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Enter The Deku
Thoughts arranged into semi-cogent writing on any and every subject, from history to politics, music to gaming, photography to Marvel!
The Freedom of Freedom
15th Jul 2020 enterthedekuLeave a comment
I like to think that most people would want to live in a world in which individuals are free from the persecution of others, and live in peace. I like to think that freedom of expression is a tool for creativity out of which beautiful art, music, literature, and personal development are encouraged. I like to think that individuals wish to use freedom of expression for the advancement of science, technology, and the seeking of the greater truths. Sadly, it appears that instead of these things, freedom of expression is a tool used as an excuse for quite the opposite behaviours.
In recent days, weeks, and months, one can perceive an enormous surge in groups for whom freedom of expression has been wielded as a weapon in order to advance the march towards a puritanical, anti-diversity, dogmatic pursuit of racial, sexual, and personal (small 'c') conservatism. In the complete abandonment of the scientific rationality that our ancestors wrestled from the grips of the Churches, we have stumbled drunkenly towards an era in which the phrase, 'I don't want to believe that and therefore I am right,' appears to be an unstoppable force. We can observe it when our doctors and scientists recommend the simple act of wearing a face mask to stop the spread of a global pandemic are belittled, and crowds of angry people wilfully ignore them whilst picking up their latest capitalist necessities. We see it in the scorn meted out whenever global warming is brought up in conversation, and vast corporations do all in their power to denounce what is almost universally accepted as fact by the scientific community. And we see it in a million everyday acts that ignore the injustices imposed upon downtrodden communities across our planet that we are relentlessly assured our capitalism machinery will one day lift out of poverty and oppression, in spite of never actually doing so.
But there is an irony in the latest wave of conservative (again, small 'c') rhetoric about freedom of expression that makess the current crop of foaming-at-the-mouth truth-avoiders look so deliciously silly. To explore this, I will refer to the open letter signed by a number of high-profile individuals, including JK Rowling, Salmond Rushdie, and Margaret Atwood. There is no need here to discuss the strange beliefs of some of these individuals that have led them to endorsing the message of this letter. That is for another article. But the nature of the letter itself is what will be called into question.
The letter suggests that, 'the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.' It goes on to suggest that 'cancel culture' is obliterating creativity and making content-creators more risk-averse. It is a scathing indictment of those who do not agree with the viewpoints and opinions of those who have undersigned it. But therein lies a colossal irony that they appear to have missed.
Whilst freedom of expression is a concept that we should strive for, in no way does this suggest that individuals are required to agree. Opinions are not protected, and nowhere does it say that they must be listened to. There is no provision to force individuals to listen to something with which they don't agree, and there is no prerequisite that content must be consumed or transmitted. Freedom of expression works both ways; you are free to air your opinion, but that does not mean that anybody has to listen to it, agree with it, package it up and ship it for resale. If you wish to deify your own belief system, you simply cannot expect that others will promote it. You are on your own.
If you find yourself at the receiving end of the so-called 'cancel-culture', that is simply freedom of expression working both ways. If you find your controversial opinions ignored, that is sad for you, but it is simply the system that you are desperately trying to skew in your own favour working on its own. Your words and beliefs are not guaranteed protection, or a platform for distribution, and you at the whim of the prevailing zeitgeist just like everybody else. If you find your beliefs making you an outsider, then that is the very process of the freedom of expression that you claim to hold dear.
In a world where we are closer than ever to our fellow human beings thanks to the wonders of technology that the scientists who are currently under threat have created, every opinion and belief now has a platform on which to be shared. But this does not mean that people must automatically listen. Fortunately, diversity, equality, and difference, are all things that the vast majority now celebrate. If you wish to fight against that, you have your mountain from which to shout. But should people move out of the range of your voice, you must realise that this is simply their method of asserting their own freedom of expression.
The British and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
28th Jun 2020 enterthedekuLeave a comment
Whenever one engages a white British individual in dialogue about the Transatlantic slave trade, you are guaranteed to hear one or more of the standard, practiced responses that are surely by now an inbuilt part of the genetic make-up of the citizens of this United Kingdom. The first usually goes something like, 'all European nations were engaged in the trade'. The second, 'but it was Africans who were selling Africans to the Europeans'. And the third, almost invariably accompanied by a smug expression, 'ah, but the British Empire abolished the slave trade'.
Whilst none of these are factually incorrect statements, they lack a fundamental comprehension of the context surrounding them that displays a terrifyingly wilful ignorance of reality from those who speak them. It is the context of those statements that will be addressed here.
It is true that slavery has existed since before we have the historical records to document it. Whilst there has been debate over the extent of their role in various historical events, such as the construction of the pyramids, it is fairly irrefutable that civilisation marched forward, built upon the backs of the oppressed, for several millennia. That is not to say that all slaves were treated equally; the Romans provide a number of examples of slaves who were in positions of great power throughout society, whilst simultaneously dishing out harsh treatment such as routine rape and torture of their human property.
Fast-forwarding to the early years of the European slave industry, and it was the Portuguese and Spanish who kicked things off by setting up trading posts on the west coast of Africa, and sending captured individuals to their colonies in South America. Not to be outdone, the Dutch, French, Italians, and pretty much any nation with the capacity to build ships got in on the game. The British were, of course, as usual a little late to the whole colonial-imperialism party, but they soon caught up on the action. It is thought that John Hawkins was the first Englishman to undertake a slave-trading voyage; from 1564 to 1569 it is estimated that he transported around 1100 Africans across the Atlantic. This might sounds like an enormous number, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the five millions of individuals that Britain alone transported from Africa to the Americas, and an even smaller percentage when compared to the estimated twelve million total. Added to the 10-15% of those who died during passage and were unceremoniously dumped overboard, and the babies who were born into slavery, this is a truly staggering figure. There is no denying that most European countries played their part in adding individuals to this total, but Britain and Portugal alone are calculated to have been responsible for around 70% of this trade, with Britain transporting over eight hundred thousand slaves in a single 25-year period between 1751 and 1775. In fact, with impending abolition, in the twenty years prior to 1808, Britain sent more slaves across the Atlantic annually than any nation had done previously. This does not excuse the other European nations for their part in this barbaric system, but it certainly highlights the ridiculous nature of those who seek to downplay the role of the British in this heinous activity.
For those who look to the USA as a means of excusing the British role in the North Atlantic slave trade, their total number of transportations was ten times less than their former imperial masters.
On to the next point. And it will be brief.
Any person who enslaved another was complicit in the Transatlantic slave trade, be they white European, or Black African. However, most individuals, given the choice between more power and more wealth, or a musket shot in the back of the head, would choose the former over the latter. One is welcome to be an idealist about this, and say that those Africans who participated in the slave trade should have taken the musket shot instead (and I am sure some will have done), but I will not condemn a person for choosing life. Particularly when their place in the industry would simply have been filled by another person. The machine of slavery was driven by European supply-and-demand, financed by European wealth, and enforced by superiority and might of European weaponry. There is little that an individual African, or indeed an African nation, could have done at this point in their history to counter this. For proof, one must only look to other complex and developed civilisations, the Aztecs, the Inca, Mughal India, Imperial China, and see what happened to them when a European nation desired to impose its will.
So to our final point. The British Empire abolished the slave trade. And forgive the abandonment of professionalism for a paragraph or so.
Of all of the decontextualised tripe that is spouted about the British role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and its eventual end, this is one that causes my blood pressure to rise the most. Of course, for many, this is the direct result of their education; until relatively recently, anything and everything British-related was taught through a rose-tinted lens, and a whilstfull sadness, shrouded in a post-imperial malaise. The Empire did nothing but good. 'We gave them the railways!', or 'but where would they have been without the British Empire?' You get the point. The shiny, glossed-over horrors of multiple genocides, economic devastation, racism, brutality, and of course, slavery, are ignored in the delicious imagery of Britannia striding forward bringing peace and civilisation to the world. Our slave owners were surely gentlemen who lived their lives with a misty-eyed romanticism, on beautiful plantations, who fed, housed, and cared for their chattel property. Let us forget that slave-owners such as Thomas Thistlewood wrote gleefully in their diaries about the times that they punished their slaves by tying them down and, 'shitting in their mouth's'. Or taking a pregnant woman, fastening her belly-down upon a plank, lashing her until her bone showed through, and leaving her there in the Jamaican mid-day sun. Of course we want to ignore this; the British were too civilised for such behaviour. Except that they weren't.
Which brings us around to our final quote; 'ah, but the British Empire abolished the slave trade!'
Yes. There were two acts of parliament that brought about the end of the slave trade within the British Empire. In 1807, the trading of human beings was prohibited (though one was still permitted to continue owning slaves already in their possession), and in 1833, a second act was passed abolishing slavery altogether. Hurrah! Aren't the Brits wonderful, and kind, and liberal, and all of those other lovely adjectives. Except for a couple of things.
Although it is right to say that there were various abolition movements, such as the Sugar Boycotts, prior to the 1807 act, they had relatively little affect upon the governments of the time. It wasn't until the Act of Union in 1800, bringing 100 Irish MPs into the House of Commons to shift the balance in favour of abolition. Even then, it was no certainty. There was no moral will to see the practice of slavery come to an end. Instead, it was an economic argument that won the day. Ever since Adam Smith wrote his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, in 1776, the cumbersome mercantilist policies of the British Empire had come under question, and a desire to replace them with a laissez-faire style of governance had arrived, with the philosophy that minimal central intervention of the markets would provide the greatest opportunity for the greatest number of people to acquire the greatest amount of wealth. However, unwilling to abandon its symbol of imperial prestige – the Empire – entirely, Britain mashed up various political philosophies and spluttered into the nineteenth century not really sure what to do about the rest of the world. Laissez-faire required markets into which to sell manufactured goods, but of course we did not want to open up our borders to competition – that would be a disaster! Yet, there simply wasn't an overseas market within the Empire big Enough to drive demand for manufactured products. In short, it was considered that there was more profit to be made in manufacturing goods and selling to an emancipated empire, than using free labour to create raw materials.
I'm sure you see where this is going.
It did not go unnoticed by a new class of capitalists, that around the Empire were thousands upon thousands of individuals who currently had no purchasing power; they were not a potential market for goods, because they had no money with which to buy them. However, if this unwaged population could be transformed into consumers within the Empire, all of the questions of how to implement laissez-faire, whilst retaining the Empire, would be resolved. The economic argument was persuasive, and as history shows, it did win out in the end. However, the ancient mercantilist system did not go away without a fight.
We must remember that all of this was occurring at a time when democracy was not defined by every person having the right to vote. It was restricted to the wealthy, land-owning classes. Almost exclusively men. So for those, predominately women, who had arranged abolitionist movements such as the Sugar Boycotts, they could not simply vote their way to seeing their goals come to fruition. To compound the issue, consider who, within Britain, might have owned slaves. Of course, it was those who had the right to vote. Nobody in their right mind would vote away their source of income, wealth, and power on the basis of, what was considered to be, a moral ambiguity at worst.
Yet, the old money had a problem; a new and emerging breed of capitalists. They had the wealth and land-holding to satisfy the conditions necessary to be granted the right to vote. And they wanted change. Alongside their new Irish allies within the House of Commons, they created a tipping-point within parliament, where any vote on the subject of slavery truly was in the balance. So how could they win their argument; how could they see their economic fantasies come to life? Well, they would appeal not to the hearts or minds of the old money, but to their pockets.
A truly monumental program of compensation was proposed for British slave-owners in order to bribe them into accepting abolition. And, for the most part, it worked. 1807 Act, 1833 Act, hey presto. Done and dusted. The story is over. In a manner of speaking. Many slave owners simply could not accept what was coming to pass. They petitioned the government, demanding additional cash in order to set their property free. There are detailed records of correspondence between individuals and the department set up to deal with compensation claims in which elderly widows pleaded their case to be given more money, because they simply could not cope without their slaves in the Caribbean providing them a source of income. It was ultimately a futile effort, as compensation was dealt with in a uniform manner, but it demonstrates the mindset of those who could not let go of their power. The compensation package was so monumentally huge that it accounted for a staggering 40% of the British Treasury's entire annual income – the largest expenditure ever undertaken by a British government. To put this into context, it took Britain 61 years to pay off its Second World War debts. Yet it took 182 years to pay off its slavery compensation bill. Britain had to be bribed to the value of a debt that would take nearly two centuries to pay off in order to unwind itself from the brutality of its slave system. But we have still not reached the end of our story.
Britain may have been the first major empire to leave behind its slave trade, however it continued to profit enormously from the existing global system.
The powerhouse of the British industrial economy, Manchester's Cottonopolis, still required raw materials. From whom would it purchase its raw materials? Our partner across the sea, the USA. Britain consumed vast quantities of raw materials from slave-owning nations in order to power its new capitalist economic machine. And although it nominally condemned nations for not following in its abolitionist footsteps, no real pressure was exerted upon others to follow suit. Indeed, when civil war broke out within the USA, the majority of wealthy British individuals supported the slave-owning Confederacy of Southern States, and trade with it continued unabated. Hardly the actions of a newly morally-enlightened people.
So, Britain can hardly be applauded for its role in abolishing slavery. But there is one final point that simply must be addressed before concluding.
To praise Britain for abolishing slavery is to ignore one absolutely crucial point; slavery is an evil practice. Therefore, to offer congratulatory applause is suggesting that something extraordinarily magnanimous took place. However, that simply is not the case. It was not 'kind' to free the slaves; it should be considered a basic behaviour. Yet there is an adulation reserved for the 1833 Act that is simply not deserved; we should surely focus solely on the cruel and barbaric activity that went before, and look upon 1833 as a return to what should be normality.
Any other way of perceiving British actions in relation to this system would be like, for instance, if a police officer had kneeled on the neck of an individual for eight minutes and forty six seconds, followed by a crowd applauding him for finally doing the right thing by removing it, two minutes after the individual had already suffocated to death.
✌☮
Did the USA Really Lose the War in Vietnam?
There is no denying that from either side of the political fence, the War in Vietnam was a disaster for all involved. The USA lost so much political capital that it would take decades to regain its prestige in international relations, if indeed it ever did. The USSR angered its superpower rival to the extent that the USA spent the subsequent years building up a military force that would ultimately lead to the bankruptcy of the communist bloc. And for the Vietnamese, so much blood was shed on both sides of the 17th parallel that the scars of the conflict will be felt possibly for centuries.
The USA withdrew its last troops from Vietnam in a stunning capitulation on the 29th and 30th of April, 1975. During this action, its people were helicoptered from the rooftops of buildings whilst the army of North Vietnam entered the city of Saigon. Civilians and military personnel alike were unceremoniously dumped on naval vessels, whilst helicopters and military equipment were dumped overboard to ensure enough space. This was hardly a Dunkirk-style evacuation; even the USA were unable to draw positive political propaganda from this failure.
The war was marked by numerous horrific actions from both sides, from the capture and torture of US airmen and soldiers, to the massacres of civilians by the US army. Towns were wholly destroyed, and ancient tropical jungle subjected to chemical defoliation agents that turned lush, green scenery into desert land, and in turn causing a generation of Vietnamese children to suffer lives plagued by painful birth defects. There is no denying the grotesque nature of what took place during those years.
Yet, for all of the action and counter-action, the question has to be raised as to whether or not the USA really lost the war in Vietnam. In order to answer that question, one must first consider one crucial thing; what was the USA's objective, and was it achieved?
In the mid-1950s, a particularly virulent and extreme form of capitalist fervour had swept the USA under the name of McCarthyism. The premise was simple; capitalism very very good, communism very very bad. At its height, it was not vastly different to the Salem Witch Trials, in that people were accused of supporting, favouring, or even just sympathising with communist or socialist principles, and were turned into social pariahs at best, or incarcerated without evidence or trial at worst. Those accused of even the slightest socialist leanings were outcasts within their society – something which was frequently weaponised against foes. Is a political rival becoming too popular? They are a communist sympathiser. Neighbour annoying you? They have socialist tendencies. It was all so very ugly.
Whilst the reasons for the diametric opposition and incompatibility of the two political philosophies is deep, and most likely irreconcilable, I will not go into detail here (although it makes an interesting post for another day!). Suffice to say, it must simply be accepted that each side saw the other as the devil – as evil personified. And so imagine the horror in the minds of middle-Americans as they watched the formation of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe, and as China fell to communism, and as South East Asian countries slowly but surely revealed their leftist leanings. Imagine the fear and panic as a red wave swept slowly and inexorably across those nations, all the while the USSR was testing nuclear weapons far more powerful than the USA was capable of. In the minds of the public and politicians, something had to be done.
The first attempt to curb the spread of communism in the East was in Korea, and led to a conflict that was every bit as brutal and deadly as the Second World War. The war ground down to a stalemate, and the ancient country of Korea was divided into two parts; the communist North, and the capitalist South. To the USA, this was a devastating loss.
Yet, not as devastating as seeing its neighbour, Cuba, fall to communism. Oh, the USA tried to prevent it by sending an overwhelming force. And the world expected the greatest economy and pinnacle superpower to steamroll the tiny island nation into acceding to its political will. So imagine the embarrassment when the USA failed in its primary objectives. Now multiply that by the chagrin when Cuba opened itself up to the placement of Soviet nuclear weapons on its soil.
The loss of diplomatic capital on the international stage was about as much as the USA could take, and be damned sure that the next nation daring to fly a red flag upon its capitol buildings would have unleashed upon it the wrath and fury of a nation whose wealth and military might totalled that of the rest of the world combined.
And that nation would be Vietnam.
The USA entered the war under the pretext of preventing the 'Domino Theory' – President Eisenhower's belief that if Vietnam fell to communism, it wold not be long before Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, India, and Bangladesh would fall in quick succession. It was a relatively sound theory, after all, it is exactly what had happened in Eastern Europe only a handful of years previously.
So, when Ho Chi Minh sough the support of communist China and the USSR to gain its independence from the yoke of French colonial oppression, the USA decided it simply would not do. A political entanglement saw the USA first of all ditch its anti-imperialist ideology to support the French, then support a capitalist independence movement, then… well, it's all a bit messy and could quite frankly be the subject of a many-volumed book series (and indeed it has). But suffice to say, the upshot is that the USA ended up supporting a puppet capitalist government based in the South of the nation, aiming to prevent the North from taking over the entire country under the banner of communism.
The primary goal of the USA was to prevent the spread of communism across South East Asia. And whilst its military muscle was entirely embarrassed by the resourceful guerrilla warfare tactics of the North, it has to be said that it did not fail in this goal. Whilst Vietnam would eventually fall to communism, of those other nations that were feared to turn left, only Vietnam and Laos are communist today. Cambodia had various flirtations with the ideology, and there is no denying that there is a strong socialist leaning in those other nations. But the fact remains that South East Asia is predominantly capitalist. So the USA, regardless of its numerous cock-ups (and there are hundreds, worthy again of a separate post) in the field, largely achieved its goal in the Vietnam War.
Why then does the world remember the Vietnam War as a loss for the Americans? Well, it is a simple answer. The actions of the USA during the decades of the war were at times utterly deplorable. It was a national embarrassment. Mass protests were held across the nation against the war, which even led to the killing US citizens on their own soil and at the hands of their own security forces. The US withdrawal was similarly a chapter in their history that they would prefer to forget; helicoptering scared individuals from rooftops is not an image of victory. It is not raising the flag on Iwo Jima; it provides no newspaper-friendly photographs, and it cannot be propagandised. But it must be accepted that neither embarrassment nor morally-questionable actions equate to a loss of war. After all, many of the actions taken under Churchill in the Second World War were morally reprehensible, yet it is not in doubt which side won.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the war was not for the USA to either win or lose. It was, in essence, a civil war between the communist north and the capitalist south. The USA was merely a supporting party. Albeit, one who ran around-the-clock bombing missions against North Vietnamese targets, and fought at close quarters with the enemies of the South. It would be hard to argue that an external nation can either win or lose the civil war of another nation.
So. The USA did not lose the war in Vietnam; it achieved its wider goals in the long-term. However, it did lose something far greater; its perception of power, dominance, and impenetrability. Prior to the war, as noted above, the economic power of the USA was equal to that of the rest of the world combined. It's military might was seen as an insurmountable force. Yet, by the time the war ended, it had lost both of these statuses leading to increased challenge from other parties across the globe.
The Flaw in the System
26th Jun 2020 27th Jun 2020 enterthedekuLeave a comment
Recent global events have demonstrated that we live within a system that is simply not designed with any capacity for resilience. After only a brief pause in productivity, the entire mechanism of capitalism has been brought to its knees, and is begging to be rescued by the kind and generous people of nations in which its companies reside. At the direction of their governments, via taxation, of course.
The capitalist system is the ultimate in hypocrisy; simultaneously demanding of the population that they rely only upon themselves as sole provider, whilst requiring assistance when things do not go the way that any given corporation might intend. Over the last decade or so, we have seen bailouts for the automotive industry, banks, and insurers. Of course, there is a delicious irony in the idea that the hyper-capitalist banking industry has been the recipient of the greatest amount of public cash. It seems that in the most capitalist nations, where socialism is but a dirty word uttered only behind closed doors between individuals considered to be part of some kind of liberal conspiracy to destroy the planet, individuals are seen as social pariahs for seeking public assistance in bad times, yet companies may dip their hand in the public pot as and when required.
But back to recent global events.
The Great Productivity Pause (as I would like it to be known) has thrown the world travel industry into some kind of terminal downward spiral, and now governments are considering throwing billions at airlines in order to keep them afloat, and reopening hotels regardless of the Covid-19 threat level. What's a few thousand additional deaths here and there if it ensures CEOs and shareholders receive their payments?
Most recently, the retail giant Intu has collapsed into administration, just as our government in the UK has decided that we should be encouraged to go out and spend, spend, spend in order to keep our wonderful capitalist economy going. We are assured of an economic bounce-back! Hurrah! Everything is going to be fine. Do not worry about a second wave of Covid-19; just make sure that our shops do not go bankrupt.
Intu is not a retailer itself, but an owner of large shopping complexes – temples of retail in which people sacrifice their paycheques upon the alter of useless trinkets. Yet, since the early 2000s slowdown, and the 2007 global recession, customers have been less faithful to their gods. Spending in retail stores has seen sharp declines, and in turn, the high rents they were able to pay in exchange for locations with heavy footfall has diminished. As such, the revenue potential for these giants of retail landlording has been equally suppressed, whilst their costs have remained. Therefore, haemorrhaging money, they have had no option other than to place themselves into administration.
Although this may seem like a recent problem, the economic slowdown that has resulted from the Covid-19 crisis is only a symptom of a much bigger problem. Capitalism itself.
The goal of capitalism is, as its name suggests, the acquisition of capital. This is done by producing goods and providing services to consumers, at a profit. This profit is used to produce more goods and provide more services to consumers, at a profit. This profit is used… you get the picture.
In order to create a profit, goods must be produced at the minimum possible cost, and sold at the maximum possible price. In the past, this system worked relatively well. However, with the advent of the industrial revolution, all that began to change. It has become less and less necessary to keep humans in the production loop. Goods produced by machines can be created at a far lower cost, far more consistently, and can be sold at a greater profit.
But isn't this good for the consumer?
Well, for the short-termists, yes. But if you consider the greater consequences, you see that capitalism has a fundamental flaw when it comes to profit-maximisation. To explain this, we will consider a generic example.
A company produces kitchenware for the mass market. It sells lots of units and makes a great profit. However, a new machine comes along that is able to take the place of the humans in the factory who produce those plates and cups and dishes and other things. So, the business owner buys the machine and produces the same items at a lesser cost, selling them for the same price to the market. The business owner gets richer. Yay! Capitsalism is working.
But what about those workers who no longer have jobs? How do they access the market without the capital that they had previously earned from producing those kitchenware items? They must get another job elsewhere, either producing some other good, selling it, or providing a service. However, in reentering the labour market, they have increased the supply of labour, driving down the cost that they are able to charge for their service.
Repeat this across several companies, or several hundred companies, or several thousand companies, and you have replicated the situation within large and complex economies across the world. Labour costs are constantly driven down by increased supply until a significant portion of the population simply cannot afford the goods that are produced within the market of which they are a part.
So, you have a population that cannot afford the goods that are produced, so companies seek to drive down their production costs yet further, implementing further cost-cutting measures in order to drive their unit prices down. Yet this puts further individuals out of work and back into the labour supply, and the situation becomes gradually worse.
Eventually, a tipping-point is reached at which nobody can afford said goods, and the company is no longer selling units in order to make its profits. Where does it turn? To the government of its nation, who bails it out with public money. Where does this money come from? The public, via taxation. Or printing money. Both of which lead to the same devastating problem; inflation. And so the value of the capital owned by every person within the market is diminished. Not such an issue for those with plenty of spare capacity, but a potentially life-threatening problem for those on the edge of financial survival. And of course, as the supply of labour increases, and the cost of labour decreases, and the value of the money in circulation is reduced, more people are pushed towards that line of financial destitution.
Yet, we exist within this system, which self-protects at all costs. It continues to devalue money in order to perpetuate the inexorable march toward the endgame, at which the majority of people will no longer have the capital available to sustain the market.
So what does this have to do with Intu? Well, it is an example of what happens when the population does not have the capital to sustain the system around it. Managed protection of the system may delay the inevitable, but at some point in the future, the Intus of this world will become so numerous that systemic failure will become inevitable.
Did the British Empire actually exist?
23rd Jun 2020 27th Jun 2020 enterthedekuLeave a comment
We all know about the British Empire – that grand old institution responsible for colouring a quarter of the world map in pink, and providing a source of pride for those who love to stick one in the eye to the French, who never quite achieved the same level of global dominance and had to settle for second place in the pecking order. We have all read, heard, or watched programmes on how the British Empire industrialised the world, brought civilisation to undeveloped regions, and connected the globe with train tracks and telegraph lines. We know that Pax Britannica brought peace at the end of a battleship's gun barrel, and that in its death-throws, the Empire provided a bulwark against the Nazi onslaught in Europe. Its legacy is evoked annually in an orgy of patriotism at the Last Night of the Proms, in which thousands of people who don't really understand the Empire empty their lungs to sing about how the mighty power of the thirty four remaining British Naval attack vessels still hold the ability to protect citizens of the realm from hypersonic jet fighters, ICBMs, and nuclear weapons. Somewhat hopeful if you ask me, but a nice thought, nonetheless.
So, we all know that the British Empire existed. We learned about it in school, we read about it in textbooks, and we have watched television presenters run around excitedly like children who have eaten too much sugar talking hurriedly about 'the events that shaped Britain', or 'the fifty greatest achievements of the British Empire'. We all know that the British Empire existed. But did it? Well, yes. But also no. And as I shall be arguing, slightly more no than yes.
To explore this subject, we will take a look at some of the key areas that may cast doubt on the entire existence of the British Empire. We will take a whistle-stop tour of some of the most important moments in its history and examine their validity in the grander narrative before taking a dive into the subject of what an empire actually is, and examine whether the British Empire satisfies analytical definitions. In summation we shall conclude whether or not the British Empire ever really existed, and consider if there is, perhaps, a better way to conceptualise it.
Before beginning, a very brief timeline of British history is useful to place the empire that we commonly speak of in its rightful place in the historical narrative. The first British Empire is not necessarily the one that you are thinking of, with its mighty ships and trading colonies spread around the world. Instead, it might well be attributed to the Roman military commander, Carausius, who instigated the very first Brexit back in 286 AD. Having split from Rome, he established a stable and peaceful realm spanning the length and breadth of the British Isles, complete with its own government and even mint. He appears to have been popular with the locals too, who took warmly to him after years of dissatisfaction with Roman rule. However, this first British Empire was not to last and in 293 AD, Carausius's treasurer, Allectus, quite literally stabbed him in the back. Possessing neither the military nor the political skill of his former boss, Allectus saw the British Isles recaptured by Rome in 296 AD.
The next British Empire was the first with overseas reach. The Norman Empire, whose political power was consolidated in London in the decades following the 1066 conquest, had territory spanning from the Scottish borders to Italy, and as far afield as Antioch.
The Norman Empire would eventually evolve into the Angevin Empire, whose power could be equated to an expired battery and whose territory collapsed slowly and painfully like a badly conceived soufflé.
Which leads us to the roots of the British Empire that we all know and love.
It is a commonly ignored fact that centuries of failure preceded the establishment of the Empire. But our story really begins in 1497, when , in an attempt to emulate the success of the Spanish five years earlier, Henry the Seventh commissioned John Cabot to set sail in search of lands to settle. Ultimately his quest was unsuccessful, and no empire was founded. As was the case in 1578 when Martin Frobisher made similar attempts under the direction of Queen Elizabeth. In 1583, Sir Humphrey Hilbert was successful in founding the colony of St John's in Newfoundland, but he and his companions were not fans of the cold, so only took up residence there in the summer. Roanoke was established in 1586, but the colonists mysteriously disappeared after one year. And Cuttyhunk was established in 1602, but abandoned after one month. Finally, on the 14th of May, 1607, after a one hundred and ten years of failed attempts under eight monarchs, Captain Christopher Newport founded Jamestown in what is modern day Virginia.
The following century was an entirely different story. Over fifty colonies, settlements, forts and trading posts were established, which surely demonstrates that the British Empire had arrived.
Except that, as those of us with healthy love of pedantry would point out, it hadn't. Britain only lurched into existence in 1707 under the Act of Union, which tied together England and Scotland. No British Empire could exist prior to that point, because no political or national entity named Britain existed prior to that point. In fact, there is no commonly agreed nomenclature for the loose association of English possessions before 1707, and although the first, presumably aspirational, use of the term 'British Empire' appears to be in the mid seventeenth century, its usage did not significantly increase until the 1770s – right about the time that the debate about how Britain might best dispose of its expensive and unwieldy empire began.
Aha! You might think. But the British Empire did indeed exist from 1707 onwards, regardless of the technicalities of language!
Yes, that may be the case. However, the very construct of the Empire itself must be considered before allowing oneself to agree with that thought.
Much of the British empire was established through the grant of commercial charter and subsequent company rule. The most commonly known of these was the East India Company, which ran vast swathes of the Indian subcontinent between 1600 and its eventual collapse in 1874. However, the very first colony, Jamestown, was established itself by a company – the Virginia company. In fact, much of what became the Empire was gained following the establishment of territorial footholds by private companies, followed by subsequent emigration. And many territorial possessions would be held at arms-length throughout the existence of the Empire. Indeed, for the longest time, the greater part of the British Empire was only indirectly ruled, with a handful territories directly administered by the British government. This style of indirect rule could be compared with a school bully kindly offering to relieve a peer of their lunch money so that he did not have to give him a good beating; it is the projection of control, but it is not a genuine relationship. Yet, much as the size, longevity, and homogeneity of the British Empire has been greatly diminished by this avenue of argument, it still must be conceded that it did seem to exist from 1707 onwards.
If the start of the Empire seems convoluted, then its end is even messier. Suffice it to say that there are numerous arbitrary dates that one could stick a pin in as to its end point – the 1997 transfer of power in Hong Kong, or the end of British Rule in India in 1947, to name but two. However, after years of study into the subject I have accepted that the 1926 establishment of the Commonwealth provides the strongest claim to the end of the British Empire. Well, at very least the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning. In a nutshell, that those in the corridors of power had accepted by this point that the Empire had to be reorganised due to powerful economic arguments as to the advantages of laissez-faire and a generally disgruntled population, makes a compelling argument. That it stumbled on for a few more decades is, to me, largely irrelevant; after Mary had her head chopped off she kept blinking – that did not mean she was still alive.
So, 1707 to 1926, the British Empire existed. Hurrah! Two hundred and nineteen glorious years of Imperium Britannicum. If nothing else, we have put the claim that the British Empire did not exist to the test, and disproved it.
Or have we?
It would be more precise at this juncture to suggest that we have determined that an Empire existed with Britain in charge. But we have by no means confirmed what an empire actually is, much less whether the one we have been talking about was ruled by Britain. In order to do this, we must consult the fabulously pedantic scholarship of my hero, Alexander Motyl. And, should he ever come across this work, he must forgive my butchery of its intricate detail.
Motyl is an expert in the subject of what it means to call something an empire. Not for him was the suggestion that an empire is simply, 'a collection of colonies ruled from the centre and separated by sea', as many post-colonial American scholars have attempted to use in order to diminish the imperial mannerisms of the extant US state. First and foremost, as pointed out by Motyl, this would invalidate the claim that Austria-Hungary, due to its landlocked status, was an empire. Instead, Motyl defines an empire as peripheries connected to the metropole, where the metropole is able to project its political, economic, military, and cultural power upon the peripheries. It makes nothing of this being a formal arrangement, and accounts for the informal arrangement of empire as we have previously described. USA, take note. This definition of empire envisages it as in a hub-and-spokes arrangement, whereby everything flows through the central metropole, and there is limited interconnectivity between the peripheries. Of course, there will be some trade amongst them, and some cultural crossover. But the majority of interaction happens via the metropole.
Therefore, for the British Empire to exist in this capacity, it must pass four tests; did the political, economic, military, and cultural power flow via the metropole? Well, as tenuous as it might be given the informal arrangement of empire described earlier, political power certainly did flow from the periphery to the metropole. If anything, this is inextricably linked to the economic test in the case of the British Empire; private companies required royal permission or government mandate in order to pursue trade and establish colonies. The governor of Jamaica could not apply to the Viceroy of India for an adjustment to the laws there, everything had to be dealt with centrally. So one might well say that the political test is passed. Economically too, the metropole dominated global trade. The whole principle of the trading empire was to import raw materials to Britain, transform them into manufactured goods, and export them to the Empire at great profit. So without going in to vast amounts of detail, it is safe to say that the economic test is passed.
The military test is somewhat more complex. Although it was the government of the metropole that directed the majority of military action, the vast army of the East India Company and its successor, the British Raj, outnumbered that of the British Isles by quite some margin. So perhaps it might seem that the military test would not be passed. However, one must recall those flag-waving patriots at the Last Night of the Proms. It was not the terrestrial military that secured the military power of the British Empire – many European nations throughout the nineteenth century far outclassed the British with regards their ground armies. It was the Royal Navy, whose policy of maintaining a greater power than the two nearest rivals combined ensured the security of the Empire. As this projection of military power onto the periphery was at the direction of the metropole, we can say that the military test is passed.
The projection of cultural power from the metropole onto the periphery is a hugely complex topic – much more so than the other three tests. But if one considers the spread of only one aspect of British culture – the English language, then one can see the effects of cultural domination upon the Empire.
So, the British Empire passes the four tests of empirehood/empiredom/empiring…. Once again, hurrah! Yay! We can go back to waving our flags in celebratory ignorance of its negative side!
Or can we…?
We have without doubt confirmed that it existed between the years of 1707 and 1926 or there abouts, and we have confirmed that it passes the Motyl test of being an empire.
But we have yet to explore one key fact – possibly the most important of them all. Was the British Empire… the British Empire?
The Motyl tests are all well and good, but in the case of the British Empire, their use presupposes a monocultural homogeneity that simply does not exist with these British Isles. And it is that phenomenon that we must now explore.
Britain is infamous for its diversity, even prior to the incredible cultural and societal benefits brought about by modern immigration. For example, having recently moved from a big, metropolitan city to a village in rural South Yorkshire, I can barely recognise the language spoken by my neighbour as matching that spoken by myself. Indeed, when I first moved in, he informed another member of the local community that I must be, and I quote, 'from somewhere abroad', because I was such an alien entity to him.
It is this diversity that must be reconciled in relation to the British Empire to determine whether or not it really existed. Did the cotton merchant of Manchester, or the wool merchant of Leeds, or the ship builder of Glasgow, or the financier of London, all have the same agency to project their economic and cultural power upon the Empire? And if so, could they do so as part of one homogenous entity? Was Britain really the hub, and if not, what implications does that have for the existence of the British Empire?
Let us put the British Isles themselves to the Motyl tests; political, economic, military, and cultural.
Firstly, it is beyond doubt that the political power of Great Britain is, was, and pretty much always has been, centralised to within the geographic scope of a few streets in London. The regions of the nation have no power to negotiate with one another, and they have no right to grant one another new laws. Even the devolved governments of modern Britain have limited independent agency. Protests on every facet of political change invariably lead to London. Throughout history, even those protests whose mass gatherings happen elsewhere, such as the peasant's revolt of 1381, result in petitions being delivered to within sight of the capital. On occasion, the government might engage in some kind of outreach program, sending the great and the good into the wilds of the provinces to pacify the locals, but this is never a great deal more than lip service.
It is a similar story economically. Of course, goods are manufactured, distributed, and exported from all regions of the nation. However, the permission to do so was and is granted by the government, situated in the capital. The laws that grant the right to trade spices in French Indochina, or place a special sticker on your electrical goods to say that they are fit for purpose are all created in the capital, and the laws governing the percentage of your profits you must hand over for the privilege of doing so are similarly centralised.
It goes without saying that almost every military decision undertaken by the British since the year dot has been taken by the government or crown, situated in the capital. Of course, the occasional civil war has broken out, but these are not the decisions of the nation or the empire, but individual choices that do not affect this argument.
Finally, on the subject of cultural power, although there has been a drive in recent years to diversify the creation centres away from London, it is clear where the cultural power of the nation truly lies. And this is not a modern phenomenon. Although Mendelssohn might have engaged in a jaunt across Britain in the 1820s and 30s, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and any number of great artists, musicians and performers hit the capital and remained there without seeing beyond the city limits. If a rare museum piece is to be shown in the country, it will be in London. If a rock god is to play one show only in the UK, it will almost always be in London. If an up and coming young artists wants to make it, they move to London. As much as we regional folk would hate to admit it, London drives the cultural heart of the nation.
With this in mind, how can it be claimed that a person in Inverness, Newcastle, or Carlisle is, was, or has ever been any more a part of the metropole of a great empire than an individual from Port Royal, Boston, or Melbourne? They are each as separated from the power of the metropole as one another.
I began this exploration by stating that the British Empire existed, and it did not. But it didn't more than it did. And in summary, I believe this remains true. An empire existed with a metropole located within the British Isles, but it was by no means a British Empire. Instead, it was the Empire of London. It was London, not Britain, that projected its political, economic, military, and cultural power to, at its greatest extent, a quarter of the worlds landmass and population. One might be tempted to argue that the Empire of London could not possibly be a real thing, because England is too small to constitute an empire in and of itself. However, this is to dismiss the Aztec Empire, which was less than half the land size of England, and the Ashanti Empire, less than a fifth the size of England, as non-existent. Landmass does not define empire – if that were the case, there are many modern nations that would be classified as such today.
An Empire of London could even be argued to have pre-existed the 1707 entity that has been under discussion by 638 years – the moment when William the Conqueror consolidated his power in the South by harrying the North.
In conclusion, the British Empire did not exist. But over the centuries, a great empire did rise up from within the British Isles to rule across the globe. But it has been alarmingly misnamed. The Empire of London has existed since at least 1069. And as a final thought, by all of the tests put forward as to what constitutes an empire, it still exists to this day.
The Truth Manipulation Syndrome
When Donald Trump was first elected president in 2016, most of us assumed that we knew what was about to happen; a buffoon of a man sat on a throne, elevated above his competency, with ludicrous policy decisions leading his fanbase to become gradually eroded as his aura and power faded slowly into the background. For all the disappointment of his victory, most were sure that he would be nothing more than a lame president, serving a few years in which he would get to live in a nice house and play with some new toys, before being evicted at the next election cycle, and things would quickly revert to the normal order of things. A president would be installed whose lies were subtle but visible enough to be acceptable, whose corruption stops at taking a few cheeky back-handlers, and whose policy decisions amounted to a bit of superficial tinkering around the edges – much in the way that democracy has functioned for the past few centuries or so. We would go back to moaning that nothing really changed, all the while being thankful that, after what we thought the Trump presidency would look like, that status quo would continue for decades more.
Although his four years started with the anticipated insanity, what with the border wall failing to materialise, and policy after policy being rejected, things soon became somewhat less amusing. It began with a series of events that, whilst serious, were easily reversible; banning individuals from entering the country, and detaining children in cages. These things, whilst horrendous for those on the receiving end, and tragic for those who suffered, would have required only a few marks on a piece of paper to undo by whoever was to be the next occupant of the White House.
And then things began to take a serious turn for the worse.
Trump began to transform himself from sitting president, to a quasi cult leader, appealing to any and every populist cry across his nation in order to bolster his failing polls and draw a following. He appealed to those poor, downtrodden minorities; racists, misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes, religious zealots of the Judeo-Christian flavour, and promised to them that whatever they so desired. Forget that he was, as a twice-divorced adulterer with a preference for foreign wives who immigrated under shady conditions, the antithesis of many of their beliefs. Yet this strange practice began to work. Those with outdated views of the world, who desired some fantasy of what the past was like, gravitated towards him as though he would cure all their ills, speak to all their fears, and heal all of their divisions.
As with the weeks after his election, this was all seen as something rather amusing by the free-thinking, liberal population across the globe. What they had failed to notice, however, were the dangerous seeds that Trump had sewn throughout the population. All of those mentions of 'fake news', 'liberal agenda', 'lock her up', 'build the wall', that were so derided, had so successfully cast doubt upon the traditional mechanisms of state that for a significant portion of the population, the only place they believed they could find truth was in the words of the leader himself.
But then began something very strange, and very terrifying. The words coming from the president were not those of denial, or the propagandising of events in his favour. Instead, he began to create his own truth.
Ridiculous claims were made – 'windmills cause cancer', 'my approval ratings are the highest of any president', 'unemployment is at its lowest ever point', 'the economy is at its strongest point ever', etc. etc. ad infinitum. We knew that this would be a feature of this president; he had espoused the Obama birthed conspiracy for years. Whilst this behaviour was relatively harmless, if annoying, to begin with, the claims slowly transformed into the downright dangerous. He, began claiming that the Covid-19 epidemic was under control, that they had discovered a cure, that there was a vaccine. People died through these lies, yet Trump would always find somebody else to blame. Either the scientists had given bad advice, the media had misrepresented his words, or the public had failed to understand him. It was the ultimate in gaslighting. It was easy to see the damage he had done to the public psyche. People in their millions ignored the advice of expert scientists and doctors, and paraded through the streets, ignoring social distancing measures that were supposed to keep them safe, and demanding, in spite of the tens of thousands who were dying, that businesses stayed open regardless of risk. Trump said it was safe, and people believed him. Trump said the economy must keep on moving, and his army of followers were ready to carry out his orders.
Yet as scary as this is, it pales in comparison to what has come since.
The large part of Trump's success is the result of an image of himself crafted on social media, and the direct connection that this new-fangled technology allows him. No other political figure has quite so cannily understood how to manipulate the power of a new technology since, if we are honest about it, the 1930s. His social media following is as devout as that of any religious movement of cult practice, and they defend his each and every move rabidly, with thousands of individuals ready and willing to jump to his defence of even the most outlandish comments and claims; his words are held by this group as the ultimate truth in the world. And it is in this that the most alarming echos of the 1930s are heard.
Trump has encouraged his following to see the Second Amendment as not just optional, but compulsory. He has managed to convince them that political rivals are doing everything in their power to remove this right. As such, he has essentially created a quasi-private militia, willing not only to defend his honour upon the wilds of the internet, but out in the real world too. He has bypassed the traditional mechanisms of national peacekeeping, in order to create a body that would do his bidding at a single word. This state-within-a-state arrangement has, as noted above, already been the feature of a past state in the 1930s.
But the most alarming moment in the presidency of Donald Trump was the moment that the veil of civilised behaviour was finally lifted; the moment when in an advertisement placed on Facebook, he chose to use the imagery of the Nazi Party in order to suggest that those on the political left were a terrorist organisation. The red triangle, used as a symbol denoting that an individual was a political dissident under the Nazi regime, is one of many that they used in order to categorise the enemies of state. For Trump to use it was unforgivable; either is was used knowingly and he has unveiled his true political goals, or it was used unknowingly in which case he is simply not responsible enough to be in such a position of power.
One might think that this glimpse beneath the mask might have turned people away from Trump, but instead, his online army has been out in force to validate his comments.
Facebook, taking action against the president for the first time, accepted that the use of Nazi symbolism was a form of hate-speech, and dutifully removed traces of it from their platform. However, the damage had already been done. Every person in the connected world knew what had happened, and everybody either sided with the president, or reacted with revulsion to his actions.
Yet, I suspect that this was simply a toe-in-the-water for the president, in order to gauge what public reaction to such overtly brazen displays of fascist symbolism would be. As his followers reacted positively towards it, I don't think it will be the last time such an approach is taken.
We shall wait and see…
Wonder, Wealth, and Sacrifice
When Hernán Cortés first set foot in the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan on the 8th of November, 1519, he must have truly believed he had entered a city of the gods. What must he have thought of the majestic expanse of urbanity that eclipsed the largest European cities? A city as populous as Paris, London, Florence, and Milan combined, with gleaming skyscrapers of stone, must have appeared as alien to that Spanish invader as a city floating in the sky would to modern humans. As he walked down wide boulevards lined with gold and tumbaga, he must have doubted just for a moment that European sense of superiority that drove his mission of conversion and conquest. Surely he wondered, as he gazed up at the Templo Mayor, what history had brought these people to this point? How could this culture have so effectively terraformed the land around them so that it might provide for their every need, when back home even the construction of a simple canal was a monumental undertaking? This must have seemed to Cortés, even if just for the briefest of moments, as the most advanced civilisation in the world.
But of course, this magic spell could not have lasted. Gunpowder, horses, and biological warfare in the form of smallpox made swift work of bringing this beautiful culture to its end, and the Spanish inherited its wealth in less than two years.
But peeling back the majesty and wonder of the Aztecs for just a moment, we see a far more brutal society. I am, of course, talking of human sacrifice. For the Aztec, and the Maya before them, human sacrifice was a practice built in to every day life. It was not just meaningless murder, either. Aztec culture believed that the existence of the universe was dependent upon the continued and sustained sacrifice of the gods, who provided the conditions for life to continue. Human sacrifice was a reflection of this practice, and a way in which humanity itself could thank the gods, by relieving a little of the burden upon them. It was, in essence, considered as an absolute necessity for life to carry on, and for society to function. Without it, civilisation would collapse, and the great cities, and skyscrapers, and temples would fall into the earth and the Aztec would be no more.
Of course, this was seen as a horrifically barbaric cultural practice by the Spanish, who moved quickly to outlaw the practice. The Aztec were taught that their religion was wrong, and that Catholicism was correct, and that God loved them, and that suicide was a sin, and the practice was ended.
Human sacrifice was not limited to the Aztec and the Maya; countless civilisations have practiced it throughout history, either secretly or overtly. The Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Celts, Chinese, Japanese, Mongols, Israelites, Vikings, Nazca, Inca, Indians, and almost anywhere you care to look have at some point throughout history indulged in the practice, usually as a quasi-religious metaphor in order to ensure the continuation of society by pleasing and thanking the gods, or to attempt to improve the health of a person or people. Giving the life of another human being is the ultimate sacrifice, and usually it was done only as an absolute necessity, when no other loss would suffice.
These cultures have now ended, and their rituals lost to the depths of time. This surely demonstrates the futility of wasting life for the purpose of continuing a societal system.
Which brings me to the present day.
We live in strange times. Capitalism is supposed to be a system of opportunity, in which the poor are able, through struggle and strife, to work their way into wealth. Yet we reached a stage of capitalism in which those who are born poor are likely to remain that way throughout their lives, and those who are wealthy are likely to see their resources grow indefinitely. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, and they are held as shining examples of what can be achieved. This of course conveniently leaves out the enormous quantities of luck required, and the infinitely small probability of doing so. Furthermore, we regularly turn a blind-eye to the harm that our economic system is doing the world around us; in a form of collective suicide we are causing the conditions for a slow species extinction.
Regularly, we are told by those who have made their fortunes through the capitalist system of how fortunate we are to be 'free'; that we live in relative comfort, and that we have never had life so easy. We are reminded of how many died for the failed experiments in socialism, communism, and other 'isms' throughout history, and that capitalism would never tolerate such barbarism.
Yet if this is true, in a world where all but a handful of nations are paid-up members of the global capitalist club, why are more than eight hundred million human beings undernourished? Why, when we have individuals sitting on piles of wealth that they could not possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes and whose capital continues to grow, do people starve to death, or lack basic medical care? Why are thousands of tons of food disposed of in landfill, when children go hungry at night?
Of course, everybody believes they are exempt from this system; nobody wishes to believe they are part of such a cruel machine. But the truth is that we are all caught up in the intrinsic self-preservation of this way of life. Every time we buy a new car, or television, or novelty clock, we are perpetuating a system in which resources are taken away from those most in need, and funneled slowly but inexorably wealthwards to those dragons sat upon on their mounds of gold. But, you may be thinking, what on earth this has to do with human sacrifice?
At no time in the modern world has the fragility of the capitalist system been more apparent than during the current Covid-19 crisis. After only the briefest of moments in which the world stopped working, economies around the world were on their knees, with systems on the verge of collapse. Of course, nations initially shut down their workforces in order to preserve life, but when it became apparent that the capitalist economy could not sustain extended closure, talk immediately turned to how best to restart the fires of industry.
Whilst the probability of a person dying of Covid-19 is low, it is significant enough that the world was closed-down for weeks if not months. Yet now, when capitalism is on its knees, human beings are being told to go back out into the world, and risk their life in order to preserve the system.
Is a system which requires humans to die in order for it to survive worth preserving? Covid-19 has not fundamentally changed anything, it simply created an extreme in which the limits were tested. In doing so, it highlighted what was already there to see, had we all looked; humans have being dying for capitalism since its inception, from lack of food, shelter, warmth, and medical care. It is a system whereby many do win, but in order for that to happen, many must lose. And in this case, losing often means dying. When one truly stops to consider it, there is a morbid hilarity in the knowledge that the combined resources of the wealthiest three individuals on earth could end poverty and hunger, yet instead they choose to compete over who can build the coolest space ship.
Human beings are being sacrificed upon the high alter of capitalism, which makes us no less barbaric than those past civilisations whom we so much enjoy patronising for their simplistic beliefs.
The Paradox of Politics
During a lovely long walk to the middle of nowhere and back, a conversation was struck up about why the political right always seems to have greater periods of electoral stability and success than their politically left rivals. Certainly, if one looks over the timeline of British election results over the last couple of centuries or so, it reveals a startlingly blue hue. As the conversation progressed, it evolved into a more generalised look at how things generally remain broadly (small-c) conservative over the longue durée, with brief moments of liberalisation during which previously withheld rights are granted to repressed groups. Naturally, I start musing on the reason why this might be, and, why the left might in fact never win in the long run.
Although I wont pretend to be an expert on such matters, something became apparent very quickly. To explore it, I am going to use some incredibly blunt generalizations about the two wings, but it will save us from wasting the time to categorise and label each and every scenario when the majority understand broadly what is meant when referring to 'left' and 'right' in both situations described.
It should be noted that at this stage, these are very loose-fit thoughts that I shall probably return to ruminate upon at some point in the future. I would gladly welcome helpful input!
The first problem for the left is that it tends to err towards a position of acceptance of difference. This openness is seen by the likeminded as a forum for constructive debate, in which issues that face individuals and the wider world can be solved, and is one in which every person is entitled to hold their own opinion. However, whilst this is a perfectly good system when engaging with those of a similar persuasion, when faced with the more generally closed-mindedness of the right it faces an issue. Those on the right are traditionally less accepting of difference, and more likely to surround themselves with those of their own cultural background. When challenged on a resistance to change, the right must only remind the left that it is supposed to be accepting of all opinions, and that they must treat those of the right with the same respect as those of their own. In this, the left faces a conundrum. How does the left claim that the insular opinions of the right are incorrect, whilst maintaining their acceptance of free thought? To do so would be to undermine, and create a paradox within their own philosophy. Furthermore, the right is far more likely, due to its inherent homogeneity, to reach consensus between individuals and thus create a more unified position from which to fight their political battles. The left, however, is philosophically bound to allowing the voices of all to be heard, precluding the possibility of unification. The only binding consensus is that everybody may condone differing courses of action – which is not a useful position from which to launch an offensive upon an ideological rival. The only way in which this can be countered is to adopt the consensus strategy of the right; a hypocritical action. This undermines the left, creating a logic-crisis that can be easily exploited. 'You believe in diversity and difference, yet you are all presenting the same front. You believe we should all have free thought, yet you wish to eliminate my preference for homogeneity.' Furthermore, the likelihood of any left-consensus surviving over a significant period is inversely proportional to the willingness to abandon the core philosophy of individual thinking.
The second problem for the left is the preference towards pacifism. In practical terms, this faces the same paradox as the first problem in that the right only has to arm itself to fight a battle in order to have won both the physical and philosophical fight. In this situation, the left will either stick to principle, and be wiped out, or take up arms, and become the hypocrite that abandoned their philosophy. Once again, the left has no hope of winning.
The only hope of a stable and long term victory for the left is the permanent abandonment of some core beliefs by a select few who are willing to sacrifice their principles in order to ensure the survival of the deeper philosophies. Yet, even though this is something that is part of the day-to-day political vernacular, the true left attack this position, leading to yet more fragmentation.
As stated, this is only loose-fit thoughts at this stage. Furthermore, it relies on gross oversimplification of complex ideologies predominantly based on how one side views the other, rather than any basis in reality. However, I hope it is an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. I find it an interesting topic for consideration, and so I shall return to this at some point in the future when it is more developed!
Addressing the Binary Characterisation of Historical Figures
During the Second World War, there existed a leader who so perfectly characterised the actions of his nation that he has become not only a symbol for his side, but for the entire war. He is a leader who was willing, to do anything necessary to win; someone whose pre-war political guile was so effective that it put him in a position of almost unchallenged power. During the war itself, he took decisions that had disastrous consequences for his people, and were barbaric in nature. He used his citizens as a meat-shield to protect the military. People were allowed to starve to death to enhance his war effort. And of course he was directly responsible for the deaths of two to three million people in a single year alone. He stood proudly amongst the ruins of his bomb-ravaged cities, whilst enemy aeroplanes flew overhead, proclaiming that the sacrifice of the civilian population was necessary for the war effort. As the war drew to a close, he even stood by and allowed the Holocaust to continue, ensuring that the grotesque and evil genocide taking place would continue until the very end of the conflict.
Yet to the electorate, he was a hero. He appeared to the public as a sole voice of reason against a sea of political insanity. Whilst his rivals wound themselves up in knots, attempting to politic their way out of national crisis, his voice cut through the nonsense, and appealed directly to the people.
Of course, you know of whom I am speaking.
Over the last few days and weeks, there has rightfully begun a debate about the esteem in which we hold our historical, national heroes. Much has been said about them, and much has been ignored. As a historian, what saddens me the most is that people are unwilling to see the nuances of humanity; nobody who ever lived had an exclusively good or evil nature. Every human has elements of both. Yet I have observed over recent days historians who have for years been my own academic heroes drawn in to this black hole of binary conflict, and joined in the rhetoric of absolutist argument.
I will not be detailing the individual actions and atrocities undertaken at the behest of Winston Churchill whom, if you had not guessed was the subject of the opening paragraphs. He directed some actions the morality of which is absolutely unforgivable. So, why then do we overlook the evil within the man and celebrate him as a national treasure?
Imbued within the man lies not only the decisions that he took, rightly or wrongly, that brought about British victory in the Second World War, but also a metaphor for Britain at that time. In his image lies not only his successes and failures, his kindness and his evil, but the actions of every soldier who stormed the beaches at Normandy, protected the skies in the Battle of Britain, and who sacrificed his life so that we might be free to criticise Churchill today.
His image is not simply the representation of one man, but it is the encapsulation of millions upon millions of human beings who died in those horrific years. We must learn to accept the flawed man – and he most certainly was flawed; the perfect human does not unnecessarily sacrifice the lives of three million Bengalis, or set a Howitzer upon democratic protesters.
So why maintain his image at all? Well, for better or for worse, he was the one chosen to lead Britain at that time. And amongst all debate, that fact will never change.
We must acknowledge all of the triumphs, inadequacies and evils of the man but at the same time, understand that his image has transcended the simple likeness of a singular human, to become an embodiment of the millions who gave their lives in that terrible time.
The Damned Media
Over recent days and weeks, it is fair to say that there has been considerable unrest across a number of countries, including the United Kingdom. The fires of civil disobedience have been stoked, in part, due to the inequality that still continues to be a fact of life for many within the black, and other repressed minority communities. Whilst it has been heartening to see the inclusion of white allies in calls to take action against injustices, it has also broken the hearts of many to see the outing of neo-Nazis and fascists, who have taken to the streets in a show of hatred against all that is different to the straight-white power hegemony that has existed across the globe since the early days of European colonialism.
These racist, homophobic, misogynist, fascist nut-jobs have been, in recent years, emboldened by the rise of the political right, particularly in (thought not limited to) the English-speaking world. Here, we have seen nationalistic insularism become the new alter upon which politicians have decried the evils of immigration and cultural integration; difference has become a dirty concept. An increasing number of followers of this not-so-new cult of hatred have lapped it all up, seeking more and more, as if requiring their next hit of heroin. And just like those who cannot control an addiction to heroin, a tipping point has been reached in which all sensible activity has been suspended in the crazed need to get their next hit of hatred. For these people, it has become a need, and there are dealers who are ready, willing, and able to supply them with their fix.
I am, of course, talking about that symbiotic relationship between politicians and the media. On the face of it, this should be a simple relationship in which the politician speaks, and the media reports what is said. Yet, as with so many things in this modern world, that is simply not the case.
It seems that the media has, in recent years, taken it upon itself not only to report the news, but also to create it. They no longer need the input of the political side of the relationship. They have surpassed the requirement. This is a terrifying prospect; the organisations that we reply upon to let us know what is going on in the world around us are manipulating events in order to sell more advertising space. The shinier and more exciting a story is, the more people will consume the article. Therefore, media organisations are in a constant battle with one another in order to ensure their survival by providing the consumer with the most tantalising and exhilarating stories possible. This is capitalism at its not-so-finest.
But surely, you ask, this is all just a conspiracy dreamt up in the mind of some oily little person in the basement of their responsible adult's home? It does sound awfully like it. But when one looks, even with just a hint of criticality, it is easy to see that it could not be more horrifically true. I shall highlight this with a few choice examples.
On the face of it, when Charles Saatchi grabbed Nigella Lawson by the throat whilst having breakfast in a London restaurant, the story was clear; an abusive husband physically harms his wife. There can be no excuse for this kind of physical violence. And initially, that was the story. Our national treasure, that slightly-naughty tv cook with a bubbly personality and assets that drew men to her shows, had been dis-respected, and we were not going to have it. However, as the months drew on, stories began to appear in the press about how Nigella was a habitual cocaine user, may not have been faithful, and was a poor wife. The media had begun to reframe her not as an innocent victim of a violent attack, but as a person who perhaps had driven Charles to do something out of character. Why on earth would this kind of story manipulation take place? What could be gained from it? Well, aside from dragging out a tragic tale of love gone wrong, it was to fill column inches and to draw out more details; Nigella could not simply stay silent and have her name tarnished in such a manner, so she and her team of course would respond. Now, it is up to others to consider what role Saatchi, whose multi-millionaire status was crafted in advertising and media, had to play in the attempt to discredit his victim. But with his contacts list, it cannot have been hard for him to make a couple of phone calls. Did these stories require fact-checking? Of course not. Throw the word 'allegedly' in front of any sentence and it becomes legally acceptable. Does the public read this as potentially misleading? Of course not. They see the words, 'Nigella' and 'cocaine', and immediately she is a drug user, and her reputation is tarnished.
This practice has been applied with devastating effect to the events surrounding the murder by the police of George Floyd. Never mind the fact that there is video evidence of the police officer kneeling on his neck for eight minutes and forty six seconds, with him begging for his mother and his life, having not resisted arrest or engaged in violent conduct. Never mind that two other officers were also allegedly kneeling on his back. Never mind that his pulse was checked after six minutes or so and none was found, but the officer continued to kneel on his neck. Never mind the fact that his supposed crime was the use of a fake twenty dollar bill, which at the time could not be proven. Never mind the fact that when he was murdered there was no evidence whatsoever that he was guilty of any offense. What matters to the media is that, in the past, he was guilty of armed robbery, and that he was 'allegedly high on drugs'. Note that canny little word again, that absolves the writer of any responsibility to fact-check their claim. 'I heard it from a reliable source.' Will the public read this as a potentially misleading statement? Of course not. They will see, 'George Floyd was on drugs, he was a violent criminal, and the police officer needed to restrain him because he was dangerous'. It is despicable.
Why would the media seek to discredit individuals in such a manner? There could be a number of reasons. It could be to protect a wealthy and powerful individual who has influence over a particular outlet or organisation. It could be to draw out the story in order to generate more revenue. Or, it could be to push a certain agenda. There are many reasons for doing so, but it is unlikely that from the outside it can ever be established with any certainty.
Another way in which the media creates its own news it by the careful and cynical manipulation of facts. In the past, this has been a subtle art, but in recent years it has become a blunt-force instrument used no differently than a police officer uses pepper spray to blind a peaceful protester.
I will firstly use the example of Laura Kuenssberg, a vile individual whose only rival in the art of manipulation would be the theoretical devil-spawn of Rita Skeeter and Delores Umbridge. Her BBC title gives her a sense of credibility that she simply does not deserve. And lets not forget, the BBC is an organisation itself that cynically manipulated the image of a candidate during an election cycle to make it look as though he were a Soviet soldier. Kuenssberg has managed to get away with more lies than a child whose parents catch them drawing graffiti on the walls with crayon. Let us not forget the occasion upon which a story was released of, 'A labour supporter viciously attacking a Tory electoral candidate' in Leeds. This story was release, picked up by the wider media, and then escalated to the Tory Prime Minister who willingly lapped it up as the next story in the ongoing propaganda attempt to paint the Left as hooligans. Even the person who was the supposed victim of the attack got on board with the witch-hunt. Until it was revealed the next day that the whole affair was fabricated. It had never happened. Kuenssberg tweeted a brief apology, and that was the end of the matter. Except that it wasn't. The apology did not matter one jot; the aim of the story had already been achieved; the right-wing rage indicator had risen another notch, and strengthened their resolve to do anything they could to ensure the 'loonie lefties' were punished. By the time the apology was issued, the impact of the fabricated event was over, and no amount of back-tracking could undo the damage it had caused.
Next, we turn to the USA. Fox News has, for many years, been known to those with anything more than two brain cells as the media outlet of choice for those who like to consume their news content in a right-wing, subtly racist flavour. Over the years, this has mostly been presented in the form of praising one individual over another, ignoring character faults of those to whom they are sympathetic, and finding the most trivial transgressions of their enemies and presenting them as atrocities. But in recent days, things have taken an alarming turn. For context, it should be noted that social media is a place upon which images are photoshopped, and videos are misattributed with astonishing regularity in order to prove a point, regardless of accuracy or truth (see any number of examples from the recent right-wing riots in London, labelled as left-wing violence). However, direct manipulation like this has been below the standards of traditional media. That is, until Fox News decided that it was acceptable to take the perfectly peaceful protests in Seattle, and attribute to it images of a man standing with a machine gun amid rioting and looting, and the burning of cars and buildings. Not only is this misattribution alarming, but in the first instance, some person had even gone to the effort of photoshopping the man with the machine gun into the image. If this is the new standard of the traditional media industry, what hope does the public have of being able to discern truth from it? What does the media, in this case, Fox News, have to gain from such a heinous activity? They play into the hands of their hard-won audience by blowing the dog whistle and proving that they were right all along. They cement the loyalty of their fanbase by reconfirming their beliefs, and in doing so ensure that their audience in the future is assured. That day-long right-rage that exists before the inevitable admission of deception is, as with the Kuenssberg incident, worthwhile to craft the narrative they have decided upon in advance. The rage dies down after a day or so, and the apology becomes meaningless as the story has already served its purpose.
The British are alarmingly arrogant about their superiority in many aspects of their culture. I should know – I am indeed British. And for that reason, many that read these words might well be thinking, 'ah yes – but that sort of thing would never happen over here. We have far higher standards!' If only this were true. We have had occasions where the mobile telephones of dead children have had their voicemails hacked in order to generate a story. We have had newspaper stories printing images of queues of migrants in order to present the image that our borders are 'under attack', only to be shown that they are entirely false. And we have had blatant lies about this, that, and the other fed to us (£350m per week for the NHS? Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?) channelled through to us throughout the last few decades, with little regard as to the quality of information given by the 'reliable source'.
But for my last point, I turn to a large, regional media outlet with a declining physical newspaper readership, but a loyal and dedicated Facebook following of over 200,000.
Over the last week or so, the Yorkshire Evening Post (YEP) has posted no less than twenty articles to its social media sites, highlighting the disruptive nature of the Black Lives Matter protests around the world. They have noted when protests have turned into riots in the USA, that UK BLM protests have resulted in social distancing laws being broken, and that vandalism and destruction of statues has taken place. Each time one of these stories is posted, it is followed up, usually two to three hours later, with a 'reaction article', in which a local politician has given a response. These articles might in and of themselves seem like they are presenting the facts, but for one small issue; those 200,000 followers. Articles are immediately lost in a maelstrom of comments, angry-faces, and abuse, all of which the YEP relish. Once the commenting begins to quiet, the 'reaction article' pops up in people's feed to ensure that the rage never truly subsides. And what rage it is. I have witnessed numerous comments along the lines of, 'If they don't like it, they should leave England – this is our country', written about protesters taking part in the BLM movement. I have observed, 'these people should all be shot'. I have noted hundreds of occasions where images of far-right, fascist and racist riots have had a label such as, 'see what the BLM protesters are doing' have been posted. And the YEP does nothing to prevent this. In fact, I added a number of comments underneath these types of posts over the last few days, mentioning that the supposed facts that these contributors presented were indeed incorrect, only to find that they had been subsequently removed and the misleading images left in place. Twenty or more articles posted denigrating the BLM movement as violent and illegal, yet upon the occasion when the far right took to the streets of London, smashing up property, throwing missiles at the police, urinating on memorials, and making Nazi salutes, at the time of writing this piece, there has been absolute silence on the matter. What does this tell us about the YEP?
Well, it tells us the same story as can be drawn from every one of the above examples. Traditional news media is dying. It is at its endpoint. In the ultra, possibly even late-stage-capitalist world warned about by Werner Sombart over a century ago, they have to justify their reason to exist, and fight with every fibre of their being to do so. In a world where social media reports the news instantly, as it happens, and with high quality camera equipment in every street of every town of every country, traditional news media must use its coffers as a war-chest in order to fight for its existence. The capital it has built up in money, power, and public trust ever since the moment the Gutenberg pressed his first piece of paper are being used to fight for survival by any means possible. If the news can no longer simply be reported, for that is now the job of those with a phone in their pocket, then it must be created. In order to ensure consumption, they must ensure loyalty. In order to ensure loyalty, they must provoke rage and inspire fear. By doing this, they might continue on, but at what cost to society at large?
The actions of the industry whilst attempting to survive in the modern world has been the cause of division, anger, and violence on a global scale. After all this noise and pain, it is time for traditional news media to go into retirement, and die a quiet little death.
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