Archive for September, 2020

Techniques of Fascism

September 24, 2020

‘Fascism’ is a term which tends to be used to designate dislike so we need more understanding than that to use the term analytically.

Fascism is

1) NOT anti-corporate. Corporations can flourish under fascism; they can get State support, massive arms deals, monopolies, disposable slave labour, and so on. The corporate sector can support fascism with enthusiasm, and often does if they think they own it, and it will give them security and stability (which it won’t).

2) NOT a specific doctrine, or body of theory, as such, somehow related to the party of Mussolini – but it does have a set of recurring techniques, themes and strategies, some of which are described below.

Fascism involves

A Leader

Trust in the leader. There is no policy other than what the leader demands. The leader knows and understands everything, with a competence far beyond that of other people.

The leader is strong. The leader has will. Everyone must yield to the leader. Nothing should hold him back.

The leader should be emulated, even though it is impossible, he is so virtuous, with such impressive skills.

The party should be purged of those who have doubts about the leader. Having doubt or disagreement, with even the most obvious falsehoods is a sign of treachery.

Ultimately, the leader is the favoured of God or the cosmos. Disobedience to the leader is disobedience to God, or to the nature of the Cosmos. The leader has their own true revelation, of how things really are. He is inevitably correct unless mislead by traitors.

Strong and enforced social categories

Fascism depends on emphasised and hierarchical, in-group and out-group identity categories. People in the in-groups are automatically superior to those in out-groups. Men are superior to all but exceptional women. Party members are superior to non-party members. High up members of the party are superior to lower party members. People of a particular race are superior to people of all other races, which appeals to people who identify as belonging to that race who feel they should be valued above those of out-groups, and who feel they have not been. Fascism emphasises the category of ‘we good people’ vs the category of ‘those evil people’.

People of specific, or even most, out-group categories are evil subhuman enemies who must be destroyed, or captured and held where they cannot cause harm. All methods may be used to get rid of, or contain, these people.

Fascism uses scapegoating. Everything that goes wrong is the fault of out-group members. Ideally out-group members are reasonably powerless in the face of in-group police. ‘party soldiers’ and troops. This reinforces the idea that out-groups are inferior and must be controlled or exterminated. Weakness, especially in the face of violence, or the encouragement of violence, is taken as a clear mark of inferiority.

Policing of categories and of people in out-groups is intense and violent, and this violence is encouraged. Armed vigilante members of ingroups are praised and unconstrained in their attempts to police social categories and crush unrest in out-groups. The true believer must fight against these out-groups. This fight demonstrates that the true believer is part of the in-group and builds in-group loyalties and bonds. Reluctance to engage in pursuit of the out-group may demonstrate one is not really part of the in-group, which is a frightening place to be.

On the other hand, violence by out-groups, even if in self-protection, is condemned. No terrible accusation can be disbelieved when it is about out-groups, because they are already defined as completely evil.

For Fascists, the nation state is an essential in-group marker. In the early days of the regime it is claimed that the leader will make the nation great again. The Nation, before the leader arrived as saviour, was somehow inadequate, or fallen from its peak due to out-group conspiracy or dilution of the in-group with out-group members, who must now be purged.

Membership of the Nation State is restricted. The Nation State is a kin-group of related people. Migrants, or people of races not defined as the true race, are at best suspect. They need to be controlled. People identified as coming from other nations, even if they have lived in the country for generations are suspect, and subject to violent policing. The nation, as an identity category, must be kept pure.

People who do not support the leader and his party, clearly become non-members of the Nation State and an out-group subject to obliteration for their own safety.

Authority gives coherence

As should be clear, authoritarianism is a primary mark of fascism, although not all authoritarians are fascist. For Fascists, democracy is an evil which can be supported for as long as it gives the ‘correct’ result and indicates support for their authority. If it fails to do this, then results can be faked, ignored, or be said to result from out-group plotting.

Fascist politicians are not consistent in their opinions and doctrines. They are, however, always consistent in acting to benefit the power of the party and the power of the leader, and in their attempt to crush out-groups and opposition. If they have to contradict themselves to achieve those primary aims, then that is what is required. Success and power is everything. It is possible that incoherence, intense emotion and overt contradiction induce hypnotic states in people by disrupting conscious rationality and filtering, and make them more easily manipulated.

Thus for fascists violent insurrectionists can be heroic supporters of the leader or out-group provocateurs depending on who the fascists are talking to.

Fascists may claim to favour the rule of law, but the law is whatever supports the leader and the party and allows the violent suppression of evil out-groups, traitors and scapegoats. Members of the inner party cannot be corrupt by definition, unless the leader wants to get rid of them. The law and the police become militarised and an arm of the leader, because this is ‘necessary’ due to the evil of out-groups and to promote awe amongst the population.

Heroism

Fascism encourages heroic struggle, in which people risk their lives for the glory of the leader, in fighting for the Nation, and in fighting against evil and subversive out-groups and so on. Fascism needs enemies and will generate them, to have something to struggle against. Fascism is often specifically anti-communist, even when there are no communists in positions of influence. These apparently necessary communists will be manufactured.

Ordinary people can participate in the Heroic Struggle by denouncing the outgroups, participating in name calling the outgroups, making threats to the outgroups, being rude in the streets, sticking up posters, trolling outgroups on the internet, making death threats, mocking what the outgroup fears, cheering the heroic leader, and so on. They are standing up against those defined as evil, and thus being brave. This helps increase the intensity of the struggle, as well as helping the supposed victimised mainstream feel it is participating in politics as both an individual and as a group, and can no longer be ignored.

Fascism tends to be about the triumph of the will rather than accommodation to what is. The will of the leader is the will of the nation. The world should yield to that will. Failure to attain the will of the leader, shows people are not trying hard enough, and are not heroic enough. They are a disgrace, or traitors.

Other nations are default enemies and inferiors, although short term alliances may be maintained with similar kinds of authoritarian States or States which are identified as belonging to the same race – for as long as those alliances are useful. Democratic States may be pacified, but ultimately they are to be considered as weak enemies.

War and conquest is the ultimate expression of fascism, because how else is heroism best put to test, and how else are enemies brought to heel? War can initially be against those the party defines as internal evils, but it will ultimately move against external evils and inferiors, as the fascist leader fails to solve all the problems facing them through suppression – and this failure cannot be admitted, or must arise from the actions of supremely evil out-groups.

Information is about power

Education exists to inculcate admiration for the leader, the party and the nation (which cannot be separated) as well as obedience to the leader as that is the natural consequence of admiration. All history, philosophy, or religion etc. is only useful in so far as it shows the leader and the party are the inevitable climax of this exceptional nation’s struggles for self-actualisation. Education should emphasise how people from the past, who the party favours, display nobility of character and are heroes. Those who the party dislikes are clearly the villains. Out-groups have always been despicable. Only the party’s interpretation of history and politics is allowed, all other versions are cancelled and forbidden. This suppression is supposed to foster unity and national values.

Information which does not support the leader and his party is clearly wrong and must be suppressed. The leader only wants positive information, as negative information indicates that the people reporting it have not tried hard enough, or are enemies.

The party has no hesitation in lying to the people, because the will and genius of the leader and the heroic struggle of the people, makes whatever they assert to be the case, to be the case. Anything which gets the people to support the leader and the party, and fight against out-groups, is correct. Truth can change day by day, but the party and leader will never be wrong.

Fascists have no interest in political discussion with out-groups. After all, out-groups know nothing useful by definition. Fascists are interested in struggle against the out-groups, heroic assertion, together with lots of shouting (which shows dominance and strength of emotion), and whipping up loyalty amongst their own. Intellectuals must yield to the force of the leader’s will and truth, or they are clearly traitors.

Eventually not attending to accurate but unwanted information will bring the regime down but, it will have caused significant damage in the process.

Support

Initially, Conservatives can support fascism because they agree with the promotion of love of Nation/Country, hierarchy, discipline, strength and order. They see the search for the Nation’s soul and tradition as being valuable, but eventually they realise that fascists have no interest in any tradition that does not support the party, virtue that does not support the party, checks and balances that do not support the party, constitutional rules that do not support the party, religion that does not support the party and so on. They eventually become disillusioned, but have little real idea what to do about the crisis they have helped bring about.

Ordinary workers and middle class people can support fascism, because, in the current situation, they see themselves being ignored, loosing prosperity, loosing security, and facing disorder. They have lost respect for normal authority and its elites which they see as corrupt. The Party offers hope. After a while they come to see the party primarily offers fear and death for themselves, friends and loved ones, but by then it is too late. The irony is that it is usually the power of capitalist hierarchy which has produced this sense of abandonment, but the rage is channeled away from those who benefit from the the system to those who try to mollify it.

Conclusion

Fascism is ultimately an authoritarian manipulation of social categories and information, to maintain the power of the leader and the party. The aim is national and party glory. That is all.

The party is led by self-proclaimed heroes, and seeks glory fighting against opposition, even if it has to manufacture the enemies it needs to give itself, and its members, meaning. The party’s goals will never end in peace, because peace is inglorious and unheroic.

Fascists can and will believe anything that says their side is good and the other side is evil, because that has to be true.

Without enemies there is no point to fascism. Struggle is never ending, and it is triumph in that struggle which indicates a person and a nation’s value. A successful fascist State that conquered and subdued the world would eventually tear itself to pieces in seeking internal enemies and scapegoats.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The recognisable stages of capitalism

September 21, 2020

Capitalism is not the same everywhere, but in the English speaking world it has a number of stages, which might be described as: Theft and Conquest; Consolidation and Worker’s Rise; People’s Capitalism; Plutocracy and; Crisis and Fascism. All the stages can overlap, and they may not always appear in sequence.

People’s capitalism’ is probably one of the better forms of social life. Certainly it is better than militarism, theocracy, complete state control over everything. However, pro-corporate capitalist writers tend to move from this relative fact to insisting that capitalism is without significant flaws in every stage, and thus should be left alone.

If left alone, then capitalism will nearly always become rule of the rich, or plutocracy. The theory of this is easy to understand. In capitalism, wealthy people are seen as virtuous and have status. They are largely admired for their success. Wealthy people also have much larger amounts of disposable wealth than ‘ordinary people’. Wealthy people can easily team up and promote legislation which supports what they see as their interests, without much opposition. They can buy politicians. They can buy laws and lawyers. They can buy “think tanks”. They control information through owning and controlling the media, large and small. Smallness of media is no guarantee of accuracy, or liberty from the control of wealth.

In capitalism, there is no source of power which cannot be bought from violence to religion. Consequently, wealth is the source of nearly all power, and of all differences in power. Wealth is used to support the wealthy and hinder anyone else from challenging them. This is quite natural. This does not mean there are no factions amongst the wealthy; some, for example, may have more sense of obligation to those ‘beneath them’ than others, but because the wealthy control the sources of information, these differences may be hard to detect accurately.

It seems fairly obvious, that regulation favouring established wealth will not always work out well for everyone. It will have unintended and harmful consequences. It can stop the best part of capitalism, namely the ability of new success to tear down the old wealth and power establishment, and set up new businesses, new technologies and new business models.

In plutocratic capitalism, owners, high level executives and directors tend to know each other, and support each other, and engineer the distribution of wealth, so having contacts rather than talent is rewarded. Established companies tend to receive heaps of taxpayers’ money during a crisis to bail them out and keep them running. They can also receive more favourable regulations, or lessening of regulation. That appears to be what is happening in the Covid crisis – especially with fossil fuel companies. In the financial crisis of 2007-8 there was plenty of money to bail out financial corporations, but very little to bail out ordinary people who had taken fraudulent, or entrapping, loans. Wealthy capitalists were protected from the consequences of their actions – and some parties claimed those companies receiving bailouts should not have to pay any of the gifted taxpayers’ money back.

In this plutocratic stage, it often happens that new industries which challenge established ones are regulated out of existence by established wealth, or find it much harder to operate than they should. Sometimes, as with large stores, established business can effectively use their market power to stop small business from being economic. Hence the crisis in small business today.

If there is a real crisis which will not fix itself profitably (such as ecological exhaustion, serious pandemic, decline of an important resource, massive inflation, stagflation etc), and the State is supposedly democratic, then many of the established wealthy groups tend to abandon any restraint in attempting to preserve their power and wealth.

They may attempt to split ordinary people by encouraging hatreds amongst the population, scapegoating minorities, misdirecting people’s anger against the wealthy into support for the wealthy, encouraging police violence and so on. They may find a nice demagogue – that is, a highly persuasive and unprincipled person – who will say anything to take lead of the State – with the violence against dissent getting more and more intense as this leader solidifies their power.

This is the beginning of fascism. Fascist processes are encouraged as an attempt to provide stability for a form capitalism in crisis. While the fascists build on the power of wealth at the beginning of their moves, they slowly take it over, usually through violence from the party and its militias. Some of the established wealthy manage to accommodate to the fascists. However, along with the scapegoats, some of the established wealthy people get eliminated, or realise they have stuffed it badly for themselves. But most of the wealthy were never in favour of democracy anyway, as it disrupts their power and their freedom, and they prefer the apparent discipline of fascism, the suppression of unpleasant opposition and the appearance of a solution to their problems, which should not cost them anything.

So there is a tendency for capitalism to end in violence when it hits a crisis, especially a crisis that capitalism generates itself – such as the increasing ecological crisis.

Violence is no stranger to capitalism. Some people argue that capitalism always grows out of violence and theft. For example, European and American capitalism, grew out of violent conquest, slavery, murder, dispossession of people from their lands (not only in America, Australia, India and Africa, but in the UK as well), the destruction of land, stripping wealth and resources from countries, the imposition of drug addiction in China by gunboats, and so on. It was an easy form of accumulation which provided some people with capital which they could use to start up business.

This violent theft gets legitimated, and turned into property by the plunderer’s influence in the State which made laws justifying the theft, or because this wealth collection is part of a State project to begin with. Sometimes State armies are used against people who protest against any of this. This period was not pleasant for those people who suffered and died to make capitalism successful.

Capitalism only seems peaceful because, over generations, people forget the violence, and people are not reminded by the capitalist owned media about the violence in their history, or the violence that is going on now. You have to do that research for yourselves. The point is that the capitalist wealthy are already used to violence, or ignoring their violence, and the violence of fascism can seem necessary if it seems to be protecting them from risk.

If the wealthy go the fascist way, then eventually the fascist leader, they have promoted or supported, becomes dictator and leads the country to war to gain new resources, to build the people’s loyalty and because the fascist rulers enjoy violence. That usually results in collapse, as the country extends beyond its military capacity, and generates more and more opposition from other powers.

So the major cycle goes: capitalism is born in plunder and dispossession, leading to massive wealth inequalities, which leads to plutocracy which aims to preserve the power and wealth inequalities. Plutocracy plus crisis leads to fascism, which usually leads to war and suffering for most people.

This cycle, can in theory be interrupted, by ‘people’s capitalism’, or to be more dramatic ‘socialist capitalism’ as found in the Nordic States or in the UK after the Second World war. People’s capitalism seems relatively precarious. It arises through political action from ordinary people, not through economic necessity, and is vulnerable if the wealthy decide that they have nothing to fear from the people.

Historically, it began to arise towards the end of the 19th Century, when workers began to organise and demanded better wages and conditions. Capitalists feared communist revolution – the “spectre haunting Europe”. As a result, a kind of truce occurred in the capitalist west in which wealth was somewhat shared, people got educated, the State became mildly helpful to everyone and protected people (to some extent) from misfortune. Ordinary people began to prosper a little, and social mobility increased.

The more that people share the wealth being produced, and the more governments act to help people to get opportunity and advancement, hinder the powers of corporations to exploit or poison people, set up competition to capitalist activities, and break up capitalist monopolies (or duopolies), then the longer capitalism will work and the people flourish.

This movement heightened after World War II and between the 1950s to 1970s capitalism was pretty good for most people, and it seemed to be steadily improving.

However with the collapse of the threat of revolution with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the wind down of worker organisation, plutocracy has been growing again. This plutocracy grew along with intense talk of free markets, attempts to destroy unions, and largely successful attempts to stop people from having much control over corporate activity as it interfered with the ‘free market’. Neoliberals successfully promoted the idea that the economy was the most important thing in life.

Given the many crises we face, the corporate world now seems to be heading for fascism again to preserve its wealth and power in the face of those crises. The choice is pretty clear. If, at this moment, a party supports action against the ecological crisis then it is probably not fascist. If it supports action which opposes ecological action or allows pollution to get worse, it probably is supporting the current set up at all cost, and will ultimately become fascist if it is not already.

It should not be a surprise that most pro-capitalist analyses of capitalism, such a neoclassical economics, or Austrian economics, tend to ‘forget’ the importance of accumulating differences in wealth and success, how this ends ‘free markets’, and the class politics involved in attempting to maintain, or lessen, that difference. Both of these factors are essential to understanding how the system works in the long term.

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Detecting Neoliberals

September 15, 2020

This is a quick quiz to help you determine whether the politicians you support are ardent neoliberals, interested in defending corporate plutocracy and probably in crushing your rights.

Rather than answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ immediately it might be better to do a little research, preferably in sources which do not generally support the person you are answering the questions about – this way you may get information you are not aware of. Remember that the neoliberal conspiracy means that you are likely to have false, favourable, or excusing information, for any really prominent neoliberal figures.

The more ‘yes’s a person scores in answer to these questions, the more they are probably a neoliberal.

It is unlikely that any politician nowadays will score zero, such is the power of neoliberal ideology, but it is best to know how much you are being conspired against.

However the great thing about neoliberalism, is that strong neoliberals will probably be consistent on most of these points, so it may be worth checking up on reality again, if they have an area in which they appear to score low.

*********************

Do they talk a lot about the free market?

Are they in favour of tax cuts which primarily favour the already wealthy?

Are they in favour of tax cuts which benefit big business?

Are they in favour of, or quietly vote for, taxpayer bailouts for favoured corporations?

Are they in favour of cutting back government services and help for ordinary people?

Do they seem to continue government services for wealthy people and corporations, even if they try to hide this?

Do they generally prefer to ignore business corruption? A usual excuse is that doing something would be harmful for business confidence in a tough time.

Do they seem to care if their party, or corporate elite supporters, are corrupt in their business or fund raising?

Does their own fund raising break regulations, or does the money raised go into the pockets of the organisational elite?

Are they involved with fraudulent charities, whose funds support them? Are they convicted of running a fraudulent charity, or did they solve the issue out of court?

Do politicians on this side, use their contacts to increase the profitability of their personal business, or do favourable departmental deals with their friends and supporters?

Is this systematic, or a few corrupt people?

Do they fail to support independent anti-governmental corruption organisations?

Do they support unlimited corporate political donations and lobbying? This is usually supported as free speech, but its really the right of the wealthy to buy being heard, and ordinary people to be ignored.

Do they try to reinforce the idea that corporations are persons with the rights of persons?

Do they oppose minimum wages?

Are they happy for ordinary people to suffer, die or be injured to help ‘the economy’ or ‘the market’?

Do they repeal health and safety rules, lessen the responsibilities of employers towards workers, or lower payouts for worker injury?

Do they avoid providing easily accessible statistics and accounts of workplace injury and death?

Do they support cutbacks in funding for public education (of all, or any, types)?

Do they support increased funding for private education, but not with any demand for lower fees, or accountability?

Does most of the funding for private schools go to already wealthy private schools, or to the schools of those religions who support them?

Do they oppose any science that goes against their apparent interests or which warns against activities conducted by favoured corporations?

Do they allege that the scientists who disagree with them are organised and politically hostile to them, or to democracy in general?

Do they prefer to get their information from corporately supported private think tanks, than from publically funded and reviewed scientists?

Do they deny climate change, or say climate change is not urgent, or suggest it will cool again sometime in the future if we do nothing?

Do they pretend that wildfires have nothing to do with increased heating or drying out of forests or grasslands?

Do they pretend that the breakdown of land ice is irrelevant or something which will happen in the distant future?

Do they support fossil fuel companies, give taxpayer money to fossil fuel companies, or regulate energy in favour of fossil fuel companies?

Do they encourage the mining of fossil fuels in food production areas?

Do they attempt to over-regulate renewable energy, while claiming they hate business regulation?

Do they support the repeal, or relaxation, of environmental and anti-pollution regulations, so that business can ‘productively’ damage the ecology for profit?

Are they more likely to ignore pollution dumping when it affects poor areas and people?

Do they allow genetic modification of crops, and approve or encourage insecticides that are possibly harmful to humans?

Do they support the large corporation when it claims its genetically modified crops are sterile and that organic farmers whose crops contain such gene modifications have stolen their property?

Do they oppose restraints on corporate fishing?

Do they give taxpayer funding to corporate environmental organisations which end up doing very little, or which encourage pollution?

Do they support increased military spending?

Does most of that increased military spending go to the corporate sector, such as armaments manufacturers?

Do they support massive arms deals with repressive States in the rest of the world?

Do they get involved in wars, or use troops, to support corporate interests?

Do they side with authoritarian religions, who support business?

Do they side with, or claim to like, authoritarian leaders and States?

Do they encourage fracturing of the population, claiming that everyone who opposes them is evil? Especially do they do this on days of national unity?

Do they engage in culture wars, especially while destroying the basis of the culture they claim to defend?

Do they make minorities evil?

Do they seem happy to use the armed might of the State to repress protests?

Do they increase penalties for protesting against them, or their favoured activities?

Do they support people who shoot into crowds they don’t like, whether with live or other ammunition?

Do they ignore the violent arrest of people they disagree with, while getting annoyed at the violent arrest of people they agree with?

Do they demonise Media which does not always support them?

Are their media supporters, people who shout a lot and try and get people angry with those who disagree with them?

Do they listen to people who disagree with them, or disparage them completely?

Are they routinely supported by people in the Murdoch Empire?

Is their main policy area describable by saying ‘if wealthy people get wealthier, everyone will benefit’?

As a Bonus Extra:

Do they pretend that they did not support George W. Bush’s Iraq war, and that their opponents were the main people in favour of it?

Tags:
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Can any argument defeat President Trump?

September 15, 2020

No. Nothing can defeat Trump. Well I will talk about a few strategies towards the end of this piece, which might make a difference, but I doubt Democrats will use them.

Trump followers absolutely know that any information which contradicts Trump’s greatness is fake. The only true news is news that tells people how wonderful the President is, and how he is the only person that can save America. If the information does not say that, it is simply wrong and malicious and to be ignored.

Indeed if their opinion that Trump is wonderful is contradicted, it simply proves to themselves that they are people who think for themselves. They don’t believe the ‘mainstream lies’ that ‘sheeple’ believe. So the more evidence against Trump, the more strongly they believe they are correct about how good he is, and the more they can praise themselves for independent thinking and agreement with other Trump supporters.

For example:

Covid is either not real, or it is a “summer flu”, boosted by a communist conspiracy of disinformation and fear headed by the mainstream media (who are all corporately owned) and the Pharmaceutical companies, who want to genetically engineer obedience through vaccines. People who are scared of Covid are sissies. [This is not to deny there are problems with complete lock-downs – especially if other medical services are made to shut down as well, which is unnecessary. The problem is, however, that Trump supporters tend to deny covid is a serious problem at all.]

Climate change is not real. It really is a plot plugged by the Chinese and communist scientists all working together to cripple the US. Fake ideas of climate change are being bravely opposed by networks of fossil fuel businesses, their think tanks and Fox News. These think tanks, which are not heavily promoted (unlike climate change lies), give you the real information you need.

If Climate change was real then capitalism and technology could handle it and we don’t need to do anything else.

Climate change, just like Covid, is a lie whose purpose is to produce global poverty, and set up a dictatorship over demoralised people. But we will stand firm – being confident scientists and doctors are lying.

People like Greta Thunberg are automatised zombies, following the elites mind programming instructions, or they are hysterical screaming teenagers who need to go and get a job.

The President is a paragon of virtue, sent into the Whitehouse by God to protect America, and those who vote against him are ungodly and doomed to hell for all eternity.

The Republicans do not need a policy document, because their policy is to follow the greatest President ever and the Bible. Without doubt, these two pillars will lead them to wisdom.

The President is fighting the satanic deep state who want to enslave all Americans. The deep state is naturally Democrat and is best fought by introducing hyper-competent and wealthy people from big-business who support Donald Trump. Again you can tell a person’s competence by their loyalty to the President, but a lot of people get corrupted and leave.

Donald Trump is a martyr for the Truth. He has been persecuted more than any other American in History, because of his virtues and his strong and dedicated fight against evil.

The President has built a wall which keeps out Mexican criminals, rapists and human traffickers. We are now all safe!

The President LOVES minorities and Black Lives Matter is another ungrateful communist conspiracy fostered by the Democrats and the lamestream media who are encouraging riots in order to ferment civil war and take away our guns. However, the President’s strong reaction has defeated this plot for the moment.

Likewise the President LOVES and supports women, especially good looking, young and well-bodied blondes, and no President has done more for non-feminist women than he has.

Antifa are the absolute evil; a truly horrendous and immoral group who will stop at nothing to destroy democracy, loot our property, rape our women and create anarchy. Antifa are lighting forest fires in Oregon and California, to try and use climate change against the President and loot peoples’ property. And they like Joe Biden!!!

White supremacists are really just patriots, and so they naturally like Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is the first American President to have nothing to do with organised pedophilia. It is because of him that Epstein was arrested, and hordes of Democrats are being secretly tried for their roles in human trafficking, and the results will be out soon – probably after the election as the President would not want to take unfair advantage of the anti-democrat publicity. By not reporting all this, the mainstream media is supporting the pedophiles, and this shows they really cannot be trusted.

Joe Biden is totally evil. He is a pedophile, he is a fascist, he is a communist, he is neoliberal, he is a devil worshipper, he is a rapist, he is senile, he is a weak war-monger, he is a drug user, he is totally incompetent and bound to take the US from the productive order we now have into total chaos. He must be resisted even at the cost of our lives.

Donald Trump has single handedly ended America’s participation in wars all over the globe. He is the first American Peace President. Even though troops still seem to be in the countries they have been in for 20 years, and there are no welcome home parades.

Donald Trump has invested more in the military than any other President, carried out more bombing raids than anyone else, and vetoed a bill passed by both houses of Congress asking for the US to withdraw from the war in Yeman, so he is protecting the US and its interests unlike the Democrats.

Donald Trump has single handedly (again) defused the tension between the US deep state and Russia and North Korea. We now face peace. A vote for Biden risks that peace.

Donald Trump has solved the Middle East Peace Problem through the treaty between Israel and UAE, even if neither of them were at war and the Palestinians have to face losing more of their land.

Donald Trump is a man of the people, who understands the pressures of life that ordinary Americans face. He is an exemplar of purity and self-help. He made his fortune by his own brilliance. He is truly an extraordinary President and deserves our loyalty, and that means ignoring anyone who says otherwise as they are clearly an envious fool.

**************

From my experience with Trump supporters, I am not exaggerating. It was similar last time.

Democrats just were not aware of how weird or strong the opposition to Clinton was. After four yeas of Trump, it is even stronger than it was then. If Democrats are not aware of what many Trump followers seem to believe then they will not win, because their arguments will not make sense to, or be heard by, the people they are trying to win over.

If the Democrats do not realise what they are fighting, then Trump will win. And if he does not win, his supporters will rise in defense of him.

This is the Republican dream.

So what can Democrats do?

First off, the most recurrent theme is the idea that Donald Trump is a peace President and the Democrats are war-mongers. Talk about Trump’s wars, however hidden they have been. Talk about his bombings etc. Talk about how he does not remove troops. Give people facts. Point out the problems with the Israle UAE treaty, and how it sacrifices the Palestinians.

Second, Republicans are not scared of Covid, but they are scared of Vaccines. Point out that rushing a vaccine is the only strategy the President has for dealing with the problem. Explain that an untested vaccine is dangerous. Emphasise that Trump is putting them in danger. Promise that any vaccine developed under the Democrats will be safe and not compulsory.

Trump was completely unaware of him supposedly being against pedophilia, so he is unprepared. He has recently decided he can gain kudos by accusing Biden of pedophilia. Take the gloves off. Point out he was about to face trial for child rape, and the case was stopped when he became President, and the woman received death threats she took seriously. Point out the events were witnessed. Point out Trump has never tweeted about human trafficking. Point out how he is failing in this. Point out his friendship with Epstein and Maxwell. Point to the others in his admin….

People don’t like corporations getting richer at their expense. Point out how Trump has helped this, that his only economic policy is taxcuts for the wealthy, Truly abandon neoliberalism, and make it clear Trump is one of the wealth elite and is governing for the wealth elites and is getting rich on taxpayers’s money. Celebrate his excess consumption, his pride and contempt for ordinary people.

Will this work? It may not. But the kind of approach the Democrats are taking now will lead to them coming second again. You can’t fight irrationality with reason, but you can fight it with drama and facts…

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Neoliberal Conspiracy 04: Neoliberal ‘individualism’ as opposed to ‘individuation’.

September 13, 2020

Introduction

This blog post continues the series on the conspiracies of the powerful, by suggesting that the form of ‘individualism’ encouraged by neoliberalism functions to support corporate dominance, helps to create eco-catastrophy and hinders real and creative ‘individuation’.

The ideal neoliberal individual identifies with their ego. They are lone and autonomous. They have no responsibility towards others, or dependence on others. If they recognise such connection then they work to sever it.

This is clearly difficult for normal humans, so the individual is often allowed to be responsible for their family or towards those who please them, and obey them.

However the individual is still opposed to those who do not please them; ‘sheeple’ who disagree with them, or people of other ‘races’, other political parties, or other genders. These people are seen as non-virtuous in the neoliberal sense; they are protesting the natural hierarchical order, not hard working, not true and independent individuals.

The dependence of neoliberal individuals on being different from these displeasing others, leads to what in the next blog I will call “shadow politics,” in which neoliberal individuals project their denied dependencies and faults on others, and work to expel or obliterate those others. ,

Neoliberal individualism encourages this “shadow politics” by hindering the development of real individuation, and promoting an unreal view of life. It encourages a socialised and homogenous individuality that, directly and indirectly, functions to support neoliberal policy and power by giving the neoliberal class an angry political base. It further helps reinforce the politicisation of knowledge, and hence promotes ignorance. This ignorance can lead to catastrophic social failure.

The reality is that we are mutually interactive and dependent individuals, needing other people and supportive ecologies to exist and flourish. This recognition is the basis of real individuation.

Neoliberal individualism as ideology

The promotion of a particular form of anti, or asocial capitalist “individualism” is part of the information and power structures neoliberalism spreads, even if it is not deliberately engineered.

This should not be too surprising as individualism, of some form or other, has been the ideology of protestant captalism for at least 500 years.

Neoliberal individuality is often said to be under attack from mysterious displeasing others. This is partly because it depends on a contrast between the person expounding it, with those displeasing others. It is a relatively common propaganda strategy to claim something that is largely dominant and popular is under attack. That way the propaganda gets reinforced, and remains unthought about, as people seek to defend it.

Capitalist individualism may have been briefly under threat between 120 to 50 years ago with the rise of communism, but it has come back to dominance with the triumph of the neoliberal elite, functioning as both one of its core persuasive propositions, and as a disciplinary motif which keeps neoliberal power functioning – before eco-collapse.

The political functions of capitalist individualism

Individualism, as it has developed in capitalism, has several political functions. It allows the breaking of community responsibilities and obligations which, in turn, enables:

  • the accumulation of capital – rather than having to give capital back to the community in gifts or funeral rituals;
  • finding meaning in possessions;
  • the breaking of community charity;
  • the seeing of salvation in purely individual or egoic terms; and
  • the reduction of all relationship to cash and contract.

More recently it argues that anything that is not individualistic is communist and dangerous, when society essentially depends on willing collaborations and interdependencies of various types: human to human, group to group, creature to ecology etc.

Promotion of individualism helps to break up collective collaboration against the dominant regime, and allows such collaboration to be dismissed as juvenile. It makes liberty and advancement an individual, rather than collective, or collaborative, issue. It encourages workers to be individually submissive and dependent upon heroic employers, rather than to take a collective stand which could benefit everyone. It drives consumerism and the idea of reward coming from the accumulation of personal, or individual, property which is not to be shared outside the family. It may even help define the individual by their ownership and consumption. It allows those who are unemployed, unfortunate, sick, or damaged by the neoliberal State, or neoliberal economic policy, to be blamed for individual fault, and dismissed as worthy of any consideration. It allows the removal of the individual person from the context on which they depend, and thus works to encourage, and legitimate, the destruction of land and ecology for personal profit. Land or ecologies held in common are worthless, and should be handed over to those who can afford them, or they are easy to destroy without qualm.

Recognition of necessary and functional, systemic interdependence is severed, unless seen in purely competitive terms (“nature red in tooth and claw”), or in terms of competitive markets regulated in ways neoliberals like, which are then magically supposed to deliver the best possible results irrespective of any player’s intention.

Individualism, as it has arisen and is encouraged in neoliberalism, cultivates no responsibility towards other beings in general, and breaks the sense of working with others and the world. Victory and autonomy are what count.

Neoliberal individualism encourages weakness and ineffectiveness, when people act outside of, or challenge, the neoliberal system.

Neoliberal individualism is collective

The irony of this individualism is that it gains this power as an ideology because it is collective, enforced, felt to be obviously good because it fits in with capitalist lives and power relations, and is shared by many people. It takes as normal the idea that everyone is alone (perhaps apart from a neoliberal God, who rewards capitalist virtues and punishes capitalist sins), and that everything that people suffer depends on completely on themselves. The poor or unfortunate brought their suffering on themselves, and so need to be condemned or told to get on with making themselves better and stop troubling others. On the opposite side, every approved wealthy person, no matter how much they inherited, how much support they received from others of their group, or from government subsidy or from social organisation, gained their wealth through individual talent and effort, and they owe nobody else, or anything else, anything.

Complexity and interconnection

Reality, as usual, is complicated. As suggested earlier, the reality is that we are embedded in systems upon which we depend, and which we help maintain or destroy.

We cannot self-create, or gain independence, to the extent that individualist thinkers often appear to assume. We did not invent the world, and the societies, we live in – although we can shape them. We did not invent the languages with which we think, interpret and explain our experience, although our language use has personal idiosyncracies and sometimes we shape the language of others. We think with sensory images of the world we experience and move around in; we did not create this. We did not originate all our ideas; we borrowed them from our culture, from other people (sometimes without thinking) and from books, just as we gained the language we borrowed and learnt without thinking. We took on, transformed and reacted against the ideas of others. Those borrowed and shifted ideas shape who we are, how we think, and how we live and relate to others – and many of those ideas may be unconscious, unexamined, or promoted by established forces.

Similarly, we depend upon the work, and sacrifice, of many people for our life and existence; farmers, truckers, sewage workers, electricity workers, street cleaners, shop assistants and so on – the list is huge. We all would have died as children without interconnection with others, no matter how cruel or incompetent those others turned out to be. We likewise depend upon the vast interacting webs of nature to survive; from plants and trees, to ants and bees, to the bacteria that help break down our food, to the relative stability of climate, and to the Sun and stars, however indifferent these beings may be to our fate.

Even our bodies seem to be colonies rather than whole individuals. Most of our mass is held in non-genetically related bacteria. Our cells themselves seem to be colonies of small creatures. If this inter-cellular and infra-cellular collaboration stopped, then our ‘I’ (whatever that is) could not function. There is likewise the possibility that our minds are not single factors but organisations which shift in and out of use, and consciousness, depending on the context.

With different formations and patterns around us, and interacting with us and in response to us, we would almost certainly be different, or not exist.

We are not individuals in the neoliberal sense at all. We are dependent upon systems, constituted by systems and have the possibility of influencing systems. Our ‘individual’ psyche spills out into the social and world systems, and the world and social systems spill into us. Boundaries are not clear. We live with, and sometimes against, other beings – but even those beings who appear to threaten us are indelibly part of the same systems to which we belong.

Our sense of our self as an individual is born in and with a collective tradition which it inherits. The individual is born in interaction with others and with the world; we are a process.

In that very real sense, non of us (who can speak) have never been totally lone individuals, separate from others and independent of others. We cannot survive as lone individuals. In the vast empty realms of space we could not live. If we did have a chance of surviving then it would be because of the work and knowledge of others, or the work of nature, as well as ourselves. Our ‘I’ is a ‘we’ as well as an ‘I’. Autonomy is always limited by contexts. Its expression requires us to work with, and alongside, the dynamics of interdependent reality.

Variation is real

Yet, despite all the collectivity that is part of real life no person is completely shaped by the collective. No person is the same as any other. Everyone has their own unique variations of body, history, and context that makes them different. Natural variation is the basis of evolution, and adaptation. There is probably no assumed path, however supposedly superior, that will fit everyone.

Trying to forget, or suppress, these variations, can be a basis of oppression and delusion; as with insisting everyone should be a lone individual, or that everyone is part of an identical collective (if the latter has ever happened outside of individualist fantasy).

Addendum: Solnit on neoliberal individualism and preserving hierarchy

Since the initial version of this blog. Rebecca Solnit has written a short article on the Right’s response to Covid, which makes similar points, much better than I did. So I will quote some of it, before moving on to the topic of “individuation”. My slight modifications are in square brackets.

She writes:

The pandemic [and the ecological crisis, have] focused and intensified the need to recognize the interconnectedness of all things—in this case the way that viruses spread and the responsibility of those in power and each of us to do what we can to limit that spread, and to recognize the consequences that could break our educational system, our economy, and our daily lives… if we did not take care, of ourselves, each other, and the whole…. [I]nseparability is a basis for making decisions on behalf of the common good. But Republicans have long denied this reality.

The contemporary right has one central principle: nothing is really connected to anything else, so no one has any responsibility for anything else, and any attempt to, say, prevent a factory from poisoning a river is an infringement on freedom… Freedom as they uphold it is the right [for the already privileged] to do anything [they] want with utter disregard for others…

Despite the rhetoric of freedom and equality of opportunity, [neoliberal individualism has] always been about preserving… a hierarchy 

Rebecca Solnit “Trump’s response to the pandemic has always been dishonest and cruel”. The Guardian, 8 October 2020

Individuation

This problem of immersion and variation, and the reality that it represents, is what, it seems to me, Jung points to through the term ‘individuation.’

As the individual is not just a single, separate being, but by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship, it follows that the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation (CW 6: #758).

Individuation is a:

separation and differentiation from the general and a building up of the particular – not a particular that is sought out, but one that is already ingrained in the psychic constitution (CW 6: #761).

It involves a transcendence of capitalist ideas of individualism and of overcoming the real but denied attachment to, or identification with, a group and group ideology. Becoming a real individual is not a pre-existent state, it is difficult and built.

If the individuality is unconscious, there is no psychological individual, but merely a collective psychology of consciousness (CW 6: #755).

Individuation is a relational movement, a paradoxical movement aimed both towards what seems most internal and what seems most external. It involves becoming aware of unconscious dynamics and attachments, both creative and destructive.

In Jungian work becoming aware of personal and collective unconscious forces, and coming to a relationship with them, can involve: suspending certainty of knowledge, dialogue, listening, attention to dreams, active imagination, art work, spiritual experience, and even free association.

This path of coming to oneself, within the collective, has patterns. It is not uniquely individual, but it depends upon being human, the person and the context they live within.

The relations between person and context is not always a relationship of harmony. In becoming a person, we may have to break with families and with social ideologies – but the paradox is always that we often break with our social ideologies, myths and symbols, through other ideologies, myths and symbols, hoping that our internal creativity can use the devices and people around us, to further that process of coming into our variant being, and adapting to, and with, reality – perhaps partly changing that reality if necessary.

One danger is that these ‘new’ collective ideologies we can use to attempt to break free, may simply be social tools for pathology or mere restatements of ‘individualism’, rather than wisdom welling up from unconscious processes.

Individuation is not simply a breaking of ties to everything but our ego, or our conscious self, as with neoliberal individuality.

Indeed the ego is found not to be the central part of the self around which everything orbits. The individuated person, learns to consult with the unconscious world of which they are a part, to gain wisdom from the hidden, and from the perception of useful pattern – some of which may be preserved in neglected traditions. (This is why Jungians like fairy tales). Certainly the ego has the function of evaluating the patterns, but if the ego is not humble, or does not recognise its limits, it can be captured by the perceived patterns – such as shadow projection. Individuation is a reassertion of our real ties to the world, while taking our individual and creative place within that world.

Individuation also involves a cultivation of ethical responsibility. Almost the first step in individuation is becoming aware that most of what we call the evil we see in the world is present in ourselves and largely projected onto the world in an attempt to avoid or suppress recognition of that ‘evil’ in our selves and become ‘virtuous’.

Recognition of our own ‘evil’ is difficult. Our un-individuated ‘collective ego’ is largely built upon suppressing and denying our evil and projecting it on to others, in an attempt to become a good socially, or personally, approved individual.

The socialised individual casts a shadow, and some of what it can perceive as bad are actually:

good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses etc.

For example religions have, in some forms, denied our bodies and natural desires completely.

If the role of the shadow is not recognised in our personal and social lives then the individual is not only impoverished in the potentials of their true self, and their connections with others, but they become more easily manipulated by proponents of their form of individuality, into hatred of those on whom they are encouraged to project their shadow. Individuality becomes simply a compliant social role, or an attempt to dominate others and keep up shadow projection on ‘the inferior’. Overcoming this shadow projection, not only requires self-knowledge, but some level of ethical refinement and experimentation.

Consequently, individuation should not be taken to mean that we become ‘supermen’ or that we should embrace ego inflation – that is becoming what the ego already thinks it should be, or is, or coming to think that we are somehow above the rest of humanity. These are dangers on the path of individuation leading to delusion and possibly psychosis. This is why a guide who has started on the process, and dialogue with them , can be useful on the path.

Figuratively we can think of individuation as involving a descent into ‘the unconscious’, or ‘the depths’ and a surfacing with new wisdoms. However, there is always the risk that we can ascend with new pathologies, hence the need for ethical growth at the same time, to evaluate the actions we now engage with.

The main message is that, wherever we should be on the path of individuation, we are still humans and still interdependent with others and still working with the world. Hopefully we can reach some level of freedom and satisfaction amongst those others, perceive ourselves more accurately and contribute to to the lives of others. Even if we end up residing in a mountain cave by ourselves we got there through living with others, and this may need to be acknowledged.

If the individuation is constructive, and the context of that individuation is right for development, then individual persons can change the world – even if they do not wish to. Some of those people are visible, like Confucius, Laotzu, Plato, Aristotle, Paul of Tarsus, Mohammed, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Newton etc. Sometimes it is just ordinary people whose names are lost to history, who by a simple action encouraged something momentous to happen, that may not have happened without them.

Sometimes the change that the context allows seems clearly for the worse, as when the person does not emerge cleanly from the depths and encourages attacks on their shadow, as with Hitler and Stalin, or Pol Pot etc.

A different politics?

We all face a number of problems which probably cannot be solved by neoliberal individualism.

Immediately there is the issue of Covid. At the moment we have two solutions, the Trump solution and Lock Down.

The Trump solution seems to be: Get back to work, be positive and pretend there is no problem and hope that a vaccine arrives quickly. The secondary parts of this seem to be – do not encourage the vaccine manufacturers to do the proper testing to make sure the vaccine has no dangers, and indemnify the manufacturers should it prove to have dangers.

Apart from ignoring the problems of a vaccine, the Trump solution seems to have no thought that we could work together on solving, or diminishing, this problem, and indeed Trump attacks people for wearing masks, and encourages people to be neoliberal individuals with no care about their effects on others -running meetings without distancing and so on. He also cheers armed protests against lock-downs and against people protesting in the Streets. The Trump Solution also downplays any information that suggests Covid is more harmful than we might think, with long term effects on people who have caught it, frequent need for massive medical care, high levels of contagion, and low levels of anti-body preservation. This form of individualism only seems to seek the information which confirms it.

The Lock-down solution similarly does not really see the possibilities of people collaborating, or the problems that lock-downs only work for a short while. People have to know that other actions are people taken. Neoliberal individualists are also likely to resist lock downs as them see them as an imposition on their individual right to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and so Lockdowns are inherently vulnerable to neoliberal attacks, from those who don’t ‘want’ to support others in times of danger, or only see the issue in terms of competition.

Neoliberal individualism, does not encourage the idea that sometimes we have to suffer some loss in order for the system to survive or prosper. Given we are not connected, other than in competition, why should we risk any loss for an uncertain advantage for others? Without empathy there is no connection to others. They are just things that attack us.

Likewise with climate change. We cannot solve this individually. Neoliberal individualism separates us from nature, it makes nature an object to be exploited, and ultimately leads to social death.

Individuation on the other hand can lead to an awareness of connection, because you don’t have to engage in separation in order to find yourself. You do have to find your connection to the greater you, the fields of unconscious process, the place you occupy in the system that sustains you.

An individuated person can also realise that solutions may be as complex as the problems, and pay attention to material that others ignore. Even if it is only by withdrawing their shadow projections.

Conclusion

That the ideology of individualism is unreal and possibly destructive, does not mean individuals are not important, or that the collective is necessarily good. The process of emerging from the collective, and listening to the wider self and the wider world is a process we can call individuation.

Individuation is difficult. There is almost never a resting place of certainty, or of perfect autonomy.

Any vision which sees the future in terms of individuals alone, or families alone in secure buildings, or people as an always harmonious single willed collective, is doomed to failure in the long term as it does not recognise reality.

Individuation is particularly difficult when there is a collective individualism which suggests that we are already there, and can proceed by strengthening the ego and accepting the collective idea of individualism without tackling what we, as a collective, are unconscious of, or refrain from being conscious of.

In neoliberalism, individualism tends to enable what we might call shadow politics, and this is the subject of the next post in this series….

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Pandemic Comparison 5

September 8, 2020

I have not done one of these for a while….

The population of the US is about 13 times greater than that of Australia. So if all things are equal, US figures should be 13 times greater than Australian figures.

Today’s figures 8 September 2020:

Australian cases: 26,322
US cases: 6.3 M

The US currently has about 239 times as many cases as Australia.

The pattern over time is as follows:

10 April 77 times as many cases as Aus
29 April 130 times as many cases as Aus
29 May 246 times as many cases as Aus
27 June 330 times as many cases as Aus
08 Sept 239 times as many cases as Aus

We should note that testing is going to be difficult with those US numbers. But it would appear cases have significantly gone up in Australia.

Australian deaths: 762
US deaths: 189k

The US has 248 times as many deaths as Australia

The pattern is as follows:

10 April 309 times as many deaths as Aus
29 April 673 times as many deaths as Aus
29 May 1000 times as many deaths as Aus
27 June 1221 times as many deaths as in Aus
08 Sept 248 times as many deaths

A significant decline in the US increase of death.

We still have no figures for those left incapacitated by the virus

Tags:
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Neoliberal Conspiracy 3: (dis)Information

September 7, 2020

This is part of a series:

The Neoliberal Conspiracy 01 discussed the nature of conspiracy and the value of being aware of the possibilities of conspiracies of the already powerful. In our societies, these already powerful people tend to belong to the hyper-wealthy corporate class. I put forward the idea of a neoliberal conspiracy which supports ideas of:

  • “free markets” which translates into the prevention of democratic attempts to reduce the power of corporations;
  • wealth as virtue;
  • the effectiveness of privatisation of common property and services with the aim of transferring wealth from ordinary people to the dominant classes;
  • the denial of any public good without corporate profit, and;
  • the radical destruction of tradition while pretending to be conservative.

I suggested that neoliberalism was a deliberate movement to counter to the elite crisis of “too much democracy” in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a way of defusing the rapidly rising environmental movement, which threatened to prevent corporate exploitation of the material world.

In the second installment, The Neoliberal Conspiracy 02: Education, I described some of the ways that education was being bent in favour of wealthy people, and put under their control, with the consequence that people would be less able and knowledgeable to challenge them.

Education involves control of the information and quality of information given to various classes in society. Often the dominant groups are taught thinking and use of power and given useful connections, whereas the lower classes are taught the virtues of obedience and adapting to the desires and requirements of the powerful. Skills and knowledge are only relevant to the extent they allow students to fit in with the patterns of power. In Australia we subsidise already wealthy private schools (who put their fees up in response), and cutback funding to ordinary schools. This helps restrict access and cement the power and knowledge of the wealthy.

This blog now moves into questions of information provision and conveyance in more general terms. Information always forms part of power struggles, but in neoliberalism information is nearly all only part of a power and persuasion struggle; this pattern is intensified by the problems of information in a supposed information society.

Problems of information

One fundamental problem is that the world is a complex system, beyond the conscious understanding of any particular individual.

This seems magnified in so called ‘information society, in that there is so much information that we can always choose information which pleases us, and which states that those who disagree with us are simply wrong, or that their disagreement comes from intent or malice. People who disagree, are evil. This may help reassure us of our ability to navigate this complexity; even as it almost certainly leads to misunderstanding and folly.

Another problem seems to be that we always filter information by other information that we consider correct or probable. This information may be wrong to begin with; therefore inaccuracy runs the risk of accumulating, and making more recent “information acquisitions” even more precariously accurate.

The third problem is that neoliberalism, (or the support of corporate power and wealthy people through talk about free markets), cannot deliver what it promises; liberty and a functional high prosperity economy. It only delivers ongoing support for ecological destruction, suppression of dissent, destruction of government services, stagnant wages, economic crisis and plutocracy. The only techniques available to neoliberal governance is taxpayer support for big business (often through military spending), increasing the right of the wealthy to destroy ecologies, suppression of organised labour, government service cutbacks which largely affect the poor and lower middle classes, and taxcuts for the wealthy.

Therefore, in any kind of democracy, supporters of neoliberal corporate dominance and its lack of responsibility, have to have to stir up passions and misrepresent reality to gain support. There is no alternative.

Information and Behaviour

Information is important not just because it guides us through the world, but because it contributes to who we think we are. People with different theories of what it is to be a person, or category of person, or to be in the world, will likely have differing interpretations of events in the world, and hence different interactions with that world. A person who thinks that humans are competitive individualists, will behave differently and suffer differently to a person who thinks people are lovingly co-operative. They can both be wrong, but it changes behaviour and expectations.

By giving us modes of interpretation and setting problems, information is constitutive of our modes of being in the world, and our experience.

If you control, or heavily influence, a person’s information then you are likely to influence their understandings, behaviour and interactions. Most acts of communication exist to persuade other people to do things such as: collaborate with you, honour you, fear you, agree with you, help you, work for you, support you, fight against your enemies, behave in particular expected ways etc.

All of these attempts may have unintended consequences, partly because they are of limited accuracy and we live in complex systems, and people then have to deal with those consequences. That communication may not always have the intended effect is to be expected, but persuasion is still one of its primary aims. Rhetoric is fundamental, not incidental, to language.

In information society, information problems are intensified, because a great deal of self image and status (as a independent thinker, or not being a ‘sheeple’) appears to come from being ‘right’ or ‘correctly informed.’ This renders self correction even more difficult than usual. Many people engage in ‘virtue signalling’ about this: they are sane, righteous and calm thinkers while everyone else is unbalanced, or swayed by hysterical propaganda, or the orthodoxy. This does not lead to calm discussion. Despite the complexity, there seems little humility about our capacity to understand what is going on.

Distribution and distortion of information

Irrespective of the possibility of using information for deliberate control, whenever free production of information exists, then information tends to get widely distributed for the following reasons, non of which contribute to accuracy:

1) We select information because it confirms what we already think, and confirms or fits in with our existing biases or the information we have already accepted. This is a form of information filtering, that means we do not have to change our minds every time we encounter contrary ideas.

  • 1a) Much important information will be filtered out, by this process.
  • 1b) One of the first things we filter out, is this process, as it implies we are not good processors of information. We can see it in others, but less easily in ourselves.

2) Information is spread because of its propaganda function, which those distributing it think benefits them or their allies – or at the least confirms what they already think. In this set-up, accuracy is a minor concern because lies and misdirections which support the supposed ‘underlying truth’ are acceptable. This seems to be the default neoliberal position.

  • 2a) Propaganda is often designed to appeal to an audience’s existing biases, and shift that audience in the direction of the emitter. It is a form of crafted manipulation.
  • 2b) It has long been known that a convincing lie will travel much faster than the correcting truth, and with the internet the lie will hang around and be rediscovered, repeatedly. Climate deniers can reuse the same false facts repeatedly, despite the number of rebuttals. Rebuttals tend to get forgotten.
  • 2c) Propaganda can also use distractions. If people are worried about the wealthy, get them worried about wealthy people who don’t push the neoliberal line like George Soros, and Bill Gates. Then ignore the behaviour of all the other billionaires who may be more of a social threat, like Rupert Murdoch, Charles Koch, or Donald Trump. This also helps keep the wealthy in line, as they can fear what will happen to them if they transgress in what they say.
  • 2d) While most neoliberal propaganda is internal to the country and comes from deniable sources, there is also external propaganda from other countries which tries to undermine social functioning, as a form of non-violent warfare. Thus the Russians supported Trump to help destroy the US (although the tendencies of the pro-Trump audience to distribute anything that supported them, also led to the making of fake news to ‘attract eyeballs’ and get advertisement money). It is possible that some of the ‘covid is not serious in any way’ material is being distributed for the same reasons. Likewise US government and corporate propaganda to encourage capitalism is well documented. At the same time it is possible that relatively accurate information can be denounced as foreign propaganda.

3) Information is spread when it is issued by people we identify with, and therefore consider trustworthy. This seems to be one of the standard ways of filtering large amounts of information. The filter is quick and allows us to move on, or act.

  • 3a) We also tend to think, that information issued by those we don’t identify with, or identify as being opposed to us, is necessarily false. This easily becomes the basis of ‘polarisation’, or what I am calling ‘shadow politics,’ in which we project our own denied failings onto others and blame them for all our problems. This again is a standard neoliberal trope to build support, although it is not only used by neoliberals. Once it becomes established, it influences most communication.
  • 3b) Hence Trump attempts to threaten any media or reporter who dares to disagree with him, and accuses them of lying – even if the media organisation they are working for is 95% in favour of flattering him. In neoliberalism, loyalty to the underlying cause should be 100%. Any organisation which does try and be impartial and only report the truth is suspect – perhaps because neoliberalism cannot be supported by the truth.
  • 3c) This category-effect means that some people argue they must be right precisely because other disliked people disagree with them. Disagreement does not lead to discussion but to confirmation.

4) Information which is highly emotionally charged can appeal directly to our feeling self. Emotionality, often generates a sense of truth or reality (“If I am angry with that person, there must be a reason, and the anger must be justified”). It also functions to prevent reflective thinking, and to confirm people’s allegiance to the information source and increase their hostility to counter-sources. If a tightly controlled company or person uses this strategy (e.g. Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Fox News), then they may be getting an audience for the advertisement space they sell, ‘telling the truth’ according to their biases, and influencing people not to trust other sources and stay with them. The standards of evidence are lowered. Sometimes scathing humour can serve this function.

  • 4a) Confident certainty is also persuasive to people in the in-group, irrespective of whether it is deserved or no, and this helps shut down discussion, or reflection. It is another hallmark of neoliberal communication, along with condemnation.

5) Some information may spread because it makes life easier, and helps collaboration, builds friendships and so on. It may have deleterious effects as well, but these are not as clear and tend to be ignored.

  • 5a) Sometimes information which makes life easier, like delaying action on climate crisis, may hinder people from seeing needed information, which could keep them alive.

6) Some information issued by companies is simply hype, to sell products, or confirm their power in the markets. Such hype is likely to be designed to be memorable, and spreadable, so it affects markets, profitability, actions and general knowledge. Rather than going with existing technology to solve a problem, people may postpone action for the supposedly better hyper-innovative technology that is “just about to be released”.

  • 6a) Markets, particularly financial markets, seem to be largely based on such hype, which is possibly one reason for financial bubbles, and people remaining loyal to businesses when they are near breaking, or hoping for the breakthrough that will keep markets stable and growing.

7) ‘Science’, or other modes of attempting to find accuracy, will be attacked when they disagree with neoliberalism. Scientists can recognise that while they have informed people according to the best of their knowledge, they can be wrong. Neoliberals are right before any evidence comes in, and are right whatever the evidence. Hence, science is automatically described as wrong whenever it disagrees with established bias, or interest.

  • 7a) There is no role for recognition of limited, or temporary, certainty, or ongoing uncertainty. We can keep producing greenhouse gases and we know it will be ok if we don’t cut back just yet.
  • 7b) Building real knowledge takes effort, time and correction. As said above, building or finding an appealing lie, can be much much quicker. The time and refinement process makes real knowledge look as if it is constantly changing, because it is responding to new data. People in this society think truth should be unchanging.

8) I suspect some people also enjoy producing confusion. Information confusion, means that we will be more likely to choose our information by its relationship to our existing biases, so it opens us further up to manipulation.

  • 8a) The point here is that the information which gets taken up by others and spread by others (in the Richard Dawkins sense ‘memes’), obviously has some pull, and emitting lots of conflicting information with the same general push, may help some version of the information be selected and promoted naturally by other people.

9) US culture, in particular, is sunk in optimism and positive thinking. Problems can and will be solved. Recognising the problems can be defined as negative thinking, and is thought to bring on the destruction being recognised. In this framing, problems are easily forgotten, especially if there are too many of them. Supporters of President Trump, for example, frequently seem to forget his checkered business and political history, and always assume the best. Memories are removed by media not building histories and contexts for what is happening.

  • 9a) Sometimes this optimism functions as denial – as, for instance, when the underground right (the real deep state) insists that Trump is fighting child abuse against evil Democrats, despite his dubious sexual past, and his apparent lack of interest in this pursuit (judging by his twitter feed). Trump also lowers environmental standards and tries to make climate change worse. This will abuse the lives of everyone’s children, but that cannot be dealt with, so we will assume Trump is doing something good to save us. Neoliberalism has to pretend to goodness at the mythical level, because it does seem harmful to most people, even if it does not intend to be.
  • 9b) For some discussion of positivity and the response to the corona virus go to part 6 of this chain.

10) In neoliberal ‘misinformation society’ information does not exist to promote discussion between opposing groups, or accuracy testing. It exists to cause fracture and dislocation, and leave the wealth establishment in charge.

Information and Organisation

This is not an important part of this argument, but it may be helpful to remind people that organisations mis-transmit information, because of their structures. ‘Punitive Hierarchies’ in which the higher-ups have the right to punish or dismiss lower-downs, tend to set up systems whereby the lower-downs tend to give the higher-ups the information they think those higher-ups want to hear, as it is not worth facing punishment. The higher-ups also refuse to let those below know what is going on, to avoid challenge or to look ignorant. Eventually the whole organisation comes to live in fantasy, with decisions made on inaccurate data, and the expectations of what those people are reporting to, want to hear.

Siloing, which is a kind of sideways hierarchy adds to these effects, as parallel groups consider themselves rivalrous, or cannot communicate.

Authoritarian organisational structures distort information. The more punitive those organisations, the more information distortion occurs.

Information and Ownership of Media

In neoliberal societies, the main sources of information about what is happening tend to be owned by wealthy people or corporations. These main sources tend to rely on other corporations for advertising revenue. This reinforces the tendency of these sources to primarily express the views of their owners and controllers, and the corporate class in general.

Inside recognisably strongly ideological media, such as the Murdoch Empire, people tend to give the news the spin they think the hierarchy requires – especially when the culture asserts that journalists get sacked for going against the wishes of the hierarchy. Even if a journalist writes the ‘truth’ this can be altered by a sub-editor who wants to please their boss. Given that people in the organisation tend to read the organisation’s news, this increases the news bubble they live within, and the ideological basis of that news.

Information corporations can also sponsor supposedly independent information sources, which reinforce their message, or make the message seem truer because it comes from many apparent sources. Sources are not independent or unbiased because they agree with you and are on youtube or in a podcast. Indeed podcasts should be suspect, because the people making them are rarely expected to give sources, and there is less time for listener reflection.

We can, in general, classify media as neoliberal or extreme neoliberal. Some neoliberal media organisations may appear to support human rights, minorities and so on (the so called ‘liberal media’), and others will be more or less open in their contempt for ‘difference’ (the so called ‘conservative media’). All of them will support some version of the corporate establishment, or some faction within that establishment.

Now there may be more principled sources of information than others, but even these are subject to the forces listed above, and there is little countervailing force in current distributions of information which leads to correction, and so news is likely to reinforce neoliberal dominance in general. Fox and the New York Times both support the corporate establishment in general, Fox probably even more so.

People informed by mainstream sources will be told that other sources which have different opinions and different news should be dismissed as biased, and people are unlikely to read or view it. Neoliberal media often campaigns fiercely against non-corporately controlled media, as for example when the Murdoch Empire and the Australian Government campaign against the publicly owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation, for daring not to always support neoliberal truth.

The more the media can inculcate a neoliberal bias the less likely we are to have any kind of democratic counter-revolution, and the more likely we are to have an authoritarian result – as there is no necessary connection between capitalism and liberty for most people.

Information ‘Markets’

We could consider information as existing in an information market. In this market people may well tend to choose what pleases them, or is useful to them, as they do for other items. We cannot know the value of information in market terms in advance – effort put into gathering accurate information, may not be appreciated, or valued, by the market. Amounts of labour applied to checking has little to do with ‘value’ on the market, in terms of sales or power.

Eventually the market, as an information processing device, will encounter reality and feedback effects will be generated; inaccurate, or even partially accurate, information will cause problems – perhaps even begin collapse, or start off the normal processes of ‘creative destruction’. Possibly this collapse can be delayed as when taxpayers bailout large companies due to the effects of what seems to be normal neoliberal crony capitalism, or when corrupt political systems get bailed out by increasing misinformation or militarisation of ‘law enforcement’, or by distraction techniques such as pretending the President is doing something constructive.

Conclusion

The conveyance of relatively accurate ‘conscious’ information seems a difficult problem. Part of the problem is the structure and patterning of information collection and distribution. For the reasons we have discussed, even if some organisations where not trying to manipulate us to support their power and dominance, then the distribution of relatively accurate information would still face problems.

There is no need of a deliberate conspiracy for media to attempt to support the dominant groups who own them, but some media probably is conspiring to support those groups, and to discredit any information which would suggest that information issued by people opposing them has any value.

Factoring in the likely presence of neoliberals needing to deceive the people in order to retain power, and the normal distortion effects of media transmission that we have discussed above, the chance of our societies surviving (or even admitting) any major challenge is greatly diminished, largely because we won’t be informed enough to make reasonable decisions, and information will simply become a political tool.

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Basic Systems for eco-social analysis

September 2, 2020

This is another go at formulating a list of basic systems which need to be considered for eco-social analysis. For earlier versions see here and here.

As a guide to the factors involved in the socio-ecological dialectic we can point to a number of different, but interacting systems. We can use this list as a set of reminders for analysis and we can make general statements about how they interact. The order of importance of these systems is a matter for investigation.

The main systems are as follows:

Political System

The political system, includes the modes of struggle encouraged, enabled or disabled, the structure and divisions (factioning) of the State, the differing effects of different bases of power (monetary, communication, violence, hierarchy, religion etc), who gets into positions of power and how, and so on.

Economic System

The economic system can presently be described as ‘capitalist’. The economic system involves modes of appropriation, extraction, property, commodification, exchange, circulation of ‘products’, and accumulation of social power and wealth and so on.

In capitalism, political patternings tend to be describable as ‘plutocratic’, although different factions in the State can ally with different or competing factions in the economic system. For example, different government departments or political factions can support fossil fuels, renewables, or nuclear. The political system legitimates and enforces, allowable modes of extraction, property, pollution and regulates economic behaviour among different social groups. Economics always involves political as well as economic struggle.

The Extraction system is part of the economic system, but it might be useful to separate it out from the economic system because extraction is one of the prime ways in which economies interact with ecologies and because different kinds of economies can use similar extraction systems. Extraction not only involves extraction of what gets defined as ‘resources’ (minerals, naturally occurring substances such as oil or coal, and so on) but also the ways that human food gets extracted for consumption, via agriculture, gathering, hunting and so on. Clearly not all forms of extraction need to be destructive of the ecologies and geographies they depend upon, and investigating the differences may well produce useful insights.

Energy System

The energy system powers the economic system and is organised, at least in part, by the political and economic systems. Human labour is part of the energy system, and while not yet, if ever, superseded completely, can be supplemented and possibly dominated by technological sources of energy. Coal and oil power provides masses amounts more of directed energy than human labour, and this is important to understanding the patterning and possibilities of the economic and extraction system, and its relationship to colonial/imperial history.

Important parts of the energy system include the amounts of energy available for use, and the capacity for energy to be directed. Non-directable energy is wasted energy (entropy), and usually unavailable for constructive use.

The availability of energy is influenced by the energy return on energy input. The greater the amounts of energy applied to gain a humanly directable energy output, the less energy is available. Because food is necessary for human labour, cultivation of food can be considered to be part of the energy system.

Social power and economics may affect the ways that energy is distributed, what uses are considered legitimate and so on. However, the energy system also influences what can be done in both other systems, and the costs (social, aesthetic, ecological or monetary) which influence choices about the constituents of energy systems The system’s pollution products which are significant factors in producing climate and ecological change, will also limit what can be done.

As the energy system determines what energy is available for use, it is not an unreasonable assumption that social power and organisation will be partly built around the energy system and that changes in energy systems will change what can be done, and thus threaten established social orders and be resisted. If an energy transition goes ahead, it is likely that the established orders will try and preserve the patterns, of organisation, wealth and social power which have grown up under the old system.

Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems

Understanding the Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems is vital to understanding current energy transformations. We can define waste as “material which is re-processable by the economy or eco-system”, and pollution as not being so re-processable. ‘Dispersal’ is where some essential material is dispersed into the system, and becomes largely unavailable for reuse without ‘uneconomic’ expenditures of finance or energy – as occurs with helium and phosphorus. These concepts directly import the ecosystem into the economy, while pointing out that what counts as allowable waste, pollution or dispersal can change, economically, politically and ‘practically’.

When too much waste for the systems to re-process is issued, then waste becomes pollution. This is what has happened with CO2. CO2 is also dispersed in the atmosphere which makes CO2 extraction, as recommended as essential by the IPCC and IEA, difficult and costly in terms of energy.

Waste, pollution and dispersal from the energy system and from modes of extraction, enter into the political system because that system decides and regulates what can be emitted, and where, and who is too valuable to be poisoned by the pollution. The political makes the laws allowing, diminishing or preventing, pollution.

However, energy is not the only significant source of pollution, and if we are to discuss transition this has to be remembered.

Information about pollution from the energy system and the extraction system, provides a major driver for energy transformation, partly because this issue seems ‘economically’ politically and energetically solvable, while other sources of pollution seem less easy to deal with. This involves a likely politicisation of the information system. How would people, in general, become aware of pollution and who it is that primarily suffers from its effects?

Information System

What people become aware of, what can be understood or done depends on the Information System. This determines what feedback is available about what is happening in general, but also the information which allows people to act politically, economically, in response to the actions and reactions of the ecological system to other systems such as waste and pollution, or extraction.

Regulation is an important part of both the information and political systems. Information systems indicate the availability or coherence of regulation of energy and extraction, and the understanding of problems and predicaments. Regulation is based on information selection as well as political allegiance, and regulations can be opaque as well as easily decodable.

The political and economic systems also directly impact on the information systems, as politics often centres on propagation of politically favourable information and the inhibition of politically unfavourable information. Economic ownership and control of sources of information also impacts upon the information available. Economic power may also influence what information is collected and processed.

The information system does not have to be coherent, thus we can be both informed and disinformed of the progress of climate change by the system. Certain groups being more likely to be informed than others, even though everyone tends to frame themselves as being well informed. Information does not have to be accurate to have an effect, it is also part of socially constructed propaganda – as we can see with climate and covid denial, and this can influence political process, victories and inaction.

Geographic Systems

Then we have Geographic systems. Geography affects the layout of energy systems, the potential reach of political and economic systems, the ‘natural’ flow of air and water, changes in temperature, the availability of sunlight, and the kinds of extractions which are ‘economic’ or economic in the short term, but deleterious in the long term. Geography is relational, giving layout in space between spaces and constructions. Geography shapes and is shaped by politics, social activity, economics, pollution and so on. Geography constitutes the human sense of home, and transformation of geography or relations of geography can produce a sense of ‘unhoming’, or dislocation in place and in the future of place.

Planetary systems and boundaries

Finally we have planetary boundaries. The planetary boundaries are ways of conceiving the limits and constitution of ecosystems, and are, as such, fairly abstract. These boundaries represent systems necessary for human and planetary functioning.

They do not necessarily form the one system, and could be separated out for purposes of analysis. They act as guidelines, and probable reactive limits which are essential for the consideration of ‘eco-social’ relations, and the likely long term success of those relations.

These planetary boundaries appear to be either under significant pressure, or breaking down. Any global system which does not preserve or reinforce planetary systems will probably give impetus to global ecological collapse.

The systems are usually listed as involving: climatic stability, biospheric integrity (balance between species, rates of extinction etc), water cycles (availability of drinkable, non-poisonous water), biochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, dispersal of valuable materials, which literally form the metabolic rift, etc), ocean acidity or alkalinity, levels of particulates or micro-particulates, ozone levels, and the introduction of novel entities into the global ecology and their unknown systemic consequences (new chemicals, microplastics etc.). It is the functioning and disruption of these systems which make processes of pollution and extraction problematic. Thus the impact directly on society.

Conclusion and Advice

Recognition of the interactions of these systems, with their differing but interacting imperatives, seems vital to getting a whole and accurate picture of the problems and opportunities presented by energy transition.

All the systems that have been discussed here, are complex systems. They are composed of ‘nodes’ which modify themselves or change their responses in response to changes in the ‘system as a whole.’ The systems are unpredictable in specific. The further into the future that we imagine, the less likely our predictions are to be specifically accurate. We can, for example, predict that weather will get more tumultuous in general as we keep destroying the ecology, but we cannot predict the exact weather at any distance. Complex systems produce surprise and actions often have unexpected consequences. If we seek to apply a policy, we cannot expect it to work exactly as we think it should. For example, the political move to make ‘markets,’ the most important institution, did not deliver either efficiency or liberty, as was expected. In all cases of actions within complex systems we should seek for unintended consequences. Sometimes the only realistic way to approach unintended consequences is to realise that our theory could not predict those events, and without looking we might never even have seen the events, or realised their connection to what we did. Working in such systems, all politics becomes experimental.

Complex systems do not have to be seek the best conditions for human beings. From a human point of view, they can be maladaptive. For example, our social system can be maladative and destructive of our means of living.

People involved in promoting Energy Transformation have to deal with the various complex systems we have discussed above. The complexity does not mean we cannot make any predictions, although we need to treat them cautiously.

  • People engaged in transition have to consider the effects of the political systems involved, and be aware that politics influences what is likely to be possible. A transition may be delayed by political action, and political patterning, no matter how sensible or affordable the transition is.
  • A transition has to fit in with economic patterns or its supporters have to be prepared to change those patterns. It may help or hinder the process if patterns of extraction, property and control are not changed. This reinstates the economic process as both a political and business process. Patterns of extraction also have to be less harmful than previous patterns or the harm will be continued, even if in a different manner.
  • We have to have the available energy to build the transformed system. As we are supposedly aiming to replace the existing harmful system without lowering the energy availability, this may prove difficult. Where does the energy to build the new system come from if not from the old? We also need to avoid using renewables to simply add to energy availability, without reducing energy from fossil fuels. Considering these problems may lead to conclusions about the necessity of degrowth, in the same way as slowing down the damage from extraction may do. Changing the energy system is a political problem, and may require a change in the economic system as well as in power relations.
  • The new system and the path of transformation, has to reduce pollution and extraction damage, or ecological and climate crises will continue, and planetary boundaries will be given no chance to recover. A transition plan which does not consider this problem is probably futile. Likewise a transition plan should consider diminishing the dispersal of rare and valuable materials. More of what is currently pollution and dispersal has to be transformed to waste, in amounts the systems can process.
  • The current information system does not seem to be functioning in favour of the transition. It seems highly politicised and does not report ecological feedback accurately, either denying crisis, or delaying the supposed arrival of crisis. Our current information system is largely owned and controlled by the neoliberal fossil fuel based establishment, which is defending its power, wealth and ways of living in the world. Without an independent information system, it will be impossible to win the political struggle. At the same time accurate information will be attacked and dismissed as political. At the least, people engaged in energy transformation have to be aware of the nature of complex systems and the normal arising of unintended and unexpected consequences. We need an information system that allows us to perceive such consequences, without attacking the transformation as a whole.
  • Geography will affect the layout and possibilities of the transition. Renewables appear to require far more land than fossil fuels per unit of energy although fracking and coal seam gas seem to require similar amounts of land and do far more permanent damage to that land. The capacity of renewables to take up agricultural land has to be factored in, as does the capacity of any new form of energy generation to ‘unhome’ people – especially fossil fuels which are also poisonous.
  • Finally, the transformation should aim to avoid disrupting the planetary boundary systems as much as possible, with the longer term targets of restoring those systems. Pointing to the range of boundaries will possibly remind people that climate change is not the only problem we face, and it should be clear that no energy, or social, system is going to survive if it violates these boundaries in the long term.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »