class, necessary for the operation of complex machinery. The danger that this led to was that an educated working class might also become more demanding. This became increasingly apparent throughout the 20th century, with strikes becoming more and more frequent as workers demanded a more equitable share in the cake.
The mythology of the "winter of discontent" created a bugbear that the "establishment" could use to reshape society into a form more in fitting to their wishes.
The "establishment" envisaged a society where the capital grew rich not from the output of factories, but from the manipulation of money. Done right, this would benefit the "establishment" enormously; meanwhile, the country's workforce could be restructured to benefit the capital better.
Workers' rights were sharply curtailed. The industries that provided the skilled and reliable work for those that lived in some regions were destroyed. As a result, many towns across those regions lost their primary source of employment, with the only other work on offer being unreliable, low-skilled and low-paid. This has remained the situation ever since.
But those populations did not revolt against the centre. The thing that empires fear most is "hope", and the destruction of industries in those regions effectively killed their hope and self-respect, leaving in its place only a sense of defeat and self-loathing. Those "defeated" populations turned in on themselves, falling back on the dark solaces of alcohol and drugs, turning to crime and violence against each other.
This was how the "establishment" created an underclass and another scapegoat.
Divide and rule - demonizing the poor
After removing the self-respect that skilled employment offered those formerly-industrialized regions, the resulting underclass was the ideal scapegoat in the new "individualistic" morality that the "establishment" were keen to engender.
After being the threat to the "establishment" when they had self-respect, as a defeated underclass, their self-loathing and violence was seen as the ultimate moral evil. After removing their industries, they were further divided by the Thatcher government selling off vast tracts of social housing to those who could afford it. This left "social housing" as the preserve of the dregs of society, creating the implicit connection of social housing with moral failure.
Manipulation from the centre had thus created a sense that the de-industrialized regions, as places of the "feckless poor" were places where nothing good was to be expected; a self-perpetuating myth was created by the centre that the regions were thus incompetent and that only the centre, the capital, was where ideas could come from, where growth came from.
Thus we also had, over the last forty years, a "brain drain" as well as an economic hollowing-out of the regions. Those born in the regions were encouraged to leave and pursue life in the capital as the place where everything happened; thus the formerly troublesome regions became the exploited "slaves" to the capital, in one form or another. Those born into that background had become indoctrinated into associating it with failure, and the capital with success. Exactly as "the establishment" intended.
Creating a false idol - a fake "opposition"
But even people with no hope can only go so long before they look for something else.
As we have seen, the manipulation of the working class began in earnest during the Thatcher era with the reorienting of morality against the idea of social housing and collective workers' rights, in favour of a more individualistic outlook.
This manipulation towards an individualistic morality through the media in the 1980s also coincided with the rising Euroscepticism in the press. The anti-European mood was explained through the same individualist lens; against European regulations that were "stifling" British business.
While the capital grew rich from restructuring the economy in its favour, those regions that remained without any stable industries after the capital's "reforms" simply fell further behind. By the time the financial crisis hit ten years ago, those deprived regions were looking for a scapegoat of their own for their troubles.
As the media had manipulated them into believing that it was somehow the EU's fault that their industries had collapsed thirty years ago and that European migrants were taking their jobs, it suited "the establishment" to use the EU scapegoat for the further inequalities that the centre was inflicting on the rest of the country. Instead of blaming "austerity", it was better that they blame the EU.
In this way, the "hope" that the long-defeated underclass had after decades of economic suffering, was that leaving the EU would somehow make their lives better. The fact that the people spreading this narrative were figures of selfsame exploitative "establishment" themselves was something that the media helpfully glossed over.
The hideous irony over "Brexit" is that during the referendum "the establishment" was in reality acting as both government and opposition. The winning side, while painting themselves as "insurgents", were in reality "establishment" extremists; far worse than even the relative "moderates" who were in government at the time. The "establishment" extremists were exploiting the sense of "hope" that had been kindled from a manipulative media; that manufactured "hope" they would then be able to crush when the time was right.
In the empire of the establishment's creation, they would even have a monopoly on "hope" itself.
The "Brexit" vision that won over many in the deprived regions is one that would create yet more inequality, cement the domination of the capital over the country yet further, with an agenda that seeks to enrich the voracious hierarchy on the backs of others' poverty.
The cruelest form of "hope" is the one that delivers the precise opposite.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Brexit, The Conservative Party and Theresa May: using Orwellian language and tactics
The author has recently been re-reading Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-four". Apart from the brilliant insights into human psychology and politics, it's now hard not to be struck by how much of what Orwell was warning us about (such as the insidious use of language) is actually used - quite openly - by our political masters.
In one respect, the book represents an astute warning; in another (and in the wrong hands) of course, it may represent more of an authoritarian "manual".
Orwell's influence on British culture has been massive over the decades; his language has permeated many aspects of popular (and political) culture. What is striking, though, is how his insights in language and politics have been used by some modern-day strategists almost as a template to follow, as we shall see below...
"He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future"
Today this is called creating a "false narrative". Orwell's insights here go back to how, for example, the Nazis propagated the myth of Germany being "stabbed in the back". The Soviets, at a whole new level, had people literally "airbrushed" out of existence.
Orwell saw this tendency, as he demonstrated in "Nineteen Eighty-four". In the story, the all-powerful "Party" re-wrote history and talked about the time "before the Revolution" as one of chaos and exploitation; the protagonist, Winston Smith, made the observation that half the population didn't remember, and the other half weren't even born. This was what made the job of falsifying history easier.
In Britain, the "false narrative" has been used by the Conservative Party (by whoever has been in charge) to denigrate the record of the Labour Party. Most commonly, it has used "The 1970s" to represent a time of chaos, inefficiency and mass unemployment, so that any attempt by Labour to make economic or social reforms is seen as taking the country "back to the 1970s".
The convenience here is that anyone over the age of, say forty-five, has no real memory of what the 1970s were like; so for all intents and purposes, the Conservatives may as well be correct in their assessment. The younger generation have no real way of knowing, while even the older generation's memories have probably also fogged over time. Conservative strategists are well aware of this, and this "mythologizing" is an essential part of the repeated message: things are better now; things were worse before.
(That being said, when appropriate, the reverse can also be true: regarding the EU, in order for the "Brexit narrative" to make sense, it must be seen that Britain was a success before it entered the then-EEC, regardless of the reality i.e. that Britain entered the EEC precisely because Britain was weak. In this narrative, it was the EEC - and its successor the EU - that made Britain weaker and more inefficient, and so on. This "false narrative" about Britain and Europe was one of the many reasons people voted for Brexit)
But in the UK, this use of "false narrative" has become even more brazen in recent years. The financial crisis is a very recent event, which happened less than ten years ago. In the same way that Margaret Thatcher blamed Labour for the problems that occurred in the 1970s (when she was actually part of the Conservative government during that very time), David Cameron was blaming Labour for the financial crisis of 2008. This is a little like Stanley Baldwin blaming Ramsey McDonald, the then British Prime Minister, for the Wall Street Crash. It's a nonsensical position.
Labour did not "cause" the financial crisis through massive government overspending, as the Conservatives' "false narrative" claims; if anything, it was guilty of loosening regulations on the banks to the point where banks took ridiculous risks, like in 1929. The Conservatives at the time were, in fact, saying there were too many regulations on banks prior to the financial crisis. They were also matching Labour's spending plans. But the "false narrative" put all that right.
But as we have seen, people's memories quickly fog over, making people want to believe what they're being told; after all, if it's a simple message, it's easier to remember. You can then forget what you "thought" you remembered.
"Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same"
The above quote describes the organising system of the all-powerful "Party" in Orwell's dystopian novel, "Nineteen Eighty-four".
In the UK, the term used for "who wields power" is often referred to as "the establishment". This term can be applied to any person or institution that supports the ruling status quo. In this way, "the establishment" is not reliant on one person, or even on a small group of people, but is supported more as a system of beliefs and traditions, like a self-contained "culture". In order for this culture to survive in Britain as long as it has, it cannot remain too exclusive or inflexible: it must remain as a marker of prestige for those who wish to obtain power, but the conditions for entry must be seen to be transparent. For this reason, while entry into "the establishment" is often about family and connections, in theory entry can also be attained through the correct educational background. This element of amorphousness is what has kept "the establishment" in its inviolate position as the pinnacle of Britain's social hierarchy.
It is true that in recent years various scandals have tarnished its image, but the all-encompassing nature of its influence has meant that these can be brushed under the carpet or ultimately dismissed as the actions of "a few bad apples" rather than a symptom of the nature of its organisation. In any case, large parts of the media are ran by people who also buy into its "culture".
The Conservative Party is the accepted political wing of "the establishment": anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves. Progression through the ranks of the party should thus be considered in the same way as that as entry into the "establishment": having the right connections and education is essential.
The Conservative Party thus exists as the enabling arm of the "establishment's" interests; the "public face", if you like. The establishment surrendered the democratic franchise in nineteenth century, mainly as a way to prevent the threat of revolution from the masses. From the period after the Second World War to the end of 1970s (i.e. a period of about thirty-five years), the establishment surrendered large areas of the economy to government control, again mainly as a way to go with the prevailing orthodoxy at the time; it had already done so under wartime conditions, and the then-popularity of "Social Democracy" meant it was politically expedient to do so. As we have already mentioned, the 1970s were then used as an opportunity to "re-align" the political orthodoxy away from "Social Democracy" and back towards what might be called "establishment control", which existed in greater purity before the onset of the Second World War.
Since then, as we have seen, a "false narrative" has been created propagating the myths already described. What hasn't been mentioned yet is the necessity for inequality for the hierarchy to remain powerful: this was something that Orwell was well aware of, as he discussed in "Nineteen Eighty-four".
By the end of the 1970s, the level of inequality in the UK was the lowest ever recorded (another fact that has been conveniently "forgotten"). This sent some in "the establishment" into paroxysms of fury, as it came at their expense, and indirectly threatened their status. What was needed was a movement that was both pro-inequality and yet also seen as pro-worker...
"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and believing both of them"
Called "Doublethink", this is in evidence everywhere. Another word for it might be a "logical contradiction": such as using seemingly illogical arguments to justify a belief.
One example of this is so-called "trickle-down" theory, used by Neo-Liberals in the Conservative Party since the 1970s: this is the idea that by making conditions for the wealthy easier (such as reducing their taxes) this somehow also makes things better for the poor i.e. that the extra wealth available to the rich "trickles down" to the poor through the rich using their extra wealth to invest more and thus create more jobs. The problem is, it's just a theory: there's no actual evidence it's true.
It's not even clear that those in the hierarchy of "the establishment" truly believe it either, but it certainly provides them with a seemingly "altruistic" explanation they can give to the masses for their self-interested actions.
Another example of this is how George Osborne grabbed for the Conservatives the mantle of "the party of the workers"; rhetoric that has been continued by Theresa May. Using the same logic as that of "trickle-down theory", the Conservative Party - the party of "the establishment" - claim to represent the interests of workers because they are interested in a strong economy that "lifts all boats". But the reality is that the kind of economy the Conservatives advocate is one where seemingly high employment is achieved through a highly-insecure, low-paid workforce living on the bread line.
As said by Orwell, it is "a vast system of mental cheating". Those in the higher echelons of this hierarchy have no illusions about what they are doing: they are defending their own interests in the best way they can, by making black seem as white.
While those higher up are under no illusions, those lower down have to be able to convincingly spread this "Doublethink". In "Nineteen Eighty-four", Orwell described how many "Lower Party" members had a kind of "saving stupidity" that enabled them to believe two mutually incompatible beliefs without any difficulty. You can sometimes witness this with some of the less intelligent (but no less dumbly-loyal) members of the Conservative Party: from the "nice-but-dim" activist types, to even members of the government, who get can intensely flustered and confused when their nonsensical contradictions are pointed out by more astute opponents. Those that are able to repeat these contradictions convincingly when challenged, or even better, make their more astute opponents seem like idiots for not understanding nonsensical party policy, are the most valuable to the cause.
"The prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity"
Continuing from the theme of "Doublethink", this strategy has also been applied to the opposition, in particular the Labour Party, where they are derided as a joke, but also deeply feared as a mortal threat.
This was a theme that Orwell again touched on in "Nineteen Eighty-four", in his portrayal of the arch-enemy of "The Party", Emmanuel Goldstein: seen as both a figure of ridicule and a figure of fear, he was the ever-present threat that nobody had seen; likewise, "The Brotherhood", the mysterious and anonymous ranks of Goldstein's followers that were blamed for every internal setback encountered.
If the Conservative Party were to imagine an opposition of their dreams, they would probably not go far wrong with Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to epitomize everything they hate in the "old" Labour Party; likewise, Corbyn's movement from within the Labour Party, "Momentum", seems like an organisation designed for ridicule, while holding a vice-like grip on the Labour Party itself: engineered, it would seem, to perpetuate the eternal, hopeless leadership of Corbyn and his successors.
In the same vein, parliament is seen as blocking the people's will, and judges are "enemies of the people": in other words, Brexit was initiated to restore the sovereignty of parliament and the rule of law, so the government could take it away.
"Brexit" was a power-grab dressed up as the opposite; giving "power to the people", so they could give it to those who knew what to do with it. An "anti-establishment" vote was hijacked by the establishment before anyone knew what was going on.
"When war becomes continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous"
Or put another way, when a "war" has no feasible end in sight, it also becomes meaningless. Whatever the "war" is, it becomes an end in itself. This may be a "war" from without, such as against an exterior "enemy", or it may be a war from within, such as against forms of internal opposition. Ideally, it must have elements of both aspects. The "war" can never be truly won, for that would defeat part of the main benefit of having the "war". But the main reason for the "war", was the depletion of resources without raising the standard of living.
That was how Orwell saw things in "Nineteen Eighty-four". While once government was engaged in a "war on poverty", these days it would be more accurate to describe an undeclared "war on the poor": "austerity" and all its associated policies, such as welfare reform, and side-effects, such as food banks and homelessness, could be described as nothing less. Because "the poor" tend to vote Labour they are seen as "the enemy" first of all, and secondly, a segment of society that it is easy to stigmatize. This was one reason, privately of course, that George Osborne gave for being against building more council housing - it would only help Labour voters.
Apart from the benefits of making the Conservatives seem keen to get the economy on the right track, "austerity" works on various levels. First, it acts as a form of divide and rule among the masses, pitting the so-called "strivers" against the "skivers". Second, it allows the government to cut back on "non-essential spending" on services and allow the voracious and amoral private sector to fill in the gaps. Third, reduced spending on the criminal justice system means that increased levels of crime will increase dysfunction and chaos at the lower end of the social spectrum, feeding into a self-perpetuating loop of social deprivation, and creating further scapegoats for the government to blame. The constraining circumstances of "Brexit" over the coming years are likely to make this "war on the poor" seem endless.
At a day-to-day level, people are more worried about staying safe and having enough money for the bills and food on the table to worry about why it's happening and who's really to blame.
"From the "proles", nothing is to be feared"
This contemptuous language comes directly from the pages of "Nineteen Eighty-four", but can also found amongst the inner circle of the Conservative Party, which explains why many of the policies are designed the way they are: the last point made in the previous paragraph sums up why this is. The "proles" are seen as a sub-class to be jeered at, despised, and attacked for even daring to enjoy themselves through their own devices. The "culture war" against what was once called the "working class" has made them despise their own kind. The poor - the "proles" - are most dangerous when they are happy through their own devices, so therefore their happiness must be treated with deep distrust.
Instead, their happiness should be manipulated and manufactured: jingoistic nationalism is the "default" setting to distract them from their woes. Having the population united against a common exterior enemy acts as an "opium of the masses", conveniently distracting them from any uncomfortable reality at home - in the case of the UK, the government's ongoing "austerity" programme.
The oncoming situation of "Brexit" therefore acts as a prime opportunity for this to be put into practice, as we can already see from some of the regular headlines in the media. The masses are deemed to conform to the idea that unquestioning patriotism and simplistic jingoism is their "default setting": conversely, as mentioned, the threat of "war" from without is another instrument at the government's disposal. Not an actual, fighting war: more of a "cultural war" with Europe; therefore, any Europeans living in the UK should be seen with instant suspicion, and any British citizen that espouses any residual pro-European sentiment (i.e. "Remainers") should be seen as being latent traitors to the country. This feeling has been seen in the British press for years, which was part of the background campaign that led to the rise of UKIP (more of an extremist wing of the Conservative Party) and the eventual Brexit vote.
"Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful"
Some fun has been had at Theresa May's expense recently: from her troubles in eating chips with her fingers, to her fear of meeting the public. The strategy the Tories are taking is nothing new - making politics about personality is as old as the hills. What's different about how they are doing it today is that they are making the election much more about voting for "Theresa May" than about voting Conservative than has been seen by parties and the leaders in any election in living memory. In some places, campaign literature is all about Theresa May with barely a mention of her party.
This is no doubt down to Lynton Crosby, architect of the Tories' last election victory. One-on-one, in the public's perception, May wins hands-down any contest with Jeremy Corbyn about leadership.
But there is more to it than that. Partly it is a conscious act of distraction (one of Crosby's "dead cat on the table" tactics): because with a fair segment of the population still bearing doubts about the Conservatives' sincerity (who'd have thought it!), it's better to make it a vote about the person rather than the party. Furthermore, and as mentioned by the author in a previous article, there is a fair amount of "Groupthink" in the air following the referendum: people psychologically want to "get on with it", and therefore want to get behind the leader; regardless of their previous doubts, they will vote for May. Following from that, there is a tendency to therefore see in Theresa May a person that embodies "the spirit of Brexit" i.e. an aspect of "mythologizing" of the national leader in difficult times. Her previous faults are now seen as strengths. With Europe now seen as "the enemy" (again), it's not difficult to imagine some in the Conservative Party wanting to engender an almost Churchillian-like cult of personality around her.
To an extent, therefore, the strategy of minimizing May's real contact with the electorate (rather than meetings with party activists) is not only because the strategists have seen how deeply unnatural she is with people (Thatcher had the same issues, though that is hardly an endorsement). The same tactic was done with Cameron in the last election, but he was more naturally gregarious and seemed to enjoy campaigning; Theresa May seems to enjoy campaigning not a jot, shows strong signs of control freakery. No, the other reason may be to add to the "mythologizing": the less people see of her, the more people will project on to her want they want to see in a national leader. In other words, Theresa May, for the Conservatives, is presented as less of a leader than more of a symbol, almost in the same semi-divine status that some reserve for the Queen. Whether this is truly intentional or merely unconscious is hard to know at this point; strategy-wise, it may well be the first masquerading as the second.
In this way, the seeds have been sown; we will soon know what kind of harvest they bring, and who for.
In one respect, the book represents an astute warning; in another (and in the wrong hands) of course, it may represent more of an authoritarian "manual".
Orwell's influence on British culture has been massive over the decades; his language has permeated many aspects of popular (and political) culture. What is striking, though, is how his insights in language and politics have been used by some modern-day strategists almost as a template to follow, as we shall see below...
"He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future"
Today this is called creating a "false narrative". Orwell's insights here go back to how, for example, the Nazis propagated the myth of Germany being "stabbed in the back". The Soviets, at a whole new level, had people literally "airbrushed" out of existence.
Orwell saw this tendency, as he demonstrated in "Nineteen Eighty-four". In the story, the all-powerful "Party" re-wrote history and talked about the time "before the Revolution" as one of chaos and exploitation; the protagonist, Winston Smith, made the observation that half the population didn't remember, and the other half weren't even born. This was what made the job of falsifying history easier.
In Britain, the "false narrative" has been used by the Conservative Party (by whoever has been in charge) to denigrate the record of the Labour Party. Most commonly, it has used "The 1970s" to represent a time of chaos, inefficiency and mass unemployment, so that any attempt by Labour to make economic or social reforms is seen as taking the country "back to the 1970s".
The convenience here is that anyone over the age of, say forty-five, has no real memory of what the 1970s were like; so for all intents and purposes, the Conservatives may as well be correct in their assessment. The younger generation have no real way of knowing, while even the older generation's memories have probably also fogged over time. Conservative strategists are well aware of this, and this "mythologizing" is an essential part of the repeated message: things are better now; things were worse before.
(That being said, when appropriate, the reverse can also be true: regarding the EU, in order for the "Brexit narrative" to make sense, it must be seen that Britain was a success before it entered the then-EEC, regardless of the reality i.e. that Britain entered the EEC precisely because Britain was weak. In this narrative, it was the EEC - and its successor the EU - that made Britain weaker and more inefficient, and so on. This "false narrative" about Britain and Europe was one of the many reasons people voted for Brexit)
But in the UK, this use of "false narrative" has become even more brazen in recent years. The financial crisis is a very recent event, which happened less than ten years ago. In the same way that Margaret Thatcher blamed Labour for the problems that occurred in the 1970s (when she was actually part of the Conservative government during that very time), David Cameron was blaming Labour for the financial crisis of 2008. This is a little like Stanley Baldwin blaming Ramsey McDonald, the then British Prime Minister, for the Wall Street Crash. It's a nonsensical position.
Labour did not "cause" the financial crisis through massive government overspending, as the Conservatives' "false narrative" claims; if anything, it was guilty of loosening regulations on the banks to the point where banks took ridiculous risks, like in 1929. The Conservatives at the time were, in fact, saying there were too many regulations on banks prior to the financial crisis. They were also matching Labour's spending plans. But the "false narrative" put all that right.
But as we have seen, people's memories quickly fog over, making people want to believe what they're being told; after all, if it's a simple message, it's easier to remember. You can then forget what you "thought" you remembered.
"Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same"
The above quote describes the organising system of the all-powerful "Party" in Orwell's dystopian novel, "Nineteen Eighty-four".
In the UK, the term used for "who wields power" is often referred to as "the establishment". This term can be applied to any person or institution that supports the ruling status quo. In this way, "the establishment" is not reliant on one person, or even on a small group of people, but is supported more as a system of beliefs and traditions, like a self-contained "culture". In order for this culture to survive in Britain as long as it has, it cannot remain too exclusive or inflexible: it must remain as a marker of prestige for those who wish to obtain power, but the conditions for entry must be seen to be transparent. For this reason, while entry into "the establishment" is often about family and connections, in theory entry can also be attained through the correct educational background. This element of amorphousness is what has kept "the establishment" in its inviolate position as the pinnacle of Britain's social hierarchy.
It is true that in recent years various scandals have tarnished its image, but the all-encompassing nature of its influence has meant that these can be brushed under the carpet or ultimately dismissed as the actions of "a few bad apples" rather than a symptom of the nature of its organisation. In any case, large parts of the media are ran by people who also buy into its "culture".
The Conservative Party is the accepted political wing of "the establishment": anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves. Progression through the ranks of the party should thus be considered in the same way as that as entry into the "establishment": having the right connections and education is essential.
The Conservative Party thus exists as the enabling arm of the "establishment's" interests; the "public face", if you like. The establishment surrendered the democratic franchise in nineteenth century, mainly as a way to prevent the threat of revolution from the masses. From the period after the Second World War to the end of 1970s (i.e. a period of about thirty-five years), the establishment surrendered large areas of the economy to government control, again mainly as a way to go with the prevailing orthodoxy at the time; it had already done so under wartime conditions, and the then-popularity of "Social Democracy" meant it was politically expedient to do so. As we have already mentioned, the 1970s were then used as an opportunity to "re-align" the political orthodoxy away from "Social Democracy" and back towards what might be called "establishment control", which existed in greater purity before the onset of the Second World War.
Since then, as we have seen, a "false narrative" has been created propagating the myths already described. What hasn't been mentioned yet is the necessity for inequality for the hierarchy to remain powerful: this was something that Orwell was well aware of, as he discussed in "Nineteen Eighty-four".
By the end of the 1970s, the level of inequality in the UK was the lowest ever recorded (another fact that has been conveniently "forgotten"). This sent some in "the establishment" into paroxysms of fury, as it came at their expense, and indirectly threatened their status. What was needed was a movement that was both pro-inequality and yet also seen as pro-worker...
"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and believing both of them"
Called "Doublethink", this is in evidence everywhere. Another word for it might be a "logical contradiction": such as using seemingly illogical arguments to justify a belief.
One example of this is so-called "trickle-down" theory, used by Neo-Liberals in the Conservative Party since the 1970s: this is the idea that by making conditions for the wealthy easier (such as reducing their taxes) this somehow also makes things better for the poor i.e. that the extra wealth available to the rich "trickles down" to the poor through the rich using their extra wealth to invest more and thus create more jobs. The problem is, it's just a theory: there's no actual evidence it's true.
It's not even clear that those in the hierarchy of "the establishment" truly believe it either, but it certainly provides them with a seemingly "altruistic" explanation they can give to the masses for their self-interested actions.
Another example of this is how George Osborne grabbed for the Conservatives the mantle of "the party of the workers"; rhetoric that has been continued by Theresa May. Using the same logic as that of "trickle-down theory", the Conservative Party - the party of "the establishment" - claim to represent the interests of workers because they are interested in a strong economy that "lifts all boats". But the reality is that the kind of economy the Conservatives advocate is one where seemingly high employment is achieved through a highly-insecure, low-paid workforce living on the bread line.
As said by Orwell, it is "a vast system of mental cheating". Those in the higher echelons of this hierarchy have no illusions about what they are doing: they are defending their own interests in the best way they can, by making black seem as white.
While those higher up are under no illusions, those lower down have to be able to convincingly spread this "Doublethink". In "Nineteen Eighty-four", Orwell described how many "Lower Party" members had a kind of "saving stupidity" that enabled them to believe two mutually incompatible beliefs without any difficulty. You can sometimes witness this with some of the less intelligent (but no less dumbly-loyal) members of the Conservative Party: from the "nice-but-dim" activist types, to even members of the government, who get can intensely flustered and confused when their nonsensical contradictions are pointed out by more astute opponents. Those that are able to repeat these contradictions convincingly when challenged, or even better, make their more astute opponents seem like idiots for not understanding nonsensical party policy, are the most valuable to the cause.
"The prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity"
Continuing from the theme of "Doublethink", this strategy has also been applied to the opposition, in particular the Labour Party, where they are derided as a joke, but also deeply feared as a mortal threat.
This was a theme that Orwell again touched on in "Nineteen Eighty-four", in his portrayal of the arch-enemy of "The Party", Emmanuel Goldstein: seen as both a figure of ridicule and a figure of fear, he was the ever-present threat that nobody had seen; likewise, "The Brotherhood", the mysterious and anonymous ranks of Goldstein's followers that were blamed for every internal setback encountered.
If the Conservative Party were to imagine an opposition of their dreams, they would probably not go far wrong with Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to epitomize everything they hate in the "old" Labour Party; likewise, Corbyn's movement from within the Labour Party, "Momentum", seems like an organisation designed for ridicule, while holding a vice-like grip on the Labour Party itself: engineered, it would seem, to perpetuate the eternal, hopeless leadership of Corbyn and his successors.
In the same vein, parliament is seen as blocking the people's will, and judges are "enemies of the people": in other words, Brexit was initiated to restore the sovereignty of parliament and the rule of law, so the government could take it away.
"Brexit" was a power-grab dressed up as the opposite; giving "power to the people", so they could give it to those who knew what to do with it. An "anti-establishment" vote was hijacked by the establishment before anyone knew what was going on.
"When war becomes continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous"
Or put another way, when a "war" has no feasible end in sight, it also becomes meaningless. Whatever the "war" is, it becomes an end in itself. This may be a "war" from without, such as against an exterior "enemy", or it may be a war from within, such as against forms of internal opposition. Ideally, it must have elements of both aspects. The "war" can never be truly won, for that would defeat part of the main benefit of having the "war". But the main reason for the "war", was the depletion of resources without raising the standard of living.
That was how Orwell saw things in "Nineteen Eighty-four". While once government was engaged in a "war on poverty", these days it would be more accurate to describe an undeclared "war on the poor": "austerity" and all its associated policies, such as welfare reform, and side-effects, such as food banks and homelessness, could be described as nothing less. Because "the poor" tend to vote Labour they are seen as "the enemy" first of all, and secondly, a segment of society that it is easy to stigmatize. This was one reason, privately of course, that George Osborne gave for being against building more council housing - it would only help Labour voters.
Apart from the benefits of making the Conservatives seem keen to get the economy on the right track, "austerity" works on various levels. First, it acts as a form of divide and rule among the masses, pitting the so-called "strivers" against the "skivers". Second, it allows the government to cut back on "non-essential spending" on services and allow the voracious and amoral private sector to fill in the gaps. Third, reduced spending on the criminal justice system means that increased levels of crime will increase dysfunction and chaos at the lower end of the social spectrum, feeding into a self-perpetuating loop of social deprivation, and creating further scapegoats for the government to blame. The constraining circumstances of "Brexit" over the coming years are likely to make this "war on the poor" seem endless.
At a day-to-day level, people are more worried about staying safe and having enough money for the bills and food on the table to worry about why it's happening and who's really to blame.
"From the "proles", nothing is to be feared"
This contemptuous language comes directly from the pages of "Nineteen Eighty-four", but can also found amongst the inner circle of the Conservative Party, which explains why many of the policies are designed the way they are: the last point made in the previous paragraph sums up why this is. The "proles" are seen as a sub-class to be jeered at, despised, and attacked for even daring to enjoy themselves through their own devices. The "culture war" against what was once called the "working class" has made them despise their own kind. The poor - the "proles" - are most dangerous when they are happy through their own devices, so therefore their happiness must be treated with deep distrust.
Instead, their happiness should be manipulated and manufactured: jingoistic nationalism is the "default" setting to distract them from their woes. Having the population united against a common exterior enemy acts as an "opium of the masses", conveniently distracting them from any uncomfortable reality at home - in the case of the UK, the government's ongoing "austerity" programme.
The oncoming situation of "Brexit" therefore acts as a prime opportunity for this to be put into practice, as we can already see from some of the regular headlines in the media. The masses are deemed to conform to the idea that unquestioning patriotism and simplistic jingoism is their "default setting": conversely, as mentioned, the threat of "war" from without is another instrument at the government's disposal. Not an actual, fighting war: more of a "cultural war" with Europe; therefore, any Europeans living in the UK should be seen with instant suspicion, and any British citizen that espouses any residual pro-European sentiment (i.e. "Remainers") should be seen as being latent traitors to the country. This feeling has been seen in the British press for years, which was part of the background campaign that led to the rise of UKIP (more of an extremist wing of the Conservative Party) and the eventual Brexit vote.
"Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful"
Some fun has been had at Theresa May's expense recently: from her troubles in eating chips with her fingers, to her fear of meeting the public. The strategy the Tories are taking is nothing new - making politics about personality is as old as the hills. What's different about how they are doing it today is that they are making the election much more about voting for "Theresa May" than about voting Conservative than has been seen by parties and the leaders in any election in living memory. In some places, campaign literature is all about Theresa May with barely a mention of her party.
This is no doubt down to Lynton Crosby, architect of the Tories' last election victory. One-on-one, in the public's perception, May wins hands-down any contest with Jeremy Corbyn about leadership.
But there is more to it than that. Partly it is a conscious act of distraction (one of Crosby's "dead cat on the table" tactics): because with a fair segment of the population still bearing doubts about the Conservatives' sincerity (who'd have thought it!), it's better to make it a vote about the person rather than the party. Furthermore, and as mentioned by the author in a previous article, there is a fair amount of "Groupthink" in the air following the referendum: people psychologically want to "get on with it", and therefore want to get behind the leader; regardless of their previous doubts, they will vote for May. Following from that, there is a tendency to therefore see in Theresa May a person that embodies "the spirit of Brexit" i.e. an aspect of "mythologizing" of the national leader in difficult times. Her previous faults are now seen as strengths. With Europe now seen as "the enemy" (again), it's not difficult to imagine some in the Conservative Party wanting to engender an almost Churchillian-like cult of personality around her.
To an extent, therefore, the strategy of minimizing May's real contact with the electorate (rather than meetings with party activists) is not only because the strategists have seen how deeply unnatural she is with people (Thatcher had the same issues, though that is hardly an endorsement). The same tactic was done with Cameron in the last election, but he was more naturally gregarious and seemed to enjoy campaigning; Theresa May seems to enjoy campaigning not a jot, shows strong signs of control freakery. No, the other reason may be to add to the "mythologizing": the less people see of her, the more people will project on to her want they want to see in a national leader. In other words, Theresa May, for the Conservatives, is presented as less of a leader than more of a symbol, almost in the same semi-divine status that some reserve for the Queen. Whether this is truly intentional or merely unconscious is hard to know at this point; strategy-wise, it may well be the first masquerading as the second.
In this way, the seeds have been sown; we will soon know what kind of harvest they bring, and who for.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Narcissism and sexuality: LGBT psychology and the darker beyond
Narcissists have an entirely self-centred view towards sex. A narcissist sees their sexuality as a projection of their own sense of omnipotence. As discussed in another article written on the same topic, narcissists essentially objectify their partners or sexual conquests. At the same time, the narcissist is also in love with his own self-image and his own fantasies. He feels he is deserving of special treatment (entitlement), deserving of the perfection of his desires regardless of reality, and will resort to histrionics (tantrums and sudden bursts of emotion and anger) if he fails to get what he wants.
Narcissistic characteristics can also be found in many members of the gay and transgender community. What marks out the gay community from heterosexuals is their use of their sexuality in itself as a way to mark themselves as different. In other words, their sexuality is used as a way to express their narcissism (as described here) - their sexuality is the physical manifestation of their narcissism. However, this is not to say that they are inherently more narcissistic than a heterosexual narcissist - merely that the narcissistic manifestation is more distinctly expressed.
The link between homosexuality and narcissism is unclear, as there has been little proper scientific research into this area. It would be unfair to delve into any controversies about the origins of homosexuality per se. There is a plethora of evidence that homosexuality occurs naturally throughout the animal kingdom. That is not so say, though, that there may well some biological cross-over between homosexuality and narcissism. But due to a lack of actual scientific evidence thus far, this can only be conjecture. For this reason, what is said below is based on some element of supposition.
However, it can be said that due to the way that homosexuals define themselves by their body (and sexual identity), they may also be somatic narcissists (i.e. they are in love with their own body). Likewise, it could be argued that a homosexual may be in love with his own idealised image of himself, and that this is what he seeks when he seeks a sexual partner. He or she is attracted to the person that most correlates to the person he or she wishes to be, consciously or not. Therefore, having this person as a partner is the ultimate form of self-love as well as - in a manner of speaking - auto-erotica. In the same way that the heterosexual somatic narcissist uses a member of the opposite sex to essentially masturbate into, the homosexual narcissist enjoys his/her partner as a way to effectively achieve sexual pleasure from their idealised self in physical form.
The narcissism that exists in the homosexual may more generally manifest itself in other ways. Some homosexuals enjoy having a single long-term partner (which may mark them out as being a cerebral narcissist - see the link mentioned earlier), while others may repress their homosexuality for years and living with a sheltered secrecy to their sexuality, which is revealed only in carefully-orchestrated situations (this may also be a marker of cerebral narcissism of a kind). Yet again, many homosexuals will themselves openly admit to being promiscuous (justifying this by saying "it's a very promiscuous scene"), which is another sign of ingrained somatic narcissism: promiscuity is a symptom of narcissism as narcissists quickly bore of "routines", as it goes against his sense of uniqueness and entitlement. Homosexuals are often histrionic ("drama queens"), and some also indulge in other forms of outrageous showmanship, such as cross-dressing. These are all methods of achieving attention and limelight - forms of narcissistic supply, as true with any classic narcissist.
Bisexuality may also, in another way, be seen as a manifestation of narcissism. As a homosexual can be said to seek sex from an idealised image of himself, the bisexual could be said to literally want the best of both worlds - both male and female - and therefore wants to take their sexual omnipotence to the ultimate heights. By seducing and "conquering" both males and females, the bisexual narcissist boosts his self-image by feeling loved by both sexes, which makes him/her feel like God - in an almost literal sense. They may feel they have defied "nature" itself by being sexually-attractive to both sexes simultaneously
The psychology (and narcissism) of transsexuals is perhaps more contorted still. Transsexuals seek to change their gender as they reject their own sense of self. While there are various motivations for this, it can be said that this motivation shares characteristics with the same narcissistic motivations that can be seen in aspects of homosexuality i.e. as the homosexual is attracted to an idealised version of himself he sees in another person, the transsexual sees an idealised version of himself in a member of the opposite sex, and seeks to become that person. In other words, the transsexual rejects his own gender completely, in order be become another (idealised) version of himself in the opposite gender. This can also be called a narcissistic psychology due to the unrealistic nature of this fantasy or wish, as it involves such a drastic (and possible unobtainable) step. Also, this shows the objectification of the transsexual's own body, in a way far more pronounced than can be seen in a homosexual.
Some transsexuals (known as autogynephilic) even wish to change their gender in order to become the sexual object of their own desire. Thus, they may attract members of the opposite sex to themselves in order to fulfill the fantasy of somehow taking on both roles in the act of sex, the male and the female. It can then also be argued that transsexuals have a grandiose sense of entitlement, owing to the nature of their psychology. They feel they deserve to be taken care of by society and their fantastic (biologically-demanding) wishes to be fulfilled, and will go to extreme lengths to do so; in some cases being highly histrionic and even threatening self-harm if they fail to get what they want.
To summarise, the psychologies of the LGBT community seem to be skewed towards some form of expression of narcissism, but may simply be more contorted manifestations of narcissism; a variant on the heterosexual manifestation.
The last taboo
However, narcissism takes on an utterly amoral form when it is manifested in the form of child abuse. There have been numerous examples of this psychology laid bare in the UK, with the revelations regarding Jimmy Savile, as well as the former LostProphets' singer, Ian Watkins. This manifestation of amoral narcissism is ultimately psychopathic in nature, as well as highly-narcissistic - and has almost certainly nothing to do with sex. Along with the sexual sadist, these types of individuals' acts are simply a way of demonstrating their amoral omnipotence. As children are seen as something innocent and rightfully protected by law, therefore these individuals feel they wish to make a point by showing their disdain for moral values. This same type of pathology was evident in the psychology of the serial killer, Ian Brady. These individuals' enormous sense of entitlement, wishing to omnipotent and callously objectify their victims, is the ultimate expression of their deep, dark narcissism.
Along with those in positions of power, this form of sexual psychopathy and deep-rooted narcissism is perhaps the most frightening of all - barring serial killers.
Narcissistic characteristics can also be found in many members of the gay and transgender community. What marks out the gay community from heterosexuals is their use of their sexuality in itself as a way to mark themselves as different. In other words, their sexuality is used as a way to express their narcissism (as described here) - their sexuality is the physical manifestation of their narcissism. However, this is not to say that they are inherently more narcissistic than a heterosexual narcissist - merely that the narcissistic manifestation is more distinctly expressed.
The link between homosexuality and narcissism is unclear, as there has been little proper scientific research into this area. It would be unfair to delve into any controversies about the origins of homosexuality per se. There is a plethora of evidence that homosexuality occurs naturally throughout the animal kingdom. That is not so say, though, that there may well some biological cross-over between homosexuality and narcissism. But due to a lack of actual scientific evidence thus far, this can only be conjecture. For this reason, what is said below is based on some element of supposition.
However, it can be said that due to the way that homosexuals define themselves by their body (and sexual identity), they may also be somatic narcissists (i.e. they are in love with their own body). Likewise, it could be argued that a homosexual may be in love with his own idealised image of himself, and that this is what he seeks when he seeks a sexual partner. He or she is attracted to the person that most correlates to the person he or she wishes to be, consciously or not. Therefore, having this person as a partner is the ultimate form of self-love as well as - in a manner of speaking - auto-erotica. In the same way that the heterosexual somatic narcissist uses a member of the opposite sex to essentially masturbate into, the homosexual narcissist enjoys his/her partner as a way to effectively achieve sexual pleasure from their idealised self in physical form.
The narcissism that exists in the homosexual may more generally manifest itself in other ways. Some homosexuals enjoy having a single long-term partner (which may mark them out as being a cerebral narcissist - see the link mentioned earlier), while others may repress their homosexuality for years and living with a sheltered secrecy to their sexuality, which is revealed only in carefully-orchestrated situations (this may also be a marker of cerebral narcissism of a kind). Yet again, many homosexuals will themselves openly admit to being promiscuous (justifying this by saying "it's a very promiscuous scene"), which is another sign of ingrained somatic narcissism: promiscuity is a symptom of narcissism as narcissists quickly bore of "routines", as it goes against his sense of uniqueness and entitlement. Homosexuals are often histrionic ("drama queens"), and some also indulge in other forms of outrageous showmanship, such as cross-dressing. These are all methods of achieving attention and limelight - forms of narcissistic supply, as true with any classic narcissist.
Bisexuality may also, in another way, be seen as a manifestation of narcissism. As a homosexual can be said to seek sex from an idealised image of himself, the bisexual could be said to literally want the best of both worlds - both male and female - and therefore wants to take their sexual omnipotence to the ultimate heights. By seducing and "conquering" both males and females, the bisexual narcissist boosts his self-image by feeling loved by both sexes, which makes him/her feel like God - in an almost literal sense. They may feel they have defied "nature" itself by being sexually-attractive to both sexes simultaneously
The psychology (and narcissism) of transsexuals is perhaps more contorted still. Transsexuals seek to change their gender as they reject their own sense of self. While there are various motivations for this, it can be said that this motivation shares characteristics with the same narcissistic motivations that can be seen in aspects of homosexuality i.e. as the homosexual is attracted to an idealised version of himself he sees in another person, the transsexual sees an idealised version of himself in a member of the opposite sex, and seeks to become that person. In other words, the transsexual rejects his own gender completely, in order be become another (idealised) version of himself in the opposite gender. This can also be called a narcissistic psychology due to the unrealistic nature of this fantasy or wish, as it involves such a drastic (and possible unobtainable) step. Also, this shows the objectification of the transsexual's own body, in a way far more pronounced than can be seen in a homosexual.
Some transsexuals (known as autogynephilic) even wish to change their gender in order to become the sexual object of their own desire. Thus, they may attract members of the opposite sex to themselves in order to fulfill the fantasy of somehow taking on both roles in the act of sex, the male and the female. It can then also be argued that transsexuals have a grandiose sense of entitlement, owing to the nature of their psychology. They feel they deserve to be taken care of by society and their fantastic (biologically-demanding) wishes to be fulfilled, and will go to extreme lengths to do so; in some cases being highly histrionic and even threatening self-harm if they fail to get what they want.
To summarise, the psychologies of the LGBT community seem to be skewed towards some form of expression of narcissism, but may simply be more contorted manifestations of narcissism; a variant on the heterosexual manifestation.
The last taboo
However, narcissism takes on an utterly amoral form when it is manifested in the form of child abuse. There have been numerous examples of this psychology laid bare in the UK, with the revelations regarding Jimmy Savile, as well as the former LostProphets' singer, Ian Watkins. This manifestation of amoral narcissism is ultimately psychopathic in nature, as well as highly-narcissistic - and has almost certainly nothing to do with sex. Along with the sexual sadist, these types of individuals' acts are simply a way of demonstrating their amoral omnipotence. As children are seen as something innocent and rightfully protected by law, therefore these individuals feel they wish to make a point by showing their disdain for moral values. This same type of pathology was evident in the psychology of the serial killer, Ian Brady. These individuals' enormous sense of entitlement, wishing to omnipotent and callously objectify their victims, is the ultimate expression of their deep, dark narcissism.
Along with those in positions of power, this form of sexual psychopathy and deep-rooted narcissism is perhaps the most frightening of all - barring serial killers.
Monday, July 20, 2015
The Queen's Nazi salute: what it tells us about the establishment
The leaking of private royal footage from the early 1930s has shown the then seven-year-old Elizabeth Windsor prompted to give a Nazi salute with her mother and the future King Edward, her uncle.
Criticism of the actions of a seven-year-old girl seems silly and nonsensical. What the footage does show however, is the private behaviour of the elders of the royal family. It was well-known at the time that a wide number of people in the royal family and the establishment in general, were sympathetic to the Nazi regime and its ideas. The future King Edward was the most high-profile member of the royal family to be openly supportive of the Nazi regime, even during the war and afterwards. For this reason, if he had remained as the monarch at the outbreak of war, the UK would surely have faced a constitutional crisis unlike anything it had ever seen; the actual "abdication crisis" would have felt like a walk in the park by comparison.
Further revelations have revealed (or more exactly, been re-told) that not only were many of the future Queens' relatives sympathetic to the Nazis, but her future husband's family were, in anything, even more interlinked with Hitler's party. Due to his family's German roots, Prince Philip's sisters were married to Nazi officers at the time. So while there may be the view that the UK had "dodged a bullet" by the abdication of King Edward, Philip's Nazi links through his family simply looked to have swapped one imbroglio for another.
In reality, the onset of war changed everything, and the vast majority of those in the royal family (on both Elizabeth's and Philip's sides) distanced themselves very quickly from anything to do with the Nazis. Philip's sisters, of course, could do nothing about being married to Nazis. This was something they had to live with for the rest of their lives. But the pre-war links to the Nazis and the British establishment are something that now look like very uncomfortable reminders of a different time.
Britain and Germany: "best frenemies"?
Large parts of the British establishment became fascinated by the Nazis during their rise to power. Like the higher echelons of the then British Empire, the Nazis were fiercely anti-Communist, saw strikers as a Third Column for Stalin, and were instinctively anti-Semitic. What's often forgotten is that many of the Bolshevik elite were themselves Jews, and the "internationalist" nature of communism was partially what drew some Jewish intellectuals to the Bolshevik cause. For some Jews who did not have a real nation to call their own, Communism fitted the bill. For the same reason, this was why this was seen by some as a mortal threat to the "established order" around the world at the time: "Godless" Communism was therefore a "Jewish conspiracy" at world domination. At the time of Hitler's rise to power, plenty of the great and the good in the UK and the USA saw the Nazis as, at least, a "necessary evil"; others, as we have seen with the future King Edward, actively supported their ideas.
This "moral support" with the British establishment may not only have come about through the "shared goal" of aggressively fighting Communism, but also through a sense of injustice inflicted on the "sister country". Britain's royal family is of German origin, with many of its members married to members of the (former) German royal family in the years after the First World War.
The schism that occurred between Britain and German relations in the year immediately prior to the First World war was down to a variety of reasons. Up to the early 1890s, relations were very friendly, not least because of the extremely close family ties (Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria's nephew - more on his personality here). It was the poor choices that the Kaiser and his advisers made in foreign policy after this point that led to the collapse in good relations with the British government; in that sense, Germany and Britain became "best frenemies" in those last, fateful years before the war.
In the aftermath of the war and the punishing terms of the Treaty of Versailles, there were probably many in the British establishment that must have felt pity for what went wrong with Germany. So by the time of the Nazi's rise to power, those same people would have felt relief that the country was back on the road to recovery that it should never have been forced to take. Whatever misgivings they might have had about the Nazi's methods of this "recovery" would probably have either been put at the back of their minds or dismissed as Communist propaganda.
Seen in this way, the royal family's distancing from the Nazis as the march to war got ever louder by the end of the 1930s would probably have re-ignited the same sense of disillusionment that the British royal family must have felt at the outbreak of the First World War. Germany and Britain had become "best frenemies" once again. The "love-in" that Germany and Britain's establishment once shared had turned into a "mutual loathing" - for a second time.
Controlling "assets"
Apart from the historical context, the establishment's reaction to the publishing of these "revelations" is perhaps more telling than the revelations themselves. The palace has become highly-defensive about the nature of the footage revealed, and is highly-protective of the royal's privacy, for their past private behavior and actions as much as currently.
As the adage goes "information is power". The author recently discussed how technological advances have allowed government the "control of information" in ways never before possible. These days, the "establishment", in the guise of the security services, has the capability to know almost everything that is happening. At the very least, this allows them to have a very good idea about where "threats" may come from.
The phrase "national security" is used a lot by the government to justify its mass surveillance: they cite the now "unpredictability" of the world and the "new techniques" that dangerous groups and individuals pose.
But "security" has a double meaning in reality: officially, it means the security of the nation-state (and by extension, its citizens); unofficially, it also means the security of the government (and its assets).
The reaction that Buckingham Palace has had to the release of the "damaging" footage is the same the reaction that the British government had when Edward Snowden revealed the way that GCHQ work with the NSA to make mass collection of people's communications. The palace sought to punish the leaker of the "damaging" footage, discredit the implications of the footage, and to strongly defend the head of state's right to "privacy" (this last point is an odd stance to take, which we'll look at more in a moment).
When the government discovered "The Guardaan" newspaper had information disclosing how it used mass surveillance, its reaction was to have the newspaper destroy it - which it did under government supervision, even after being told there were other copies outside the UK the government could do nothing about. Later, it used anti-terror laws to arrest the Brazilian partner of a "Guardian" freelancer who was in transit at Heathrow airport, and confiscated his laptop to try and find out what information the "Guardian" had on them. Meanwhile, it strongly discouraged other newspapers from writing any negative coverage about the whole issue.
There's the old saying that you only really know someone when they're really tested. The same can be said of governments and institutions. When tested (using the examples above of Buckingham Palace and the UK government), the establishment's instinct has been shown to be authoritarian and secretive. It behaves so even when it is probably against its longer-term interests. While on the surface the establishment makes a show of respecting "democracy", "oversight" and "freedom of speech", when the chips are down, these ideas are swiftly disregarded.
As seen earlier, the British government gave itself some awful press for the sake of pointlessly destroying a newspaper's computers, and pointlessly (and almost certainly illegally) arresting and detaining a foreigner because they wanted to see what was in his computer and flash drives. Buckingham Palace protects the royal families "privacy" and longer-term legacy with fearsome possessiveness. Some royal experts even argue that it would be better for the royals if more private correspondence was made public, to show that the royal family is, indeed, just a fairly average family in many ways. There have been some good people and bad people in it; people make mistakes and do foolish and horrible things from time to time. This is normal. But by their instinct of wanting to keep many things private, it simply feeds the conspiracy theorists that the royals have a host of "skeletons in the cupboard"
Information is an "asset" for governments; outside information is precious to obtain; inside information is even more precious to keep hold of. Unfortunately, this is also the same thinking used by authoritarian regimes around the world. The establishment, by following this nature, has done itself no favours over the years. It is due to this climate of secrecy that the child abuse scandal has been so damaging. Bad people swarm to a "climate of secrecy" like moths to a flame, for they know they will be protected at all costs, no matter what they do. This is innate, corrupting power of "the establishment": it is corrupt because there is no accountability. If one card falls, they all fall: this is the self-justifying logic of the establishment.
It explains by the infamous MP Cyril Smith was never prosecuted (because of who he knew), and also why Jimmy Savile got away with his behaviour for decades (because of who he was).
Criticism of the actions of a seven-year-old girl seems silly and nonsensical. What the footage does show however, is the private behaviour of the elders of the royal family. It was well-known at the time that a wide number of people in the royal family and the establishment in general, were sympathetic to the Nazi regime and its ideas. The future King Edward was the most high-profile member of the royal family to be openly supportive of the Nazi regime, even during the war and afterwards. For this reason, if he had remained as the monarch at the outbreak of war, the UK would surely have faced a constitutional crisis unlike anything it had ever seen; the actual "abdication crisis" would have felt like a walk in the park by comparison.
Further revelations have revealed (or more exactly, been re-told) that not only were many of the future Queens' relatives sympathetic to the Nazis, but her future husband's family were, in anything, even more interlinked with Hitler's party. Due to his family's German roots, Prince Philip's sisters were married to Nazi officers at the time. So while there may be the view that the UK had "dodged a bullet" by the abdication of King Edward, Philip's Nazi links through his family simply looked to have swapped one imbroglio for another.
In reality, the onset of war changed everything, and the vast majority of those in the royal family (on both Elizabeth's and Philip's sides) distanced themselves very quickly from anything to do with the Nazis. Philip's sisters, of course, could do nothing about being married to Nazis. This was something they had to live with for the rest of their lives. But the pre-war links to the Nazis and the British establishment are something that now look like very uncomfortable reminders of a different time.
Britain and Germany: "best frenemies"?
Large parts of the British establishment became fascinated by the Nazis during their rise to power. Like the higher echelons of the then British Empire, the Nazis were fiercely anti-Communist, saw strikers as a Third Column for Stalin, and were instinctively anti-Semitic. What's often forgotten is that many of the Bolshevik elite were themselves Jews, and the "internationalist" nature of communism was partially what drew some Jewish intellectuals to the Bolshevik cause. For some Jews who did not have a real nation to call their own, Communism fitted the bill. For the same reason, this was why this was seen by some as a mortal threat to the "established order" around the world at the time: "Godless" Communism was therefore a "Jewish conspiracy" at world domination. At the time of Hitler's rise to power, plenty of the great and the good in the UK and the USA saw the Nazis as, at least, a "necessary evil"; others, as we have seen with the future King Edward, actively supported their ideas.
This "moral support" with the British establishment may not only have come about through the "shared goal" of aggressively fighting Communism, but also through a sense of injustice inflicted on the "sister country". Britain's royal family is of German origin, with many of its members married to members of the (former) German royal family in the years after the First World War.
The schism that occurred between Britain and German relations in the year immediately prior to the First World war was down to a variety of reasons. Up to the early 1890s, relations were very friendly, not least because of the extremely close family ties (Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria's nephew - more on his personality here). It was the poor choices that the Kaiser and his advisers made in foreign policy after this point that led to the collapse in good relations with the British government; in that sense, Germany and Britain became "best frenemies" in those last, fateful years before the war.
In the aftermath of the war and the punishing terms of the Treaty of Versailles, there were probably many in the British establishment that must have felt pity for what went wrong with Germany. So by the time of the Nazi's rise to power, those same people would have felt relief that the country was back on the road to recovery that it should never have been forced to take. Whatever misgivings they might have had about the Nazi's methods of this "recovery" would probably have either been put at the back of their minds or dismissed as Communist propaganda.
Seen in this way, the royal family's distancing from the Nazis as the march to war got ever louder by the end of the 1930s would probably have re-ignited the same sense of disillusionment that the British royal family must have felt at the outbreak of the First World War. Germany and Britain had become "best frenemies" once again. The "love-in" that Germany and Britain's establishment once shared had turned into a "mutual loathing" - for a second time.
Controlling "assets"
Apart from the historical context, the establishment's reaction to the publishing of these "revelations" is perhaps more telling than the revelations themselves. The palace has become highly-defensive about the nature of the footage revealed, and is highly-protective of the royal's privacy, for their past private behavior and actions as much as currently.
As the adage goes "information is power". The author recently discussed how technological advances have allowed government the "control of information" in ways never before possible. These days, the "establishment", in the guise of the security services, has the capability to know almost everything that is happening. At the very least, this allows them to have a very good idea about where "threats" may come from.
The phrase "national security" is used a lot by the government to justify its mass surveillance: they cite the now "unpredictability" of the world and the "new techniques" that dangerous groups and individuals pose.
But "security" has a double meaning in reality: officially, it means the security of the nation-state (and by extension, its citizens); unofficially, it also means the security of the government (and its assets).
The reaction that Buckingham Palace has had to the release of the "damaging" footage is the same the reaction that the British government had when Edward Snowden revealed the way that GCHQ work with the NSA to make mass collection of people's communications. The palace sought to punish the leaker of the "damaging" footage, discredit the implications of the footage, and to strongly defend the head of state's right to "privacy" (this last point is an odd stance to take, which we'll look at more in a moment).
When the government discovered "The Guardaan" newspaper had information disclosing how it used mass surveillance, its reaction was to have the newspaper destroy it - which it did under government supervision, even after being told there were other copies outside the UK the government could do nothing about. Later, it used anti-terror laws to arrest the Brazilian partner of a "Guardian" freelancer who was in transit at Heathrow airport, and confiscated his laptop to try and find out what information the "Guardian" had on them. Meanwhile, it strongly discouraged other newspapers from writing any negative coverage about the whole issue.
There's the old saying that you only really know someone when they're really tested. The same can be said of governments and institutions. When tested (using the examples above of Buckingham Palace and the UK government), the establishment's instinct has been shown to be authoritarian and secretive. It behaves so even when it is probably against its longer-term interests. While on the surface the establishment makes a show of respecting "democracy", "oversight" and "freedom of speech", when the chips are down, these ideas are swiftly disregarded.
As seen earlier, the British government gave itself some awful press for the sake of pointlessly destroying a newspaper's computers, and pointlessly (and almost certainly illegally) arresting and detaining a foreigner because they wanted to see what was in his computer and flash drives. Buckingham Palace protects the royal families "privacy" and longer-term legacy with fearsome possessiveness. Some royal experts even argue that it would be better for the royals if more private correspondence was made public, to show that the royal family is, indeed, just a fairly average family in many ways. There have been some good people and bad people in it; people make mistakes and do foolish and horrible things from time to time. This is normal. But by their instinct of wanting to keep many things private, it simply feeds the conspiracy theorists that the royals have a host of "skeletons in the cupboard"
Information is an "asset" for governments; outside information is precious to obtain; inside information is even more precious to keep hold of. Unfortunately, this is also the same thinking used by authoritarian regimes around the world. The establishment, by following this nature, has done itself no favours over the years. It is due to this climate of secrecy that the child abuse scandal has been so damaging. Bad people swarm to a "climate of secrecy" like moths to a flame, for they know they will be protected at all costs, no matter what they do. This is innate, corrupting power of "the establishment": it is corrupt because there is no accountability. If one card falls, they all fall: this is the self-justifying logic of the establishment.
It explains by the infamous MP Cyril Smith was never prosecuted (because of who he knew), and also why Jimmy Savile got away with his behaviour for decades (because of who he was).
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Westminster and First Past The Post: A British political system not fit for purpose
Westminster is a living museum, in every sense of the word. A recent piece in "The Economist" gave an accurate and thought-provoking reminder of how impractical a place the Palace Of Westminster is to deal with the day-to-day tasks of dealing with British politics in the 21st century. Built in the middle of the 19th century, no-one would disagree that the building is an architectural masterpiece. But still using it in the same way in the 21st century as we do now is like insisting on using the same clapped-out, classic car that keeps failing its MOT and you can't fit your family into simply because it was your grandfather's. As reported some time ago, the building needs urgent repair work that would probably take at least several years, resulting in parliamentary business being conducted elsewhere.
Even on a practical basis, the current arrangements are an ad hoc solution. There is not enough space in the Palace Of Westminster for MPs to work, even to fit all the current MPs into the House Of Commons. When there is an important debate, many MPs have to stand; when there is an important vote, because - as pointed out in the "Economist" article, MPs are housed in any one of three separate buildings - there is a dash to get to the chamber in time. This is ridiculous. It may look good on TV to have MPs housed in the Palace Of Westminster, but it makes no sense in reality, least of all for the MPs themselves who have to deal with these issues every day.
And this is before mentioning the antiquated procedures and "traditions" that the recent cohort of neophyte SNP MPs are - rightly - finding an absurd distraction from the business of politics. Some of these points (and the "fighting" over where to sit in the House Of Commons) were recently mentioned in a "Question Time" debate on the BBC (in the episode's first question). The SNP is looking at the way things are done in Westminster, compared to how things are done in Holyrood, and seeing the London institution as a place trapped by its own history, unable to deal with the realities of the 21st century.
The Palace Of Westminster is a museum piece, and should be treated and preserved as one: it is not a suitable place of work for 650 MPs and staff in the 21st century. It is a museum, and should be used as one. And this is without even mentioning the electoral system....
The most unfair election in history
A recent article pointed out the fact that the election result of the last election produced a result in parliament that was the most unrepresentative (compared to how people actually voted nationally) ever.
On the one hand, the Conservatives gained a majority of the seats in parliament based on 37% of the vote. The SNP took 56 of Scotland's 59 seats in Westminster based a little over half of the vote in Scotland. The Greens, who received over a million votes (a little under 4% of the national vote) only returned one MP. And then there is UKIP, who gained 12.5% of the national vote...and also returned only one seat in parliament.
Those figures there tell you the nature of the problem: while the electoral system has for decades not been a true reflection of the political reality, resulting in distortions that favour the two biggest parties, today the system has created not so much a distortion as a perversion of how politics is meant to work. In the multi-party reality of UK politics in 2015, we have an electoral system that is loaded massively in favour of the two main parties; clearly, much more in favour of the Tories at the moment.
In short, it could be called a "fix". It is not "democracy". As the electoral system favours the party in government (currently with a majority), the party with that position has no inclination to change the system. Ergo, the party in government has a stranglehold on parliament and the electoral system that benefits itself at the expense of the other (especially, smaller) parties. Furthermore, in this parliament the constituency boundaries are due to be redrawn in a manner that will benefit the Tories, giving them a further in-built advantage. With Labour likely to be out of office for ten more years, it is difficult to say what the UK will be like after fifteen years of Conservative rule in 2025.
So the hideous irony here is that as British politics becomes the most multi-polar it has been for generations (arguably, ever), the "natural party of government" - the Tories - tilt the system in the exact opposite direction. The UK has a multi-polar political environment with a political system weighed massively in favour of one party: the Conservatives. Only in Scotland does the system produce a different result, now weighed massively in favour of the SNP.
Not fit for purpose
The author has made comments on the easily "corruptible" nature of the British political system before. The British political system has always been a "fix" of one form or another, ever since the electoral franchise was extended beyond the landed classes. It could be argued that the system worked at its best (i.e. it best reflected the political reality) in the 1950s and '60s, when Labour and the Conservatives dominated British politics.
That system began to break down in the '70s in Scotland with the rise of the SNP, and Liberals more generally. In the 1980s, the SNP/Alliance were the victims of a system that didn't give any "space" for a third national party. From the '90s onwards, their successors, the LibDems, managed a way to get over some of the hurdles in their way, while by the time Labour gained office in 1997, the next thirteen years saw the system skewed in their favour instead, up to (and including) the 2010 election.
Britain has changed, but its political system remains fundamentally the same as it was two hundred years ago. Stepping away from the House Of Commons, to the House Of Lords, we see an assembly of hand-picked individuals, aristocrats and bishops - one of the world's last remaining bastions of modern-day feudalism in the developed world. This is masked in the tones of deference to the "mother of all parliaments" and reverence for "families that have generations of experience at the highest level of the decision-making process".
But this is simply masterful misdirection; something that the establishment has been good at for centuries.
The Tories are the party of the aristocracy, and have been since the 17th century. They know how to make people want to vote for them, and when you are up against (in the words of Alastair Campbell) a set of "ruthless bastards", what can you do?
Even on a practical basis, the current arrangements are an ad hoc solution. There is not enough space in the Palace Of Westminster for MPs to work, even to fit all the current MPs into the House Of Commons. When there is an important debate, many MPs have to stand; when there is an important vote, because - as pointed out in the "Economist" article, MPs are housed in any one of three separate buildings - there is a dash to get to the chamber in time. This is ridiculous. It may look good on TV to have MPs housed in the Palace Of Westminster, but it makes no sense in reality, least of all for the MPs themselves who have to deal with these issues every day.
And this is before mentioning the antiquated procedures and "traditions" that the recent cohort of neophyte SNP MPs are - rightly - finding an absurd distraction from the business of politics. Some of these points (and the "fighting" over where to sit in the House Of Commons) were recently mentioned in a "Question Time" debate on the BBC (in the episode's first question). The SNP is looking at the way things are done in Westminster, compared to how things are done in Holyrood, and seeing the London institution as a place trapped by its own history, unable to deal with the realities of the 21st century.
The Palace Of Westminster is a museum piece, and should be treated and preserved as one: it is not a suitable place of work for 650 MPs and staff in the 21st century. It is a museum, and should be used as one. And this is without even mentioning the electoral system....
The most unfair election in history
A recent article pointed out the fact that the election result of the last election produced a result in parliament that was the most unrepresentative (compared to how people actually voted nationally) ever.
On the one hand, the Conservatives gained a majority of the seats in parliament based on 37% of the vote. The SNP took 56 of Scotland's 59 seats in Westminster based a little over half of the vote in Scotland. The Greens, who received over a million votes (a little under 4% of the national vote) only returned one MP. And then there is UKIP, who gained 12.5% of the national vote...and also returned only one seat in parliament.
Those figures there tell you the nature of the problem: while the electoral system has for decades not been a true reflection of the political reality, resulting in distortions that favour the two biggest parties, today the system has created not so much a distortion as a perversion of how politics is meant to work. In the multi-party reality of UK politics in 2015, we have an electoral system that is loaded massively in favour of the two main parties; clearly, much more in favour of the Tories at the moment.
In short, it could be called a "fix". It is not "democracy". As the electoral system favours the party in government (currently with a majority), the party with that position has no inclination to change the system. Ergo, the party in government has a stranglehold on parliament and the electoral system that benefits itself at the expense of the other (especially, smaller) parties. Furthermore, in this parliament the constituency boundaries are due to be redrawn in a manner that will benefit the Tories, giving them a further in-built advantage. With Labour likely to be out of office for ten more years, it is difficult to say what the UK will be like after fifteen years of Conservative rule in 2025.
So the hideous irony here is that as British politics becomes the most multi-polar it has been for generations (arguably, ever), the "natural party of government" - the Tories - tilt the system in the exact opposite direction. The UK has a multi-polar political environment with a political system weighed massively in favour of one party: the Conservatives. Only in Scotland does the system produce a different result, now weighed massively in favour of the SNP.
Not fit for purpose
The author has made comments on the easily "corruptible" nature of the British political system before. The British political system has always been a "fix" of one form or another, ever since the electoral franchise was extended beyond the landed classes. It could be argued that the system worked at its best (i.e. it best reflected the political reality) in the 1950s and '60s, when Labour and the Conservatives dominated British politics.
That system began to break down in the '70s in Scotland with the rise of the SNP, and Liberals more generally. In the 1980s, the SNP/Alliance were the victims of a system that didn't give any "space" for a third national party. From the '90s onwards, their successors, the LibDems, managed a way to get over some of the hurdles in their way, while by the time Labour gained office in 1997, the next thirteen years saw the system skewed in their favour instead, up to (and including) the 2010 election.
Britain has changed, but its political system remains fundamentally the same as it was two hundred years ago. Stepping away from the House Of Commons, to the House Of Lords, we see an assembly of hand-picked individuals, aristocrats and bishops - one of the world's last remaining bastions of modern-day feudalism in the developed world. This is masked in the tones of deference to the "mother of all parliaments" and reverence for "families that have generations of experience at the highest level of the decision-making process".
But this is simply masterful misdirection; something that the establishment has been good at for centuries.
The Tories are the party of the aristocracy, and have been since the 17th century. They know how to make people want to vote for them, and when you are up against (in the words of Alastair Campbell) a set of "ruthless bastards", what can you do?
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
The 2015 General Election: how did the Conservatives win?
In the cold light of day, it is clear that the Conservatives' election strategy worked. Their aim - which seemed hopelessly fanciful when said by David Cameron during the campaign - was to win around twenty seats; what was need to achieve a bare majority. In that simple aim, the Tories were even able to exceed their wilder expectations (given the polls), producing a - precariously-small - majority government.
The Tories are masters at winning elections, having been doing it on a regular basis since the 18th century. For this reason, to many people, they seem the "natural" government. The thirteen years of Labour government could be seen an aberration, only achieved by the Labour leadership under Blair by accepting many of the basic tenets of Thatcherism, the Conservatives' longest-serving leader of the 20th century. Meanwhile, the "post-war consensus", that saw the Tories move closer to the left than they have ever been, could be seen as the Conservative Party showing its chameleon-like ability to adapt to survive. Then, when the economic crises of the 1970s happened, the Tories under Thatcher seized on the opportunity to re-define and remake their party in its more traditional guise, and quickly shedding its support for the "consensus". Whether or not these facts are "fair" or "just" feels like a trivial point. The hard truth for those on the left is that, when it boils down to it, England is a "conservative" country in many ways.
This is a simplification, though. As we have seen, the election has shown us that the UK in 2015 is now more politically-fractured than ever before. The main point is that in spite of the fracturing of the political faultlines, the Tories still - in spite of everything - know how to keep their nose ahead of the rest to get over the finishing line first.
All part of the game
This author has talked before about the plethora of "dirty tricks" and negative campaigning used by the Tories in the 2015 election campaign. And the nakedly-cynical "divide and rule" strategy over the "threat" of the SNP - which even some Tory elders were warning of the dangers of - worked with clinical effectiveness at the end of the day. In the end, it was the Tories' sway over the "marginals" that ensured that Labour's result in England was no better than what they got in 2010, putting Labour's number of English MPs on the same level as what they got in 1992.
A BBC "Question Time" special on the day after the election provided some particularly insightful moments of analysis. Paddy Ashdown agreed wholeheartedly to the brutally-effective supposition put to the panel that the LibDems were punished for the mistakes of the Coalition, while the Tories were rewarded for its successes. As Alastair Campbell put it more bluntly, the Tories won because they were "ruthless bastards". Francis Maude, the Tories' member of the panel, kept quiet while these points were being made. His silence told its own story.
The LibDems, post-election, are - ironically - now having their biggest surge in membership in living memory. A wit might argue that this was many English voters now feeling guilty for realising that they had been savagely punishing the wrong party for the Coalition's errors. Certainly, Paddy Ashdown's indictment of how his party was punished for doing what it felt had been the right thing for the country was a very powerful point.
While the "divergence" of the two Coalition parties had been going on more at least a year prior to the election, it was Francis Maude - the Tory - who complained of the Coalition partners not "being fair" to the government. He should have known better, and Paddy Ashdown put his squarely right in his place. The Tories - and Cameron in particular - were shamelessly claiming credit for popular ideas (such as raising the income tax threshold) that were really LibDem policies that had never been in the Conservative 2010 manifesto.
But this is part of a trend with the Tories: to stab you in the back, and later harmlessly claim it was "part of the game" of politics.
This attitude is symptomatic of how people like David Cameron and George Osborne see politics not as a force for good, but as "sport". The two of them have made duplicitous, cynical and savage attacks on their opponents (and segments of society), but later on brush it off being "heat of the moment" stuff. A common accusation made against Cameron is that in spite of appearances, he never seems to take things very seriously. This feeds into a feeling that many of the Tories involved in politics still think they are playing by "boarding school rules"; certainly, the way that some of their MPs in parliament behave at times reinforces the view that Westminster is all "old school tie" and a callous "establishment" that treats democracy as an inconvenience to be tolerated
With this level of cynicism evident in the ranks of the Tories, it is no wonder that more and more people see the electoral system as a "fix". When things are constructed like this, how can they lose?
The Tories are masters at winning elections, having been doing it on a regular basis since the 18th century. For this reason, to many people, they seem the "natural" government. The thirteen years of Labour government could be seen an aberration, only achieved by the Labour leadership under Blair by accepting many of the basic tenets of Thatcherism, the Conservatives' longest-serving leader of the 20th century. Meanwhile, the "post-war consensus", that saw the Tories move closer to the left than they have ever been, could be seen as the Conservative Party showing its chameleon-like ability to adapt to survive. Then, when the economic crises of the 1970s happened, the Tories under Thatcher seized on the opportunity to re-define and remake their party in its more traditional guise, and quickly shedding its support for the "consensus". Whether or not these facts are "fair" or "just" feels like a trivial point. The hard truth for those on the left is that, when it boils down to it, England is a "conservative" country in many ways.
This is a simplification, though. As we have seen, the election has shown us that the UK in 2015 is now more politically-fractured than ever before. The main point is that in spite of the fracturing of the political faultlines, the Tories still - in spite of everything - know how to keep their nose ahead of the rest to get over the finishing line first.
All part of the game
This author has talked before about the plethora of "dirty tricks" and negative campaigning used by the Tories in the 2015 election campaign. And the nakedly-cynical "divide and rule" strategy over the "threat" of the SNP - which even some Tory elders were warning of the dangers of - worked with clinical effectiveness at the end of the day. In the end, it was the Tories' sway over the "marginals" that ensured that Labour's result in England was no better than what they got in 2010, putting Labour's number of English MPs on the same level as what they got in 1992.
A BBC "Question Time" special on the day after the election provided some particularly insightful moments of analysis. Paddy Ashdown agreed wholeheartedly to the brutally-effective supposition put to the panel that the LibDems were punished for the mistakes of the Coalition, while the Tories were rewarded for its successes. As Alastair Campbell put it more bluntly, the Tories won because they were "ruthless bastards". Francis Maude, the Tories' member of the panel, kept quiet while these points were being made. His silence told its own story.
The LibDems, post-election, are - ironically - now having their biggest surge in membership in living memory. A wit might argue that this was many English voters now feeling guilty for realising that they had been savagely punishing the wrong party for the Coalition's errors. Certainly, Paddy Ashdown's indictment of how his party was punished for doing what it felt had been the right thing for the country was a very powerful point.
While the "divergence" of the two Coalition parties had been going on more at least a year prior to the election, it was Francis Maude - the Tory - who complained of the Coalition partners not "being fair" to the government. He should have known better, and Paddy Ashdown put his squarely right in his place. The Tories - and Cameron in particular - were shamelessly claiming credit for popular ideas (such as raising the income tax threshold) that were really LibDem policies that had never been in the Conservative 2010 manifesto.
But this is part of a trend with the Tories: to stab you in the back, and later harmlessly claim it was "part of the game" of politics.
This attitude is symptomatic of how people like David Cameron and George Osborne see politics not as a force for good, but as "sport". The two of them have made duplicitous, cynical and savage attacks on their opponents (and segments of society), but later on brush it off being "heat of the moment" stuff. A common accusation made against Cameron is that in spite of appearances, he never seems to take things very seriously. This feeds into a feeling that many of the Tories involved in politics still think they are playing by "boarding school rules"; certainly, the way that some of their MPs in parliament behave at times reinforces the view that Westminster is all "old school tie" and a callous "establishment" that treats democracy as an inconvenience to be tolerated
With this level of cynicism evident in the ranks of the Tories, it is no wonder that more and more people see the electoral system as a "fix". When things are constructed like this, how can they lose?
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
The Conservatives' election strategy and "dirty tricks": how to divide your enemies and threaten people
Q: How do the Conservatives, the party that represent the interests of Britain's rich and powerful, persuade others to vote for them?
There have historically been two strands to this answer, depending on who they are trying to persuade.
To the "middle class", the Conservatives use the double-pronged "threat" of the Labour party as the party that will take away their money through taxation (and destroy the economy), as well as the "threat" that the "feckless/ undeserving/ immoral" segments of society pose to the rest.
Married with the psychological "threat" of the alternative is the "opportunity" that the Conservatives say they can bring to the middle class - that they offer the easiest (low tax) route for the the middle class to rise upwards to the golden realms of the elite. The message is fear on one hand, and greed on the other.
To the "working class", the Conservatives use the similar "threat" of the "feckless/ undeserving/ immoral", which is presumably much closer to home to them, married with the message that the Conservatives represent the "party of opportunity", allowing the "hardworking" to rise up to the middle class. Again, it is fear on one hand, and self-interest on the other.
Over the long history of the Tories, they have been adept at masking their recurring incompetence inside an exterior shell of assured self-confidence. This may well also be a metaphor for the state of modern Britain itself: but that's another story.
Divide and rule
George Osborne's use of the "strivers versus skivers" rhetoric is the latest telling of a narrative from the Tories that has been the same for many decades, which has intensified with the coming of Thatcherism.
The psychology of politics is a science in itself, and the psychology of the Conservatives is well worth studying in detail. The author looked at some examples from the Conservative government a few years ago, and came up with some interesting results. But as the only way that the Tories can become the government is by making their enemies hate each other, divide and rule is the best way to achieve it. As said earlier, this is a strategy they've practiced over many years.
This explains why Cameron's election strategy - devised by Lynton Crosby - has been all about the negatives, which reached a particular nadir a few weeks ago. But things have hardly got much better since, and there has been the relentless promotion of the "threat" that the SNP have over a possible Labour government - about the most cast-iron example of a literal "divide and rule" strategy you could witness.
The baseness of psychology required to formulate this strategy is stark, and it tells you much about how many Conservatives view human nature: as a game of winners and losers, where those who "lose out" have done so through their own mistakes, and therefore should be deservedly punished for it. As well as mirroring the thinking of Ayn Rand, it also - alarmingly - mirrors the thinking of one of the most destructive psychological disorders.
The kind of Britain that the Tories espouse is one where the disabled and the unemployed are presumed as probable fraudsters for simply wishing some financial aid from the state. It is a Britain where the unemployed are sometimes forced to work for their benefits (which is not only immoral, but also bad economics). People have literally died as the indirect result of government welfare policy. But under the Tories "divide and rule" strategy, those people that died were not penniless and starving because the government withdrew their benefits, but because of the choices that those people made. They were defined as "undeserving" i.e. they deserved to die.
The use of "divide and rule" provides the most important element of electioneering - creating a "scapegoat". Whether it's the SNP (or Scotland in general), "immigrants", "skivers", or whoever, the electorate - from a psychological point of view - have convincing "hate figures" in order to turn to the Tories as their saviour.
But for a cynical and immoral "divide and rule" strategy to work to its best, you also have to know how to use cynical and immoral "dirty tricks"...
How to use "The Dirty Tricks Handbook"
First and foremost, you have to control the "narrative". This is the "story" of what has happened up to the election. In short, it's propaganda - a lie - that you tell voters. It must be simple to be easily memorable, and repeated regularly.
The Tories' "narrative" about Labour - repeated by Cameron - is that they "broke the banks", and that it was "Labour overspending" that caused the crisis. Only the other day a treasury civil servant said catagorically that this "narrative" was untrue and a historical fallacy. It was a banking crisis (partly caused by lack of government regulation) that created the financial crisis. The "Labour overspending" happened as a result of the crisis; it was not the cause of it. The fact that so many people in the UK have such bad memories that they don't remember this is deeply worrying. The Tories are relying on the notion that if a smart, smooth-talking politician keeps on saying something, people believe it is true. And - horrifyingly - the evidence supports that notion.
Secondly - but probably as important - you have to have the media on your side. In this election, there is convincing evidence (also carried out by Loughborough University) that the media are solidly on the side of the Conservatives. This also seems to extend to the BBC, given the regularly tough questioning given out to Ed Miliband especially, compared to the tame (and sometimes poorly-phrased) questioning given to Cameron and other Tory figures. Given the similar educational backgrounds that many media figures have to many politicians, this shouldn't be so surprising, but it certainly puts paid to any real sense of media "freedom". Also, given that Ed Miliband had effectively declared war on a large segment of the media "establishment" following the events of Leveson, it is even less surprising.
It wasn't always like this, though. Under Tony Blair, the media "establishment" was largely on his side, but again - especially in the case of Rupert Murdoch - it was a case of currying favour in order to gain the support of the media. If the media really wasn't so influential, why did Blair (and Cameron) so obviously want to win them over?
Next, and related to the two previous ideas, is how essential it is to control the agenda. The Tories did this with ruthless duplicity. The whole "debate about the debates" was a prime example of the Tories controlling events in order to allow David Cameron to dictate to the media and the other parties precisely on what terms things would be allowed to happen. It was a disgraceful - but horribly effective - strategy.
Fourthly, apart from the "big lie" to control the "narrative", is the use of character assassination. This was alluded to earlier with the negative attacks on Miliband as someone who would "Stab Britain in The Back". In the case of this election, they seem to have been fairly ineffective (even counter-productive), but in the past had a greater chance of success - with the help of the media (see above). Related to this point is using your opponents' comments in an out-of-context manner to try to destroy their reputation.
One of the most interesting - and to your rival party, confounding - tactics is the use of "projection". This is a psychological term more commonly used as a tactic of narcissists to confound those around them when under threat. In political terms, this is when you accuse your rivals of the exact same errors that they accuse you of - "projecting" your own weaknesses onto your opponents. As this is the last thing your rivals are expecting, it leaves them confused and unclear where to go next with their argument.
An example in this campaign is Cameron's claim the other day that the Tories are for "hardworking people" and against the excesses of bankers, unlike Labour (because they bailed them out, and allowed excessive bonuses). This statement is so catagorically opposite to the Conservatives' reality that it beggars belief that Cameron can even convincingly utter it. As anyone with a brain knows, the Conservatives finances are strongly-reliant on groups and individuals in The City and offshore clients.
This kind of statement tells us more about the worrying ease with which David Cameron can spout complete nonsense from his mouth while seeming to believe every word of it. But Cameron has a track record for being a compulsive liar (or - let's be fair - possibly just a complete idiot), as well as a bully; not to mention a coward, and an incompetent.
Lastly, you can always steal the clothes (i.e. policies) of your opponent and claim they were yours all along.
There have historically been two strands to this answer, depending on who they are trying to persuade.
To the "middle class", the Conservatives use the double-pronged "threat" of the Labour party as the party that will take away their money through taxation (and destroy the economy), as well as the "threat" that the "feckless/ undeserving/ immoral" segments of society pose to the rest.
Married with the psychological "threat" of the alternative is the "opportunity" that the Conservatives say they can bring to the middle class - that they offer the easiest (low tax) route for the the middle class to rise upwards to the golden realms of the elite. The message is fear on one hand, and greed on the other.
To the "working class", the Conservatives use the similar "threat" of the "feckless/ undeserving/ immoral", which is presumably much closer to home to them, married with the message that the Conservatives represent the "party of opportunity", allowing the "hardworking" to rise up to the middle class. Again, it is fear on one hand, and self-interest on the other.
Over the long history of the Tories, they have been adept at masking their recurring incompetence inside an exterior shell of assured self-confidence. This may well also be a metaphor for the state of modern Britain itself: but that's another story.
Divide and rule
George Osborne's use of the "strivers versus skivers" rhetoric is the latest telling of a narrative from the Tories that has been the same for many decades, which has intensified with the coming of Thatcherism.
The psychology of politics is a science in itself, and the psychology of the Conservatives is well worth studying in detail. The author looked at some examples from the Conservative government a few years ago, and came up with some interesting results. But as the only way that the Tories can become the government is by making their enemies hate each other, divide and rule is the best way to achieve it. As said earlier, this is a strategy they've practiced over many years.
This explains why Cameron's election strategy - devised by Lynton Crosby - has been all about the negatives, which reached a particular nadir a few weeks ago. But things have hardly got much better since, and there has been the relentless promotion of the "threat" that the SNP have over a possible Labour government - about the most cast-iron example of a literal "divide and rule" strategy you could witness.
The baseness of psychology required to formulate this strategy is stark, and it tells you much about how many Conservatives view human nature: as a game of winners and losers, where those who "lose out" have done so through their own mistakes, and therefore should be deservedly punished for it. As well as mirroring the thinking of Ayn Rand, it also - alarmingly - mirrors the thinking of one of the most destructive psychological disorders.
The kind of Britain that the Tories espouse is one where the disabled and the unemployed are presumed as probable fraudsters for simply wishing some financial aid from the state. It is a Britain where the unemployed are sometimes forced to work for their benefits (which is not only immoral, but also bad economics). People have literally died as the indirect result of government welfare policy. But under the Tories "divide and rule" strategy, those people that died were not penniless and starving because the government withdrew their benefits, but because of the choices that those people made. They were defined as "undeserving" i.e. they deserved to die.
The use of "divide and rule" provides the most important element of electioneering - creating a "scapegoat". Whether it's the SNP (or Scotland in general), "immigrants", "skivers", or whoever, the electorate - from a psychological point of view - have convincing "hate figures" in order to turn to the Tories as their saviour.
But for a cynical and immoral "divide and rule" strategy to work to its best, you also have to know how to use cynical and immoral "dirty tricks"...
How to use "The Dirty Tricks Handbook"
First and foremost, you have to control the "narrative". This is the "story" of what has happened up to the election. In short, it's propaganda - a lie - that you tell voters. It must be simple to be easily memorable, and repeated regularly.
The Tories' "narrative" about Labour - repeated by Cameron - is that they "broke the banks", and that it was "Labour overspending" that caused the crisis. Only the other day a treasury civil servant said catagorically that this "narrative" was untrue and a historical fallacy. It was a banking crisis (partly caused by lack of government regulation) that created the financial crisis. The "Labour overspending" happened as a result of the crisis; it was not the cause of it. The fact that so many people in the UK have such bad memories that they don't remember this is deeply worrying. The Tories are relying on the notion that if a smart, smooth-talking politician keeps on saying something, people believe it is true. And - horrifyingly - the evidence supports that notion.
Secondly - but probably as important - you have to have the media on your side. In this election, there is convincing evidence (also carried out by Loughborough University) that the media are solidly on the side of the Conservatives. This also seems to extend to the BBC, given the regularly tough questioning given out to Ed Miliband especially, compared to the tame (and sometimes poorly-phrased) questioning given to Cameron and other Tory figures. Given the similar educational backgrounds that many media figures have to many politicians, this shouldn't be so surprising, but it certainly puts paid to any real sense of media "freedom". Also, given that Ed Miliband had effectively declared war on a large segment of the media "establishment" following the events of Leveson, it is even less surprising.
It wasn't always like this, though. Under Tony Blair, the media "establishment" was largely on his side, but again - especially in the case of Rupert Murdoch - it was a case of currying favour in order to gain the support of the media. If the media really wasn't so influential, why did Blair (and Cameron) so obviously want to win them over?
Next, and related to the two previous ideas, is how essential it is to control the agenda. The Tories did this with ruthless duplicity. The whole "debate about the debates" was a prime example of the Tories controlling events in order to allow David Cameron to dictate to the media and the other parties precisely on what terms things would be allowed to happen. It was a disgraceful - but horribly effective - strategy.
Fourthly, apart from the "big lie" to control the "narrative", is the use of character assassination. This was alluded to earlier with the negative attacks on Miliband as someone who would "Stab Britain in The Back". In the case of this election, they seem to have been fairly ineffective (even counter-productive), but in the past had a greater chance of success - with the help of the media (see above). Related to this point is using your opponents' comments in an out-of-context manner to try to destroy their reputation.
One of the most interesting - and to your rival party, confounding - tactics is the use of "projection". This is a psychological term more commonly used as a tactic of narcissists to confound those around them when under threat. In political terms, this is when you accuse your rivals of the exact same errors that they accuse you of - "projecting" your own weaknesses onto your opponents. As this is the last thing your rivals are expecting, it leaves them confused and unclear where to go next with their argument.
An example in this campaign is Cameron's claim the other day that the Tories are for "hardworking people" and against the excesses of bankers, unlike Labour (because they bailed them out, and allowed excessive bonuses). This statement is so catagorically opposite to the Conservatives' reality that it beggars belief that Cameron can even convincingly utter it. As anyone with a brain knows, the Conservatives finances are strongly-reliant on groups and individuals in The City and offshore clients.
This kind of statement tells us more about the worrying ease with which David Cameron can spout complete nonsense from his mouth while seeming to believe every word of it. But Cameron has a track record for being a compulsive liar (or - let's be fair - possibly just a complete idiot), as well as a bully; not to mention a coward, and an incompetent.
Lastly, you can always steal the clothes (i.e. policies) of your opponent and claim they were yours all along.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
The UK, the 2015 general election and the illusion of democracy
Some would say that England has gifted the world with two valued exports: parliamentary democracy, and football. As any Englishman would know, England "invented" the concept of football. Englishmen also know that after being the country that created the football "system", other countries over time developed the same system and evolved it, while England lagged behind, for a long time failing to update its "system" at all. We still were sticking to the same ideas from generations past, while other countries had taken the idea to the next level. his is partly why England only won the World Cup in 1966.
However, much the same could be said of parliamentary democracy, England's other "export". When foreigners understand fully how the political system in the UK works, many of them are in disbelief. This author has witnessed this reaction a number of times.
In many ways, the UK's progressive "public image" to the world abroad is in stark contrast to the grubby and backwards reality. This is one of the many ways in which the "elite" of the establishment fool those abroad, and their own electorate, into being turkeys that vote for Christmas.
England's parliament gained its power over the monarch during the events of the 17th century, when the actions of two Stewart kings (Charles I and James II) took England back into the realms of autocracy that had existed in previous centuries. The result was a much more powerful parliament, composed of combination of aristocrats, landowners and "men of means", that substantially reduced the power of the monarch. That system has remained unchanged since, and was gradually extended over the 19th century to better reflect the changes in population and society.
The idea of parliamentary democracy spread to America, resulting in the War Of Independence, and throughout the 19th century, across parts of Europe. Even by the end of the 19th century, it could be argued that Westminster was still one of the best models of democracy in the world, compared to the embryonic attempts of much more limited "democracy" across parts of Europe.
How To Waste Your Vote
Today, almost all representative democracies in the world use the system of Proportional Representation, which has existed since the early 20th century. Although there are rules that give a threshold for parties to pass in order to enter parliament, this voting system allows the fairest reflection of the electorate's will in parliament. Of course, this usually results in coalition governments, but this is accepted as the natural result of the system. Coalition government has its critics, but the electorate is used to it, and would struggle to think of an effective - and fair - alternative.
The "First Past the Post" system (or a variation of it) is still used in the English-speaking world - in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This is the same electoral system that existed more than two hundred years ago. While the franchise of the vote has extended, the electoral system remains the same.
The natural result of that FPTP system is fewer parties in parliament. To become an MP, a party needs to have more votes than any other party in that particular electoral district (called a "constituency" in the UK). Naturally, this means few parties will be able to gather that kind of support, and this get into parliament.
Advocates of this system point to the fact that it allows local representation that is not the case in PR. However, it can equally be argued that as one of the effects of the FPTP system is a large portion of "safe" seats, this puts into question the motivation of any MP who has the luck to be sitting in one. Because of the way that district boundaries can be "gerrymandered" (e.g. in the USA or the UK) to suit a party's interests, it means that a large portion of the electorate are effectively disenfranchised - their votes become "wasted" simply because of where they live. Prospective candidates in a party can easily become MPs in "safe seats" through smart politicking and networking, and then once in place, the party "favourite" has little incentive to be an effective MP for his constituents, but far more incentive to spend time in Westminster for the purposes of self-promotion. This is how the game works for many.
Many of the "safe" seats can easily become "rotten boroughs". Any voter that happens to live in a "safe" seat but doesn't support their MP's party, has no effective way to get rid of him. Only a highly-organised "tactical vote" by supporters of other parties working in unison for an agreed candidate would work - one rare example of this was the election of Martin Bell standing as in independent candidate in the 1997 election against the sitting Conservative MP in the constituency of Tatton (currently George Osborne's seat). This demonstrates the extremely high level of organisation necessary to "beat the system". Only significant (and, therefore, rare) changes in political mood - such as those in Scotland since the historic referendum last autumn - make this possible.
In this sense, the FPTP system makes the electoral process a "closed shop". With the election - and 2015 is likely to be a prime example - often decided on the votes of some tens of thousands living in "marginal constituencies" in England (in the USA, read: "swing state") - it makes a mockery of the supposed power of the electorate. Only those who happen to live in the right areas have real power, and it is always these "swing voters" (that supposedly represent "Middle England") that decide things. This is the reason why the political parties focus so narrowly on the issues that matter to those specific voters. The effect is not far from that which existed two hundred years ago, when it was the voters in "rotten boroughs" that had a big say in things.
In this way, the UK is really ran in much the same way it was in the 18th century. While the franchise has been extended to all adults, the electoral system basically is the same as it was in the 18th century, with the "power" of the electorate's vote highly dependent on where they live. Millions of votes are "wasted", while the established parties tussle over a smaller and smaller proportion of the electorate.
And this is even without mentioning the House Of Lords - or what might better be called the "House Of Boyars". Like in the days of the Russian Empire, the House Of Lords is simply a parlour for aristocrats and political appointees, a pathetic joke on the concept of "democracy". The "House Of Lords" is a place where giving enough money to the governing party can "buy" you a place in the upper parliament of the UK. None of them are elected and - along with the theocratic Iran - is the only "parliament" in the world where theologians (i.e. bishops) have a place alongside those who have gained their place through a nod and a wink.
In more unpleasant ways, of course, there is plenty of evidence that the "establishment" has been covering up the truth for years.
A "managed democracy"?
It is no wonder that as politics in the UK has become more "professional", it has also become more of a charade separated from the reality of ordinary people's lives. The current Prime Minister is a self-evident example of that: a son of a minor aristocrat (and distant relative to the Queen), he represents the psychology of the "establishment", in spite of his protests: seemingly self-confident but actually incompetent, publicly sincere but privately scornful.
And yet, in the 2010 election, Cameron said - with a straight face - "Vote Change, Vote Conservative"(!).
Apart from the political system being a "closed shop" in many ways, in any case the way the country is ran - through the economy - is effectively a debate-free zone. The economic orthodoxy of austerity and the neo-liberal model has transformed the UK from a diverse economy with a large manufacturing base, to a largely reliant on the fortunes of the (now bloated) financial industry. Having tied the fate of the UK economy to finance, the banks then promptly crashed the economy and made the government pay the bill. And now the rest of society is "paying the bill" in the form of austerity, the shrinking of the state, and the (often dubious) selling-off of government services to an incompetent private sector.
In this way, the UK is barely operating as a country at all, and more like a corporation that should be "restructured", with its population as "employees" that can be offloaded. There are always cheaper supplies of labour, and cheaper ways of getting things done.
Lastly, there is the media, which during this election campaign has seemingly done its best to promote the virtues of Cameron and his "long term economic plan" (see above). As Cameron himself has said in the past: "There is No Alternative".
Well, we may as well all go home, then.
However, much the same could be said of parliamentary democracy, England's other "export". When foreigners understand fully how the political system in the UK works, many of them are in disbelief. This author has witnessed this reaction a number of times.
In many ways, the UK's progressive "public image" to the world abroad is in stark contrast to the grubby and backwards reality. This is one of the many ways in which the "elite" of the establishment fool those abroad, and their own electorate, into being turkeys that vote for Christmas.
England's parliament gained its power over the monarch during the events of the 17th century, when the actions of two Stewart kings (Charles I and James II) took England back into the realms of autocracy that had existed in previous centuries. The result was a much more powerful parliament, composed of combination of aristocrats, landowners and "men of means", that substantially reduced the power of the monarch. That system has remained unchanged since, and was gradually extended over the 19th century to better reflect the changes in population and society.
The idea of parliamentary democracy spread to America, resulting in the War Of Independence, and throughout the 19th century, across parts of Europe. Even by the end of the 19th century, it could be argued that Westminster was still one of the best models of democracy in the world, compared to the embryonic attempts of much more limited "democracy" across parts of Europe.
How To Waste Your Vote
Today, almost all representative democracies in the world use the system of Proportional Representation, which has existed since the early 20th century. Although there are rules that give a threshold for parties to pass in order to enter parliament, this voting system allows the fairest reflection of the electorate's will in parliament. Of course, this usually results in coalition governments, but this is accepted as the natural result of the system. Coalition government has its critics, but the electorate is used to it, and would struggle to think of an effective - and fair - alternative.
The "First Past the Post" system (or a variation of it) is still used in the English-speaking world - in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This is the same electoral system that existed more than two hundred years ago. While the franchise of the vote has extended, the electoral system remains the same.
The natural result of that FPTP system is fewer parties in parliament. To become an MP, a party needs to have more votes than any other party in that particular electoral district (called a "constituency" in the UK). Naturally, this means few parties will be able to gather that kind of support, and this get into parliament.
Advocates of this system point to the fact that it allows local representation that is not the case in PR. However, it can equally be argued that as one of the effects of the FPTP system is a large portion of "safe" seats, this puts into question the motivation of any MP who has the luck to be sitting in one. Because of the way that district boundaries can be "gerrymandered" (e.g. in the USA or the UK) to suit a party's interests, it means that a large portion of the electorate are effectively disenfranchised - their votes become "wasted" simply because of where they live. Prospective candidates in a party can easily become MPs in "safe seats" through smart politicking and networking, and then once in place, the party "favourite" has little incentive to be an effective MP for his constituents, but far more incentive to spend time in Westminster for the purposes of self-promotion. This is how the game works for many.
Many of the "safe" seats can easily become "rotten boroughs". Any voter that happens to live in a "safe" seat but doesn't support their MP's party, has no effective way to get rid of him. Only a highly-organised "tactical vote" by supporters of other parties working in unison for an agreed candidate would work - one rare example of this was the election of Martin Bell standing as in independent candidate in the 1997 election against the sitting Conservative MP in the constituency of Tatton (currently George Osborne's seat). This demonstrates the extremely high level of organisation necessary to "beat the system". Only significant (and, therefore, rare) changes in political mood - such as those in Scotland since the historic referendum last autumn - make this possible.
In this sense, the FPTP system makes the electoral process a "closed shop". With the election - and 2015 is likely to be a prime example - often decided on the votes of some tens of thousands living in "marginal constituencies" in England (in the USA, read: "swing state") - it makes a mockery of the supposed power of the electorate. Only those who happen to live in the right areas have real power, and it is always these "swing voters" (that supposedly represent "Middle England") that decide things. This is the reason why the political parties focus so narrowly on the issues that matter to those specific voters. The effect is not far from that which existed two hundred years ago, when it was the voters in "rotten boroughs" that had a big say in things.
In this way, the UK is really ran in much the same way it was in the 18th century. While the franchise has been extended to all adults, the electoral system basically is the same as it was in the 18th century, with the "power" of the electorate's vote highly dependent on where they live. Millions of votes are "wasted", while the established parties tussle over a smaller and smaller proportion of the electorate.
And this is even without mentioning the House Of Lords - or what might better be called the "House Of Boyars". Like in the days of the Russian Empire, the House Of Lords is simply a parlour for aristocrats and political appointees, a pathetic joke on the concept of "democracy". The "House Of Lords" is a place where giving enough money to the governing party can "buy" you a place in the upper parliament of the UK. None of them are elected and - along with the theocratic Iran - is the only "parliament" in the world where theologians (i.e. bishops) have a place alongside those who have gained their place through a nod and a wink.
In more unpleasant ways, of course, there is plenty of evidence that the "establishment" has been covering up the truth for years.
A "managed democracy"?
It is no wonder that as politics in the UK has become more "professional", it has also become more of a charade separated from the reality of ordinary people's lives. The current Prime Minister is a self-evident example of that: a son of a minor aristocrat (and distant relative to the Queen), he represents the psychology of the "establishment", in spite of his protests: seemingly self-confident but actually incompetent, publicly sincere but privately scornful.
And yet, in the 2010 election, Cameron said - with a straight face - "Vote Change, Vote Conservative"(!).
Apart from the political system being a "closed shop" in many ways, in any case the way the country is ran - through the economy - is effectively a debate-free zone. The economic orthodoxy of austerity and the neo-liberal model has transformed the UK from a diverse economy with a large manufacturing base, to a largely reliant on the fortunes of the (now bloated) financial industry. Having tied the fate of the UK economy to finance, the banks then promptly crashed the economy and made the government pay the bill. And now the rest of society is "paying the bill" in the form of austerity, the shrinking of the state, and the (often dubious) selling-off of government services to an incompetent private sector.
In this way, the UK is barely operating as a country at all, and more like a corporation that should be "restructured", with its population as "employees" that can be offloaded. There are always cheaper supplies of labour, and cheaper ways of getting things done.
Lastly, there is the media, which during this election campaign has seemingly done its best to promote the virtues of Cameron and his "long term economic plan" (see above). As Cameron himself has said in the past: "There is No Alternative".
Well, we may as well all go home, then.
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