Remember when the Tories and their baying lapdogs in the press were all howling that Jeremy Corbyn was unelectable? They’re still trying to make this stupid and risible claim, but the increasingly hysterical puff pieces about Theresa May show that they really believe the opposite: They’re scared that he’s all too electable.
Looking through the newsagent’s yesterday, I glanced at the cover of the Scum. Its headline proclaimed that May’s manifesto showed that she was a ‘Red Tory’. They even hailed it as ‘Socialist’.
All lies of course. There’s nothing remotely ‘Socialist’ about it – it promises more privatisation, more cuts and more poverty and misery for the poor. Standard Tory policies. But it also shows that the Tories are very afraid of the Labour party manifesto and the return of real Socialism under Jeremy Corbyn.
The nonsense about May being a ‘Red Tory’ is just a rehash of the way David Cameron tried to rebrand his party in his campaign against Blair and Brown. It’s also the title of a book by his mentor, Philip Blond, which tried to argue that under Cameron, the Tories would be the true friends of the working class, citing episodes from the early 19th century when paternalist aristos like Lord Shaftesbury passed the Factory Acts and other legislation to improve conditions for workers in the mines and industry. He also spouted a lot about the Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin.
This was all part of Cameron’s campaign to present himself as being more left-wing than New Labour. He promised to ring-fence and protect funding for the NHS. He and the Tory faithful also went out and campaigned against hospital closures.
It was all a front, with absolutely no substance behind it, of course. Once in power, Cameron threw out all these promises, and did the exact opposite. He carried out with a programme of cuts and privatisation, including that of the NHS. This included Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Act which removes from the secretary of state for health the obligation to provide healthcare, along with further legislation allowing the NHS to be broken up, sold off to private healthcare firms, and to charge for services.
Just as May is doing even now.
And to make sure that people didn’t remember how they’d been lied to, the Tories started removing their election pledges from their website, in a blatant rewriting of history, which would be familiar to anyone who’s read Orwell or knows a thing or two about Stalin.
Blair and Brown were easy targets for the ‘Red’ Tory approach, as they were neoliberals, who were also determined to privatise the NHS, and many of their policies were directly lifted from the Tories. Like the Private Finance Initiative to hand government infrastructure over to private firms to build and operate, including hospitals. It was easy for the Tories to pretend to be more left-wing than them, as the Tory ‘wets’ probably were. The Tories complained about Labour’s hypocrisy over these privatisations, stating quite correctly that they never dared to go so far when they were in power, as the Labour party would have bitterly and entirely rightly criticised them for it.
One in power, however, Cameron and the Tories changed their tune, and proved to be even more extremely right-wing than New Labour.
The return of this piece of shop-soiled propaganda under Corbyn conveys a rather different message, however. The Blairites and the Tory press were howling last year that Corbyn was a ‘Trotskyist’, leading dreaded Marxist radicals to infiltrate the party. The line is that his policies will lead us all back to the 1970s. And, in any case, Corbyn is ‘unelectable’. The British public don’t want his policies, and will prefer instead the neoliberalism that has kept them poor for the past forty years, as preached and followed by Thatcherite politicians like Tony Blair, Dave Cameron, and Theresa May.
But by trying to paint May as a ‘Red’ Tory with ‘Socialist’ policies, however risible this claim is, the Sun has tacitly admitted that they, and their Tory masters, are dreadfully afraid that Socialism and Jeremy Corbyn are genuinely popular, that neoliberalism is no longer popular as an economic and social policy, and that unless they try to paint May as somehow a ‘one-nation’ Tory, Corbyn is only too likely to get elected.
So let’s make their fears come true. Vote Labour on June 8th to end Tory rule and bring prosperity back to Britain’s real working people.
An avian critic giving IDS the benefit of its informed reading of his Foundation’s books.
A few weeks ago I found some of the little books published by aIDS think-tank in one of the second hand bookshops in Cheltenham. They were paperbacks, with a plain white cover edged in red. One of them was on welfare reform. The other was on race and race relations. Neither of the books looked as though they were published by the Tory party or one of its ideological satellites. Indeed, the red edging if anything could suggest that it was actually a left-wing publication. The blurb on the back, however, showed its right-wing provenance clearly enough.
The book declared that the welfare system had to be reformed – in other words, made tougher – because the real problem with poverty in this country were multigenerational communities in sink estates across Britain, where nobody worked, and people simply didn’t want a job. The book argued that Britain should import the American welfare system, which in some cases had reduced welfare spending, or the people on it, by 40 per cent!
The booklet wasn’t by aIDS. It claimed, however, to be published by the Social Justice Foundation or some such organisation with a similar name. The Social Justice Foundation or whatever it’s called is the Spurious Major’s pet little think tank. He set it up in order to justify his welfare reforms. It was part of the Tories’ attempts to make them appear left-wing, by dressing up right-wing policies and attitudes in the language of Socialism, in order to appeal to the working class. There are a number of other organisations within the Tory part that have adopted the same tactic. It’s all part of Philip Blond’s ‘Red Toryism’, which was simply Blue Toryism under a guise of left-libertarian references to Kropotkin and 19th century Tory paternalism. It became a dead letter as soon as it served its purpose and Cameron got in. Then it was back to the same old Neoliberalism, mass privatisation and the destruction of the welfare state. It was a tactic the Nazis adopted in order to appeal to the radical German working class, right down to using the colour red as the background colour for the Swastika. Just as aIDS’ think tank edged their publications with red to make them look socialist. And the Nazis also forced the people they considered ‘workshy’ into the concentration camps.
The central argument supporting the book and aIDS policies have been disproved again and again, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. The multigenerational families where nobody has worked by and large don’t exist. Not in America, and not over here. You can find the arguments against their existence in Owen Jones’ Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class. They’ve been reblogged by Mike over at Vox Political, and the Angry Yorkshireman. And many, many others. It’s the great lie that supports the Republican and British Conservative assault on the working class. ‘Look, there’s nothing wrong with the economy. It’s just that you’re all too lazy to get a job!’
I didn’t bother looking at the book on race. There’s only so much ignorance, hate and mendacity you can reasonably be expected to take from these people, and especially on a really emotive subject like race and race relations. I thought I’d mention the books here, just in case anyone else runs into them, and to point out where this rubbish is coming from: it’s basically IDS’ pet scriveners, taking their cue from across the Atlantic.
This is another meme I found on the Tumblr site, 1000 Natural Shocks.
In Britain, the first steps against child labour in mines and factories was taken by Lord Shaftesbury, who was a Tory. Credit where credit’s due. Philip Blond, Cameron’s mentor, cited him in his book Red Tory, as an example of Conservativism, which benefited the working class. Given the way so much of what he was forecasting about Cameron’s ‘Red’ Toryism has been proven to have been just rhetoric, it’s fair to say that Blond’s book was just propaganda. The Conservatives did pass many laws in the 19th century that benefited the working class, but they’ve always been solidly opposed to trade unions and organised labour. Disraeli told the 19th century Marxist leader, William Hyndeman, flat out that the Tories, business and the aristocracy would resist to the utmost any efforts by the working class to gain concessions for themselves.
So, regardless of what Lord Shaftesbury did, the Tories are trying their best to reintroduce the exploitative employment practices of the 19th century, of which child labour is only the worst and best known.
Charley Brooker: Master of the Baleful Gaze of Criticism
‘Confuse your enemy and you confuse yourself!’
-General ‘Mad Bloody Butcher’ Cheeseman, The Fall of the Mausoleum Club, (Radio 4, 1985).
I found Charley Brooker’s review of last year, Newswipe 2014, over on Youtube. Assisted by Philomena Cunk and Barry Shitpeas, Brooker casts his jaundiced eye over last years’ events, and inveighs against the horrors and stupidity therein, both of themselves and in the media, that reported them. Brooker’s comments are masterpieces of highly inventive scorn and outrage. Cunk and Shitpeas, for their parts, are highly intelligent people, who satirise the news by posing as complete morons for whom even a relatively straightforward film like ‘Twelve Years a Slave’ is beyond their comprehension.
Brookers’ angry nihilism, in which he sees recent events and the latest offerings of the world’s celebrity-obsessed media as proof that we live in an absurd, pointless universe, wherein human civilisation is a bad joke about to collapse, and Cunk and Shitpeas’ faux naïve and inane comments are amusing enough. What lifts the show into another dimension entirely is a short film by Adam Curtis, on the way politicians are using the feelings of helplessness created by the terrible events replayed across our TV screens as an instrument of control.
Curtis is the director of the superb documentaries The Living Dead, The Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, and How We Lost Our Dreams of Freedom. These explored how politicians used and abused theories of history, psychology, game theory and simplified models of human behaviour based on computer models, to boost their own power, while depriving the people they claim to represent of the power to change their destinies and better their lives. In this film, he explores how politicians, both those in Putin’s Russia and in Britain, have created an absurd, meaningless view of contemporary events in order to maintain their power by keeping their peoples deliberately confused and off-balance.
Tserkov, and the Politics of Spectacle and Subversion
This tactic was invented in Russia by Vladimir Putin’s advisor, Vladislav Tserkov, who has spent 15 years aiding Russia’s elected tsar. Tserkov was an avant-garde artist, and important elements from Conceptual art into Russian politics. The Soviet Regime has staged and promoted a series of gatherings and spectacles as part of its campaign to mobilise Russian support. But he has also gone further, giving funding to groups directly opposed to his master and each other, from Neo-Nazi stormtroopers to Human Rights activists. He has also deliberately let everyone know he has done this. This has produced a radical destabilisation of the opposition, as it is no longer clear what is authentic and genuine, and what is carefully staged propaganda. The result is an enervating feeling of defeat.
Tserkov has even found a way to profit from the terrible civil war now raging in Ukraine. Last year he published a short story about how politicians could practise what he called ‘non-linear warfare’. In this, the gaol is not to win the war, but to use it to spread further confusion. The aim is to create a situation in which no-one really knows who the enemy is, or why they are fighting.
Cameron’s Absurd Government and the Politics of Despair
Curtis goes further, and argues that a similar condition is present in this country. Although not deliberate, the confusion created by politicians’ contradictory policies and actions has had the same result. He identifies Cameron as the British counterpart of Tserkov’s shape-shifting, non-linear politician, and gives the following examples of his government’s contradictions and confusion:
* Aging deejays are prosecuted for their historic crimes, but not the bankers, whose actions have created the current global economic mess.
* We are told that President Assad is evil. However, his Islamist enemies are worse, so we end up bombing them, thus helping Assad.
* George Osborne says that the economy is booming, but wages are going down.
* Gidiot says that they are cutting the national debt, but the deficit has actually increased.
*The government is pursuing a policy of austerity, taking money out of the economy. They are, however, putting it back in through ‘quantitative easing’.
Quantitative easing is the massive subsidy and bail-outs the taxpayer is giving the banks. It amounts to £24,000
per family. This has not gone to the poor, but to the richest five per cent. It is the biggest transfer of wealth, and could be a real scandal, but nobody knows anything.
Because there is no effective counter-narrative offered to the above policies, the public similarly feels defeated, disempower. The response is ‘Oh dear’.
But, says Curtis, that’s exactly what they want you to think.
Tserkov’s Co-Option of the Society of the Spectacle
From here, it looks like Tserkov took hold of the Society of the Spectacle, and adopted it as a deliberate policy. The Society of the Spectacle was a theory developed in the 1960s by Baudrillard, the French postmodern philosopher. Baudrillard believed that capitalism survived ideological attack, by taking over its opponents weapons and then re-presenting them as spectacles. The forms had been preserved, but their ideological power had been drained and discarded. Way back in the ’90s, one of the small press magazines devoted to the weird and bizarre gave the Glastonbury Festival as an example. When it started, it was very definitely a fringe, countercultural event. It’s very existence was a challenge to mainstream culture. Now it is very much a part of that same mainstream culture. Instead of seeing the bands for free, you are now charged tens, sometimes hundreds of pounds for a ticket.
The former Soviet Union, like all totalitarian regimes, had a deliberate policy of staging fake demonstrations and events in support of the regime. There’s an old story from a very public school teacher, who organised a trip for her girls to the former USSR. One of the planned outings for the day was disrupted by a noisy Soviet peace demonstration. The headmistress duly complained to the authorities, who reassured her, ‘Do not worry, ma’am. This spontaneous display of the people’s anger will end at 2.00 pm precisely’.
Subverting Situationism
Where Tserkov differs is that he has gone beyond this, using the ideas of Situationism and turning them back on themselves. The Situationists were hippy anarchists, who organised a series of spectacles to subvert mainstream, ‘straight’ society. Malcolm McLaren, the founder of the Sex Pistols, claimed to have been a Situationist, but this was just a bit of self-aggrandising hype on his part. The tactic hasn’t gone away with punk and the hippies. It’s still used by contemporary anarchists to use comedy, humour and spectacle to satirise and subvert capitalism and its organs of oppression and control. Tserkov has learned from this, and turned it against the opposition, using the very methods of liberation from capitalism and the state as weapons for their preservation and extension.
Non-Linear War, Vietnam, ‘ Nomad’ and ‘Deathlok the Demolisher’
As for Tserkov’s theories of non-linear war, you can trace these back to the feelings of disempowerment and confusion in 1970s in America created by Vietnam and Watergate. The Vietnam War presented ordinary, patriotic and freedom-loving Americans with terrible reports of their country’s atrocities against another people, all in the name of freedom. Despite the unequal status between the two countries, the war dragged on for decades, and the American public saw the friends and relatives killed, and many of those that returned home stricken with terrible physical and psychological injuries. This result was a feeling of anomie and despair. The nation’s self-confidence took a further blow with Watergate, when even the supreme leadership were shown to be corrupt.
Captain America Forswears his Country
That feeling of alienation and national disenchantment found expression in the comic strips of the day. American comics began to explore political issues, including racism, feminism and the abuse of the media to aid in crime and foment hate. It was perhaps expressed most forcefully by the actions of that most patriotic superhero, Captain America. The Captain is a symbol of everything good and noble in American society. In the strip, he had been created as a super-soldier to fight the forces of evil in the shape of the Third Reich, a storyline followed in the recent film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Faced with his country’s corruption, the Captain changed his name and costume to become ‘Nomad’, a superhero without a country.
Deathlok: Robocop against an Anonymous Enemy
Post-Vietnam disillusionment and confusion found further expression in another Marvel strip, Deathlok the Demolisher. Deathlok was a cyborg created from the mechanical reanimation of an American army officer. The strip was set in a future America devastated by a terrible war, in which whole cities have been abandoned. To fight the war, the government has taken to creating cyborg soldiers, vicious killing machines like Deathlok, which are engineered to enjoy killing and maiming. A battle with a rival cyborg destroys the mechanisms controlling Deathlok, allowing the human side to reassert itself, and the man inside to go on a quest to recover his humanity. In flavour, the strip very much resembled Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop, with its cyborg hero, robotic killing machines and a city devastated by crime and political neglect. Unlike Robocop, which came out later, the strip made it deliberately unclear what the point of the War was, or even who soldiers like Deathlok had been created to fight. The suggestion was that it had all somehow been staged by the government, to divide, terrorise and rule.
There are no cyborgs slugging it out on the streets of Moscow or Kiev, but the depiction of ‘non-linear war’ looks exactly like the shattered America in Deathlok.
Shifty Cameron, Austerity and the Enrichment of the already Wealthy
As for Cameron, he is indeed a protean, shape-shifting politicians, adopting guises only to abandon them when he got into power. Remember when he said that ‘this would be the greenest government ever?’ It didn’t take long for that to go once he got his foot through the front door of No. 10, along with his promises about the health service and the abandonment of the market economy so proclaimed by his mentor, Philip Blond, in his book, Red Tory.
The transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich is not confusing by any means. It’s been a feature of American politics for decades, where the government has pursued a policy of austerity for the poor, and subsidies and tax breaks for the rich. It’s only confusing because the extremes of poverty and wealth created by the banking crisis has thrown into very acute relief.
Assad, Islamism and the Paradoxes of the Modern Middle East
As for Assad, this is the product of Western politicians genuinely not understanding the politics of the Middle East. They pursued idealistic goals that ran in direct contradiction to the perceived good of the nations to which they were applied. Assad and his counterparts in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya were dictators, who held power through terror and brutality. Western governments see themselves as defenders of democracy and freedom, and so felt bound to support the popular revolts that broke out in the Middle East during the ‘Arab Spring’. Yet however undemocratic these regimes were, they were also secular, Westernising regimes that ostensibly promoted liberal policies of religious tolerance and personal freedom and relative gender equality to an extent which the Islamic and Islamist regimes that sought to replace them did not. The result has been the volte-face from seeking to oust Assad, to trying to combat his enemies in order to preserve his secular, Ba’ath regime.
Time to Reject Failed Neo-Liberalism
All of this has had a disempowering effect, because the parties have moved so close together, that there is little apparent difference between them. They are still attempting to apply discredited economic and foreign policies, while hiding their failures.
It’s long past the time when this situation changed, and politicians began thinking out of the Neo-Liberal box.
Shoes from ancient Greece. From Giovanni Caselli, History of Everyday Things (Hemel Hempstead: Beehive Books 1993)
Nick “Colthurnus” Clegg?
I found the saying, ‘He wears the sandals of Theramenes’, and its explanation in the 1981 edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. It said that this was
Said of a Trimmer, an opportunist. Theramenes (put to death c. 404 B.C.) was one of the Athenian oligarchy, and was nicknamed Cothurnus (i.e. a sandal or boot which might be worn on either foot), because no dependence could be put on him. He “blew hot and col with the same breath.”
Which just about describes Clegg, the man, who broke all his election promises to climb into a coalition with the Tories, and is now frantically trying to convince the electorate that the Lib Dems are still a party of principles who can be depended upon to restrain the excesses of whichever party with which they will form another coalition. There is absolutely no evidence they have actually done this, and indeed have appeared only too eager to support the massively illiberal legislation passed by the Conservatives destroying the health service, state education, what’s left of the welfare state and setting up secret courts from which the accused is barred and may not know the charges against him. For security reasons, of course.
Or it could equally describe Dave Cameron, who spent his period in opposition trying to make the Tories appear slightly left of New Labour by engaging in community activism. His mentor, Philip Blond, published Red Tory, which tried to embrace 19th century working class radicalism and the progressive legislation passed by Conservative reformers like Richard Oastler, as well as name-checking the great anarchist Kropotkin. Now in power, Cameron has turned his back on all that, and has firmly embraced the usual Tory policies of putting the boot into the working class by privatising everything he can get his hand, cutting welfare benefits and forcing the unemployed to work for free for the Tories’ corporate paymasters.
And like Theramenes, Clegg and Cameron belong to the aristocracy, and so thoroughly represent oligarchic rule against any kind of democracy.
In a speech a little while ago George Osborne approvingly quoted Karl Marx on the power of capitalism, much to the disgust of everybody on the Left. One Anarchist blog referred to him as an ‘oleaginous pr*ck’. This wouldn’t be first time they’ve tried to appropriate someone from the Far Left. Philip Blond in Red Tory also cites the Russian Anarchist, Peter Kropotkin. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Communist party, had this to say about the way Marx and other revolutionaries were appropriated by their ideological opponents after their deaths in his book, The State and Revolution, written in the year the Communists seized power in Russia:
Marx’s doctrines are now undergoing the same fate, which, more than once in the course of history, has befallen the doctrines of other revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes struggling for emancipation … After their death … attempts are … ,made to turn them into harmless saints, canonising them, as it were, and investing their name with a certain halo by way of “consolation” to the oppressed classes, and with the object of duping them; while at the same time emasculating and vulgarising the real essence of their revolutionary theories and bluntin their revolutionary edge.
Cited in Alfred Rosmer, Lenin’s Moscow (London: Bookmarks 1987) p. 13.
Which pretty much describes the attitude of Osborne and Blond to try to cite Marx and Kropotkin as somehow contributing to their attempts to return us all back to 19th century predatory capitalism.
David Cameron: Stalin’s successor in the Tory Party?
‘If I was an Englishman, I would be a Conservative.’
– Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during his visit to Britain in the 1950s.
The Coalition’s attack on the poor by forcing down wages and cutting benefits conforms so closely to Marx’s theory of the ‘Iron Law of Wages’ and the programme the Russian Revolutionary, Nechaev, suggested for the way the true revolutionary should undermine capitalism from within that I ended up idly wondering if the Tories really were aware of how similar they were. In fact, so close are they to those parts of revolutionary socialist ideology that I even wondered if they similarities were deliberate, and Cameron, Osborne and Clegg were trying to see how far they could go in showing that Marx and Engels were right before the workers finally revolted and the Chipping Norton Set were ejected from government. In fact, they are following Marx so closely that I wondered if they weren’t actually following Nechaev’s advice and deliberately trying to undermine capitalism from within.
The Iron Law of Wages
The ‘Iron Law of Wages’ is one of the main doctrines of Marxist ideology. According to it, as capitalism develops, the bourgeoisie attempt to maintain higher profits by deliberating forcing down wage to ever lower levels. Eventually wages will become so poor, and the working classes so miserable, that they will revolt and overthrow the government.
Nechaev and the Revolutionary Catechism
The Russian Revolutionary Nechaev believed that this process should be assisted by revolutionary conspirators. The 19th century Russian revolutionaries had repeatedly failed in their attempts to spread Socialism and overthrow the tsar as the Russian people, on whose behalf the Revolutionaries believed they were fighting, remained largely opposed to their efforts. In his Revolutionary Catechism, Nechaev therefore argued that the true revolutionary should become absolutely ruthless, ready to sacrifice and betray anyone and everyone in order to further the revolution, even create chaos and misery in order to harden and radicalise people to the revolutionary cause. He argued that revolutionaries should deliberately enter the government and try to make conditions as worse as possible for the people. Eventually the people would become so miserable and desperate, that they would revolt, overthrow the tsar and create the new, Communist society.
Revisionism and Rejection of Iron Law of Wages
In the later 19th and 20th centuries many Socialists, such as the German revisionist, Eduard Bernstein, criticised and rejected the ‘Iron Law of Wages’ as it did not seem to be born out by contemporary events. Rather than the workers becoming increasingly impoverished, wages were actually rising. Some of this may have been due not just to expansion of the European economies as capitalism developed, but also through the actions of the various Socialist and working class movements, like trade unions, in forcing industrialists to pay better wages. The post-War economic consensus also stressed the need for higher wages and better conditions for the workers, as this would allow them to purchase consumer products and so stimulate the economy and raise profits.
Return of Iron Law under Tories and Tory Democrats
Now, through globalisation and Neo-Liberal economics, the Iron Law of Wages is back with a vengeance. It’s at the very heart of the Coalition’s policies. They are determined to hold down wages below the rate of inflation, so that in real terms the working and lower middle classes are actually taking a cut in wages. At the same time, they are destroying the education system, the NHS and the welfare state in order to maximise the profits of private industry still further, and so creating a level of poverty and misery that has not been seen in decades. We really are heading back to the 19th century world of ruthlessly predatory capitalism at a rate of knots. So closely do their policies conform to Marx’s prediction, that it strongly reminds me of the slogan on one of the T-shirts sold by Red Molotov. This is a company that specialises in selling such shirts with quirky, and often left-wing or radical slogans. One of their shirts has a portrait of Marx, underneath which is the slogan ‘I told you this would happen’.
Quite.
Coalition Conscious of Own Predatory Nature
I don’t, however, seriously believe for one single minute that they are revolutionaries trying to provoke an increasingly impoverished British public into overthrowing capitalism and the state. They are simply ruthless, predatory capitalists doing what Marx believed ruthless capitalists would always do: exploit the poor and drive them to ever increasing depths of despair, insecurity and poverty, all for greater profits.
And they know this. Osborne had the temerity to quote Marx, while Philip Blond, Cameron’s mentor, liked and quoted the Russian anarchist, Kropotkin, in his book, Red Tory. They simply don’t care that they conform to Marx’s description of capitalist ruthlessness. All that matters to them is that the ordinary man or woman in Britain doesn’t, and continues to swallow all that nonsense that ‘we’re all in it together’, and that the cuts and the austerity drive are the result of high-spending by the previous Labour administration, rather than an integral part of their own Neo-Liberal economic policies.
The Way to Stop Them: Voting, Not Revolution
There is an alternative. Unlike the masses of 19th century Europe, who were largely excluded from participation in the electoral process because of property qualifications that excluded the poor, people don’t have to riot or revolt simply to make their voices heard. They can force out iniquitous and unpopular governments by simply voting them out. And we need to do so now, at every opportunity before the Tories and Tory Democrats make the situation very much worse.
I received this kind comment from Gathering Swallows on my post ‘Explaining the Coalition’s War on the Poor and Disabled’, remarking on the similarities of the policies pursued by the National Party in Oz and the Conservatives over here:
I had been following UK politics for quite sometime prior to the Aust elections last year. I couldn’t believe what I was reading out of the UK. Then it started being applied here to my absolute horror. The worst thing about the way Abbott has been introducing these similar sorts of policies is that he didn’t announce any of his policy intentions prior or during the election campaign. He counted on people being sick of Labor, many shenanigans he himself incited with the help of his mainstream media buddies. His hit list, as we have come to realise, was buried in a document by the IPA (Institute of Public Affairs, Australia) outlining a 75 point plan to dismantle just about anything progressive in this country. On the matter of the disabled (although this next comment was in relation to racial things but I extrapolate for obvious reasons…), today, our Attorney General stated that it was OK to be a bigot. That’s right – it sends a wonderful message (not) that vilifying the least fortunate will be fair game. Thanks for your blog.
The similarity between Abbott’s approach to politics, and that of David Cameron is obvious. Cameron’s government also disguised its true intentions in order to win power. In the case of the Tories in Britain, they appeared to be more Left-wing than Labour. Philip Blond’s book, Red Tory, even cites Kropotkin, the 19th century anarchist, approvingly.
I’ve remarked on the way Conservatives across the English speaking world, from America, Canada, Britain, and now, it seems, Australia, adopted the same strategies, rhetoric and targets in their campaigns. You can see it in the way the Daily Mail in Britain started attacking public sector workers for supposedly being overpaid a few years ago. This followed a similar campaign of vilification by the Republicans in America. And Amnesiaclinic, one of the other commenters on this blog, has also told me that the same policies are being pursued in Canada after Harper’s regime.
As for Oz’s Attorney-General now telling everyone that it’s okay to be a bigot, there are sections of the British Tory party that would heartily agree with that. The Daily Mail for years has carried a campaign against the ‘race relations’ industry and what it sees as the erosion of free speech by the laws against incitement to racial hatred. They raised a particularly bitter campaign against them when Labour was in power, despite the fact the laws themselves were passed way back in the mid-1960s in order to undermine the rapid growth of the National Front. And the NF back then was truly frightening. It engaged in paramilitary training, and other sections of the racist fringe were openly Nazi, like the National Socialist Movement. One of these groups was involved in attacks on five synagogues, as well as street clashes with Blacks and Jews. I’ve also noticed that the Tories in Canada are also leading a campaign against the same laws there.
Part of the argument against the laws against racist speech is that these laws didn’t work when they were first introduced in Weimar Germany. The argument is that the German government had passed legislation outlawing the vilification of ethnic groups, like Jews, and pursued a vigorous policy of prosecution. This did not, however, prevent the Nazis from entering government and finally seizing power in 1933.
The issues in Weimar Germany, however, isn’t as clear cut as the argument suggests. Firstly, it shows just how difficult combatting an aggressively racist Right was in the political climate of the time. The parliamentary system in Weimar Germany was vulnerable because to many Germans it was the product of their defeat in the First World War. However, despite increasing anti-Semitism, the Nazis’ seizure of power was by no means assured. For much of the 1920s the party received only a trivial number of votes. They made their major electoral breakthrough by exploiting an agricultural crisis in Schleswig-Holstein, and their entry into government was greatly assisted by the Wall Street Crash and consequent global recession. They were also invited into government at the end of the decade in order to provide support for a coalition of Right-wing parties after the party system had more or less broken down with some of the major Weimar parties refusing to work with each other, but having no overall support to govern alone. Hitler also tailored his rhetoric to appeal to certain groups, stressing different elements and playing down others in the particular areas where he was campaigning at the time. And finally, you cannot tell what would have happened if the Weimar government had been more lax about racism and anti-Semitic vilification. Would the Nazis have come to power earlier if such vilification had been far more legally acceptable?
Aside from this particular issue, there is the wider point that the Conservatives across the globe are copying from each other in order to seize power and drive everything back into the worst aspects of the 19th century. The Left also needs to do this – to learn what they’re doing, and challenge them across the globe as well. And together we can defeat them in Britain, Australia, Canada, America or wherever. It’s just a case of ‘thinking globally, and acting locally’.
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