This is from Martin Wolf of the FT:
Worryingly appropriate.
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Yes indeed.
I thoroughly agree.
Very worrying indeed. The ERG & Associates have very successfully hi-jacked the term ‘The People’ to mean and represent a distinct majority of the adult population, which is far removed from factual reality. Even the wining majority in the referendum was well below any threshold that could rationally be said to be representative of ‘The People’, viz. those of voting age. Simultaneously they have demonised the majority as ‘traitors’. Smart tactics worthy of Edward Bernays if not Goebbels himself.
Unfortunately, after almost 3 1/2 years of endorsement by the MSM, it’s now too late to establish the truth. If Johnson wins the election (which I’ve pessimistically predicted he will) the future for UK parliamentary democracy will not be in safe hands. The nation’s immediate future is looking bleak.
If only there was a strong, united opposition with enough clout and voter appeal to convincingly challenge this mendacious rhetoric emanating from the Tory right. I just can’t think of anyone with that ability. Suggestions?
Memo to self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep9Vzb6R_58
Ofc I meant ‘winning majority’ not ‘wining majority, although the two are probably not mutually exclusive! My typos are becoming almost as frequent as yours, Richard 🙂
Me, make a tipo? Never
The parallels between now and the 1930’s are certainly striking – incompetent populist rabble-rousing snake oil salesmen stirring up mobs for power with no clue of or care for what the consequences might be, institutions of law reviled (this time even by those charged with making law), deliberate subversion of and disdain for democracy by media and politicians alike.
This time we have knowledge of that history – we’re even aware of our ability to cause our own extinction – and still so few ‘names’ raise their voices in question.
I wonder if this is part of the normal, even inevitable, cycle of intelligent life throughout the universe?
If there were a god, and there isn’t, it might have created this whole episode of “The Earth” – the one about humanity – all for the single sick closing joke that we knew it would kill our children but we did it anyway.
Not even as funny as the episode of “Red Dwarf” where (spoiler alert) time flows backwards and Cat takes a dump in reverse.
Payback for “Life Of Brian” I expect.
Yes. Same propaganda methods, same language carefully chosen, borrowed from the man himself. It always starts with language.
Not a Nazi because the ideology being pushed through is different, extreme liberalism doesn’t have to use racial, religious or ethnic divisions, just socio-economic ones.
But Johnson is a racist, the ERG are racists, so are many in the Tory party, they have White Supremacists in their ranks now that UKIP has been absorbed by the party, but they do not yet have the power to spread that racist ideology to the majority of their followers, I think…or hope.
The demons unleashed will be very hard to control, and the divisions created will make it difficult to put them back in their box for a long time.
It is a bit rich for Martin Wolf, one of the most well-connected and influential economic journalists evangelising free markets, globalisation, commodification and financialisation during the Non-Inflationary, Constantly Expanding (NICE) era, to be issuing this jeremiad now. He may have being exhibiting flickers of repentence occasionally since the GFC, but he was one the high priests who blessed the sowing of the dragons’ teeth by his ‘friends in high places’ – governing politicians and central bankers. And now we are reaping the harvest of Trump, Brexit and the rise or consolidation of authoritarian regimes in China, Russia, India, Brazil and Turkey.
A man can change his mind
I think we have to accept Wolf has, to some degree
There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth..etc.
But he, and he is not alone in this, is drawing an unjustified comparison between the rise and consolidation of the Nazi regime and the current Brexit fiasco – as well as the election of Trump. The proximate causes may be a conflict between plebiscitary democracy and an ossified system of parliamentary democracy (Brexit fiasco) or the risk that the electoral college system may generate an outcome that deviates from the result of the popular vote (the election of Trump). But all are symptoms of deeper political and economic failures.
Keynes’s “Economic Consequences of the Peace” remains the locus classicus for describing the failures that led inexoraby, but not inevitably, to Hitler’s ascendancy. However, we have yet to see an adequate “mea culpa” from the influencers and practitioners who created the conditions for the Brexit mess. Nor have we seen any clear resolve by them or their successors to remedy the failures that generated these conditions. Demonising the often intemperate language of those advocating Brexit by comparing it to the language used by the Nazis is just a self-serving, self-exonerating lazy example of the validity of Godwin’s Law. Parliamentary or legislature and presidential elections have not been suspended either here or in the US. Nor will they be.
Interestingly though, in the current edition of The Economist, the house journal of those pushing free markets, globalisation, commodification, financialisation and a shrunken public sector, there is a leader and a special report concluding that major reform of the current monetary policy/fiscal policy mix is required.
It may be just another straw in the wind (and they couldn’t resist a swipe or two at “wacky” MMT), but there is no doubt the policy mood music is changing. It’s unfortunate that it looks almost impossible to assemble a democratic plurality in favour of a clear programme of policy reform.
my oh my
A respectable journalist ‘states the bleeding obvious’.
Chesterton said of certain evangelists ‘they do not read the bible, but their bible’.
This is the beauty of the referendum, which Hitler used before he took over Austria. once it is won, the winner by virtue of winning defines what it is, with no say for ‘loyal opposition’ who are condemned as opposing the will of the people. The recurrence of the world ‘will’, (Triumf Des Willens – Leni Riefenstahl) over the decades.
I commented a couple of weeks ago on The Toxic Stain of Johnson: “Now we have a real disrupter, a neo-fascist, ie someone who claims to know the “will of the people” and asserts that it only through him that this “will of the people” can be delivered. It is a very dangerous situation.”
Can I withdraw the “neo-” part?
Yes
Curious to know whether it’s mention of the primary target of the most vile form of Tory propaganda – or mention of the nature of the propaganda itself that this blog chooses to censor.
I think you are seeking to raise issues that are not relevant to this blog
That is contrary to the comment policy
If the reason that Tory propaganda is approaching 1930’s levels is considered irrelevant to this blog then perhaps this blog aspires to a level of political detachment that amounts to acqiescence.
David
With respect, I am well aware of what you are saying and there are o9ther arenas for you to raise the issue in
This is not the one
It never claimed to cover everything, and does not
So please do not waste my time with false aspersions – they are inappropriate and unbecoming for you
Richard
Assuming one still believes in a mixed economy rather than a ‘Clause 4’ economy, then Martin Wolf, Adair Turner, the FT and others are amongst those looking seriously for alternatives. They are joined by many in the business world who recognise the dysfunctional current shareholder model, financialisation and the negative role of much of the City, the failure to invest in people and share wealth equitably and not least the looming disaster of climate change.
Labour would be a lot more credible and powerful if it could be seen to be reaching out to potential allies in the business world. At the moment it feels to be too wedded (at the top of the party) to what looks like rehashed 60s/70s socialism as the proposed alternative to failed 1980s neoliberalism. And yes I’ve read the last manifesto and there is much to agree with, plus the move to accepting GND.
However, still not enough on how to create the wealth that we need to rebuild public services, create sustainable (in all senses) jobs, and share more equitably.
I’ll put my tin hat on and go and hide behind the sofa…
I think anyone with an6bsense has to realise we will have a mixed economy
The debate is only about where the line between stats and private is drawn and what the regulations are
But the answer is still that there will be a significant private sector
The private sector foments war to sell weapons and it conceals the extent of poison produced by its cars.
It lobbies, bribes and bullies governments to prevent regulation of its freedom to sell whatever it wants for whatever price it can get away with at whatever cost to the planet and its inhabitants, to pay little or no tax and to nationalise its losses and privatise its profits.
And it always has.
The money it’s spent on war, cold war and propaganda to kill and discredit Socialism is incalculable.
The arguments against capitalism are becoming simpler – the minds that invent our toys will continue to invent even if they’re prevented from acquiring the wealth of the whole planet in return for one good idea.
The fact that AI so easily and so thoroughly trounced medical diagnosis by GP strongly indicates that business management, law, accountancy, banking etc. will soon be the province of a $20 app.
“Entrepreneurship can’t be computerised” you say?
Are you willing to bet everything you own?
If I’m even close on any of the above, private industry and commerce will need to come up with a new USP to stay relevant in AI World.