Consider how climate change is driven by those with the greatest wealth and, by extension, power. We see this directly through how the richest 1% account for 17% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, and a whopping 50% for the richest 10%[1]. And this doesn’t even count their controls over processes of production and distribution that cause bulk emissions, which ends up being represented as coming from those from lower income brackets. Indeed, the world’s richest 1% own 59% of all global financial assets, and we are currently set to see the world’s first trillionaire within a decade. So it’s very clear that those with most power are driving this, and the question arises as to why. Is it really through ignorance and deluded short term gain, or could it actually be deliberate? Let us make the reasonable assumption that those who hold power are not stupid; that they cannot be so blind as to continue on a trajectory that overwhelming scientific consensus loudly points to climate collapse. Setting aside the apparent absurdity in knowingly being complicit in rendering the world uninhabitable for (human) life, let us imagine if this is actually the case. What do those with power really hope to gain?
Firstly, a world rendered uninhabitable or near-uninhabitable would mean all remaining humanity could only survive through advanced technology. The ability to grow food and live in places that can still support life wouldn’t be determined by free access to ‘the commons’, but through being allowed to utilise technological supports. And who owns and controls such technology…?
Secondly, it may be realised by the powerful that, however humanity proceeds, all life on Earth will eventually come to an end anyway. We cannot avoid the larger geological and eventual solar lifespans of this world. The only hope of continuance beyond that is through colonising other worlds. And it’s no coincidence that the world’s billionaires have spent a great amount in efforts to smooth the way to that, with increasing investments each year. So why hasten the need for colonising other worlds through destroying Earth’s habitat? Perhaps because in waiting longer, society will also go through major structural changes – as history repeatedly shows us – the kind that erodes if not entirely removes the power structures of today. In the meantime, through short term manipulations, these self-same structures can strengthen their positions and simultaneously undermine resistance to their goals through removing individual liberties of those who don’t hold the power. This is seen in the ever-drifting trend of countries across the world towards authoritarianism and far-right populism, which are the easiest forms of government for the wealthiest to exercise power. They never last in the long-term, but if the goal is to hasten climate collapse then this becomes an irrelevant consideration.
Thirdly, there may be some idea of facilitating a hastened catastrophe to only step in as ‘savours’. That is already apparent through the endeavours of space colonisation, but it can also be realised through geo-engineering. Again, any such projects would only consolidate the positions of those in power.
Of course this leaves the fact of death. Nobody can avoid this. And yet, through technology, there are ways to significantly delay it. Going even further, great interest from the rich and powerful has been shown in cryogenic freezing, genetic engineering and even the possibility of ‘downloading’ a human intelligence into a synthetic form. All these things are being pursued with mounting appetites. Setting all that aside, there may also be a sense of continuing legacy through their children – who, of course, will have the same securities.
If the above applies, we are looking at an attempt to become gods, or secure a dynasty that is seen to guarantee a form of immortality. Such a megalomaniac pursuit is visible across human society, likely embedded in the darker side of our psyche, and even rooted within entire past cultures. To this we may add the oft-quoted phrase: “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Therefore, it does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility that there is a deliberate, concerted attempt from the most powerful to cause or hasten climate collapse. Doing this, whilst enriching themselves further in the process, may make perfectly logical sense to them – and even be justified morally in that life on Earth will end anyway and they are the ‘best ones’ to steer humanity’s continuance.
That billions of humans – to say nothing of other lifeforms – will perish in the process is at best irrelevant to them; the philosophy of ‘survival of the fittest’ can be called upon, or that such life will ‘die anyway’, and they would not have achieved such power and wealth in the first place if they placed value in others’ lives and wellbeing (under the present socioeconomic model, to gain wealth and power is determined almost exclusively by the ability to exploit others and the environment).
If one were a detective seeking to uncover the culprit for a crime, all the ingredients are there: motive, means and opportunity. This doesn’t imply certainty in some global conspiracy amidst the rich and powerful, but nor should we rule it out. To make such a hypothesis even more credible, it’s conspicuously absent in any popular media discourse – if true, even encouraging debate on it would be highly dangerous for those who hold power.
I’m not convinced myself that this is what’s going on. But the alternative is we defer to the other explanation of ‘collective stupidity’ governed by deluded short term power interests that give little intelligent thought to the situation. The actuality is if the 1% really determined to change the course things we’re heading in, they could do so. Indeed, even the 0.1%. If they decided this was not in their interest – for reasons mentioned above – that would be one explanation for why it isn’t happening.
Present riots in Bristol (England) are – as expected – the source of widespread condemnation. But amidst all the frowning ‘figureheads’ and privileged power brokers, we get a fleeting glance on what people ‘on the ground’ may be thinking:-
Rachel Legg, a 51-year-old carer who witnessed but did not take part in the violence at the police station, said: “I’m not surprised. They all seemed to be in their 20s. That is an angry generation.
“They are facing a planet that is dying, a home secretary that wants to hang people, the rent in Bristol is horrendous and they have no job prospects. It’s not about a bunch of thugs taking part in a protest, there’s a bigger picture people need to understand.
All this about yet another lurch towards authoritarianism – albeit one that, if carried through, would actually be counter-productive to government. We know from history that the more a people are oppressed, the harder it becomes to hide the oppression. Such is the beginning of a self-reinforcing cycle, which eventually culminates in outright rebellion.
The younger generations are usually the first to start it. This is because, out of all groups, they are the one that is excluded most by the system, but with the greatest ability to take action against it.
Where a government fails its people, taking actions that are not in their long-term interests, it is time for the people to rethink their contributions to ‘their’ government. Being part of the cycle of production and consumption, enlisting onto the systems that prop up institutions – from banks to ministries – all of this should be reconsidered. Where vast portions of taxes go to support a privileged elite rather than sustaining the well-being of the majority, people would be justified in withholding them. Where dutiful obedience entails turning a blind eye to widespread injustice and inequality, people would be right to rebel.
The fact remains that change within such a twisted power structure as England (I wouldn’t quite go as far as ‘the UK’) cannot be accomplished. At best, one can achieve tiny pockets of progression, which vanish as soon as they are created. It is like trying to build a house on a low-lying island: eventually the tide of regressive policies and top-down hierarchies will submerge the whole thing.
Only by working outside of the system – and against it – can meaningful and lasting change be accomplished. To those politicians, civil society figures and protest movements who do their upmost to work within its rules – the time for this is over. They strive, in some misguided notion that somehow two decades of neo-liberal policies can be reversed; that somehow their voices will not be silenced and misrepresented by a billionaire-owned media; that, despite all the odds, the tide can be turned. Noble as they are, all their effort is ultimately wasted.
Drastic actions a decade ago may have turned the course. But now we need to start thinking of creating things apart from the system – separate from mainstream society. It means turning our backs on the things we were indoctrinated to follow from childhood. Working for someone else; striving for money above all else; competing with others for higher status; conforming to the crowd; being obedient to authority. We need to rethink all of this. The past binds us, but we can also learn from it. Denied insights and knowledge of alternative societies by the education system, we can nonetheless learn about them. For all its ills, technology – and the power of the internet – has at least bestowed open access to such information. We can look to self-sufficient communities, cooperatives and indigenous cultures as beacons of light. Even among some established nations, there are things to be learned.
The time of exploiting each other and the planet is drawing to a close. The society we know is on the brink of collapse. But that does not have to mean the end of human civilisation – or, at least, the aspects of humanity that are based on compassion, nurture, sharing and curiosity.
The majority are walled in by power structures that have little regard to real democracy or for the well-being of future generations. It is a maze within a pyramid, and only a handful make it to the top. Politicians of all ilks, together figureheads of popular movements and organisations, would have us all running around that maze until we grow too old to take another step forward.
For real change, sometimes we need a sledgehammer – and the will to wield it.
By Chris Hedges – originally published at Counter Currents back in 2010. As relevant then as it is now.
“Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.
These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism.
‘The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe.’
We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.
My analysis comes close to the analysis of many anarchists. But there is a crucial difference. The anarchists do not understand the nature of violence. They grasp the extent of the rot in our cultural and political institutions, they know they must sever the tentacles of consumerism, but they naïvely believe that it can be countered with physical forms of resistance and acts of violence. There are debates within the anarchist movement – such as those on the destruction of property – but once you start using plastic explosives, innocent people get killed. And when anarchic violence begins to disrupt the mechanisms of governance, the power elite will use these acts, however minor, as an excuse to employ disproportionate and ruthless amounts of force against real and suspected agitators, only fueling the rage of the dispossessed.
I am not a pacifist. I know there are times, and even concede that this may eventually be one of them, when human beings are forced to respond to mounting repression with violence. I was in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia. We knew precisely what the Serbian forces ringing the city would do to us if they broke through the defenses and trench system around the besieged city. We had the examples of the Drina Valley or the city of Vukovar, where about a third of the Muslim inhabitants had been killed and the rest herded into refugee or displacement camps. There are times when the only choice left is to pick up a weapon to defend your family, neighborhood and city. But those who proved most adept at defending Sarajevo invariably came from the criminal class. When they were not shooting at Serbian soldiers they were looting the apartments of ethnic Serbs in Sarajevo and often executing them, as well as terrorizing their fellow Muslims. When you ingest the poison of violence, even in a just cause, it corrupts, deforms and perverts you. Violence is a drug, indeed it is the most potent narcotic known to humankind. Those most addicted to violence are those who have access to weapons and a penchant for force. And these killers rise to the surface of any armed movement and contaminate it with the intoxicating and seductive power that comes with the ability to destroy. I have seen it in war after war. When you go down that road you end up pitting your monsters against their monsters. And the sensitive, the humane and the gentle, those who have a propensity to nurture and protect life, are marginalized and often killed. The romantic vision of war and violence is as prevalent among anarchists and the hard left as it is in the mainstream culture. Those who resist with force will not defeat the corporate state or sustain the cultural values that must be sustained if we are to have a future worth living. From my many years as a war correspondent in El Salvador, Guatemala, Gaza and Bosnia, I have seen that armed resistance movements are always mutations of the violence that spawned them. I am not naïve enough to think I could have avoided these armed movements had I been a landless Salvadoran or Guatemalan peasant, a Palestinian in Gaza or a Muslim in Sarajevo, but this violent response to repression is and always will be tragic. It must be avoided, although not at the expense of our own survival.
Democracy, a system ideally designed to challenge the status quo, has been corrupted and tamed to slavishly serve the status quo. We have undergone, as John Ralston Saul writes, a coup d’état in slow motion. And the coup is over. They won. We lost. The abject failure of activists to push corporate, industrialized states toward serious environmental reform, to thwart imperial adventurism or to build a humane policy toward the masses of the world’s poor stems from an inability to recognize the new realities of power. The paradigm of power has irrevocably altered and so must the paradigm of resistance alter.
Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant.
[…]
We live in a culture characterized by what Benjamin DeMott called “junk politics.” Junk politics does not demand justice or the reparation of rights. It always personalizes issues rather than clarifying them. It eschews real debate for manufactured scandals, celebrity gossip and spectacles. It trumpets eternal optimism, endlessly praises our moral strength and character, and communicates in a feel-your-pain language. The result of junk politics is that nothing changes, “meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices that strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socioeconomic advantage.”
The cultural belief that we can make things happen by thinking, by visualizing, by wanting them, by tapping into our inner strength or by understanding that we are truly exceptional is magical thinking. We can always make more money, meet new quotas, consume more products and advance our career if we have enough faith. This magical thinking, preached to us across the political spectrum by Oprah, sports celebrities, Hollywood, self-help gurus and Christian demagogues, is largely responsible for our economic and environmental collapse, since any Cassandra who saw it coming was dismissed as “negative.” This belief, which allows men and women to behave and act like little children, discredits legitimate concerns and anxieties. It exacerbates despair and passivity. It fosters a state of self-delusion. The purpose, structure and goals of the corporate state are never seriously questioned. To question, to engage in criticism of the corporate collective, is to be obstructive and negative. And it has perverted the way we view ourselves, our nation and the natural world. The new paradigm of power, coupled with its bizarre ideology of limitless progress and impossible happiness, has turned whole nations, including the United States, into monsters.
‘Power is in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls who are ruthlessly creating a system of neo-feudalism and killing the ecosystem that sustains the human species.’
We can march in Copenhagen. We can join Bill McKibben’s worldwide day of climate protests. We can compost in our backyards and hang our laundry out to dry. We can write letters to our elected officials and vote for [them], but the power elite is impervious to the charade of democratic participation. Power is in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls who are ruthlessly creating a system of neo-feudalism and killing the ecosystem that sustains the human species. And appealing to their better nature, or seeking to influence the internal levers of power, will no longer work.
[…]
Our democratic system has been transformed into what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin labels inverted totalitarianism. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, a free press, parliamentary systems and constitutions while manipulating and corrupting internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens but are ruled by armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington, Ottawa or other state capitals who author the legislation and get the legislators to pass it. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion. Mass culture, owned and disseminated by corporations, diverts us with trivia, spectacles and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics – and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”
Inverted totalitarianism wields total power without resorting to cruder forms of control such as gulags, concentration camps or mass terror. It harnesses science and technology for its dark ends. It enforces ideological uniformity by using mass communication systems to instill profligate consumption as an inner compulsion and to substitute our illusions of ourselves for reality. It does not forcibly suppress dissidents, as long as those dissidents remain ineffectual. And as it diverts us it dismantles manufacturing bases, devastates communities, unleashes waves of human misery and ships jobs to countries where fascists and communists know how to keep workers in line. It does all this while waving the flag and mouthing patriotic slogans. “The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed,” Wolin writes.
The practice and psychology of advertising, the rule of “market forces” in many arenas other than markets, the continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the saturation by mass media and propaganda of every household and the takeover of the universities have rendered most of us hostages. The rot of imperialism, which is always incompatible with democracy, has seen the military and arms manufacturers monopolize $1 trillion a year in defense-related spending in the United States even as the nation faces economic collapse. Imperialism always militarizes domestic politics. And this militarization, as Wolin notes, combines with the cultural fantasies of hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility to sever huge segments of the population from reality. Those who control the images control us. And while we have been entranced by the celluloid shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave, these corporate forces, extolling the benefits of privatization, have effectively dismantled the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services and public housing) and rolled back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. The proponents of globalization and unregulated capitalism do not waste time analyzing other ideologies. They have an ideology, or rather a plan of action that is defended by an ideology, and slavishly follow it. We on the left have dozens of analyses of competing ideologies without any coherent plan of our own. This has left us floundering while corporate forces ruthlessly dismantle civil society.
We are living through one of civilization’s great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all “inevitable” utopian visions, is being exposed as a fraud. The power elite, perplexed and confused, clings to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the looming political and economic vacuum. The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs led industrial nations to sacrifice other areas of human importance – from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution – on the altar of free trade. It left the world’s poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits – which can never be repaid – in human history. The massive bailouts, stimulus packages, giveaways and short-term debt, along with imperial wars we can no longer afford, will leave the United States struggling to finance nearly $5 trillion in debt this year. This will require Washington to auction off about $96 billion in debt a week. Once China and the oil-rich states walk away from our debt, which one day has to happen, the Federal Reserve will become the buyer of last resort. The Fed has printed perhaps as much as two trillion new dollars in the last two years, and buying this much new debt will see it, in effect, print trillions more. This is when inflation, and most likely hyperinflation, will turn the dollar into junk. And at that point the entire system breaks down.
All traditional standards and beliefs are shattered in a severe economic crisis. The moral order is turned upside down. The honest and industrious are wiped out while the gangsters, profiteers and speculators walk away with millions. The elite will retreat, as Naomi Klein has written in The Shock Doctrine, into gated communities where they will have access to services, food, amenities and security denied to the rest of us. We will begin a period in human history when there will be only masters and serfs. The corporate forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the radical Christian right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the rage at the ruling elites and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to ruthlessly extinguish opposition movements. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order and clutching the Christian cross. Totalitarianism, George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith but an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote. “That is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Our elites have used fraud. Force is all they have left.
Our mediocre and bankrupt elite is desperately trying to save a system that cannot be saved. More importantly, they are trying to save themselves. All attempts to work within this decayed system and this class of power brokers will prove useless. And resistance must respond to the harsh new reality of a global, capitalist order that will cling to power through ever-mounting forms of brutal and overt repression. Once credit dries up for the average citizen, once massive joblessness creates a permanent and enraged underclass and the cheap manufactured goods that are the opiates of our commodity culture vanish, we will probably evolve into a system that more closely resembles classical totalitarianism. Cruder, more violent forms of repression will have to be employed as the softer mechanisms of control favored by inverted totalitarianism break down.
It is not accidental that the economic crisis will converge with the environmental crisis. In his book The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi laid out the devastating consequences – the depressions, wars and totalitarianism – that grow out of a so-called self-regulated free market. He grasped that “fascism, like socialism, was rooted in a market society that refused to function.” He warned that a financial system always devolves, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism – and a Mafia political system – which is a good description of our financial and political structure. A self-regulating market, Polanyi wrote, turns human beings and the natural environment into commodities, a situation that ensures the destruction of both society and the natural environment. The free market’s assumption that nature and human beings are objects whose worth is determined by the market allows each to be exploited for profit until exhaustion or collapse. A society that no longer recognizes that nature and human life have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, commits collective suicide. Such societies cannibalize themselves until they die. This is what we are undergoing.
If we build self-contained structures, ones that do as little harm as possible to the environment, we can weather the coming collapse. This task will be accomplished through the existence of small, physical enclaves that have access to sustainable agriculture, are able to sever themselves as much as possible from commercial culture and can be largely self-sufficient. These communities will have to build walls against electronic propaganda and fear that will be pumped out over the airwaves. Canada will probably be a more hospitable place to do this than the United States, given America’s strong undercurrent of violence. But in any country, those who survive will need isolated areas of land as well as distance from urban areas, which will see the food deserts in the inner cities, as well as savage violence, leach out across the urban landscape as produce and goods become prohibitively expensive and state repression becomes harsher and harsher.
‘Those who carried out great acts of resistance often sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, even under the darkest night of state repression, meant to defy injustice.’
The increasingly overt uses of force by the elites to maintain control should not end acts of resistance. Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience understand the moral imperative to challenge systems of abuse and despotism. They should be carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are always few in number and dismissed by those who hide their cowardice behind their cynicism. But resistance, however marginal, continues to affirm life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of faith, the highest form of spirituality and alone makes hope possible. Those who carried out great acts of resistance often sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, even under the darkest night of state repression, meant to defy injustice.
When the dissident Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in a Nazi prison to the gallows, his last words were: “This is for me the end, but also the beginning.” Bonhoeffer knew that most of the citizens in his nation were complicit through their silence in a vast enterprise of death. But however hopeless it appeared in the moment, he affirmed what we all must affirm. He did not avoid death. He did not, as a distinct individual, survive. But he understood that his resistance and even his death were acts of love. He fought and died for the sanctity of life. He gave, even to those who did not join him, another narrative, and his defiance ultimately condemned his executioners.
We must continue to resist, but do so now with the discomforting realization that significant change will probably never occur in our lifetime. This makes resistance harder. It shifts resistance from the tangible and the immediate to the amorphous and the indeterminate. But to give up acts of resistance is spiritual and intellectual death. It is to surrender to the dehumanizing ideology of totalitarian capitalism. Acts of resistance keep alive another narrative, sustain our integrity and empower others, who we may never meet, to stand up and carry the flame we pass to them. No act of resistance is useless, whether it is refusing to pay taxes, fighting for a Tobin tax, working to shift the neoclassical economics paradigm, revoking a corporate charter, holding global internet votes or using Twitter to catalyze a chain reaction of refusal against the neoliberal order. But we will have to resist and then find the faith that resistance is worthwhile, for we will not immediately alter the awful configuration of power. And in this long, long war a community to sustain us, emotionally and materially, will be the key to a life of defiance.
The philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote that the exclusive preoccupation with personal concerns and indifference to the suffering of others beyond the self-identified group is what ultimately made fascism and the Holocaust possible: “The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.”
The indifference to the plight of others and the supreme elevation of the self is what the corporate state seeks to instill in us. It uses fear, as well as hedonism, to thwart human compassion. We will have to continue to battle the mechanisms of the dominant culture, if for no other reason than to preserve through small, even tiny acts, our common humanity. We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door. Hope endures in these often imperceptible acts of defiance. This defiance, this capacity to say no, is what the psychopathic forces in control of our power systems seek to eradicate. As long as we are willing to defy these forces we have a chance, if not for ourselves, then at least for those who follow. As long as we defy these forces we remain alive. And for now this is the only victory possible.”
It starts to become depressing when one’s most negative predictions sway so close to the truth. Perhaps the greatest of all – the destination in which Planet Earth is heading – was realised over ten years ago. Not through divination or intuition, simply through looking at the scientific evidence. The only difference now is a larger number of people are starting to realise it, with a smaller number seeking to make an active difference.
Lying in the streets, barging into elite conventions, disrupting transport – it’s a start, I guess. But how long until people realise that such things are like building a sand castle against a rising tide? By the time it is realised that more meaningful action is necessary, it will probably be too late. Even now, it is probably too late. The runaway effects and feedback mechanisms have commenced, as can be observed from the Arctic icesheets to the Pacific ocean.
In a way, there is a kind of justice to what is about to occur. Humanity has caused the ongoing disappearance of countless other species – indeed, presiding over Earth’s ‘6th Mass Extinction’. The time will come when extinction will come calling for us, too. Whether that will be sudden or gradual is still uncertain, but the use of nuclear weapons following extreme social and political instability seems likely. There is still room for uncertainty, though – both for good and ill.
Perhaps the greatest source of hope is in what led to the present situation arising, or at least which paved the road to it: intelligence. Yes, it is ironic that the very thing that underpinned human survival and development is also responsible for its demise. For with intelligence, technologies arose that made the mass destruction of nature possible. At the same time, a little more intelligent thought would have prevented this same destruction. Maybe, when a certain critical stage is reached – when humanity truly collectively realises the situation it is in – all energy will be redirected towards a solution. It will be, like never before, a fight for collective survival. There is a chance, when this happens, that cutting edge technologies will come to man’s rescue: machines that suck carbon from the atmosphere; chemicals that sow a white veil of clouds across the Earth; other methods that we do not yet know. At the same time, the very implementation of these technologies may just lead to worse. In either case, the only certainty is that we do not know how effective such things will be, and that, despite almost a decade of dire warnings, governments across the world have failed to take meaningful action.
Something has happened to human society, globally, which prevents such action. Simply put, a system based upon corruption and exploitation has arisen and consolidated itself so strongly that its self-destruction is now tied to the end of humanity. Previously, dysfunctional states and empires rose and fell without it leading to such widescale, species-wide devastation. At worse, their populations were drastically reduced and localised areas left uninhabitable. Now, the shuddering end of our globalised capitalist system is tearing apart the world itself. When the base upon which it sucks up all wealth – the environment – is taken away, there will be nothing to fall back upon.
Presently, real change can only be initiated by those with sufficient wealth and power. And it seems almost inevitable that this elite has risen to its heights by playing the rules of the capitalist system so well: exploitation, deceit and the hoarding of wealth. These attributes would not have been allowed to take precedence so easily in many civilisations, but those ones have all been destroyed. The acquisitive, deceitful persona can be seen at the top of every capitalist country now, and their networks are so embedded into society’s structures that the people either do not see or do not care.
One could look to the UK as an example. Now there are two men who stand to lead this nation (into what, who knows) and it does not take much searching to ascertain the calibre of their characters. One, an elite bigot who seems half-lost in his own reality. The other, who absurdly casts himself as a reasonably minded underdog. Both multi-millionaires, both liars. Now there is already plentiful commentary on the first one, so we might just quickly look at the second. Our reasonably minded underdog is part of the same line that stood at the head of the East India Company; who became £14 million pound richer just two years ago whilst a cabinet Minister. A self-made million, he says. And perhaps many would be goaded into believing such claims, against the spectre of the other man seeking Premiership. Yet a little digging reveals a story of sinuous deceit and corruption – as usual, at the taxpayer’s expense. Just take a look at https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/revealed-30 and https://dblackie.blogs.com/the_language_business/2008/07/buried-by-time-travellers.html
These are not mad blogs or unfounded conspiracy theories. They are written based on real evidence, which you can glean yourself, albeit some of the trail has eroded over the years.
What is this pettiness against the wider catastrophe mentioned above, you may ask.
Yes, it is petty. A little island nation tearing itself apart, ruled over by psychopathic millionaires, who dance to the tunes played by their billionaire masters.
But it serves as a good example, within a developed nation regarded as a stranger to corruption, of why the world is doomed for as long as the present political and economic system stays in power. Psychopaths are happy to watch it burn. Those who move only to the rules of acquisition and deceit will not care when the tide starts creeping higher.
I knew when the Tories were voted in once again it would be the last gasp of breath for the United Kingdom. After over a decade of their ideologically driven austerity, which has recently seen the final condemnation of another United Nations Special Rapporteur, they have brought local authorities to their knees in forced budget cuts. In Bristol that saw pressures to give way to hasty property developments, mostly for the benefit of rich newcomers (many of which pushed out of the capital by the same process). Streets filled with homeless people as other streets were made exclusively into luxury student housing. Empty buildings – previously ear-marked for affordable housing – were made into swish apartments. Meanwhile, the parks, the libraries and essential community services tumbled into disarray as the budget cuts set in… but of course there were no corresponding cuts in Council Tax. It was a wholesale erosion of the public sector, sold off to profit-driven privateers, which was echoed across the whole nation and which continues to this day whilst the Tories remain in power.
Apart from this, the Tory legacy seeped into foreign affairs. Their far-right elements, in partnership with several tabloids owned by billionaires, manipulated a referendum that provided a justification to leave the European Union. Not without its own democratic short-sights, this outside source nevertheless represented the last check on a potential authoritarian regime. It bounded the UK to civil, work and environmental regulations – much of which were consistently attacked and hated by those within the Tory party and their wealthy supporters. With membership of that institution gone, the legal safeguards it brought to UK citizens could be swept aside, just like other inconveniences such as the European Convention on Human Rights (embedded into domestic law under the Human Rights Act, but easily repealable once the UK leaves the EU).
Previously, there was some streak of honour and integrity to this party. Yes, I hate to admit that. It was of the same ilk of the rich Victorian philanthropists, who at least gave something of their riches gained from exploitation for the public benefit. This kind of Tory had a pride and patriotism in the country and its people. They cared, to some extent, in its unity and prosperity. But going by the conduct of the current and two prior Tory administration, such a Tory has now become an endangered species.
We are now looking at a party that thrives not just on greed, but now also on division. First they divided and impoverished communities across the UK through their ‘austerity’ policies, and now they are stumbling (?) into a process that will both sever the UK from Europe and fragment the nation itself. Scotland and Northern Ireland will not entertain the current ‘deal’ made by the May machine, nor will Labour. The EU, meanwhile, is unable to negotiate further in the direction that the far-right Tory wings are clamouring for. This will result in a ‘No Deal’ scenario. And after that? Well, one doesn’t need to think too hard:
Scotland will demand another independence vote, and if that is refused it will trigger a constitutional crisis.
Worsening socio-economic conditions in the UK, hastened and deepened by a No Deal Brexit, will strengthen tensions across the nation. There will be another Great Depression, possibly comparable to the Thatcher era.
The May machine will go, either voluntarily or forced out by her own insipid party, and her replacement will be someone like Rees-Mogg (a far-right figure who could be a natural actor for the Chancellor in ‘V for Vendetta’).
Further down the line, a global recession – prolonged by escalating environmental problems – will plunge the UK into its deepest ever economic catastrophe. History would suggest that such events only prop up extreme and populist regimes (just look at 1930s Germany).
With no written constitution or bill of rights, nor any external authority like the EU to keep things in check (and what can the UN do?), the situation is ripe for the rise of an equivalent fascist regime.
There are some uncertainties to this, both in terms of timescale and whether another General Election will result in a ‘true Labour’ government being elected. In this case, it may well redirect steps 3-5 somewhere else. But either way the prospect of a Brexit deal is unlikely and that will result in certain jurisdictions in the UK, especially Scotland, demanding independence. The inevitable socio-economic repercussions noted above will impact communities and citizens across the UK very negatively. The only uncertainty at this stage is how deep the damage will go, and what turgid waters will be allowed to flow down the quake-zone that has been created. Dark, dangerous and deep blue those waters will be – unless a red wall seals the damage before it spreads further.
Whether or not Labour get elected, certain deep damage will never be repairable, and the country will likely be forever fragmented.
“No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now.”
For the first time in British politics – perhaps in a century or even more – there is a decent, honest, principled man within a single step of being Prime Minister.
But it is a huge step – a gigantic leap – against a wall of slander, inaccuracies and hatred. He faces enemies in the upper echelons of power and wealth: tax-evading media tycoons; the owners of massive corporate entities, and an insipid ‘old boy’ network that has tentacles in dark crimes that most people barely realise. Occasionally, people have been given glimpses of this. It has erupted in public scandals that succeeded not in eroding the status quo but in driving people away from politics as a whole.
Now a once in a lifetime choice has been presented before the British people: to replace the corrupted elitism of modern government with a democracy that works for all. Will the people seize this opportunity, remembering all the abuses they have suffered at the hands of the Tories and the neoliberal policies they tout? Will they see what the Conservative administration offers: one of alliance with Trump’s America, of detachment from Europe, of total disregard for workers’ rights and the environment?
Scarcely weeks have elapsed when 40 Tory MPs were announced to be under investigation by the Crown Prosecution Service for electoral fraud. Before that, the people we all rely upon – doctors, teachers, nurses – spoke out about the impacts of savage, ideologically driven Tory cuts. Rampant privatisation is the Tories modus operandi to public services and they care nothing of the “low level” front-line staff that make the most difference. First they break a service with cuts and mismanagement, then they privatise it – with their wealthy backers often grasping the rewards.
Have people’s memories been so drastically eroded by a diet of biased tabloid media, television and mobile ‘aps’ that they cannot recall the impacts of the Tories policies on their own lives?
One could write an entire book, maybe even a series of books, about the Conservative Party’s modern policies and operations. If any author were to attempt this, though, it is likely they would need extensive counselling and new citizenship of another country – preferably as far away from the Conservative Party HQ as possible!
Put in a different way, nearly all statistical measures for quality of life in the UK and the ‘Human Development Index’ – as defined by the United Nations – have declined over the course of the Tory’s rule. And those who have suffered most are the poorest and vulnerable.
Theresa May’s plans are to secure a sweeping Conservative majority so that her policies can be implemented with no resistance. Are these good, kind and considered policies? No, this scowling witch-like Tory leader would like to rip up the Human Rights Act, leave the European Court of Human Rights and Council of Europe, whilst surrendering whatever vestiges remain of public services – including the NHS – to wealthy private interests. She would re-introduce the cruel inequality of grammar schools, whilst binning a swathe of environmental and civil legislation that protects us all but hinders a handful of corporations. She would follow Donald Trump down a road of climate change denial and possibly outright global war. All these things have been said by May herself or her Ministers.
The British people are now being offered a choice between continued austerity and balanced, social investment; between the safeguarding and strengthening of key civil rights or their further erosion; between politicians who stick to their promises and those who blatantly break them.
What will they choose?
* * *
It is sickening to think, at this juncture between darkness and light, that most people seem to have been so misled as to follow the Tories towards more destruction.
Thus we witness the Conservative propaganda machine going into action – bankrolled by the super-rich, developed by elite spin doctors, and disbursed by the Murdoch Media Empire and The Telegraph Media Group.
It is a campaign based not upon policies but on personalities. The Tories know they cannot win on policies; indeed, random polls have consistently demonstrated that Labour’s policies are far more popular than the Conservative “promises” (for lack of a better word). So they have turned to the cult of personality and a smear campaign against the Labour leader that began even before he was elected. Misinformation, inaccuracies and blatant lies shape the context in which Corbyn is portrayed – anything to make him look ‘other’; something different, even abhorrent, to voters.
‘Throw enough dirt at someone and it will stick.’ The Tories are relying on this, and they are succeeding. Corbyn, to a large majority of voters, is ‘unelectable’. This is not about him or his policies, but a result of the media smear campaign.
And yet, there is still hope. Fewer people rely upon newspapers for their sole source of information, and increasingly digital media (i.e. social media) can change votes. Moreover, if Labour can succeed in redirecting the debate away from crude ‘leader personalities’ and get it focused firmly where all such voting decisions should be based – in the sphere of policy – then they can win.
If they don’t, well… just look at Tory policies – past, present and future – and judge for yourself.
With Labour divided and in chaos, an effective opposition will be virtually demolished. Theresa May has already attempted to sweep in more centrist voters by appearing to condemn the less savoury aspects of capitalism, including inflated executive pay. But it is all a guise, as shown by her swift condemnation of the Southern Rail strike – totally ignoring the corporate mismanagement of this company, whilst condemning the workers.
In less than 10 years time, we can say goodbye to the Human Rights Act. We can forget any further progressive moves to combat climate change. Anything that increases the power of the State, and its corporate owners, will be further bolstered. Divisions in society will worsen, as will unrest, but new powers given to authorities will allow any potential resistance to be ruthlessly crushed. Individual privacy and democracy will be eroded to the point where it is practically non-existent. Meanwhile, the impacts of climate change will bring pressures from abroad – from mass migration to a wobbling economy. And with this chaos, the darkness of totalitarianism and extreme inequality will gain a stronger foothold.
A pessimistic prediction, maybe, but one I sadly have reached. But one thing cannot be under-estimated: even in moments of greatest adversity and cruelty, there are pockets of human decency that shine like beacons in a night sky. Humanity will go on, as will life, and with its continuance there will be hope – for change, for opportunity, and for justice.
The Labour National Executive Committee (‘NEC’) have decided that Jeremy Corbyn will automatically remain on the ballot paper for party leader, but they have added a clever clause to try and prevent his re-election.
All members who have joined the party in the last 6 months are ineligible to apply, unless they register within a two-day window and pay £25. Further, any members who have publicly called the MPs who went against Corbyn ‘traitors’ (or similar terms) will be excluded from voting (including if they made such remarks on social media).
What this means is approximately 200,000 Labour members – who represent close to 40% of the entire current membership – will be prevented from voting. Unless, of course, they pay £25. It is well known that most of these members joined because of the party’s shift to the left, under Corbyn, and predominantly make up students, people on low incomes, and those who previously felt disenchanted with mainstream politics. How many of these will be wealthy and committed enough to pay the £25 they need in order to vote? Not many, the Labour NEC clearly hopes.
It is a clever move. If they excluded Corbyn from the ballot paper, he would have faced a challenge garnering enough support from his MPs to get in the running for leadership. The anger of 200,000+ members and more would be directed at the Party’s MPs, and the likelihood of a split would increase substantially. But by making the decision that of other Labour Party members – those who joined before 12th January 2016 – if Corbyn is not re-elected the blame can be attributed to them. Much like the Tory methodology, this tactic of causing division and uncertainty among people will re-direct criticism. It will also, most likely, result in new members falling away, cementing their feelings of marginalisation and disfranchisement. They can still be a nuisance, but one that the party (and the establishment) doesn’t have to deal with. People without unity and a cause are comparatively easy to control.
The British tabloid media has already caught onto this game. Already it has seized upon the accounts of Corbyn supporters as extremists, bullies and thugs. Who would want to vote like these people? Those who make death threats to anti-Corbyn MPs and throw bricks through Angela Eagle’s office? As for Corbyn himself, he is clearly unelectable – right? He cannot even lead his own party, let alone the country.
Such is the message touted by the likes of The Sun, The Telegraph and other Murdoch-owned or tax-evading billionaires (yep, The Telegraph is owned by two of them). It is hoped that, with Corbyn gone, the diminished Labour Party will upheld Angela Eagle as its leader. Or maybe Owen Smith. Yet try and imagine either of these opposing Prime Minister May in Parliament. Eagle, with her pink dress and awkward reliance on ‘northern roots’; Smith, oozing the charisma of a mushroom. Come 2020, the Tories will romp home with a comfortable majority – allowing May to dismantle what little progressive policies remain, erase the Human Rights Act, and chain the country to the diktats of her never-changing party. This is a party that will always (at best!) pay lip service to social justice, equality and accountability – for the very reason that such things are directly against the interests of its members and supporters.
But what about if Corbyn stands against May? Might the country favor his vision of democratic socialism over one of the Tory’s shade of totalitarian oligarchy? Is there a chance that his principled stance, which saw him vote against the Iraq war, may prevail over the Tories austerity-driven rhetoric?
Yes, I think there is. A good chance. And it is one that those who run the country – including the mega-rich and powerful who really pull the strings – do not want to risk. Yet, with the odds artifically shifted against Corbyn once again, we may well be witnessing the final death of (true) Labour and the future of British democracy.
HorizonHope | Blog of Stephen Jackley 