15 April 2019
14 April 2019
Misled By Donkeys
Recently I discovered the group, Led By Donkeys. They began by hijacking ads on billboards putting quotes from politicians in the form of Tweets (though in general the quotes were not tweets). They focus on catching politicians out changing their minds about Brexit. Many of them have done so.
It's funny in a kind of slapstick, people really are getting hurt, kind of way. Today they posted something on Twitter which appeared to show hardcore Neoliberal politician, Jacob Rees Mogg, saying "I don't advocate leaving the EU". And a video of him saying those words at a speech to the Neoliberal think tank the Centre for Policy Research.
I wanted to share this more widely and went looking for a YouTube version of the speech, which I duly found. It was just 20 minutes so I listened until I came to the part. It was interesting to see and hear the man outline his ideology. He is a man of his time and place: an upper class, Roman Catholic, patrician with inherited wealth and privilege. He has all the prejudices you would expect from a man of his class and background. He's pretty much everything I hate.
However, when I listened to what he actually said I was appalled to discover that Led By Donkeys had been dishonest in their editing, making him seem to say the opposite of what he did say. Now just to be clear, I don't like anything about Rees Mogg. To emphasis this I will refer to him now as "the little toad". At some cost to my mental health I have transcribed the relevant part of his speech here. It's about two minutes worth. I've tried to make this accurate - the first part has many fillers, but he hits his stride and is a lot less hesitant in the second part.
The little toad is clearly anti-EU as the EU existed in 2012 (and still does). The renegotiation he is insisting on as a criteria for remaining in the EU is truly fundamental. He wants to get rid of all the regulatory powers that the EU have over people like him - investment bankers. He believes in the kooky free market utopia. Even though the first round of Liberalism (Classical Liberalism) was a disaster that degraded all of humanity Neoliberals want a second go. Of course we have seen what an unregulated finance industry does. It brings down the entire global financial system. So those of us who want to stay in the EU are partly seeking protection from being devoured by toads.
On the other hand it is widely perceived in the UK that the EU imposes far too many petty and unnecessary rules on trade. The EU attempts to micromanage trade, for example telling member states what shaped fruit they can sell. This micromanaging tendency while allowing the finance industry to go rogue without any oversight is deeply problematic. The EU is far from perfect but we cannot change it from the outside. Already in 2012 it is apparent that the little toad sees the EU as beyond reform. Saying that he doesn't advocate leaving is merely a rhetorical device.
Of course this perception of an interfering EU has been stoked by the elements of the media that share the little toad's ideology - they all want to go back to before the Great Reform Act of 1832 so they can enslave the population and make unlimited profits while doing unlimited damage to the environment. And they must be stopped.
In any case the group Led By Donkeys has clearly set out to mislead people on the little toad. I don't feel sorry for the odious little toad. Fuck him. But if a group calling itself "Led By Donkeys" is so tempted by success that they flirt with being donkeys themselves by manipulating the words of the most odious of politicians because they couldn't find something actually odious that he said, then we are in trouble.
If your mantra is "they are dishonest" then you better make damn sure that you are scrupulously honest or you are no better than those you mock.
It's funny in a kind of slapstick, people really are getting hurt, kind of way. Today they posted something on Twitter which appeared to show hardcore Neoliberal politician, Jacob Rees Mogg, saying "I don't advocate leaving the EU". And a video of him saying those words at a speech to the Neoliberal think tank the Centre for Policy Research.
I wanted to share this more widely and went looking for a YouTube version of the speech, which I duly found. It was just 20 minutes so I listened until I came to the part. It was interesting to see and hear the man outline his ideology. He is a man of his time and place: an upper class, Roman Catholic, patrician with inherited wealth and privilege. He has all the prejudices you would expect from a man of his class and background. He's pretty much everything I hate.
However, when I listened to what he actually said I was appalled to discover that Led By Donkeys had been dishonest in their editing, making him seem to say the opposite of what he did say. Now just to be clear, I don't like anything about Rees Mogg. To emphasis this I will refer to him now as "the little toad". At some cost to my mental health I have transcribed the relevant part of his speech here. It's about two minutes worth. I've tried to make this accurate - the first part has many fillers, but he hits his stride and is a lot less hesitant in the second part.
"...So much in this county, so much that we want to do is prohibited by Europe, um, and so much that we don't want to do is enforced by, by Europe. I'm not an advocate of withdrawal from it, um, but instead I want a fundamental renegotiation of terms, and this isn't code for saying that I want to withdraw from it but I'm just not brave enough.
Ah, the reason for saying I don't think we should withdraw is that the day after we withdrew we would be negotiating a free trade pact, ah, with the European Union so we might as well stay in and get what we want rather than nominally go out and straight back in again. Ah, and I think UKIP's position on that, ah, is essentially the same; very quickly going back in in some form of EU. Ah, but we must we willing to take unilateral action if we haven't renegotiated to avoid being dragged down economically.
In my view Europe has decided that it cannot really compete with the emerging world and must therefore try to create an unthreatening but declining cocoon for its members. It has opted to apply the big state on an international scale imposing restrictions and uncompetitive practices across a whole continent to have a level playing field, but a level playing field of inefficiency and high cost. This has made the single market a millstone rather than an opportunity for commerce to bloom in what should be the largest free trade area in the world.
Jacob Rees Mogg, Speech at the Centre of Policy Studies, 2012. Verbatim.
The little toad is clearly anti-EU as the EU existed in 2012 (and still does). The renegotiation he is insisting on as a criteria for remaining in the EU is truly fundamental. He wants to get rid of all the regulatory powers that the EU have over people like him - investment bankers. He believes in the kooky free market utopia. Even though the first round of Liberalism (Classical Liberalism) was a disaster that degraded all of humanity Neoliberals want a second go. Of course we have seen what an unregulated finance industry does. It brings down the entire global financial system. So those of us who want to stay in the EU are partly seeking protection from being devoured by toads.
On the other hand it is widely perceived in the UK that the EU imposes far too many petty and unnecessary rules on trade. The EU attempts to micromanage trade, for example telling member states what shaped fruit they can sell. This micromanaging tendency while allowing the finance industry to go rogue without any oversight is deeply problematic. The EU is far from perfect but we cannot change it from the outside. Already in 2012 it is apparent that the little toad sees the EU as beyond reform. Saying that he doesn't advocate leaving is merely a rhetorical device.
Of course this perception of an interfering EU has been stoked by the elements of the media that share the little toad's ideology - they all want to go back to before the Great Reform Act of 1832 so they can enslave the population and make unlimited profits while doing unlimited damage to the environment. And they must be stopped.
In any case the group Led By Donkeys has clearly set out to mislead people on the little toad. I don't feel sorry for the odious little toad. Fuck him. But if a group calling itself "Led By Donkeys" is so tempted by success that they flirt with being donkeys themselves by manipulating the words of the most odious of politicians because they couldn't find something actually odious that he said, then we are in trouble.
If your mantra is "they are dishonest" then you better make damn sure that you are scrupulously honest or you are no better than those you mock.
I support Extinction Rebellion.
For real masochists, here is the speech timed to start just before the transcribed portion. Mind you watching from the start one gets a better idea of what Neoliberalism sounds like. Know your enemy.
13 April 2019
Fuck Neoliberalism
A great theme of Neoliberalism is the benefit of competition. Competition is the main tool in the neoliberal tool box, so they treat most problems like nails. Primary and secondary education doesn't benefit from competition and yet the focus is relentlessly on offering "choice". If people only have a choice, the arguments go, then the competition will improve the poorer schools. In fact it simply makes the poorer schools worse off.
This idea about competition is Victorian. It is evolution, but from Huxley rather than Darwin. It was Huxley who coined the term "survival of the fittest". This was part of a culture in which the British Empire systematically exploited its own people and the people of all the places it conquered. This created a huge class of people who never had to work for a living, including most Victorian intellectuals.
The rapacious Empire needed some kind of intellectual justification. Some moral justification came from Christianity and the accompanying white supremacy that continues to dog Christian Europe. But it was the atheistic intellectuals who provided the ongoing arguments for the present day bourgeoisie: Utilitarianism, Mercantilism, and economic Liberalism.
In fact Neoliberalism can be seen as a reaction against the rise of social liberalism in the post-war years, especially in America. As Lewis Powell puts it in his famous Memo to the American Chamber of Commerce (1971):
One of his big concerns was curbs on doing business to prevent them damaging the environment.
This idea about competition is Victorian. It is evolution, but from Huxley rather than Darwin. It was Huxley who coined the term "survival of the fittest". This was part of a culture in which the British Empire systematically exploited its own people and the people of all the places it conquered. This created a huge class of people who never had to work for a living, including most Victorian intellectuals.
The rapacious Empire needed some kind of intellectual justification. Some moral justification came from Christianity and the accompanying white supremacy that continues to dog Christian Europe. But it was the atheistic intellectuals who provided the ongoing arguments for the present day bourgeoisie: Utilitarianism, Mercantilism, and economic Liberalism.
In fact Neoliberalism can be seen as a reaction against the rise of social liberalism in the post-war years, especially in America. As Lewis Powell puts it in his famous Memo to the American Chamber of Commerce (1971):
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack.
One of his big concerns was curbs on doing business to prevent them damaging the environment.
"Current examples of the impotency of business, and of the near-contempt with which businessmen's views are held, are the stampedes by politicians to support almost any legislation related to 'consumerism' or to the 'environment.'" - Lewis Powell, 1971The conservative businessmen of the USA did what Powell suggested, though many critics suggest that his memo is more descriptive than prescriptive. Conservative businessmen began to buy up the news media and appoint editors sympathetic to their cause; they bought chairs in business studies and founded universities which taught economic liberalism; they funded PhD programs; they founded think-tanks which employed the new PhDs to keep the conservative businessmen's message in the public eye and to lobby politicians; they spent billions lobbying politicians and employed armies of lawyers, psychologists, speech writers, and other graduates to shape their message for maximum effectiveness.
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