This is horribly on the button. So much so, there's not much of the usual swearing:
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What Pie says about the Left is exactly what Tim Snyder says. They have allowed themselves to be sucked into intermediate indicators of the real problem (inequality between groups) rather than looking at the bigger picture, which is that ALL these groups in society are feeling the pinch in living standards, aspirations and economic security.
Thus, the march towards authoritarianism is fuelled. Misery and fear is the oxygen of Fascists.
It’s tinker-man management to be honest from the Left who just need to grab the problem by the scruff of the neck and deal with it as it has been dealt with in the past.
At the moment I am reading a lot of Samuel Beckett and I am finding that his use of absurdity helps me to cope although I know only too well that this absurdity is actually going to hurt me and others quite a lot. Therefore I am more likely to smile wryly than laugh.
The absurdity is how Pie describes it above – what I saw was actually typically American the other day – I saw the veneration of a bunch of criminals being lauded as and posing as saviours – the abusers promising to save the abused essentially from themselves – blaming Panama or green policy etc., to keep the subterfuge going.
It will be how America ‘liberated’ Iraq, or the Vietnamese and countless other places – through mendacity, violence and brute force.
Much to agree with
Like the rise of Hitler voters in most countries appear to lack the radar to recognise politicians who pimp for the rich!
Of course it’s awful, but lets face it, one of the reasons we are so horrified at T***p, M**k & F****e, is the realisation that finally it is happening to “US”. By “us”, I mean not only our countries, but the economic & social devastation is beginning to reach OUR part of our societies.
What Richard has called the age of compassion post WW2 in UK did make a difference here, but we continued to benefit at the expense of others around the world. Several centuries of empire colonialism and oil wars have still left millions of people suffering, around the world, and not being noticed. We released our colonies to compete as “free countries” in the swamp of “free” trade, IMF Loans, and our exploitation of their resources. We organised international institutions like the UN to suit ourselves, we formed nuclear clubs, to keep the peace, and fought real and proxy wars that brought misery to millions but at least protected OUR access to vital resources. We ignored genocides and famines as long as they weren’t too close to home and didn’t involve “people like us”.
We organised hypocritical moral panics occasionally, (but only about sex, never about injustice or poverty oroppression).
And now the chickens have come home to roost. Fascism is back, and once it has brutalised immigrants, non-white Americans, and the poor, once some minorities have suffered, again, the billionaires will turn on the majorities. The tariffs will hit THEIR pockets. The failing infrastructure will affect THEIR (OUR) power, gas and water and food supplies, their health and social care. I do not know how the masses will react. That is the unknown bit. The billionaires will do whatever is in their own short term interests.
I find myself thinking in the language of an old fashioned hellfire preacher about judgement, and reaping what you sow. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so old fashioned any more.
Here in the UK & Europe, although we don’t deserve it, we have a chance. We have a year at the most, to watch what is happening over the pond and change our ways, to do what the USA Democrats never did, and realise that this is OUR fault, for tolerating an unjust status quo of the neoliberal slippery slope to ruination, for not caring enough about the unjust suffering of our neighbours as long as things were okay for US.
It will involve some old fashioned things that went out of fashion long ago – especially in politics, and sadly, in most other disciplines too, even religion – namely, confession (“I was wrong and I am sorry”) and repentance (“I am going to behave differently in future”).
Are you listening Labour Party?
I EXPECT billionaires to behave badly, how else did they get so offensively wealthy? What disgusts me is when supposedly caring social democrats and socialists see no evil, and hear no evil and line us up for exactly the same result in four years time.
Apologies for the hyperbole, but nuance takes even more words than tub thumping.
Lets KUTGW, because they aren’t going to win. Hitler didn’t.
I agree, they won’t in the end.
But we are at the beginning.
“When the left offer no solutions, people will begin to believe the lies of the right.” The problem in a nutshell.
I agree – left too focused on issues which, frankly I don’t understand & care even less about.
A particular problem is (as Aurelian calls them) the “professional managerial class” (PMCs) who infest most bureaucracies and many other orgs. An example is here: https://bhesco.co.uk/ – it deals with mostly community energy and systems that generate electricity. It employs no electrical engineers. Funny that.
Or this: talking to a career civil servant @ Euro’ Commission, DG Ag – I explained the business opportunity ref data-centres, heat & greenhouses – he thought it was all to do with sustainability (it’s not – it is to do with resilience – what happened to Valencia last year will happen to Almeria – where everybodies out of season fruit & veg comes from). He thought the Commission would be unable to help & unable to organise cross-cutting action. (I burst out with laughter @ that point).
Many people in positions of authority are “nice people” but don’t know anything that is of use. Brussels NGOs – all focused on “policy” not action (“Action Plans” tend to be policy in drag) but also know nothing of use. The top bananas – the Commissioners (& their cabinets) are likewise wholly ignorant with respect to their dossiers – and in some respects are weather-vanes – pointing in the direction where the lobby wind is strongest (e.g. the VW offices in Bx – OVERLOOK the bloody Berlaymont where the Commissioners sit). Guy I know met the Commissioners for a weekend. He came away frightened at what they did not know.
It is the same in the UK. McSweeney’s CV is pathetic – Mr Dustbin man (or something like that)…..& he advises the PM. The Committee on climate change? populated by PMCs – nice people – they know nothing. Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe (the end bits) was not fiction – we are living it now with incompetents and know nothings populating all levels of the body politic and PMCs pretending to manage things with little or no formal knowledge.
A great deal to agree with, especially on NGOs, in my experience, although there are exceptions, especially on conservation, where they actually do it.
Does the Labour Party count as “The Left ” any more? Or the US Democrats?
I agreed with much of what Jonathan Pie says (I always do). But he tends to just lump the Labour Party in a broad concept called “The Left”. As long as we regard Starmer and Reeves as somehow representing Socialism or Social Democracy, we are left scratching our heads as to why they have gone off the rails. And then yearn for the day when they realise their mistakes. But they are not confused. They have accepted the neo- liberal consensus completely. Left wing ideas horrify them. Such ideas have to be stamped out , in their opinion. Accepting neo-liberal economic ideas,what are they left to argue with Conservatives about? If not identity issues ,immigration , or law and order precisely the battlefield where the Right are strongest. So have the “Left” blundered the way the German Social Democrats did in the Weimar Republic , permitting the rise of Hitler ? Or have our historically-Left Party long ceased to be anything remotely socialist anyway? I agree that it’s going to be a long hard road to recreate an “Age of Compassion” ,and I am too old to expect to be around when we do.
They have long ceased to be remotely social democratic, let alone socialist
It’s doing a great disservice to us all when the fallacy of Labour being the Left is constantly and lazily repeated and only helps shift the Overton Window further right taking us closer to fascism (and of course, climate collapse). No doubt the mainstream media will delight in Starmer’s inevitable disastrous collapse and use it as evidence to further tarnish the reputation of the “Left”.