PART THREE OF A SERIES.
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| Copyright J Michael Haynes, 2008
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How do you think he'll react to you when you learn what a real revolution is? You don't know what a revolution is. If you did, you wouldn't use that word.
-Malcolm X, Message to the Grassroots, 1963
The previous essay in this series details why we are sold the neoliberal system. This post describes how we are sold it. The first rule of the system we live in is you do not talk about the system we live in. The second rule is you blame the financial crisis on the previous administration. It's oft repeated that it was Huxley, not Orwell, that correctly predicted the future. Arguably Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is better known than Brave New World, perhaps considering its relevance during the cold war; however, rarely is it considered that they were both right about elements of present society. Huxley's nightmare was not that the people would be deprived of freedom and subjugated by a totalitarian state - it's they would be so distracted by a deluge of entertainment they wouldn't care. How ironic a 'reality television' programme brought that vision to life and used an Orwellian term - Big Brother.
Orwell's parable of the Soviet Union under Stalin never transpired in the West, though his observations about the use of language were prescient... to a degree. The so-called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis loosely states that we define our reality through language, and therefore a language influences the perception of reality. In Nineteen Eighty-Four the language of Airstrip One is Newspeak which is an engineered form of English. With a vastly reduced and simplified vocabulary, Newspeak is intended to limit thought on the basis that it would have no word for a concept such as 'freedom' and therefore no-one would be able to express or even conceive of such an heretical thought in the totalitarian state. The idea of a language being used to completely prevent particular thoughts is now debunked, though abusing language to obfuscate is all too common. We call it doublespeak, coined from Orwell's term doublethink.
You don't have to look far to find examples. Everyone knows the phrase 'collateral damage' and we know what it signifies. But what does it mean? 'Collateral' is something next to another object, and in this case it has been damaged by some action. The meaning of the phrase cannot be ascertained because it is a euphemism, which requires one first know the concept being obliquely discussed (civilian or allied casualties in the process of waging war). Not unlike a secret code, politically correct language allows the expression of antithetical ideas - a cynic might say any Congressional bill can be understood by the complete opposite of its name (or its incredibly forced acronym). This use of language to distance understanding rather than foster it came to the fore during the war in Vietnam. Faced with unprecedented media scrutiny and the necessity to maintain public support for the war, the United States military was forced to control the narrative by defining it. This media management would ultimately lead to nonsensical statements such as 'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it'. It is still occurring right now with the hunger strike ongoing at Guantánamo Bay - which you may recall houses 'enemy combatants'. 'Force feeding' immediately conjures up a mental image which is damaging to the national interest, therefore the staff at the base repeatedly insist they do not force feed. Rather they conduct 'enteral feeding', which, though it is a valid medical term for the procedure, will require most people to look up a definition in order to understand what is being said. The action, however, is the same no matter what it's called.
Once the preserve of wartime, it is today always government policy to control information flow (particularly damage-limitation via so-called spin-doctors). The manner in which the Obama administration is hunting down whistle-blowers testifies to this. You may ask why it is necessary to exercise such control. Consider why anyone would operate a free newspaper of the variety seen in subways around the world. To paraphrase Orwell: he who controls the present controls the future. By reducing the barrier to entry so low as to give away the newspaper, it introduces the editorial angle or ideology of the proprietor to those who would not pay for one of such inclination. The cost of distribution is then covered by advertising, as the real product here is the readership which the owner delivers to advertisers. Mental marketshare is gained. Controlling information is a means of controlling people. If public understanding is a danger to the state, then it follows the public is inherently a threat to the state. It is all about retaining power. If Americans knew how unequal their society was, they'd take action to rectify it. It's a hallmark of several states that their establishment through revolution is glorified, yet their systems of government designed in the late eighteenth century are believed fit for eternity - resting on the laurels of 1777. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson held that it was the way of nature for government to accrue more powers, and that there must be periodic rebellion to re-establish the residency of power with the people. Any action to equalise American society would consequently overthrow the elites (tax-dodging billionaires, the octogenarian senators, etc) that dominate it and in whose interest it is to continue the system that benefits them, and therefore such sentiments are kept in check by both Orwellian linguistics and Huxleyan pleasure.
I've stated before in this series that the Tea Party and/or affiliated movements on the right are not in fact revolutionary movements as their appropriated imagery purports, but in fact reactionary movements seeking restoration of right-wing power. Their bizarre attempts to paint Obama as some vanguard of Eurasian 'democratic socialism' reveals the sheer gullibility of particular segments of the American population to prolonged covert indoctrination - in this case, a Pavlovian response to the word 'socialism'. No attempt is made to understand it beyond the trained behaviour of reflexive rejection. I've reproduced the image seen above just to visualise poor analogical thinking (as well as Faux Cyrillic which is a serious pet hate). Take the initial statement that must have led to the creation of the image - 'Obama is a socialist'. No he isn't - that's even more ridiculous than him being a Muslim. This led to the drawing of an faulty analogy with the name of Hitler's ruling party, which indeed was derived from the phrase 'National Socialist' but the slightest knowledge of European history would reveal the Nazis were vehemently anti-communist. This leads into the next leap of Leninism as socialism and that Marxism and socialism are interchangeable. The image does manage to make one correct connection - none of these individuals' respective governments were in fact socialist (there's a hint of New Left interpretation of Fascism and Stalinism as dual realisations of totalitarianism, which I subscribe to). Unfortunately that's the complete opposite of the intention of the image.
The author of the image apparently confuses political change with radical socio-political upheaval. Obama promised change. Yes, and what candidate in the history of politics hasn't? The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, on the other hand, were totalitarian regimes that attempted to radically reshape society. In no way does this reveal the forty fourth president as a clandestine Bolshevik. The amusing (or sad) fact is that Obama is just as much a figure of the system as either of his presidential competitors and the frothing at the mouth by predominantly Republican voters would be pitiful if it were a cute puppy struck by rabies but is instead a menace and needs to be taken out and shot. To say that he is an example of charismatic authority is fairly ridiculous and to call him radical when he has been checked at every turn is the absolute antithesis of the word (the so-called Obama-care is nothing like the healthcare systems it was intended to emulate).
The mainstream American understanding, if it can be called that, of the word socialism reveals much about political discourse across the Atlantic. The purpose of language is to communicate and the phonemes we combine form words which represent concepts and objects. Complex ideas are often neologisms which are built by compounding and the meaning of an unfamiliar word can be guessed through etymology (perhaps with a little knowledge of Latin or Greek). Where a word is subverted in the manner 'socialism' has, a new meaning is imposed onto the word. The word itself has not changed, rather a convenient mental image is provided and the listener or reader need not attempt to understand it. Thus, liberalism is a political epithet in the US, conjuring images of rampant abortions and flag burning, despite it being a political ideology of liberty - a word that appears on a lot of American iconography and indeed was a founding principle of the United States. The political debate is then debased into one of images good and bad rather than the merits of ideas. Neil Postman would remark this is the influence of television compared to the highly literate society that constituted the early United States - that presidents like Jefferson would be recognised for their writing style whereas JFK is known for his physical appearance.
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| Tony Benn |
[...] the UK is only superficially governed by MPs and the voters who elect them. Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, and some new Chartist agitation might be born and might quickly gather momentum.
History already shows what happens to political change when the system is left intact. The Bolsheviks took over the Tsarist state and essentially continued its character - there was the secret police and gulags before the revolution, and there was the secret police and gulags after. It was unsurprising that an absolutist strongman was in power not twenty years after the revolution. In the West, either the institutions of power must be swept away or the forces that have infiltrated them must be banished. The political charade continues to debate the adequate level of austerity while the economic system remains entirely unquestioned even after the crash of 2008. Anyone who suggests the neoliberal economic model is at fault is a loon who subscribes to the discredited ideology of the Soviet Union. With the public pacified either through being unable to penetrate the political euphemisms, distracted by celebrity genitalia on the television, or too busy wondering which protein shake to buy, the ruling elite is free to further enrich itself. A critical mass will not be achieved until the masses are critical. The UK government wants to cripple the National Health Service through the ever greater involvement of the free market. You'll hardly find anyone in favour of such private intrusion into social provision, yet members of the opposition Labour Party front bench are taking money to speak at private health provider functions. For the public will to be heard when the representative body has sold-out requires the citizen to represent his and herself - to be seen in public rallying against it. The whole point of having political representation is that the voting public can work every day knowing the political class is fighting their corner in their place. Thus, even with majority backing, only a vocal minority will be seen whilst the rest are prevented from participation by employment responsibilities. Hence students have historically been the vanguard of political and social upheaval - though they are not immune to the Huxleyan methods used on the general population.
In the past two years there have been uprisings in the Arab world (for better or worse depending on country), and now we're seeing unrest in newly developed countries like Turkey and Brazil - that the latter is experiencing unrest only a year before hosting the World Cup (and three before the Olympics) suggests the political elite forgot the ancient saying is 'bread and circuses'. I wished the public had seen through the London Enter-Through-Westfield-Shopping-Mall Olympics, but expressing such a desire might get me arrested for incitement or sedition (perhaps then Google might come to understand why I have no intention of using my real name online). For Leninists, the resistance imbued by cultural hegemony toward revolution is why it is necessary to have a vanguard of professional revolutionaries in order to, essentially, proselytise the people. Previously in this series I had wondered how leaderless movements can arise without a revolutionary cadre corrupting it, forming a new elite. Facetiously I suggested we all wear Guy Fawkes masks when organising, yet in the internet age of niche media I suspect the professional vanguard is redundant when it comes to raising awareness. With libraries worth of information explaining the political and social theories available online there is surely plentiful opportunity for self-education. It seems to work for Islam after all, though 'self-radicalisation' might be a bad analogy there.
As time ticks by the internal contradictions of capitalism are piling up. The term 'American exceptionalism' was first used to describe the conditions extant in the US that had thwarted Leninist revolution. America rode out the Great Depression with progressive policies while Europe underwent radical shifts. Later, both Europe and America prospered in the post-war era with the same progressivism which utilised the productivity of capitalism to provide social democracy. If there was ever a time for a new New Deal, it is in this period since the financial crisis. And yet the political consensus is toward further eroding the social safety nets that are needed more than ever. The abandonment of the post-war consensus and the pursuit of greater inequality puts increasing strain on the forces of resistance. The old proletarian aristocracy of the West does have a breaking point, and should trends continue we will soon find out how far it can be pushed.
Based on drafts written August 2011, 30th November 2012, and 18th June 2013
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