U.S. President (1932-45) Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born into one of the most aristocratic families in America. A distant cousin, Teddy, had even been elected President. In his youth FDR, as he became known, was a bon vivant and ladies’ man, who strayed from Eleanor, his saintly but formidable wife. This blue blood seemed an unlikely person to buck the entire system of U.S. capitalism. He remains a hate-figure for U.S. Conservatives to this day.
Any account of his life should include the enormous personal tragedy of incapacitation from polio. He could not walk, a disability which may have broadened an empathy for others’ suffering. He was elected President in 1932 on a platform to provide a New Deal to the American people after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression. The destitution of the American people is movingly depicted in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (1939), where a group of ‘Okies’, led by Tom Joad, are ruined by dustbowl conditions, and the calling in of loans by ruthless bankers, and in E.Y. Yip Harpburg’s Broadway Musical Brother Can You Spare Me a Dime (1930). Even brokers were forced to eat from soup kitchens, as erstwhile respectable folk were reduced to ‘hobos.’
A bull market of speculation collapsed after an unregulated free market had built mountains of sand out of folly and greed. The dominant economic philosophy of laissez faire brought light touch regulation and government passivity, as with our present, similarly hegemonic, neo-liberalism. The view then, as today, was that government had no business interfering in private transactions and that wealth, growth and efficiency are best achieved through the operation of an Invisible Hand. The banking crash from 2007 has had similar deleterious social consequences.
FDR in 1933.
FDR adopted the then heretical advice of the economist John Maynard Keynes that to save capitalism it was necessary for the government to intervene in the market. He set up national agencies and support structures for aid and assistance. It was a bailout to protect the poor and disenfranchised, not the rich. His New Deal was in the national interest, not to protect vested interests. The Supreme Court initially blocked the legislation, insisting it had no business varying contracts. In response, an exasperated Roosevelt informed the judges that if they did not approve his legislation he would appoint new ones, which led to a change of heart. This became known among wags as ‘the switch in time that saved nine.’
The assumption of liberty of contract is that anyone is free to enter into a bargain under whatever terms they choose, but once the deal is struck they are bound by their word. But this is based on the pretence that the market is a level playing field. Many sign on the dotted line without fully understanding the implications, or do so under duress.
Roosevelt may at times have displayed an ambivalence towards democracy, but he favoured those at the bottom of the social ladder, as he recognised that democracy had been sabotaged by vested interests. Just like today, transnational corporations and law firms were dictating to governments. He revived the U.S. economy through a Keynesian stimulus as government expenditure raised aggregate demand. This brought investment to help ordinary people, not the infliction of wanton cruelty in the form of perma-austerity that runs contrary to even capitalist logic. The best evidence is that a mixed economy, combining private enterprise and public initiative, with social safety nets and support for small enterprise, is a model that works best for society as a whole. Keynes was right then, and still is, but over time his approach went out of fashion.
John Maynard Keynes in 1933.
In late 1970’s Britain in particular, the excesses of socialism were becoming obvious, with the three-day-working-week, refuse on the streets, and the stranglehold of government by the Unions. In circumstances where initiative was stifled, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan championed the old doctrine of unregulated markets, conveniently referred to as neo-liberalism. The ideological underpinning came from the Austrian Friedrich Hayek and the Chicago School under Milton Friedman.
The curious assumption was that wealth would trickle like manna from heaven down from rich to poor under free market conditions. Instead we got the 1980s yuppies like Donald Trump, accumulating vast fortunes. Over time we have seen a dismantling of the Welfare State; the removal of social protections and safety nets. Today the richest 1% are on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030, with the rest of our existences increasingly precarious. The distinction between working class and middle class is being eroded as we revisit a medieval pyramid of barons and serfs. Yet, ironically, Hayek actually described socialism as the new serfdom. But old-fashioned Marxist class divisions no longer make sense.
The unprecedented banking collapse after 2007 led to bail-outs being awarded to those who were responsible, and the infliction of austerity on the wretched of the earth. This led Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stieglitz to point to a socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. Yet those countries which adopted Keynesian approaches – including nationalisation of banks – such as Iceland, have been vindicated by stabilisation and recovery.
Ireland achieved the worst of all possible ends. It established a bad bank NAMA, which cut deals with failed property speculators and lawyers and the congeries of the corrupt. As the IMF and Europe imposed austerity on the defenceless masses, those responsible were bailed-out and their debts cancelled. The fraudulent banks had made money on misrepresentations, providing negligent lending advice about the value of stocks, investments and credit ratings. This caused the economy to overheat and generated a property bubble that many had pointed to. Now institutions continue to foreclose against the poor and defenceless, as sanctity of contract is insisted on. The perversion of the system it that the richer you are, the more easily you can cut a deal; the logic of a bank too big to fail.
The neo-liberal recasting of homo sapiens into homo economicus, also initiates a new form of Social Darwinism, permitting the survival of the most ruthless in a dog eat god universe. We have seen a slippage in standards, where the young are habituated to lying, having witnessed the deceit of those in high office. Lines between fact, semi-fact, lies and deceptions have been blurred. Even in the courts of law fabricated cases have reached pandemic proportions. This has also led to increasingly vicious tactics against those who demure: like a plague, the corruption of banks has spread to other private agencies and even state institutions; where whistleblowers are systematically undermined. In a distorted world, the mugshots of heroes of our time now feature in rogues’ galleries of subversion. The indicted include human rights lawyers, public-interest journalists, and anyone in public life with a shred of a social conscience.
It is an increasingly divisive ‘them’ and ‘us’ social setting, where the poor, the migrant, the displaced, the activist, and the public intellectual, are marginalised and destroyed in increments. Targeted assassination by the state is now evident across Europe, and not just under Mr Putin. Our corporate suzerains lead political discourse towards safe issues around individual entitlements. Suddenly the political class are all in favour of gay marriage, gender equality and decriminalising someone for puffing on a joint. But what about more fundamental rights intrinsic to sustaining human life, such as health care, housing and social support?
Around the world courts are evicting and rendering homeless surplus populations, and in India dumping them on the streets. Housing, either buying or renting, is increasingly unaffordable, diminishing the prospect of human flourishing. Now crucially also, the privatisation of health care has led to life or death becoming a matter of affordability not a right or entitlement. There are other sinister ramifications. Those teachers, academics or professionals in badly paid but socially worthwhile occupations must toe the line, or are fired for exposing corruption. Survivors sing for their supper, while in journalism the phrase he who pays the piper calls the tune is increasingly apt.
The wise sensei or village elder is no longer looked up to, but instead the old are being asked to quietly await their death. Intelligence and achievement have to be costed and channelled into wealth producing activities. You are not seen as a man if you do not have the mentality of the hunter. Short-termism both in contracts and outlooks has brought reactive decision-making, wherein people are desensitised to the suffering of others. These depredations being heaped on society are deliberate. The Shock Doctrine pioneered in Chile and Indonesia by neo-liberals in the 1970s have been visited on Ireland and Greece, and elsewhere. It brings cuts in funding to socially useful public agencies, such as libraries, which are being gradually eliminated. There have also been huge cuts to legal aid, imperilling the ability of the innocent to defend themselves against criminal charges.
It is clear that we require a Renewed Deal, bringing Keynesian stabilisation measures, including support for small businesses, social safety nets and the shutting down of corporate tax avoidance. The E.U. must desist from imposing austerity under the guise of the Growth and Stability Pact, and reinforce regulatory protection of labour rights and the environment, resisting the lobbying of giant corporations. Courts in Ireland should also recognise a basic human right to housing, including prohibition against arbitrary eviction, as well as healthcare. So let us organise a petition then for an umbrella organisation to bring a Renewed Deal to the world.
Codicil
I write this as the Coronavirus pandemic sweeps through the world, with governmental intervention and support in the Keynesian sense right back on the table, particularly in the U.K. But there is appearance and there is reality; smoke and mirrors.
My concern is with the Malthusian ideas emanating from an ongoing devotion to the tenets of neo-liberalism, and also that social distancing and other precautionary measures will accentuate pre-existing social atomization, and amplify a lack of care and concern for one another.
Emergency measures could also empower authoritarian elements within States, undermining cherished civil liberties.
My fear is that any Renewed Deal and stimulus to avoid economic meltdown under the politicians currently in power in the U.K. and Ireland will be selectively targeted, with many if not most of an over populated planet permitted to wither away by increments. We cannot have another Bailout to preserve the assets of those at the top of a latter-day feudal pyramid.
You might think of the film ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’ as some dated artifact, featuring Dub-a-lin in da rare auld times. But many of the cultural assumptions revealed in the film, and which later went towards hindering the film’s reception, are still very much alive in today’s Ireland. The sacred cows may have changed, but the overall cultural relationship with those things deemed sacred is still strikingly similar.
From the opening shot where the proud young boy reels off the complex theological dictates of the Catholic catechism in a machine-like patter, beaming with pride at his own parroting, oblivious to the meaning of the words he is reciting by rote; the film not only captures a moment in Ireland’s time, but achieves something far more profound: it captures the Irish sensibility, a quality slower to date than many would like to believe, and one which still informs how we do business even today.
For instance, in the opening summary of the 1916 Easter Rising, the commentator (Peter Lennon) says that one of the goals of the leaders of the rising was to ‘awaken a lethargic and indifferent Irish population to an ideal of freedom.’
To awaken to an ideal of freedom. What does that even mean? Not just freedom in the context of colonial Ireland, but freedom itself? What would it mean to be awakened to an ideal of freedom?
Vulgar Chancers
In a 1916 essay – the perhaps over-dramatically titled ‘The Murder Machine’[i] – Patrick Pearse critiques the British education system as it was applied in Ireland, arguing that it was deliberately creating lesser people; people for service, and people, in times of war, to be wasted on battlefields, as was happening in France at that time.
His point was that an ideal of freedom entailed having a say over your own education system, which would then be designed to enhance natural gifts, rather than designed essentially for enslavement to the requirements of a greater, indifferent power.
In the essay he recounts a wonderful story, which we would now recognize as a foundational argument for arts subsidy. A farmer comes to him (Pearse was a teacher) complaining about a ‘lazy’ son who chose to do nothing all day except play the tin whistle. ‘What am I to do with him?’ says the farmer. ‘Buy him a tin whistle’, says Pearse.
But is our education system any better equipped now? It seems to have been designed, like the British education system of Pearse’s time, to facilitate powerful institutions. Even at the top end, the universities often seem like dispensers of tickets for corporate jobs. In Ireland today the bulk of jobs are to be found in retail and ‘hospitality’. The modern equivalent of service.
President Michael D. Higgins recently criticised Universities for being too focused on market outcomes where they should be places to provide a ‘moral space’ for discussion. He said that this was due to a perception in academia that there was ‘magic happening in the marketplace… when in fact actually what you had was a whole series of vulgar chancers.’[ii]
In this brave new republic we now occupy, where neo-liberalism informs the values of everything, the arts appear to be regarded as something of an anomaly. Talented people are flung into dead-end jobs with the same casual disregard that they were once thrown into gunfire. The unions are weakened, landlords are murdering people, economically speaking, with killing rents; workers are over-worked and underpaid; the government is in thrall to big business; and people at the bottom are now going hungry and homeless. No matter how you might like to dress this up with figures for job creation and GDP percentages, I doubt that any of it adds up to anyone’s notion of an ideal of freedom, except perhaps the small percentage at the top, benefitting economically from the enslavement of the rest.
Silence and Gratitude
The sense I have after watching ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’ is that little has changed. The place has been repainted and the furniture moved around, but it all seems eerily similar, with one set of sacred cows replaced by another. The ‘economy’, that eternally needy abstract entity, serves as a replacement deity to whom we now must all pay homage, or face dire consequence.
Thus in 2011 Enda Kenny endowed his government’s austerity budget with a penitential quality: “The budget will be tough, it has to be,” he said, adding it will be the “first step” on the road to recovery.”[iii] Cut-backs to vital services appeared to be punishment for the ‘sins’ of excessive spending during the boom era.
The point is, people’s relationship to power in today’s Ireland is more or less the same as that portrayed in ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’. They are just now focused on a different God and a different set of authoritative ‘priests’, but the relationship to authority seems essentially the same, and a similar apathy still prevails.
As for an ideal of freedom; this has neither been articulated nor discussed in the state’s short history. It is not an ideal that informs the cultural life of the country. If anything, it is understood in the negative. Freedom from, rather than freedom to.
In the Rocky Road the question after independence becomes: what to do with your revolution once it has been achieved? The idealists hoped for the emergence of a true republic of equality, fraternity and so on.
Instead, as the writer Sean O’Faolain says in the film:
The kind of society that actually grew up was what I called urbanized peasants…A society which was without moral courage, constantly observing a self-interested silence, never speaking in moments of crisis, and in constant alliance with a completely obscurantist, repressive, regressive and uncultivated church. The result of all this was…a society utterly alien to the ideals of republicanism…a society in which there are blatant inequalities…the republic is not going to come slowly, it will be the creation of a whole generation, perhaps two generations… who will have the courage to speak and who won’t be afraid of those sanctions that are continually imposed on them if they do so.
Those sanctions of silence are still imposed on people who speak against the prevailing orthodoxies. And often those sanctions are most strenuously imposed by those who are themselves victims of structural inequalities.
The role of Irish people, mainly born in the 1930s, as identified in the film was to be ‘one of gratitude, well-behaved gratitude’, says Peter Lennon. The understanding being that freedom had been won; now, simply, shut up.
Criticism was regarded as betrayal. But whose freedom was it? What was being asked of Irish people now by the revolutionary generation, or those who had ended up in power, was a ‘new kind of heroism. Heroic obedience.’ In essence, to wait patiently while those in power created the republic.
That, to my ears, sounded exactly like what was asked of Irish people after the banking collapse. Heroic obedience and gratitude. It seems to be the same bargain struck in the name of austerity. And again, criticism is seen as betrayal. Your duty is to be patient while those in power rebuild the republic; to demonstrate allegiance with obedient silence.
But who betrayed who this time around? Did Fine Gael in power care for the people targeted by vulture investors? No. They let them fall into homelessness and left them there. It would be dull to go through the litany of Fine Gael betrayals since austerity. Everyone knows what they are. Besides, this isn’t about Fine Gael. It’s about Irish people and their reaction to being lumbered with yet another, self-serving authoritarian clique, supposedly building or rebuilding the republic.
Participation
How do you build a republic anyway? What does it need? I suppose you could say that a century of heroic obedience and silence – while the big boys build the thing – hasn’t really worked. And there is a very good reason for that. Submissive silence in a people is the antithesis of a participative republic.
A republic presupposes participation. But as the documentary about the reaction to ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’ shows, Irish people seem to guard jealously the silence that acts as cover for the powerful, more than they aspire to the necessary participative nature of a functioning republic.
Put simply, it is not up to powerful vested interests to build a republic – they’ll never do it anyway, because, as Mel Brooks once observed, ‘It’s good to be the king.’ Who in power is going to spoil their own party by introducing policies that reflect true equality and fraternity?
It’s up to people, by being participative, to build a republic. You don’t even have to do anything dramatic. In the Irish case a way forward might be to simply quit ridiculing those who speak out, as was the fate of Patrick Pearse when reading the Proclamation outside the GPO; and is the metaphorical fate of most anyone who speaks against the prevailing orthodoxies in Ireland.
This above all is what the Rocky Road reveals, the Irish penchant for keeping itself enslaved by imposing on itself heroic obedience and silence. By shutting itself up.
Peter Lennon’s film was widely denounced in Ireland, characterized as a betrayal of a people. The usual rubbish when Ireland is looked at critically by an Irish person. This was in 1968.
In contrast, the film became a huge hit in Paris – a place where they build and maintain republics. It served as inspiration for many French students for what happens to a people when they agree to the pact of heroic obedience and silence.
Interestingly, when Peter Lennon came back to Ireland in the mid-sixties he still saw the glaring power of the church everywhere. But people in Ireland, he found, genuinely believed that all that church stuff was now in the past.
They were enchanted and duped by the ‘modernising’ trend – more-yah in the guise of crooning, finger-snapping, condescending Fr Michael Cleary, singing acapella to new mothers in a maternity ward, of all places.
The young people of the time assured Lennon that Ireland was changing, that the grip of the church’s power was broken, that the grey 30s, 40s and 50s had been consigned to the past. And yet, Lennon’s film, shot with the unerring gaze of Raouel Coutard’s artist’s eye, showed a country still hopelessly in thrall to power; and, most tellingly, in total denial of its own condition. Unquestioning, obedient, silent. Until, that is, they saw Lennon’s film and found something to turn their mute hatred on.
How To Build A Republic
There is in the attitude of the ‘great little country’ – ‘the Best Small Country in the World in Which to do Business’ according to Enda Kenny’[iv] – to its own myths and legends, a sense of the magical mirror that only flatters. And when you critique any of it, you bring down upon yourself the wrath that surges angrily from denial revealed as delusion.
But that, unfortunately, is how you build a republic: by questioning its precious presumptions. This may explain why it has taken so long to even frame the question: how do you build a republic, without getting yourself killed?
The Ireland we dare not look at is decked out with cruel inequities everywhere you care to look, particularly in relation to the low paid, the unemployed, Travellers and Direct Provision tenants.
More recently we were reminded again in the RTÉ documentary ‘Redress: Breaking the Silence’[v] that state officials, in their cumbersome way to make right, actually had the effect of re-traumatising the victims by way, really, of imposing on them an old authoritarian relationship.
This time the concern was whether the victims were fibbing for monetary gain. For the victims it was just another cold authority disbelieving them.
The authoritarianism that truly informs Irish culture peeks out in all its judgmental cocksureness everywhere you look. It’s there in the house rules for Direct Provision tenants, ‘No excuses!!’ it says. It’s in the jokey management sign at the expense of workers, describing them as animals: ‘Where’s your sense of humour?’ It’s in the contempt for the jobseeker as ‘welfare cheat’. It’s in the greedy landlord hinting that payment through sex might be acceptable. It’s in the look-at-me-publican hushing almost the entire county because he feels an urge to sing a song and the world must stop to listen because he’s the man who controls the drink tap. It’s in the bus-driver’s contempt for the social housing passengers who ‘should’ have cars. It’s in the anti-intellectualism that seeks always to control through ridicule.
How do you build a republic? By participating. By speaking up and speaking out. By taking responsibility for the thing that needs to be said, and not waiting for someone else to come along and do it. Or by simply deciding not to ridicule and demean the speaker, because you’re proud of the fact that as a salt-of-the-Earth Irish person that it’s considered clever to broadcast your ignorance and affect a pose of being unable to tell the difference between art, intellectualism and insanity. Even valiantly locking your jaw in that context would be a small contribution in the right direction to the development of a wiser republic.
[i] ‘The Murder Machine’ (1916) by P.H. Pearse: https://www.cym.ie/documents/themurdermachine.pdf
[ii] Jack Horgan-Jones, ‘Universities do not exist ‘to produce students who are useful’, President says’, Irish Times, March 2nd 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/universities-do-not-exist-to-produce-students-who-are-useful-president-says-1.4190859
[iii] Mary Regan, ‘Living Beyond Our Means’, Irish Examiner, December 5th, 2011, https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/living-beyond-our-means-176062.html
[iv] Peter Bodkin, ‘s Ireland the ‘Best Small Country in the World in Which to do Business™?’ Not any more…’, TheJournal.ie, December 9th, 2014, https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-ranking-for-business-1844047-Dec2014/
[v] RTÉ ‘Redress: Breaking the Silence’ https://www.rte.ie/player/series/redress-breaking-the-silence/SI0000006787?epguid=IH000390934&seasonguid=127629864186
Donald Trump’s abrupt announcement of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria last October brought dire warnings of an ISIS resurgence in the media, and criticism from its regional allies. There were even mutterings of discontent among fellow Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.[i]
However, a significant number of commentators sounded a note of relief. ‘American troops have no strategic reason to be in that country,’ wrote Simon Jenkins in The Guardian, ‘[Trump’s]desertion of the Kurds and his licence to Turkey to invade Syria must rank high in the annals of diplomatic treachery – but for realpolitik they are hard to beat.’[ii]
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan waited barely three days to launch a long-anticipated attack across the Turkish-Syrian border, the first major military incursion into Northern Syria territory since the invasion of Afrin province began under Operation Olive Branch in 2018.
As the U.S. President boasted of having ‘destroyed’ ISIS,[iii] the Turkish military were credibly accused of re-arming and re-deploying ISIS and Al Nusra militias to spread terror in Northern Syria. And, as in Afrin, human rights abuses have been so commonplace that any neutral observer would assume they formed part of a coherent policy. These have included artillery and air bombardment of civilians, the use of white phosphorus,[iv] and terrorism from ground forces.
The Turkish government’s use of ill-disciplined local militias has provided a degree of plausible deniability of war crimes, including, potentially, the widely publicised murder of Hevrin Khalaf on the third day of the invasion.
Reductive Analysis
Coverage of the region in the Western media tends to refer to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and ‘the Kurds’ interchangeably. This reinforces a reductive narrative of the SDF as being comprised of fearless but naive nationalists, apparently content to sacrifice themselves in the pursuit of a Kurdish statehood aligned to U.S. interests in the region.
Both of these recent Turkish military incursions targeted the largely Kurdish areas of the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria, also called Rojava, which is defended by the Syrian Democratic Forces (primarily by the YPJ and YPG, the People’s Protections’ Units, which started as humble militias in 2011, before developing into a disciplined fighting force) which Turkey accuses of being controlled by the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, defined as a terrorist organization by both Turkey and NATO.
Commentators often blame the leaders of the Autonomous Administration for failure to recognise themselves as just another ethnic faction in a crowded neighbourhood. Indeed, ostensibly left-wing media frequently portrays this unusual political formation as a mere tool of the U.S. government, which has failed to invest sufficient effort in diplomacy with the Syrian government or other regional players.
Such a narrative draws attention from heartening developments occurring on the ground in Northern Syria over the past seven years. There is a revolutionary attempt to create a pluralist, feminist, multi-ethnic and ecologically responsible society in Rojava. Moreover, its administration is not seeking independent statehood, rather, its stated goal is to remain within a reorganized federal Syrian Republic.
The Northern region is multi-ethnic, and the SDF incorporates men and women of Kurdish, Arab, Syriac, Turkmen, Armenian ethnicity and others. Most are Sunni Muslim or Christian, but there are others of different religious identities and none. A significant international volunteer contingent also participated in the campaign, garnering worldwide attention[v] at the height of the campaign against ISIS.
The inclusive and diverse makeup of the military organization is an extension of the civilian administration’s philosophy of democratic confederalism. This entails devolved regional councils maintaining responsibility for their local assets, which interface with neighbouring communities and the central administration.
Full implentation of these new democratic processes is a long way off, with the project, by any reckoning, still in its early stages and threatened by potential new developments in this nine-year-old war.
Development is also hindered by continued Turkish aggression (both military and economic), as well as American capriciousness and regional gamesmanship. Notwithstanding Trump’s withdrawal announcement, the U.S. military maintains a regional presence; Russia has increased its role; while the European Union, Iran, and China keep a close eye on proceedings.
The intensity of the decade-long Syrian Civil War has abated but shows no signs of concluding, with millions of Syrians displaced throughout the country, as well as further afield in Turkey and Europe. Thus, despite providing the forces that retook cities and territories from ISIS over six bloody years, the fate of the autonomous region remains uncertain.
Tug of Allegiances
What next for the people in this troubled region? The U.S. is divided between obligations to its NATO partner Turkey, and to a legacy of alliance with the SDF, which provided ground troops that captured territory from the Caliphate.
The SDF might be expected to police the region and/or counter any renewed insurgency of ISIS. The complexity of the Syrian situation does not, however, lend itself to simplistic narratives, which tend towards vapid sentimentality about ‘the brave Kurds’.
The U.S. media is now almost exclusively devoted to the Democratic Primaries and the Coronavirus panic, and these seem likely to hog the headlines for the foreseeable future. Notably, no Democratic candidate has made any serious statements in respect of plans to help or equip the SDF, or to assist the AANES administration to circumvent crippling economic restrictions.
Trump’s occasional nonsensical remarks on the topic can be roughly interpreted as seeing the U.S. objective in the region purely in terms of extracting natural resources at the lowest possible price, but Trump’s decision last October has forced the regional authority to negotiate with both Assad and Russia, and has effectively gifted American interests in North East Syria to Russia.
Meanwhile, the war continues primarily in Idlib province in the north-west, with Erdogan now using millions of Syrian refugees for leverage against Rojava, the Assad government, and Western Europe. Crucially, oil production in the region, according to a recent interview with a Kurdish engineer, is estimated at approximately 25% of capacity,[vi] due to a deficient refinery infrastructure and reliance on the Syrian government to broker sales.
Uncertain Future
The Rojava project faces great uncertainties. Yet compared to other attempts at regional self-determination in the Middle East over the past two decades, it has seen incredible advances in civil society; albeit at an extremely high price, with approximately eleven thousand SDF affiliated fighters dying in the war against ISIS,[vii] and another twenty-five thousand suffering severe injuries
The demands of regional power brokerage and the precarious economic position of the territory mean that there may yet be serious compromises required in order to retain functional autonomy. Talks continue behind the scenes between the SDF and the Syrian government, brokered by the Russians. The question is: how will Rojava chart a course through this next challenging stage in its short but complex history?
[i] David Smith, ‘Donald Trump isolated as Republican allies revolt over US withdrawal from Syria’, The Guardian, October 8th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/07/trump-syria-us-troop-withdrawal-turkey
[ii] Simon Jenkins, ‘Trump is right to take troops out of Syria. Now they must leave Iraq and Afghanistan’, The Guardian, October 14th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/14/trump-troops-syria-leave-iraq-afghanistan-us
[iii] Tim Hume, ‘Trump Says the U.S. Has Destroyed ‘100% of ISIS.’ It Hasn’t.’, Vice News, January 9th, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkebkg/trump-says-the-us-has-destroyed-100-of-isis-it-hasnt
[iv] Dan Sabbagh, ‘Investigation into alleged use of white phosphorus in Syria’, The Guardian, October 18th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/18/un-investigates-turkey-alleged-use-of-white-phosphorus-in-syria
[v] Patrick Freyne, ‘The Irish man ‘fighting fascism’ in Syria: ‘I was always curious how I’d react to battle’’, Irish Times, March 24th, 2018, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/the-irish-man-fighting-fascism-in-syria-i-was-always-curious-how-i-d-react-to-battle-1.3435174
[vi] Mireille Court and Chris Den Hond, ‘Is This the End of Rojava?’ The Nation, February 18th, 2020, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/rojava-kurds-syria/
[vii] Wladamir van Wilgenberg, ’SDF says over 11,000 of its forces klled in fight against the Islamic State,’ March 23rd 2019, Kurdistan24.net, https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/0dafe596-6536-49d7-8e23-e52821742ae9
On Friday 14th of February Lebanon commemorated the fifteenth anniversary of the brutal assassination of former prime minister, Rafic Hariri. On the eve of the commemoration, the current prime minister, Hassan Diab, lamented how, in Hariri’s absence, ‘Lebanon lacks the regional and international presence to save us from crisis.’
Diab was brought in to lead a new government following mass demonstrations that began in October of last year. He has been tasked, no less, with pulling Lebanon back from the brink of economic collapse.
Yet the formation of a new government has done little to assuage public anger. Events in the capital, Beirut on Tuesday 11th of February made this abundantly clear.
By mid-morning downtown the Lebanese capital was bracing itself as parliamentary deputies gathered for a vote of confidence on the newly-formed government. Protesters were also assembling at various locations around the city in an attempt to disrupt the vote.
Waving flags, many pre-empting what was to come with helmets and gas-masks, the protesters were articulating a widely-held view that, regardless of what happens in parliament, the new government is a sham, cooked up by the same rotten elite that protesters have been demonstrating against for months.
Twitter and other social media were aflame, with digitally savvy individuals using hash-tags ‘like no confidence!’ ‘Tuesday Rage!’ ‘Lebanon Rises!’, to thread together the assembled masses, while urging everyone ‘to meet us on the streets’, as videos showed busloads of citizens converging on the capital.
Expecting trouble, security forces had erected concrete barriers the previous day, blocking off major approaches to Parliament Square. Meanwhile, protesters gathered around the barriers.
One girl sat atop a slab, waving a Lebanese flag, while a water cannon sprayed either side of her creating a rainbow effect. Others pulled down segments of the wall only to be met by further barrages from water cannons barring their way.
Deputes trying to enter parliament to take part in the confidence vote were welcomed by angry protestors.. it took hundreds of security forces & elite army forces to secure their entry #Lebanon#لبنان_ينتفضpic.twitter.com/wi3lWzDdjz
Elsewhere protesters disrupted traffic towards parliament. En route, one deputy had his car surrounded by protesters chanting ‘thief thief thief!’
Other parliamentarians had eggs thrown at their convoys, while one had stones hurled at him by a protester, smashing his car window and then striking his head, forcing him to divert to a nearby hospital for medical attention. Yet he made it to the parliament in the end, battered and bruised but there to vote.
Pro-regime Thugs
But anti-government protesters weren’t the only ones out on the streets. Groups of pro-regime thugs, sent out by their political bosses, zipped about town protecting harangued deputies and hampering the protesters.
On scooters these hired hands roamed from one flashpoint to the next, seeking confrontations with what seemed implicit approval from the security forces – themselves willing to give occasional beat downs to isolated protesters getting under their skin.
Meanwhile, as the toxic whiff of tear gas was spreading downtown, the barricaded parliament was slowly filling up. But numbers were still lacking for the quorum required to begin the two-day session.
Eventually the parliamentary Speaker, Nabih Berri – widely regarded as thug-in-chief – decided to commence proceedings, despite the small numbers, leading to allegations on the streets of constitutional trickery.
Embed from Getty Images House Leader Nabih Berri (right) pictured with Walid Joumblatt (centre) and Yasser Arafat (left) in 1982.
Either way, the session began and after nine hours, the vote was held prematurely, quashing any hopes of it being derailed. The new government won, as expected, while the protesters licked their wounds outside: three-hundred-and-fifty people having been injured over the course of the day.
Lebanese of All Stripes
The day’s events demonstrated to many people that the revolution has been sold short; as one observer put it: ‘while the Prime Minister speaks to a half empty-parliament about the importance of the right to protest, security forces were throwing tear gas and beating people up outside.’
Indeed, Tuesday the 11th was the 118th day of a revolution that began on October 17th of last year, triggered by a proposed tax on WhatsApp that inspired national outrage.
The streets have been filled with Lebanese of all stripes, saying with one voice: ‘the political class, every last one of them, must move aside, taking their corrupt, decades-long mismanagement with them, and give us our country back.’
The local and international media dared to believe that something truly special was happening in Lebanon. For the first time in living memory a unified political voice that transcended sectarian divisions seemed to be exploding into life.
During the early days there really was something special in the air. Streets were buzzing with revolutionary optimism; mass rallies crowded the streets, with a distinctly festival-like-atmosphere attracting children and families.
Sunni-dominated Tripoli, Lebanon’s largest northern city, long tarnished by a Salafist reputation, went from being perceived as Beirut’s neglected cousin, to ‘the bride of the revolution’, following memorable demonstrations. Suddenly Tripoli felt a lot closer to Beirut.
Embed from Getty Images An early demonstration in Tripoli turned into a rave that went viral across the country and reset the city’s image.
Sectarianism
Inspired by such scenes, protesters organised a human chain the length of the country. Up and down Lebanon, demonstrators stood hand-in-hand along the coastal highway. Stretching from north to south in a powerful gesture the message was clearly anti-sectarian, saying ‘We are not Christian, Sunni, Shia, Druze. We are Lebanese.’
In Lebanon political representation is still based on a confessional quota system that renders governance a power-sharing puzzle between sectarian groups. Governments are patched together through tenuous coalitions predicated on back-door deal, widely seen as an impediment to addressing deep structural problems.
All the while, Lebanon has been careering towards an economic abyss. After a decade of economic stagnation, with foreign remittances drying up and Saudi money deserting a country increasingly seen as an Iranian orbit, the collapse has come into plain view.
The corrupt ineptness of the ruling elite has been called out by an enraged public, watching on in horror as the country’s potential is squandered by politicians, who hide behind the excuse of sectarian power-sharing.
In reality they have pilfered from the state coffers in order to maintain patronage networks, without regard the wider public interest. Thus protesters say: ‘Shame on them.’ Indeed, nowadays politicians are likely to be refused service in restaurants or are jeered if they enter fashionable bars.
The foreign minister’s humiliation at a Davos panel discussion stirred jubilation back home, with replays giddily shared online. A wave of hostility towards the political elite, regardless of sect, is in full swing.
Banking Crisis
The public outcry is not surprising. Spiraling national debt dwarfs national GDP, as the government digs itself deeper into a deeper whole of debt, in turn selling these off to Lebanese banks, thereby threatening ordinary people’s savings.
In October banks closed suddenly and remained shut for two weeks. People were unable to withdraw dollars from ATMs. Slowly it became apparent that the banks were running on empty, through acute shortages of U.S. dollars, the currency which is pegged to the Lebanese lira.
This led the banks to impose capital controls to prevent a run. Meanwhile the Central Bank failed to step in to regulate the situation, leaving individual banks to do so on an ad hoc basis. Then rumours (since confirmed) began to circulate that the ruling class were transferring billions abroad,[i] fuelling suspicion that the banks and politicians were in on the act.
Among ordinary people there are fears that the days of the lira being pegged to the dollar are numbered, causing deposits to plunge in value.
On a daily basis panicked customers engage in furious arguments with bank staff who refuse to release dollars, while on the black market the lira’s value is collapsing. Smashed up ATMs and banking outlets are a familiar sight, and sign of the growing anger.
Embed from Getty Images Vandalized bank fronts in Beirut and elsewhere are have become a common sight.
Ongoing Crisis
The dollar shortage has driven up prices on everyday items, and workers are being laid off; tourism has ceased to a trickle; butchers’ sales are said to be down by 50%; the young talk increasingly about emigrating; malls and high streets are empty; migrant workers crowd outside their embassies attempting to flee a country where the currency crisis makes it almost impossible to send money home.
Now economists predict that the country will sink into a pit of poverty that will bring a lost decade, where college graduates will become street sellers and refugees will go even hungrier than they already are.
So amidst these increasingly severe conditions, the tone of protest has shifted from optimism to anger. While the early success in dislodging the former government was celebrated, the protesters demand for a technocratic government without political ties has not been met. The new government tasked with enacting reforms continues to co-exist with the vested interests that appointed it.
Embed from Getty Images Renewed protests shifted in tone with more aggression from protesters and security forces.
Yet reforms are essential if the government is to unlock the financial assistance that international players like the IMF could offer. A cliff-edge is imminent with interest on a Eurobond due to be paid next month and politicians arguing about whether to cough up. This has triggered rumours that there’ll be nothing left over to pay the salaries of civil servants.
Whatever happens in the short term, it seems as if life is only going to get harder for ordinary Lebanese before there is any sign of improvement.
[i] Naharnet Newsdesk ‘Hammoud Replies to Berri: All Lebanese Banks Transferred Funds Abroad’ Naharnet February 7th, 2020, http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/268948-hammoud-replies-to-berri-all-lebanese-banks-transferred-funds-abroad
So the Phony War continues in the Democratic Primaries as Bernie takes the New Hampshire primary by a small margin over Buttigieg, while Klobuchar finished a surprise third. But this month’s column is concerned with the bigger picture, and how the apparently unstoppable Trump procession to the Presidency could be halted by a virus beyond its control.
Apparently the app used had security issues, and little or no training had been given to a largely elderly and volunteer army of caucus chairpersons (all 1,600 of them across the State). Also, internet trolls publicly posted the number used to call in results, rendering the phone lines that acted as a ‘fail-safe’ useless.
Whatever the reason, it should be clear by now that politics has got a lot dirtier. Yet Democrats cannot comprehend this simple point, as many are unable to let go of a bygone era when the game was played by vastly different rules. Had they learned so by now, they would have over-prepared, playing chess rather than horseshoe.
Open Mike
Enter Mike Bloomberg. The media declared the entire week a triumph for President Trump, who was ‘acquitted’ of impeachment; while Iowa showcased Democrat ineptitude to the delight of Republican pundits.
Although Buttigieg and Sanders shared the Iowa honors when the results were finally announced, Bloomberg was the real winner. He was in the process of hiring a staff of over two thousand the same week as the Iowa poll.
Bloomberg’s approach is simply to run the best campaign money can buy, spending more than any other Democrat candidate. Ever.
As Charlie Pierce put it in Esquire: ‘Bloomberg is not coming for the other candidates. He’s simply waiting, on the ground that he’s prepared, for them to come to him.’[ii]
Also, potentially at his disposal is an army of mayors and special interest groups he’s funded for years. No doubt he expects to be rewarded for his investments.
New York tabloid market
Left-leaning Dems are crying foul at the thought of a general election between two soon-to-be octogenarians New York billionaires. Clearly that’s the future America! But seriously here’s the rub.
Before the Internet deluge, the New York tabloid market operated like the modern-day internet, offering content to the highest bidder, with an attentive public and a small number of ‘kingmaker’ platforms fighting it out for relevance. Oh and all of this happening in a city that famously never sleeps.
Trump and Bloomberg were ahead of their time, for decades sharpening their claws in the then biggest media market in the world, long before the rest of us became online trolls.
Still, while you wouldn’t bet against Mike pulling off a shock he’s still a long shot. So far he has avoided the intense scrutiny the other candidates have been subjected to, but having spent $300 million this will change in the coming weeks.
Feel the Bern?
What about the rest of the Democratic field? Pete Buttigieg the surprise package; Bernie Sanders, the old timer shooting from the hip knowing it’s his O.K. Carrol; or the New York Times’s darlings Klobuchar and Warren?[iii]
If the results of the New Hampshire and Iowa polls are any indication, the center left is far more crowded than the lane further left occupied by Warren and Sanders. If Warren pulls out sooner rather than later because of her poor showing to date, it could spell trouble for Bloomberg, Buttigieg and Klobuchar. Warren supporters are more ideologically in tune with Bernie supporters. Notice we haven’t even mentioned Joe Biden, another center-left candidate.
Here’s why. Biden currently lacks the mental dexterity. He also has a Ukraine problem courtesy of Trump. At the very least, it was inadvisable for Hunter Biden, the son of a Presidential candidate, to accept $50,000 a month to sit on the board of an obscure Ukrainian gas company. It smells of corruption, and his poor showing in Iowa and New Hampshire were a direct result of this and the tired ‘same old’ feeling surrounding his campaign.
The Klobuchar, Buttigieg and Warren campaigns call to mind the words of the ‘Father of Advertising’ David Ogilvy: ‘Remember to give people a logical reason to justify their emotional decision.’
Not many would choose Warren, Buttigieg or Klobuchar on a purely emotional basis. Warren comes across as a good-natured librarian with a tendency to lecture. Klobuchar is sensible, but without a clear edge and unpredictability factor.
Likewise Buttigieg – the McKinsey nerd – sounds too rehearsed and polished, if very sensible. He’s also unable to connect with anyone under thirty – which should scare Democrats more than any inability to connect with African-Americans. Still, the emotional pull of being the first ever openly gay presidential candidate make him attractive to some voters.
That leaves us with Sanders. Feel the Bern? The Bernie Bros are the only group currently capable of pushing back against the formidable online army that Trump has built up, deploying similar bullying tactics online. For a full outline of these sinister trends I recommend this excellent article by McKay Coppins for The Atlantic.[iv]
Yet Bernie scares a lot of middle Americans suspicious of radical socialist ideas at a time when the economy is doing relatively well. His railings against billionaires disturbs many among a middle class that have done well off the back of the recent stock market upsurge.
Still, while his path to the nomination is more obvious than the others, three weeks is a long time in politics, and things could still change significantly any time up to March 3rd – dubbed Super Tuesday – when we should have a clear picture on who will take on Trump in November.
What hasn’t changed is the prediction we made in this column in January – Trump will win the election. Unless, of course, something drastic happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLz6ydbq3D8
Coronavirus
We can’t finish this month’s column without talking about the Coronavirus.
After the initial round of panic reason set in. Then panic hit again. And currently we have a mixture. Now dare mention the economic impact and people call you insensitive. But let’s stare the reality squarely in the face.
As of writing, the Dow Jones is still near record highs, but this could change dramatically in the months ahead. Trump’s stock market rally has seen the Dow gain 48% since the inauguration, making believers out of Republicans, as the Impeachment vote demonstrated when only Mitt Romney broke ranks.
Coronavirus might be the trigger to collapse this deck of cards. How soon? Probably by April, maybe May. The virus is expected to peak around April, but by then the quarterly earnings will have been impacted.
Should most of us in the U.S. be afraid of Coronavirus? It depends. If you’re healthy and don’t work in healthcare you’ve little to worry about. Based on the limited information we can glean from the Chinese news bubble, people with an otherwise healthy immune system, who are not regularly exposed to the virus, can rest easy. Apparently it is doctors, the elderly and other vulnerable categories who are susceptible to infection.
But that won’t stop many of us from cancelling cruise ship vacations, holidays to Asia, and even overseas trips to trade fairs. It will also impact global supply chains, which rely heavily on China. All this means lost revenue, which will hit the markets once results first show up on balance sheets in April.
The length of this market downturn will ultimately decide November’s election result.
Remember you read it first on Cassandra Voices. Subscribe Today and Share!
[i] Meghan Mistry ‘Mike Bloomberg’s campaign is looking to pay influencers’, CBS News, February 7th, 2020, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mike-bloomberg-2020-campaign-pay-influencers/
[ii] Charlie Pierce, ‘Michael Bloomberg Is the Doomsday Money-Bomb Waiting for Every Democratic Candidate’ Esquire, February 9th, 2020, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30834790/michael-bloomberg-looms-over-new-hampshire-primary/
[iii] Untitled, ‘In a break with convention, the editorial board has chosen to endorse two separate Democratic candidates for president.’ New York Times, January 19th, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/19/opinion/amy-klobuchar-elizabeth-warren-nytimes-endorsement.html
[iv] McKay Coppins, ‘The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President’, The Atlantic, February 10th, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb
A fanatic heart.
W.B. Yeats, ‘Remorse for Intemperate Speech’ (1931)
With proportional representation in multi-seat constituencies, Irish elections tend to be colourful affairs. Debate rarely rises above the clamour of claim and counter-claim as candidates seemingly festoon every available lamppost the length and breadth of the country with posters. In rural constituencies especially, local causes tend to trump national concerns, while questions of global import rarely register.
But times are changing as cosmopolitan younger voters gravitate towards parties from beyond the political establishment. Until the 1990s Fianna Fáil (‘soldiers of destiny’), Fine Gael (‘family of the Irish’), and Labour – which historically assumed the role of minor coalition partner to Fine Gael – enjoyed near total domination of Dáil Éireann, the national parliament. Today no single party expects to command an overall majority, and coalitions are the norm.
The ruling Fine Gael party, having spent four years in an unprecedented ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with its old foe Fianna Fáil, called a snap election on January 14th, seemingly hoping to be rewarded for its competent handling of Brexit negotiations, and to avoid losing a no confidence motion over the performance of the Minister for Health Simon Harris.[i]
Unexpectedly, however, a political earthquake is on the cards as an array of left-leaning parties, especially the increasingly popular Sinn Féin (‘ourselves’), the Green Party, Labour, People Before Profit, the Social Democrats, and even an unheralded socially conservative newcomer Aontú (‘consent’), have made social justice the central issue of the campaign.
For the moment opposition to the centre-right mainstream of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil is coming from the left, responding in particular to an ongoing Housing Crisis. But Ireland is not immune from the wave of identity politics sweeping far-right Populists into power elsewhere.
Another recession might easily trigger far-right Populism within the existing framework, bringing together an unholy trinity, seen elsewhere, of xenophobia – including opposition to E.U. membership – climate change denial and opposition to abortion services.
Who me?
Identities are hotly contested on the island of Ireland. Thus the Fine Gael-led government’s recent proposal to rehabilitate the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) – the British Crown’s police force prior to independence in 1921 – brought a veritable Twitter storm of anger and bewilderment.
In its wake, the rousing Wolf Tone 1972 rebel song ‘Come out ye Black and Tans’ topped the iTunes charts in Ireland, and the U.K.,[ii] before being ripped off by Kerry independent candidate Michael Healy-Rae for his election campaign song.
The bizarre decision perhaps explains Fine Gael’s steep decline in support, as revealed in recent opinion polls. Although a wave of violent crime, including the horrifying murder of a Drogheda teenager,[iii] and the story of a homeless man receiving ‘life-changing’ injuries after a tent, with him inside, was forcibly removed by heavy machinery from the side of one of Dublin’s canals,[iv] contributed to widespread unease with the orientation of Irish society under the current administration.
Identity politics vary from country to country, and from epoch to epoch. In the U.S. race has long been a divisive issue. In the U.K. incipient (so-called ‘Little-Englander’) nationalism is the new clarion call, with the shattering of transnational working class identity emphasised by the implosion of the Labour Party in Scotland.
Historic cleavages in Ireland have tended to be religious rather than ethno-linguistic or racial, pitting Catholics against Protestants and Dissenters (or Presbyterians), at least since the failure of the United Irishman project in the 1790s; although, in the South at least, divisions have also recently emerged along familiar liberal versus conservative lines – especially over reproductive rights and marriage equality.
Identity politics tend to shred solidarities based on economic status both within countries and internationally, often involving deference to aristocracy or accumulated wealth. Developing a political movement based on social class, however, can also be problematic, as for example where a person’s ‘bourgeois’ speech or mannerism is stigmatised. The great diversity within any class formation is also easily overlooked.
The success of the Populist far-right in both the U.S. and U.K. has been achieved by combining working class disaffection – including resentment towards the kind of educated middle-class ‘elites’ generally at the helm of socialist parties – with ‘primordial’ racial or national identification.
As with the racism exhibited by poor Irish-Americans against former African-American slaves who migrated North after the U.S. Civil War (1860-65), the lowest income strata is often most resistant to new arrivals, who may be seen, and are often depicted in the media, as competitors for jobs, housing and other government services.
Brexit Effect
Whether, and for how long, Irish politics avoids the gravitational pull of far-right Populism is unclear. Certainly Brexit stoked identity politics in Ireland by amplifying latent anti-English prejudices.
Notably, over the course of protracted negotiations, the Irish media lampooned English nostalgia – emanating from ‘swivel-eyed loons’ – for a bygone, imperial age. The Irish Times leading columnist Fintan O’Toole even boasted that for the first time in history Ireland, with a population of under five million, was now a more powerful State than the U.K.,[v] which has a population of almost seventy million.
At least Irish nationalism tends to oppose unsavoury outlooks identified with English nationalism, including a xenophobia previously directed against Irish living there. Sinn Féin has also tempered historic anti-E.U. sentiment in the wake of Brexit, perhaps on the basis that ‘my enemies enemy is my friend.’
Moreover, Ireland’s openness to foreign investment, and low corporation taxation, means Steve Bannon – and presumably Donald Trump who owns a golf course and hotel in Doonbeg, County Clare – see little reason to interfere in Irish politics, with U.S. armed service personel permitted to use Shannon Airport as a stopover. But this might change if the rise of the left, especially Sinn Féin, continues unabated.
Arch-Imperialist Mike Pence was today greeting American troops in Shannon Airport
It is a continuing disgrace to the Irish people that American Imperialism should be allowed to use any part of Ireland as a military staging ground
— Anti Imperialist Action Ireland (@AIAIreland) January 25, 2020
Radical Redistribution
The absence of a legacy of heavy industry in the shape of rust-belt towns denies far-right Populists in Ireland the ‘blue-collar’ support base relied on by Trump, and Tory Brexiteers. On mainland Europe too, far-right Populists have successfully appealed to these working class former supporters of social democratic parties.
Most of what passes for a working class in Ireland, historically, are really petit-bourgeois pastoralists, many of whose sons became publicans, auctioneers and shopkeepers, selling commodities on the international market, and in recent times relying on grant aid from the European Union. These farmers have tended to vote overwhelmingly for one or other of the centre-right parties. But Irish society, and politics, is in a period of significant flux.
The two main centre-right parties are now struggling to retain the support of an aging, and shrinking, livestock farming cohort. That sector is in crisis owing to a slump in beef prices and existential fears around climate chaos and Brexit. Over the course of the past year, supermarkets and processing plants have been blockaded, as a schism grows between better-off dairy farmers and beef farmers, overwhelmingly reliant on subsidies.
Meanwhile, with a population approaching two million that dwarfs the other main urban centres of Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway that barely register half a million between them, the capital Dublin is the economic engine of the country. But chronic under-investment in transport infrastructure and social housing has brought spiralling rents[viii] in the capital, affecting the young disproportionately. Therefore, calls for a radical redistribution of wealth, along with action on climate change, are growing louder.
Across the country, the rising cost of living, from property to health and childcare, since recovery from the Economic Crash of 2008 and subsequent EU/IMF bailout is disrupting the centre-right consensus, dominant since the state’s foundation.
Riding high in the polls, Sinn Féin only emerged after the end of the Northern Ireland Troubles in 1999 as a serious force in the South. It has successfully twinned the objective of achieving Irish unity with radical (at least for Ireland) redistribution, pledging to enshrine the right to a home in the Irish Constitution. Its manifesto also promises to pay back €1,500 to renters, a three-year rent freeze, and the largest public housing funding scheme the state has ever seen.[ix]
Sinn Féin MPs, MLAs & TDs gather ahead of the Dáil100 event.
On the centre-right Fianna Fáil appears to be regaining pre-eminence, after riding pillion passenger with the minority Fine Gael administration. A formal coalition of these two is the most likely outcome of the election. Nevertheless, for their combined share of the vote to drop significantly below 50% is unprecedented.
As in the last U.K. election, there is a huge divergence between the voting intentions of the young and the old, with the former despairing at the failure of successive administrations to deliver affordable housing, public transport, address the climate and biodiversity emergency or further the cause of Irish unity. Similarly to the U.K. too, the left in Ireland suffers from a factionalism that makes a grand coalition unlikely.
Labour leader Brendan Howlin said he is hopeful of a progressive alliance after the #GE2020. He said there are “very serious barriers” to working with Sinn Féin. He said, “There are fundamental issues of trust about who runs SF.” pic.twitter.com/0KvTLlmbdY
Over the course of Irish history neither of the two dominant centre-right parties have been over-burdened by ideology, although Fine Gael’s ‘Just Society’-wing endeavoured to forge a social democratic party in the late 1960s.[x] Today, predictably, Fianna Fáil lays claim to more centrist policies with campaign literature proclaiming ‘an Ireland for all.’
Extended periods in opposition have tended to witness greater emphasis on left-wing causes by both parties. Once a government is formed, however, the ‘realities’ of power, often enunciated by a stubborn legion of Sir Humphreys in the civil service, brings business as usual.
Famously, in 1987 after hounding Fine Gael for its attempts to curb government expenditure in order to reduce the national debt, Fianna Fáil under Charlie Haughey introduced a series of its own swingeing cut backs.
In Ireland, substantive reforms arrive pitifully slowly as manifold Quangos, persistent Nimbyism and entrenched property interests inhibit infrastructural schemes, with the notable exception of motorways in a car-centric country. Tellingly, Dublin is the third worst city in the world for traffic congestion[xi] due to long term failures in delivering public transport, and historic corruption in land rezoning that brought a judicial tribunal lasting for fifteen years due to constant legal challenges.
On the other hand, the Irish economy has grown exponentially since the mid-1990s – reversing long-term emigration trends and attracting signification immigration for the first time – notwithstanding the catastrophic EU/IMF Bailout of 2010.
The Progressive Democrats (popularly referred to as the PDs), a breakaway party from Fianna Fáil that first enjoyed success in the 1987 election, played an important role in laying the foundations for the sustained economic growth and high employment that ensued from the mid-1990s.
Under the leadership of Desmond O’Malley, Mary Harney and Michael McDowell, the party sought to modernise the country, preferring the private sector to assume the role of an often inefficient (and corrupt) State. Despite its Fianna Fáil origins, the PD’s economically liberal agenda appealed to business-minded Fine Gael supporters, despairing at that party’s handling of the economy.
Although the party reached a high water mark in the 1987 election and steadily declined thereafter, before disappearing entirely in 2009, it left an indelible mark on successive governments. This helped created the so-called Celtic Tiger, with Ireland moving ‘closer to Boston than Berlin’, in the words of Mary Harney in 2000.[xii]
The PDs were coalition partner to Fianna Fáil over the course of four administrations (1989-92, 1997-2002, 2002-2007, and 2007-2009), securing Ireland’s position as a low tax haven for foreign multinationals. But the delivery of social and affordable housing was left in the hands of the private sector, which yielded insufficient units throughout the boom years. Moreover, the State, including local authorities, lost its capacity to construct social housing, from which it has been slow to recover.
Not only did PD ideology influence Fianna Fáil – with Minister for Finance (1997-2004) Charlie McCreevy once flirting with membership – but also Fine Gael. Thus, the former leader and Minister for Health (2004-11) Mary Harney is recorded as a confidant of Taoiseach Varadkar, who rose to prominence as a staunch critic of his own party’s social democratic tendencies.[xiii]
Under neo-liberal policies, in particular the low corporation tax regime of 12.5%, Ireland attracted significant foreign direct investment, with global technology giants such as Google, Facebook and Apple establishing European headquarters, along with pharmaceutical firms like Pfizer.
Google HQ, Dublin, Ireland
Low interest rates after joining the euro also contributed to runaway inflation in house prices until the bubble burst after 2008, leading to negative equity that ruined hundreds of thousands. Many workers, especially in the construction sector, were forced to leave Ireland for good. But consistent tax returns from the employees of multinationals in particular, allowed the exchequer finances to recover more rapidly than expected.
The EU/IMF Bailout stabilised property values, and the low taxation regime continued to attract investment into the Irish market, resulting in a bonanza for the surviving indigenous landlords. But the restoration is now working to the detriment of much of the indigenous population, with salaries failing to keep pace with rental costs.[xiv]
New Ireland
Away from the economy, over the course of the last decade, a new species of identity politics took centre stage, dividing upholders of ‘traditional’ Catholic values and ‘modern’ liberals, mainly of a younger vintage. Battles lines were drawn over marriage equality and reproductive rights, with liberal values emerging triumphant in two referendums.
Dublin Castle after 8th Referendum results declared.
Similar to ‘One Nation’ Tories led by David Cameron, Fine Gael under first Enda Kenny and then Leo Varadkar embraced a liberal social agenda, with the gay half-Indian Varadkar’s accession to power a symbol of widespread tolerance, and acceptance of diversity.
Indeed, although the country has experienced an unprecedented surge in immigration since the turn of the millennium, with the number of non-national inhabitants now almost 13% of the total,[xv] there is little sing of a far-right Populist insurgency.
Brexit also provided the Irish government with an opportunity to play a card generally monopolised by more nationalistic political rivals – with Varadkar speculating on the possibility of a united Ireland in his lifetime[xvi] – although the bizarre decision to commemorate the RIC seems to have used up that political capital.
The other side of Fine Gael’s liberal coin has been a conservative reluctance to interfere in the economy, particularly where provision of social housing has been concerned. In part at least, this stems from Leo Varadkar’s apparent aversion to anything hinting at socialism. Thus he complained in a 2018 speech about those who wanted ‘to divide our society into people who live in different areas, with some people paying for everything.’[xvii]
Real Estate Investment Trusts
The scale of an unfolding Housing Crisis, however, of unaffordable rents, homelessness and under-supply is now even attracting criticism from former PD leader, Michael McDowell, who recently wrote:
There is an ideological problem here. The private sector cannot solve the issue. The State must intervene to boost housing supply – social and owner-occupied. Even the term “private sector” is mutating before our eyes. When Reits [real estate investment trusts] buy entire developments to let at high rents – a new phenomenon – that has become the new meaning of the “private sector”.
Allegiance to the centre-right has previously been secured by an expectation among property owners that mortgages will ultimately yield capital appreciation. This requires consistent economic growth, which without adequate rent control measures has brought the rental inflation driving younger voters into the arms of Sinn Féin, and other left-wing parties.
Younger buyers are still assisted by inter-generational transfers, but this is a single step on a steep ladder. Decades of mortgage repayments await, alongside spiralling childcare and healthcare costs. Although Leo Varadkar claims to represent early rising workers, in fact his government’s laissez faire policies are to the advantage of substantial rentier property owners.
I am a champion for the self-employed & people who get up early in the morning and nobody gets up earlier than the Irish farmer! As long as I am around self employed people will never be taken for granted #IFAAGM
As the 2008 Crash proved, a fairy tale of Irish economic growth-without-end cannot endure – quite aside from ecological constraints – given the inherent volatility of the capitalist system itself. As David Graeber explains: ‘Capitalism is a system that enshrines the gambler as an essential part of its operation, in a way that no other ever has, yet at the same time, capitalism seems to be uniquely incapable of conceiving of its own eternity.’[xxiii]
With steady U.S. economic growth the Irish economy is likely to continue to grow in tandem, as has been the case since the 1990s, but another U.S. recession could see a Populist far-right emerge from out of the long grass in Ireland.
Direct Provision
September’s well-organised protests in the small town of Oughterard in County Galway,[xxiv] along with demonstrations against other proposed Direct Provision accommodation centres for refugee and asylum seekers, indicates a new anti-immigrant mood in rural Ireland. But unless, or until, one of the three main nationalists parties embraces such an outlook it is likely to remain marginal.
The Irish ‘Blueshirts’
With origins in the ‘Blueshirt’ fascist movement of the 1930s, Fine Gael has occasionally accommodated far-right views throughout its history. One prominent anti-Semite of the 1940s was Oliver J. Flanagan, ironically the late father of the current Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan, who has promised to introduce anti-hate crime legislation; much to the chagrin of far-right vloggers, such as the journalist-turned-far-right-politician Gemma O’Doherty.
Varadkar appears to assume that a half-Indian background insulates him from accusations of racism. Thus, in response to People Before Profit’s Bríd Smith’s criticism in the Dáil of Fine Gael’s recent by-election candidate Verona Murphy – who had claimed asylum seekers as young as three years-of-age could be influenced by ISIS – he claimed to know ‘a little more about experiencing racism than perhaps you do.’[xxvii]
Fine Gael has since de-selected the Wexford woman, who is standing as an independent in the forthcoming election. Yet even Danny Healy-Rae (the brother of the aforementioned Michael) was able to expose the hypocrisy of Varadkar’s criticism of Noel Grealish’s inflammatory (and erroneous) Dáil speech on Nigerians sending home remittances.[xxviii]
Fine Gael’s overriding focus, however, is to deliver the elixir of economic growth, rising rents, and well-remunerated jobs, through foreign direct investment, while embracing further integration with the European Union. Anti-immigration rhetoric jeopardises that political and economic formula.
Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and Aontú
Given a nationalist background in Northern Irish politics, and historic advocacy of protectionist economic policies outside the E.U., Sinn Féin might seem a likely candidate for adopting a nativist agenda. But the Party has remained faithful to its anti-colonial principles and avoids Populist anti-immigrant messaging. Moreover, many of Sinn Féin’s new cohort of young supporters would be alienated by such an approach.
Under the steadying hand of Micheál Martin, Fianna Fáil stands on the brink of power, either in coalition with Fine Gael or perhaps a combination of other parties. Under his guidance the party is highly unlikely to embrace any form of far-right Populism. But another recession, and a further leftward surge, could tear up that playbook, with a different outlook emerging under new leadership.
Although Martin advocated for a ‘Yes’ vote in the abortion referendum, a majority within the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party opposed repeal of the Eighth Amendment.[xxix] Notwithstanding its crushing defeat in the 2018 referendum, there exists in Ireland a substantial and well-organised anti-abortion movement, prompted by journalists and vloggers,[xxx] which might easily fall in behind a large party such as Fianna Fáil, as occurred with the Brexiter takeover of the Tories in the U.K..
Opposition to abortion services does not necessarily connote adherence to a broad spectrum of far-right ideas, but nor is it a stand-alone issue. Far-right ideologues around the world, including in Ireland, speak of a Great Replacement conspiracy theory wherein the native population is replaced by immigrants. Abortion is considered a means of diminishing the indigenous population.
Undeniably, Peader Tóibín, the leader of the newcomer Aontú represents the views of many in ‘middle’ or ‘forgotten’ Ireland. It will be intriguing to see how this conservative party performs in the forthcoming election.
There is no doubt there is a growing unease and concern among many people in Ireland around the issue of immigration. Our view is very simple, there needs to be sustainable levels of immigration in this country, it needs to be managed. There needs to be some link between the capacity of the country and the numbers of people coming in if there’s not there’s going to be hardship for indigenous and newcomers alike.[xxxi]
Should Aontú achieve electoral success on the issue of immigration in a future election, it would not require a great leap of imagination to envision ‘soul-searching’ in Fianna Fáil that leads to a ‘harder line’ being taken on immigration, and perhaps the embrace of other far-right platforms. Aontú may not survive long, but like PDs they could leave an indelible imprint on Irish politics.
Climate change denial would also appeal to farmers under pressure to reduce emissions from a sector contributing 34% of the national total; as well as a motor car-lobby resistant to carbon taxes and public transport.
Cognitive Dissonance
Thankfully, it requires a degree of cognitive dissonance for the far-right in Ireland to adopt the anti-immigrant rhetoric employed in the U.S. and U.K..
First and foremost, Irish people have emigrated in extraordinary numbers over the course of the past two centuries. Secondly, it can hardly be argued that the country lacks space given the population density was greater in the 1840s than today. Indeed, stemming a decline in rural Ireland’s population is an ongoing challenge.
The furore over Direct Provision is better assessed in terms of a housing crisis in the greater Dublin region. This led to the State securing cheap properties elsewhere; perhaps in an attempt to avoid the accusation that it looks after refugees, while failing to provide accommodation for homeless in the capital.
Finally, anyone appraised of Irish history will be aware that the Irish ‘nation’ is a composite of many waves of migration and conquests. The medieval Book of Invasion (Lebor Gabála Érenn) tells of the land being taken over six times by six different peoples. Thus James Joyce argued: ‘What race or language … can nowadays claim to be pure? No race has less right to make such a boast than the one presently inhabiting Ireland.’[xxxii]
James Joyce: ‘What race or language … can nowadays claim to be pure?’
With the institutions of the Irish state ill-equipped for a significant influx, however, friction with an indigenous population confronting a housing and homelessness crisis, if unchecked, seems inevitable.
Island Nation
Operating as an offshore member of the European Union, located between the two most populous (and powerful!) English-speaking nations brings significant advantages to an Irish State that struggled to hold its people for the first eighty years of independence. The Industrial Development Authority, established in the late 1940s, has played a crucial role in attracting some of the largest companies in the world, providing secure employment for indigenous and foreign workers under a low corporation taxation regime that infuriates many of Ireland’s E.U. partners.
The EU/IMF Bailout, however – through which the State consented to take on the debts owing to unsecured bond holders – is a Faustian Pact mandating economic-growth-without-end to prevent another debt crisis. It has restored the price of property, and rents, to levels seen during the Celtic Tiger era.
A low corporation taxation regime and lack of significant property taxes attracted the interest real estate investment trusts (Reits) that have brought the boom back with a vengeance. This works to the benefit of an ever-shrinking proportion of the population, with the young in particular struggling to live in a capital ill-served by public transport.
Long term, to address the extraordinary wealth tied-up in property meaningful land taxes ought to be introduced. Here, unfortunately, Sinn Féin has evinced reluctance to introduce what might prove unpopular measures in the short term; proposing instead to phase out unpopular local property taxes, and only to tax the earnings of Reits.[xxxiii]
But land taxes[xxxiv] could bring more land into productive use by penalising land-hording, permitting young people to buy homes at more affordable prices from empty-nesting elders, who should be accommodated in smaller, climate-friendly units. A reduction in the cost of agricultural would also encourage the development of alternative, climate-friendly, agriculture.
In the wake of Brexit, Ireland may re-assess its relationship with an E.U. (including the euro) struggling to contain atavistic forces in many countries. In the event of another global recession, the Stability and Growth Pact, requiring deficits to stay within 3%, should not impede the State from responding with Keynesian measures. Otherwise austerity policies could lead to a Populist far-right gaining traction.
The Irish general election of 2020 may prove a watershed, with the duopoly of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael being knocked off their seemingly unassailable perch, and a more conventional left-right division developing. But the politics of identity may derail ambitious social programmes, with the question of the border unresolved.
A ongoing challenge for the left, and Irish progressives more broadly, is to develop a fair distribution of resources, and sustainability, in a State still bearing the wounds of colonisation.
Featured Image (c) Daniele Idini.
[i] Fiachra Ó Cionnaith, ‘TD calling for no-confidence vote in Simon Harris’, RTÉ, January 9th, 2020, https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2020/0109/1105248-politics-no-confidence-motion/
[ii] Michael Staines, ‘Come Out Ye Black and Tans tops Charts in the UK and Ireland after RIC controversy’, Newstalk, January 9th, 2020, https://www.newstalk.com/news/wolfe-tones-come-out-black-and-tans-947680
[iii] Paul Reynolds, ‘Drogheda feud reaches new level of barbarity with teenager’s murder’, RTÉ, 18th of January, 2020, https://www.rte.ie/news/crime/2020/0117/1108136-mulready-woods-drogheda/
[iv] Conrad Duncan, ‘‘Absolutely disgusting’: Homeless man suffers ‘life-changing’ injuries after tent cleared away by Dublin city council’, Independent, January 15th, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/homeless-man-life-changing-injuries-dublin-city-council-ireland-varadkar-a9284936.html
[v] Fintan O’Toole, ‘Fintan O’Toole: For the first time since 1171, Ireland is more powerful than Britain’, September 14th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-for-the-first-time-since-1171-ireland-is-more-powerful-than-britain-1.4014922?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffintan-o-toole-for-the-first-time-since-1171-ireland-is-more-powerful-than-britain-1.4014922
[vi] Finn McRedmond, ‘Finn McRedmond: Like Tories, Corbyn has failed Ireland’, August 24th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/finn-mcredmond-like-tories-corbyn-has-failed-ireland-1.3995334
[vii] Press Association, ‘Sinn Féin pledges to secure border poll within five years’, Breaking News¸ January 28th, 2020, https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/sinn-fein-pledges-to-secure-border-poll-within-five-years-978299.html
[viii] Sorcha Pollak, ‘Dublin rents to rise 17% by 2021 due to lack of supply, report finds’, Irish Times April 8th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/dublin-rents-to-rise-17-by-2021-due-to-lack-of-supply-report-finds-1.3853074?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fdublin-rents-to-rise-17-by-2021-due-to-lack-of-supply-report-finds-1.3853074
[ix] Roisin Agnew, ‘Can Sinn Féin’s young voters finally pull Ireland to the left?’ The Guardian, January 31st, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/31/sinn-fein-ireland-left-election-ira
[x] Rhona McCord, ‘Book Review, ‘A Just Society for Ireland?’’ The Irish Story, December 16th, 2013, https://www.theirishstory.com/2013/12/16/book-review-a-just-society-for-ireland/#.Xjg8giPLdPY
[xi] Fergal O’Brien, Dublin third worst city for time spent sitting in traffic – survey, RTÉ, February `13th, 2019, https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2019/0213/1029375-dublin-traffic-survey/.
[xii] Dan White, ‘Dan White: Harney was right — we are closer to Boston than Berlin’, Herald.ie, May 24th, 2011, https://www.herald.ie/opinion/columnists/dan-white/dan-white-harney-was-right-we-are-closer-to-boston-than-berlin-27980646.html
[xiii] Frank Armstrong, ‘Leo-Liberal’, Cassandra Voices, October 5th, 2019, https://cassandravoices.com/current-affairs/politics/leo-liberal/
[xiv] Sean Murray, ‘Dublin now in top 5 most expensive places to rent in Europe, research finds’, The Journal, March 13th, 2019, https://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-rent-europe-4538856-Mar2019/
[xv] Kevin O’Neill, ‘Irish Population rises by 64,500 bringing it to almost 5m’, Irish Examiner, August 28th, 2019, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/irish-population-rises-by-64500-bringing-it-to-almost-5m-946672.html
[xvi] Untitled, ‘Varadkar says he would like to see a united Ireland in his lifetime’, Irish Times, October 25th, 2018, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/varadkar-says-he-would-like-to-see-a-united-ireland-in-his-lifetime-1.4062543
[xviii] Untitled, ‘The Irish Times view on property investment funds: Doing the Reit thing’, October 10th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/the-irish-times-view-on-property-investment-funds-doing-the-reit-thing-1.4045602?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Feditorial%2Fthe-irish-times-view-on-property-investment-funds-doing-the-reit-thing-1.4045602
[xix] Untitled, ‘Bibby: Irish SMEs struggling with rising costs’, Shelf Life, October 15th, 2019, https://www.shelflife.ie/bibby-irish-smes-struggling-with-rising-costs/
[xx] Untitled, ‘Massive IKEA store approved for Dublin’, BreakingNews.ie, June 13th, 2007, https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/massive-ikea-store-approved-for-dublin-314846.html
[xxi] Brian Mahon ‘Show Vendors, ‘Election 2020: Fine Gael promises end to ‘boom and bust’’, The Times, January 17th, 2020, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/election-2020-fine-gael-promises-end-to-boom-and-bust-9dk70kjdj
[xxii] Dan Mitchell, ‘These Were the 6 Major American Economic Crises of the Last Century’, Time Magazine, July 16, 2015, https://time.com/3957499/american-economic-crises-history/
[xxiii] David Graeber, Debt: The First Five Thousand Years, Melville, London, 2011, p.357
[xxiv] Eileen Magnier, ‘Protest in Oughterard over possible direct provision centre’, RTÉ, September 28th, 2019, https://www.rte.ie/news/connacht/2019/0928/1078800-oughterard-direct-provision/
[xxv] Kevin Doyle, ‘Taoiseach says direct provision ‘better than using tents’’ Irish Independent, October 31st, 2019, https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/taoiseach-says-direct-provision-better-than-using-tents-38647784.html
[xxvi] Untitled, ‘Leo Varadkar says Georgia and Albania driving rise in asylum-seeker numbers’, BreakingNews.ie, November 3rd, 2019, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/leo-varadkar-says-georgia-and-albania-driving-rise-in-asylum-seeker-numbers-961488.html
[xxvii] Pat Leahy, ‘Taoiseach stands by Verona Murphy despite further controversial remarks’, November 19th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/taoiseach-stands-by-verona-murphy-despite-further-controversial-remarks-1.4088124?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Ftaoiseach-stands-by-verona-murphy-despite-further-controversial-remarks-1.4088124
[xxviii] Vivienne Clarke, ‘Danny Healy-Rae defends Noel Grealish for comments about Nigeria’, Irish Examiner, November 13th, 2019, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/danny-healy-rae-defends-noel-grealish-for-comments-about-nigeria-963665.html
[xxix] Philip Ryan, ‘More than half of Fianna Fáil parliamentary party backing ‘no’ vote in referendum’, Irish Independent, May 3rd, 2018, https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/abortion-referendum/more-than-half-of-fianna-fail-parliamentary-party-backing-no-vote-in-referendum-36870462.html
[xxx] For example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9D87j5W7PtE7NHOR5DUOQ
[xxxi] Fiach Kelly, ‘Peadar Tóibín’s immigration remarks spark heavy criticism’, Irish Times, April 8th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/peadar-t%C3%B3ib%C3%ADn-s-immigration-remarks-spark-heavy-criticism-1.3853813
[xxxii] James Joyce, ‘Ireland: Island of Saints and Sages’, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p.118.
[xxxiii] Pat Leahy, ‘Sinn Féin unveils plans for dramatic increase in public spending’, Irish Times, January 29th, 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-f%C3%A9in-unveils-plans-for-dramatic-increase-in-public-spending-1.4154513?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Fsinn-f%25C3%25A9in-unveils-plans-for-dramatic-increase-in-public-spending-1.4154513
[xxxiv] Dr Frank Crowley, ‘How a land value tax could solve many economic headaches’, RTÉ Brainstorm, October 18th, 2017, https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2017/1017/912913-how-a-land-value-tax-could-solve-many-economic-headaches/.
Having grown up around favelas in the East Side of São Paulo I was expecting a similar scene of poverty mixed with a strong sense of community. Instead Moria has a post-war feeling, as it is for many people living there, who showed me evidence on their phones of the destruction they were escaping. It’s a tough and unfriendly place, until you meet the families.
The first smell that hits you is the smoke from wood, plastic and anything else that burns, as they cook on open fires. A blind person would think the whole place was on fire. The second smell is a strong male odour. It’s there because there are hardly any facilities for people to wash.
It’s completely dirty everywhere. The bathrooms are covered in shit. It’s even on the ground where people do business and cook food.
But life goes on. There are market stalls selling soft drinks, fruit and vegetables and clothing. I met two barbers working within their communities.
“The first smell that hits you first is the smoke from wood, plastic and anything else that burns, as they cook on open fires.” Moria Camp, Lesbos, December 2019. Fellipe Lopes.
The air pollution and dreadful hygiene cause a lot of sickness. The men also smoke a lot. Everyone is coughing all the time. I developed a chest infection myself afterwards. The Irish doctor said it came from bacteria prevalent in camps such as this.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) do have a medical facility, but the clinic is overwhelmed. They can’t accommodate everybody. Whether you get medical attention also depends on which camp you live in. If you are lucky you might get to attend a hospital in Mytilene, the capital and main town of the island of Lesbos.
At one point a lady from Syria showed me a document indicating she suffers from cancer, but she wasn’t receiving the medication she requires.
Many of the kids have skin problems. But the worst part is the mental torture of living in the camp that brings out the worst human characteristics.
At one point a guy passed five metres away from me with a machete, a massive knife, and I heard the noise of stabbing. As a photo-journalist my instinct was to go and take a shot, but as soon as I moved a friend, Mohammed, held me back, saying what must have been “don’t go” in Arabic. I understood from the strength he exerted that I shouldn’t move.
An African man had been killed. The perpetrator disappeared. This sort of thing happens every single day in a camp built for a maximum of 4,000 people, now housing more than 20,000 and growing. A friend said that over the last two weeks another two hundred tents had been erected. I looked down and saw a wave of them across the hillside.
Yet I didn’t feel unsafe. As the days went by I became more confident. I knew the friends I had been introduced to would protect me. That’s how it works in Moria.
Moria Camp, Lesbos, December 2019. Fellipe Lopes
When you enter the camp you notice the separation between nationalities. In one part there are Africans, mainly from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Congo, in another you find the dominant Afghan groups, with black and white scarfs speaking different languages. There is a small part of the camp where the Syrians live.
I grew close to the Syrian community, speaking a mixture of broken Arabic and broken English, and also using phones to translate. Most of them say the system is not working for them; that if you are a Syrian in Moria you have no chance of being relocated elsewhere in the European Union. You will be denied documents.
Many Syrians believe they are stuck there forever. I met members of one family who have been waiting for a year-and-a-half now.
In general, cases are not being resolved. There are people waiting for official refugee status, or waiting other documentation. Each case is different. But some people are being scheduled for appointments in 2021, just to start the process. Until then they are not permitted to leave the island. They have to sit and wait in the apocalypse that is Moria.
The Prison’
There are three areas in the camp. First there is the so-called ‘Friendly Campus’ run by Movement on the Ground, which has most of the better accommodation, which is not saying a lot. Throughout the camp you find structures built from any wood and plastic they find, and tents of different sizes; some are big enough to sleep twenty people, others are the kind of two-man tents you would expect to see at a music festival.
Then there is ‘the Prison’, which is the original camp. There you find the so-called ‘boxes’, which are temporary structures, some of which even have AC devices that take the chill off the freezing January temperatures. Journalists are not allowed to enter this part. A bus sits at the entrance with eight policemen bearing big guns. But where there is a will there is a way.
The Prison, Moria camp, Lesbos. Fellipe Lopes
I entered with a small camera inside my jacket pocket. People were helping me to get in and out. They knew when and where there would be no cops around and I could walk in and out.
Another part is called ‘the Jungle’, which is really a forest where people are living. I met one guy who had carved a hole in a tree and now sleeps inside the bark with a plastic sheet for shelter. A man forced to live inside a tree in the European Union in 2020.
“I met one guy who had carved a hole in a tree and now sleeps inside the bark with a plastic sheet for shelter.” Moria camp, Lesbos, December 2019. Fellipe Lopes
There is a part of the camp that has electricity, and where people can charge their phones. Most parts, however, have no access whatsoever.
They cook for themselves, improvising with things like old paint tins over open fires. The camp is next to an olive grove so there is some wood available and they burn whatever else they can find.
There are two options for food. The first is to take it directly from the camp dispensary. There you queue and receive a free meal. On Sundays you get chicken and rice; for the rest of the week it’s beans and vegetables.
But the food is awful. I couldn’t imagine eating it. So what most families do is recook it, using containers to carry it to their fires, mixing it with the spices they carry. It seems to become a bit more digestible.
Another option is available to families who receive allowances of approximately €90 per month. They can catch a bus, or take a one-hour-and-a-half journey by foot, to the island’s capital Mytilene and purchase the cheapest food they find in the supermarket, usually rice, beans or noodles.
How much any family receives seems to be a lottery. There is no apparent formula. Some families get nothing. The lucky ones are given a UNHCR MasterCard with credit on it rather than hard cash.
For water there are taps to refill plastic bottles. I drank it a few times and thankfully it didn’t make me ill. Locals don’t seem to drink the tap water.
Moria camp, Lesbos, December 2019. Fellipe Lopes
The frequency of rape
Until I came to Moria, I had never been to a place where there was no sense of hope. In the favelas people have a seriously tough life, but most of them believe that things will get better. In Moria, however, ninety percent of people I spoke to believe they will be staying there forever. They don’t see a future, believing either they will be killed, or live out their days there. Just a few families I spoke to saw a light at the end of the tunnel.
One thing I heard that made me feel really emotional was that I was bringing hope: “you are a guy from Brazil living in another country. You are an immigrant too who came here to tell our stories”.
In the camps there are loads of suicides, including kids under the age of ten.
One thing I should say is that rape is getting more frequent inside the camp. Women are of course victims, but I have heard that a number of young boys between the ages of seven and twelve have been targeted too.
One man came to me and told me his heart was breaking. He took my phone, translating from Arabic into English that his young son had been raped in the bathrooms. He said he was afraid to inform the authorities because he feared retaliation. As a result he, and others, keep their kids inside the tents.
Some of the families do manage to send their kids to school. But I didn’t hear of any teenagers attending high school. They go to cultural centres, the Hope Project and One Happy Family, where they spend an hour painting or playing football, and can take English lessons. But there is no regular schooling for that age group.
Empowerment and Love
European NGO workers say they want to empower people living in the camp. But how do you empower someone living in these conditions? The NGOS are doing what they can, but people are unfamiliar with the European concept of empowerment.
Yet around the rest of the island life goes on as normal. You would hardly even know Moria existed, with farmers working the fields, on an island that is a place of great natural beauty, and still popular with tourists.
There is some local sympathy for the refugees, but it has to be said most people are inclined to ignore them. Taxi drivers were asking why I was going there, or warned me against visiting.
On one occasion I was in a supermarket where a cashier refused to serve a Congolese man. She just told him to get out. She said he couldn’t make his purchase. She wouldn’t accept his card, so I intervened to pay for his drink and snack.
Another time a Syrian family came along with us to a restaurant. The waiter would not direct a word at them, and looked for the permission of myself and my colleague Caoimhe Butterly for what they could order.
I was lucky enough to be staying in guesthouse accommodation in Mytilene. Every night when I called a taxi to get away from the foul-smelling camp I felt a wave of guilt. Knowing how those people were living made me uncomfortable in my clean bed.
On New Year’s Eve we hung out with friends from Syria, Ghana and Ethiopia in the town. We went to a bar, where people were drinking and taking drugs.
Towards the end of the evening Haya from Syria began crying. She said: “I wished so much to be outside the camp, and now I see those people having fun and I just miss my family. I just want to be in the box. Because that is all I have left in my life. I don’t have money, I don’t have a job, I don’t have expectations. The only thing I have left is my family, and I’m here.”
That broke my heart, as I had a similar feeling after a phone call with my mother in Brazil. At the end of the day you have your family.
What holds those people together? It is love. There is no social programme. There is nothing from the U.N. and there is nothing much from the NGOs either. If you get close to them, to the families, what you find is loads of love between them, and kindness to strangers. That generosity of spirit holds us together.
‘The interesting thing is that they’re protesting against themselves. There’s no enemy out there. They know they are the enemy.’ J.G Ballard, Millenium[i]
The 2019 Reuters Institute Digital News Report points to increasing de-politicisation across the Western world. This accompanies a seemingly inexorable rising tide of ‘identitarian’ Populism, globally led by Steve Bannon. The movement channels latent anger into cynicism towards central governments and supra-national institutions such as the E.U.; just when we require solidarity to address climate chaos.
Symptomatic were Conservative Party tactics during U.K Election 2019 – under the influence of Bannon – promising nothing beyond ‘getting Brexit done’; in other words a negation of the country’s institutional ties with other states – rather than a vision for improvement. This recalls Donald Trump’s ongoing pledge to ‘DRAIN THE SWAMP’ of Washington politics.
In a climate of suspicion, roguish buffoons like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson have lied and cheated their way to high office. The moral landscape has altered to a point where the truth doesn’t seem to count for much anymore; in contrast to a cosy relationship with Big Data, and plenty of campaign dosh, which is more vital than ever.
Delving deeper, these political trends are tremors from a seismic Internet Revolution radically re-shaping our societies and very brains. This new medium has proved a fruitful ground for the advancement, and enrichment, of varied corporate entities and human beings. Those benefitting include Canadian psychology Professor Jordan Peterson, arguably the first public intellectual of the Digital Age – with many of his lengthy YouTube lectures hitting numbers associated with music videos.
It is instructive that Steve Bannon targeted Peterson’s online devotees before the last Presidential election. Peterson came to prominence especially through the so-called culture wars, contributing to a ‘woke’ caricature, which really should be attributed to the liberal centre, given the emphasis leading lights such as Tony Blair, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton placed on political correctness and multiculturalism.
Peterson’s cult status brings adulation of a type associated with Pop stars, drawing huge audiences to venues across the English-speaking world. A predominantly male audience has been impressed by a refusal to pay the usual fealties to political correctness, and offered the kind of sound, fatherly advice that many seem to lack, but Peterson abuses his power by peddling climate change denial, while demeaning collective institutions, and governments.
Politicide
In 2003 Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling published a book called Politicide, which charted the destruction of the Palestinian nation as a political entity. He claimed the state of Israel was transforming Palestinians into a leaderless community struggling for an identity – as had previously been the case.[ii] Thus in 1969, then Prime Minister Golda Meir questioned the existence of a distinctive Palestinian people, an inquiry that might soon be aired again.
Israel’s erosion of Palestinian identity has been achieved through collective impoverishment, targeted assassination of key leaders and the age-old technique of divide and conquer. Now the Palestinian voice on the international stage has been reduced to a barely audible whimper.
A similar, though less overtly violent, campaign of Politicide is being waged by Steve Bannon, Dominic Cummings and other unelected political advisors across the Western world. Democracy is being corroded by sophisticated technology, including from the notorious Cambridge Analytica, mining data from social media and other online interactions to develop advertising specific to targeted groups in key marginals.
The old left that forged bonds both within countries and internationally, especially through working class solidarity is the immediate target of attack ads that are having an effect. In this respect, Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 comment ‘And you know, there is no society’ recalls Golda Meir’s aspersion of Palestinian identity. Lacking sufficient resources for social media campaigns, and pilloried by journalists increasingly beholden to conservative billionaires such as the Koch brothers, socialism is on the decline across Europe and beyond.
Drawing support away from the old left, so-called Populists – who really have little in common with the agrarian-radical originals of the late nineteenth century led by William Jennings Bryan – are incubating acceptance of a global corporate order, directing oppositional energies against what they characterise as a corrupt state – which of course is being hollowed out by those same corporations, through lobbying and regulatory capture.
An important component of Politicide is for growing numbers to be turned off news content altogether. Thus the Reuters Digital News Report for 2019 found an average of 32% across a large number of countries actively avoid it, up from 29% the previous year. In the U.K. that figure reached 35% in the election years of 2019, a striking 11% increase on the previous poll. Such shifts do not occur by accident. Turning people off trusted news sources increases susceptibility to fake news arriving via political ads.
The success of the Bannon formula is not measured purely in terms of increasing vote share, but also in opponents losing support through apathy and despair. The most important social media platform remains Facebook, still the dominant player by quite a margin, especially for older people. There we find the kind of attack ads long a feature of U.S. political culture targeted precisely at voters in marginal or swing constituencies or states.
Both Steve Bannon and Dominic Cummings are clever political operators, they are not, however, geniuses. But the project of politicide, working distinctly to the advantage of large corporations, is the product of broader cultural currents. The first wave of the Internet Revolution is fraying old systems of thought, and recasting political discourse. The Jordan Peterson phenomenon is instructive.
The rise of the ‘Petersonites’
Notably, Steve Bannon mined the data of the followers of Jordan Peterson before the 2016 U.S. Presidential election as ‘they were looking for a father figure to tell them what to do,’ according to a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower.[iv] Apparently they possessed ‘the big five traits’ of easily manipulatable men: frustrated economic opportunities; an estranged father; enjoyment of word salad; not showering on a regular basis; and ranking in the top quartile for the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Jordan Peterson is not, however, a political extremist – by North American standards at least. Nonetheless, his generally compelling talks – with ideas distilled in particular from the archetypes of C.S. Jung and Aristotle’s virtues – have been adopted, and glossed, by a legion of far-right digital warriors. He also represents a successful formula for the entrepreneurial pursuit of an online personality in this neo-liberal zeitgeist that has been copied more broadly.
Peterson’s fame, or notoriety, derives mainly from impressive public speaking performances and televised debates rather than through books. Indeed, his literary output is a relatively modest two publications[v] – the most recent a self-help bestseller.
Like Donald Trump, Peterson is a master of the new digital medium. While the U.S. President specialises in cutting brevity – ‘show me someone who has no ego and he is a loser’[vi] – Jordan Peterson represents the opposite pole, opting for grandiloquent expression; dazzling audiences with a flurry of references; fluently recalled using streams of synonyms ‘maxing out’ any SAT Writing and Language test. He reaches a crescendo of self-righteousness when laying waste to scruffy woke opponents.
The Digital Age
We are in the early stages of a communications revolution reconfiguring human societies, and perhaps rewiring our brains.[vii] This Digital Age is characterised by a ‘secondary orality’ conveyed through video, podcast and memes that still depends on an inheritance of books.[viii] As the pace of change accelerated with the arrival of affordable smartphones from 2010, the quality of political journalism declined in tandem.
The great U.S. reporter Seymour Hersh recently offered a withering assessment of contemporary media to the effect that ‘We are sodden with fake news, hyped-up and incomplete information, and false assertions delivered non-stop by our daily newspapers, our televisions, our online news agencies, our social media, and our President.’[ix]
It is perhaps unsurprising that abandonment of books in favour of digital ephemera should herald a cultural decline. On social media the image is king, and language, as Richard Seymour argues in the Twittering Machine, is increasingly reduced to its effects, like all manipulative communication, from marketing to military propaganda.[xi]
These developments are unravelling a profound cultural inheritance. Walter Ong contends that ‘More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness.’[xii] ‘By separating the knower from the known’, he says, ‘writing makes possible increasingly articulate introspectivity, opening the psyche as never before not only to the objective world quite distinct form itself but also to the interior self against whom the objective world is set.’[xiii]
It is through textual records, passed down and renewed by each generation of scholars, that the wide-ranging dialectics required for scientific research and philosophical enquiry occur. The development of writing allowed us to determine and convey facts.
The increasing dominance of a ‘secondary orality’ of video and podcast is shifting political debate away from philosophic “articulate intropsectivity”, and also bringing celebrity veneration, as “the knower” (or quickfire know-all such as Jordan Peterson) merges with what is “known.”
Moreover, unlike public intellectuals of the recent past, who conveyed facts and ideas in books, the output of a digital-era leading light arrives in a stream of video, more challenging to parse, or counter, than the venerable medium in print form. Thus, previously agreed upon facts are more easily dismissed as we enter an era of post-truth.
‘An explosion in identity talk’
Alongside devotion to vacuous celebrity, Richard Seymour observes that over the course of the last decade, as the numbers regularly accessing Twitter and Facebook grew into billions, there has been ‘an explosion in identity talk.’[xiv]
Jordan Peterson is perhaps the intellectual apotheosis of this trend. Thus, in 2016 after igniting controversy for refusing to adopt gender-neutral pronouns, he released a series of videos justifying his positions.[xv] Soon he had emerged as a global conservative champion in the culture war, ‘destroying’ interlocutors with well-rehearsed, and often, it must be said, reasonable arguments.
Peterson railed against a woke-ish political correctness that many on the left already acknowledged had lurched into absurdity, to the exclusion of more pressing discussions of climate change, ecological collapse, spiralling inequality and unaccountable digital platforms.
Amy Chua identifies acute problems with identity politics ‘on both sides of the political spectrum,’ which she says, ‘leaves the United States in a perilous new situation: almost no one is standing up for an America without identity politics, for an American identity that transcends and unites all the country’s many subgroups.’[xvi]
Peterson has amassed a reasonable fortune in the process of emerging as both hero and villain in the febrile culture war. Knowingly or otherwise, he has served the interests of Bannon and his ilk.
Narrowing Debate
Jordan Peterson is broadly correct that the parameters of debate in Anglophone so-called liberal – or ‘woke-ish’ to use the term de jour – media such as The Guardian and TheNew York Times have narrowed. The phenomenon of no-platforming outspoken thinkers such as Germain Greer for questioning whether a transgender individual should be considered a woman is disturbing. The media’s obsession with celebrity sex scandals often amounts to little more than clickbait.
Harvey Weinstein believes he can rebuild career if cleared of charges https://t.co/CJbsye1pIR
Moreover in America, and elsewhere, a range of media from Fox News to Breitbart have picked up the slack, accommodating so-called conservative, increasingly far-right, standpoints.
Similarly, right-wing views are well represented in U.K. media by established players such as The Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express as well as newcomers like Spiked, whose founders’ journey from Marxism to the alt-right is symptomatic. The traditional viewpoint that Peterson purports to represent is far from being marginal across the Anglophone world.
A shift towards identity politics can be traced to the fissuring of the political order at the end of the Cold War, as mainstream centre-left parties in the U.S. and U.K. pivoted to the centre-right.
Thus in the U.S., Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama essentially ignored spiralling inequalities attending the rise of the digital behemoths, assuaging discontents by endeavouring to roll out state-funded medical care that has done little to break the dominance of Big Pharma and an epidemic of legal drug addiction. With identity politics centre-stage, Obama’s victory – that ‘Audacity of Hope’ – was mistakenly viewed as the harbinger of a tolerant and inclusive society.
Then stories such as the ‘birther’ controversy– an unfounded rumour that Obama had not been born in the United States which, if true, would have debarred him from the presidency – generated endless columns in the liberal media,[xvii] to the exclusion of reporting on social and environmental issues highlighting the despoliation of the Earth by large corporations.
Focus on identity politics, from race to feminism and same-sex marriage, not to mention abortion, diverted attention from the long-standing exclusion of the poor of all ‘races’, with real wages stagnating for decades,[xviii] while extraordinary wealth and privilege has been concentrated in increasingly few hands.
Donald Trump tapped into economic insecurities – offering up poor Latino immigrants as a scapegoat to blue collar workers – to win the Presidency of 2016. Hilary Clinton and her handlers persevered with identity politics, emphasising the importance of a female candidacy, and focusing on her opponent’s philandering, rather than addressing entrenched poverty and social exclusion, let alone the excesses of the military industrial complex, and lost.
In the U.K., the Labour Party also settled in the centre, or even centre-right, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (1997-2010). New Labour essentially accepted Margaret Thatcher’s (1979-90) market deregulations and privatisations to the satisfaction of the newspaper barons that tend to decide elections. ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’ read Rupert Murdoch’s Sun after John Major’s come-from-behind victory in 1992 – a cheeky headline masking a sinister political reality.
The Sun newspaper, April 11th, 1992.
As Mark Fisher memorably put it: ‘Blairism has consolidated and outstripped the ideological gains of Thatcherism by ensuring the apparently total victory of PR over punk, of politeness over antagonism, of middle class utility over proletarian art.’[xix]
Later David Cameron and his fellow ‘modernisers’, or ‘One Nation’ Tories, rebranded the Conservative Party in the dress code of New Labour, embracing non-economic issues such as marriage equality and increasing the visibility of female and ethnic minority representatives, while pursuing Thatcherite, austerity policies in the background.
This approach yielded electoral success in 2010 and 2015, before Brexit derailed the formula. Similar to Trump’s victory over Hilary, Brexit bubbled up, dialectically, inside the cauldron of identity politics first stirred by the centre-right.
It is disingenuous therefore for Jordan Peterson to bemoan the excesses of identity politics given it was the centre-right he claims to support that has promoted ‘woke-ish’ causes. Grandstanding on controversies over transgender identity simply gives oxygen to debates that are of little consequence, at least by comparison with fundamental issues of human welfare and climate chaos.
Logos
As a psychologist with extensive clinical experience Jordan Peterson is acutely attuned to what makes a primarily male target audience tick. Skillful rhetoric taps into the concerns of essentially Anglophone or Nordic males, perturbed by suggestions they should be ashamed of privileged upbringings, another unhelpful idea that entered debates around identity politics.
Importantly, Peterson also gave intellectual credibility to belief in God after decades of sustained attacks from evangelical atheists such as Richard Dawkins, and, following Jung, identifies the role of spirituality in recovery from mental illness. His appeal to mythology also presented novel insights to an audience jaded by a dominant discourse of scientific materialism.
More problematically, however, Peterson also styles himself a philosopher and scientist. But as James Hamblin pointed out in The Atlantic what Peterson is really selling is a sense of order and control. Thus, while science is about settling questions and determining facts, self-help is concerned with supplying immediate answers to the question of how to live in the world. Hence, a recurring idea in Jordan Peterson’s book is that humans need rules as ‘an antidote to chaos.’[xx]
A crucial concept that Peterson has pronounced on is ‘logos’, which the Aristotelian philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in Whose Justice Which Rationality describes as follows:
To engage in intellectual enquiry is then not simply to advance theses and to give one’s rational allegiance to those theses which so far withstand rational refutation; it is to understand the movement form thesis to thesis as a movement towards a kind of logos which will disclose how things are, not relative to some point of view, but as such.
Essentially, logos, in contrast to moral relativism, permits us to pronounce on moral ‘truths.’ In the wrong hands, however, it leads to moral absolutism, and is a sinister recipe for totalitarianism of a sort the Catholic Church institutionalised through the idea of a Pope speaking ex cathedra.
In our time, where celebrity veneration increasingly equates the knower with the known, real danger lurks in vesting any individual with a singular authority. We should instead assess the merit of their ideas on a case-by-case basis.
Jordan Peterson makes compelling arguments regarding the excesses of political correctness, and even in assessing virtues necessary for a good life, but he should certainly not be considered omniscient, or even competent, in fields beyond his ken.
The ‘Lion Diet’
Notably, Peterson has revealed himself as a climate change denier having argued before the Cambridge Union that views on climate change are inseparable from political orientations,[xxi] an assumption no doubt resting easily with a conservative fanbase, or market. It would certainly have pleased Steve Bannon.
Here we can see the contradiction that lies at the heart of Peterson between the scientist and the charmer, with the latter winning out. One may speculate as to why he holds these views that are at variance with scientific orthodoxy. Perhaps adherence to a ‘carnivore diet’ led to the distortion and departure from science, and logos.[xxii]
The edifice of Peterson’s ideas starts to crumble when we examine the ‘Lion Diet’ he has adopted on the advice of his daughter Michaela. James Hamblin recalls how:
On the comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, Jordan Peterson explained how Mikhaila’s experience had convinced him to eliminate everything but meat and leafy greens from his diet, and that in the last two months he had gone full meat and eliminated vegetables. Since he changed his diet, his laundry list of maladies has disappeared, he told Rogan. His lifelong depression, anxiety, gastric reflux (and associated snoring), inability to wake up in the mornings, psoriasis, gingivitis, floaters in his right eye, numbness on the sides of his legs, problems with mood regulation—all of it is gone, and he attributes it to the diet.
Bannon
Trump’s victory and the Brexit Referendum are products of a profound, and arguably justifiable, disillusionment with the political status quo. Washington and Brussels are both seen as corrupt centres of power. Many of the arguments against these institutions are valid, but ignore the essential functions federal and supranational institutions still perform, with the baby being thrown out with the bathwater in the case of Brexit.
Of more importance to Populist success, however, has been the growing sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’, derived from identity politics. Mistakenly characterised as ethnic pride, it diminishes solidarity between human beings. Thus we enter the third decade of the millennium increasingly lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive and dependent, to quote Erich Fromm.
The Internet Revolution has brought opportunities for a few, particularly the first corporations to optimise social media, and aggressively pursue audience share through acquisition of kindred platforms in Facebook’s case. It has also allowed human beings of varied intelligences to thrive, from Donald Trump to Jordan Peterson, and more encouragingly, Greta Thunberg.
Peterson is the reigning conservative intellectual champion, who has used an undeniable talent to deflect attention from the real challenges confronted by humanity. His strawman of the left is really a creation of the liberal centre. Peterson may prove to be a dangerous guru whose eccentric tastes have brought climate denial.
The intellectual decay associated with Peterson provides the soil wherein Bannon’s seedlings germinate. Peterson informs his legions of fans to stand up straight and ‘own’ their prejudices (whether against transgender individuals or supranational institutions), while Bannon’s software prowls online preferences for signs of alienation.
We are only slowly coming to terms with a Digital Age reshaping our reality. The rise of a “secondary orality” is fraying our allegiance to the older print medium of books that acted as a conduit for facts. Video and podcast are easily accessed but content is not easily parsed. Moreover, as we retreat into a solitary cyberspace the view of the world is often jaundiced, and Bannon wins.
Feature Image by Gage Skidmore/wikicommons: Jordan Peterson speaking with attendees at the 2018 Young Women’s Leadership Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Hyatt Regency DFW Hotel in Dallas, Texas.
[i] J. G. Ballard, Millennium People, Fourth Estate, London, 2003, p.109.
[ii] Deaglán de Bréadún, ‘Contemplating Politicide’, Irish Times, August 9th, 2003, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/contemplating-politicide-1.369096
[iii] Dominic Cummings, ‘‘Two hands are a lot’ — we’re hiring data scientists, project managers, policy experts, assorted weirdos…’ Blog Post, January 2nd, 2020, https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/
[iv] Andrew Hall, ‘Steve Bannon Targeted Jordan Peterson’s Followers Because They Were ‘Easy To Manipulate’’, Laughing in Disbelief, November 4th, 2019, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/laughingindisbelief/2019/11/steve-bannon-targeted-jordan-petersons-followers-because-they-were-easy-to-manipulate/
[v]Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, Routledge, Abingdon, 1999 and 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Penguin Random House, New York, 2018. Peterson has also authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers.
[vii] Hilary Bruek, ‘This is what your smartphone is doing to your brain — and it isn’t good’, March 1st, 2019, Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/what-your-smartphone-is-doing-to-your-brain-and-it-isnt-good-2018-3?r=US&IR=T
[viii] Walter Ong, ‘Orality and Literacy – The Technologisation of the Word METHVE and co. London, 10982 p.2
[ix] Seymour M. Hersh, Reporter: A Memoir, New York, Random House, 2018, p.3.
[x] Untitled, ‘Leisure Reading in the U.S. is at an all time low’, Washington Post, June 29th, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/29/leisure-reading-in-the-u-s-is-at-an-all-time-low/
[xi] Richard Seymour, The Twittering Machine, Indigo, London, 2019, p.118
[xv] Jessica Murphy, ‘Toronto professor Jordan Peterson takes on gender-neutral pronouns’, BBC News, November 4th, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37875695
[xvi] Amy Chua, ‘How America’s identity politics went from inclusion to division’, The Guardian, March 1st, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/01/how-americas-identity-politics-went-from-inclusion-to-division
[xvii] Michael Calderone, ‘Fox News Gives Donald Trump A Pass On Birther Crusade It Helped Fuel’, Huffington Post, August 23rd, 2016. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-news-donald-trump-birtherism_n_57e54a06e4b08d73b830d54e
[xviii] Drew Desilver, ‘For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades’, Pew Research Centre, August 7th, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
[xix] Mark Fisher, K-Punk – The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004 -2016), Shepperton, London, 2018, p.61
[xx] James Hamblin, ‘The Jordan Peterson All-Meat Diet, The Atlantic, August 28th, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/the-peterson-family-meat-cleanse/567613/
[xxi] Jordan Peterson at the Cambridge Union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBbvehbomrY
[xxii] Adam Gabbatt, ‘My carnivore diet: what I learned from eating only beef, salt and water’, The Guardian, September 11th, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/10/my-carnivore-diet-jordan-peterson-beef
Five predictions for 2020: The Trump Card, an analysis of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019, CES 2020, implications of 5G rollout and a Republican climate change pivot.
The Trump Card
For all the talk of a fading U.S. Superpower since President Trump came to office, there is one statistic firmly in his favor. The U.S. remains the world’s most powerful global economy in absolute terms, and home to the largest stock market.
In truth, economic indicators have rarely looked better. Corporate taxes have been cut and red tape slashed. As a result, the stock market has surged to an all-time high[i] and unemployment is hovering at levels last seen in 1969.[ii] Sure there is still serious inequality, and poverty, but at least there are employment opportunities for those willing to work.
The big question for 2020, then, is whether the bull market continues. As ever, we’re feeling Bullish, but not as much about the political ramifications.
Whatever the latest polls are saying in the wake of the Impeachment, when the economy is in this state, it’s hard to see an incumbent President losing an election.
Over the course of 2020 we anticipate billions of dollars being spent on influencing the American electorate which way to vote. All of this will be keenly watched by a global audience, who are aware that where the U.S. travels, others follow.
The outcome has a sense of inevitability, hinging as it does on the health of the stock market. As Bill Clinton, another President who faced Impeachment, famously said: ‘it’s the economy, stupid!’, and this still holds true. Barring a dramatic stock market crash, or a natural disaster, Trump is going to be re-elected.
Patriot Act
In the event of the stock market crashing, Bull Moose predicts Trump will wrap himself tightly in the star-spangled banner, much in the way his one-time mentor Roy Cohn did whenever he faced trouble.
The big question is whether appealing to patriotism will be enough to save him. After all, this approach can be replicated by the Democratic opposition, even if Republicans have owned the story in recent times.
Enter another iron law of U.S. politics: whenever the nation is involved in a military conflict, Presidents don’t lose elections.
‘whenever the nation is involved in a military conflict, Presidents don’t lose elections.
Much in the same way as other ‘strongman’ leaders have done – Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin and Kim-Jong Un spring to mind – Trump is likely to develop a rallying cry, awakening fears of an external threat beyond anything the Democrats are serving up to him – just like the Bush administration used the War on Terror to galvanise its base.
He’s sure to deploy the usual rhetoric about the dangers of socialism and the ‘woke’ left, epitomized by ‘The Squad’, a group of four Congresswomen (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan), all from so-called ‘minority’ backgrounds. But against a more centrist Democrat candidate, such as Joe Biden, this might not prove to be enough. Trump needs a scarier prospect, an enemy to make mainstream Democrats quake.
Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez
The drone-strike assassination of Qassem Soleimani on January 3rd was aimed at a domestic audience as much the Iranian regime. Much remains to be said, but henceforth every decision taken by this President should be viewed in the context of a single-minded preoccupation: to win re-election for another term.
Reuters Report
Hot off the press, The Reuters Institute Digital News Report[iii] makes for interesting reading about the state of news journalism in the world. Perhaps the most important takeaway is this:
There is no sign that the majority of people are about to pay for online news, although many recognise that information on the internet is often overwhelming and confusing. Younger audiences in particular don’t want to give up instant, frictionless (and ideally free) access to a range of diverse voices and opinions. They don’t want to go back to how the media used to be.
The global media landscape has changed forever. There is no going back.
Specific to the United States, the report reflects our view that ‘audiences remain deeply polarised, much more so than most other countries.’ This reflects what we said back in July: ‘Among the least discussed, but perhaps most important influence of the Digital Age is our tendency to live in bubbles. We no longer have to be rich to live in the equivalent of gated communities.’ A near total absence of communication between the two sides is a clear and present danger to democracy itself.
It should also be noted that many media organisations are still struggling hugely in the digital era, despite the rosy economic picture overall. Nonetheless, a few leading companies continue to do well, in effect consolidating their market dominance – think Washington Post, New York Times & Fox News.
The report points to jobs cuts affecting a variety of lesser publications, from the venerable Cleveland Plain-Dealer to digital-platform First Look Media. Notably, in January 2019, BuzzFeed laid off 15% of its worldwide workforce (a total of 220 positions). That very week Verizon Media Group, which owns HuffPost, announced a 7% reduction across its media properties, totalling about 800 positions. Gannett, the leading U.S. news publisher, also announced layoffs at local newspapers across the country.
The Report says this is ‘stoking continued concerns about the future of local news,’ although perhaps more reassuringly viewership on local television news has remained steady.
Podcasts are bucking the downward trend, however, with the U.S. leading the world in listenership, including daily news-focused offerings. The New York Times’ ‘The Daily’ began broadcasting in 2017 and now averages 1.75 million daily downloads. It is joined by the Washington Post’s ‘Post Reports’, Vox’s ‘Today Explained’, Slate’s ‘What Next’, ABC News’ ‘Start Here’, among others. Another notable development is VICE News partnering with Spotify to produce the bilingual podcast series ‘Chapo.’
While these may seem like the usual suspects, a host of small players are also succeeding in this space. This trend is likely to continue in 2020, increasing the depth and breadth of coverage around the world and inviting people to step outside their news media bubbles. This bodes well for micro-operators, such as the Joe Rogan podcast and our own Cassandra Voices, that offer fresh angles.
CES 2020
January is the time of year that for the great and the good to gather in Vegas for CES 2020 and discover the latest news and hands-on reviews from the world’s biggest tech show.[iv] Well over 200,000 people attended this year’s event, providing a useful bellwether on where the digital economy is headed in the years to come.
Amid heightened concerns about infringements on personal data, the headline panel featured representatives from Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple, to discuss privacy.
Alarm bells should be ringing that measures are being taken by the conglomerates themselves, rather than restraints being imposed on them by democratically elected representatives. While most Americans are interested in protecting their privacy, an unspoken consensus seems to have developed, where convenience is the trade-off for the loss of personal data. The question is how long the truce will last, before consumers start to object to being told what they desire.
Bull Moose had some cause for concern himself over the holidays after being surprised to receive a data usage warning from his latest model Galaxy smartphone – unusually all 64GB of storage had been used up. On top of all that, the photo and video file cache was empty.
Facing a choice between asking his young nephew to figure out how to delete the files, Bull Moose plugged the phone into his computer to explore what was happening. Lo and behold, he came across a cache of external sites that had been collecting data on the phone’s activities – involving all manner of companies and apps.
Collectively, these were using 32GB of storage, and after deleting these nothing was lost in terms of functionality. Presumably this data was there for companies to access relevant information at their time of choosing.
Let’s be clear, the primary reason data is collected is to allow companies to profile you in order to sell you goods and services, which they believe you will want.
On the surface, a limited amount of this is ok – advertising is often a bit of a shot in the dark after all – and people are ultimately free to make up their own minds. It’s just about fine provided there is government oversight to prevent identity theft or malicious use of data. The problem is there isn’t any.
It’s only really the relatively toothless and tedious GDPR, enacted by the E.U. in 2018, and California’s new Consumer Privacy Act[v] that are attempting to curb the data free-for-all.
The Rise of 5G
Enter 5G technology, which is likely to alter the way our societies interact with technology. 5G-enabled technologies and networks are characterized by delivery of ultra-high-speed bandwidth, ultra-low latency, and ultra-high reliability of service. It is believed this will lead to connection speeds up to one hundred times faster than we are used to. But it will also generate greater possibilities for tracking and data collection.
CES 2020, then, will be an opportunity for tech makers to demonstrate that 5G will be an actual thing this year, and they’re not going to hold back. Some of these announcements will be around specific devices, like Dell’s 5G-ready Latitude laptop. Others will be around chipsets: MediaTek, for example, plans to roll out a premium 5G chipset for phones at CES, and Qualcomm will likely expound upon the announcements it made at its annual Hawaii summit back in December. Most importantly, expect infrastructure updates, as the US carriers continue to expand their 5G networks and show off how the fifth-generation of wireless will transform healthcare, “smart” cities, and autonomous vehicles.[vi]
While most consumers view 5G much like the arrival of 3G or 4G, i.e. as just another smartphone upgrade, in fact it will have a transformative impact on the technology we use ever more in our daily lives.
Besides privacy questions and public health issues (5G requires a great number and more integrated cell-phone towers), there are also concern around China’s, and specifically Huawei’s, lead in this new technology. As Linsday Gorman in the Atlantic puts it:
Policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic, from European economics ministers to President Donald Trump, have viewed the 5G dispute first as a trade issue … the West has ample reason for caution about Chinese 5G suppliers. For one, the recent Chinese National Intelligence Law requires these companies to comply with Communist Party demands to turn over data or otherwise engage in snooping or network-disruption activities.
… recent revelations about how China’s ruling party exploits the full panoply of personal information it has amassed about its citizens—facial-recognition images, mandatory DNA samples, 24-hour GPS coordinates, and search-history and online-activity tracking, as well as plain old eavesdropping—to quash religious freedom and basic rights should give major pause to Western governments and wireless carriers alike.[vii]
Taken together – trade, security, changing interaction with technology, tracking and personal health – the issues that came to the fore around 5G in 2019 seem likely to gain traction.
Five Predictions for 2020
The stock market run will finally come to an end, forcing President Trump to play his remaining card. Military involvement in the Middle East will escalate as the President wraps himself in the flag to counter ‘unpatriotic’ Dems.
News fatigue and mistrust will reach all-time highs. On the positive side, however, the demand for reliable information and fresh content will see people exploring beyond their news bubbles.
Trump will be re-elected. Each one of the four realistic Democratic Presidential candidates, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg has weaknesses that will be mercilessly exploited.
The roll out of 5G will bring renewed scrutiny of Big Tech, with fears over data intrusion becoming a political issue.
Global warming will continue to hog the headlines as fires and other disasters occur around the world. Here we may see a Republican pivot, with denials giving way to acknowledgement and the identification of opportunities, just as Putin’s Russia is looking ‘to use the advantages’ brought by climate change.[viii] Notably, Trump has recently acknowledged that climate change is no hoax.[ix] Watch this space.
Featured Image: Tampa, Florida, USA 24th Oct, 2016 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hugs an American flag as he takes the stage to speak at a campaign rally at the MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre in Tampa, Florida, the third of five cities Trump is visiting during a two-day campaign swing through Florida. (Paul Hennessy/Alamy)
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[i] Yun, Li, ‘Here’s what happened to the stock market on Tuesday,’ CNBC, December 24th, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/24/what-happened-to-stock-market-tuesday-new-all-time-high-for-nasdaq.html
[ii] Untitled, ‘U.S. Unemployment fell to 3.6%, lowest since 1969,’ Washington Post, May 3rd, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/05/03/us-economy-added-jobs-april-unemployment-fell-percent-lowest-since/
[iii] Reuters Institute, ‘Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019,‘ Oxford University, December, 2019, http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/
[v] Cohen Coberly, ‘California’s Consumer Privacy Act has taken effect, bringing GDPR-like data protections to the US,’ Techspot, January 2nd, 2020, https://www.techspot.com/news/83385-california-consumer-privacy-act-has-taken-effect-bringing.html
[vi] Untitled, ‘The 8 Things We Expect to See at CES 2020,’ Wired, January 4th, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/ces-2020-preview/
[vii] Linsday Graham, ‘5G Is Where China and the West Finally Diverge,’ The Atlantic, January 5th, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/5g-where-china-and-west-finally-diverge/604309/
[viii] Agence-France Press, ‘Russia announces plan to ‘use the advantages’ of climate change’, The Guardian, January 5th, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/05/russia-announces-plan-to-use-the-advantages-of-climate-change
[ix] Rachel Frazin, ‘Trump says ‘nothing’s a hoax’ about climate change,’ The Hill, January 9th, 2020, https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/477548-trump-says-nothings-a-hoax-about-climate-change
Today it is shameful to be unemployed and regarded as an achievement to sell oneself into part-time slavery, meekly accepting as natural that one is not free for half one’s waking hours. Theodore Zeldin, The Hidden Pleasures of Life – A New Way of Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future (2015).
With an Irish general election looming, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has again appealed to early risers.[i] Thus the early bird, rubbing sleep from his swollen eyes, is promised an array of tax cuts. This is compensation, we assume, for the long commute and attendant sleep deprivation involved in living in a ‘starter home’ in a peripheral zone, all to the ultimate benefit of a minority in an increasingly unequal society.[ii]
I am a champion for the self-employed & people who get up early in the morning and nobody gets up earlier than the Irish farmer! As long as I am around self employed people will never be taken for granted #IFAAGM
As David Graeber put it: ‘The real question is how to ratchet down a bit more toward a society where people can live more by working less.’ He further opines that the non-working poor may be ‘pioneers of a new economic order that would not share our current one’s penchant for self-annihilation.’[iii]
The Tedium of Work
Neo-liberalism is predicated on a shaky assumption that success, measured in money, sex or fame, derives from a single-minded focus on hard work, and paying off one’s debts. It has led to Leo’s misplaced veneration for the alarm clock, and political scapegoating of ‘welfare cheats,’ and others among the ‘undeserving’ poor.
It is a grand delusion that early rising and hard work make dreams a reality, at its extreme recalling the banner greeting Concentration Camp inmates: arbeit met frei ,‘work will set you free’. A devotion to labour for its own sake is misplaced. In fact, an excess can dull the mind.
Detail of the main gate at Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
Adam Smith, the father of Classical Economics, argued that the tedium of monotonous industrial tasks would render anyone ‘stupid and narrow-minded.’ He maintained that the torpor of repetitive labour renders an individual incapable ‘of relishing or bearing a part in rational conversation’, or ‘conceiving generous, noble or tender sentiment;’[iv] asserting this would come in the way of ‘any just judgment concerning even the ordinary duties of private life.’
Over the course of the last century especially, workers, including those engaged in monotonous ‘unskilled’ work, joined forces to win a series of improvements to their conditions. These included a five-day week and eight-hour working day, along with a living wage. It brought scope for many, if not most, among what has been pointedly referred to as ‘the working class’ to enjoy a reasonable standard of living across the Western world.
Steadily rising standards of living in Post-War U.S and Europe brought a profusion of recreational activities including sports, and unprecedented access to the arts, especially film – the defining cultural form of the twentieth century – along with access to higher education for the children of the poor.
La Dolce Vita
With a decent life available to most of the population, the decades after World War II are known as Les Trente Glorieuses in France and Il Miracolo Economico in Italy, as salaries kept pace with labour productivity. In large part down to the political clout of the left, including Communist parties.
But these developments have given way to a sustained global period of widening inequality,[v] associated especially with Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K.. Henceforth according to David Graeber, ‘we were all to think of ourselves as tiny corporations.’[vi] This has worked to the detriment of the bulk of the population ill-equipped to understand the complexities – or just uninterested – in financial transactions. Above all it has brought a veneration of property ownership, with speculation encouraged by unscrupulous banks, leading to the property inflation that culminated in the Financial Crash of 2008, when the bubble burst in Ireland and elsewhere.
Far from bringing wealth to the many, since the 1970s real wages have stagnated, while private, and public debts spiraled, with the wealth of a few expanding grotesquely, especially in recent times.
U.S. Productivity v Real Wages (source https://thecurrentmoment.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/productivity-inequality-poverty/)
Tellingly, whereas in the 1950s the CEO of General Motors, then the model of a successful US business, was paid 135 times more than assembly-line workers, fifty years later the CEO of Walmart earned 1,500 times as much as an ordinary employee.[vii] In recent times, the efficiencies enabled by new technologies, often protected by exclusionary patents, are enriching those at the apex of corporations.
Unions, which were vital for bringing workers’ rights, are now in retreat. Those that remain often only represent employees in privileged positions. A chasm below an unemployment cliff looms in front of us, with little opposition to the new world order.
Automation
These developments are a feature of a technological revolution, especially in communications with the advent of the Internet, shattering an apparent post-Cold War consensus, and now shifting the political substrate. The world wide web has rendered words, video and music virtually uncommodifiable, wreaking havoc upon the livelihoods of independent-minded writers, musicians and others artists, who struggle to share their revitalising visions for life.
Automation now beckons in a host of industries which will further enhance ‘labour productivity’, at the expense of labour, and to the benefit of capital.
Our present disorder is comparable to the expansion of the Roman Republic in the first century BCE, when territories to the east and west fell to generals such as Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. These charismatic consuls pillaged unprecedented loot, generating an early form of welfare populism and eventually an oligarchic triumvirate. This gave way to the Roman Empire in 49BCE, under the first Emperor Julius Caesar.
The First Triumvirate of the Roman Empire: Caesar, Pompey and Crassus.
Today, we have our own benign despots within Big Data, whose loot would make an emperor blush. Their algorithms convey us from purchase to purchase, intruding ever more into our inner-most thoughts. Most worryingly, the independence of voting intentions are being severely tested by sophisticated (anti-) social media platforms.
At the outset of a dizzying technological revolution a small number of individuals wield unaccountable power, and as time passes the freedom of the Internet recedes. Just as the Celtic tribes of Gaul cowered before the ingenuity of Roman legions, structures of democratic government – states and transnational bodies – melt before the tortoise formations of the corporations, and their often solipsistic commanders.
As in another age where the value of men was assigned in battle, a capacity to appeal to a wide public with a new Internet tool, whether useful or not, has brought mind-boggling fortunes to the founders and shareholders of Google, Facebook, Instagram and the rest. There is little to prevent villainous characters developing unassailable political power through vast fortunes. The descent of the Roman Empire into corruption and excess should serve as a warning.
Moreover, just as Johannes Gutenberg was buried in an unmarked grave while others profited from his invention of the printing press, opportunism rather than ingenuity tends to be rewarded; as with the phenomenon of the real estate speculator Donald Trump, who recalls the fiddling Emperor Nero himself. This acknowledged master of the soundbite is the product of inherited wealth, and the redoubtable political nous of Steve Bannon, who preyed on the insecurities of the American worker.
One such liberal centurion, Leo Varadkar, offers no opposition to the current economic order. Indeed, he unashamedly promotes dominant corporations in Ireland, through a low, or non-existent, corporation tax regime, long justified simply from the perspective of national self-interest. We had an ‘Ireland First’ doctrine here long before Trump invented America’s.
The Irish state has been reduced to the role of croupier at a casino table where the super-rich trouser their winnings without being required to even tip the attendants. So obsequious has the Irish government become that the award of an enormous windfall to the exchequer of the Apple tax bill is resisted: ‘Would sir like to cash his chips in now or later?’
Fuller Flourishing
The impending obsolescence of much unskilled work may provide an opportunity for a fuller flourishing of homo sapiens. Liberation from tedious tasks, such as driving and manufacturing, should provide scope for the development of the “generous, noble and tender” sentiments referred to by Adam Smith. This wealth ought to be shared with the Global South too that was ravaged by the imposition of unfair loans during the 1970s and 1980s.
A powerful remedy to our present difficulties could be for a wealthy country such as Ireland to provide a legal guarantee of a basic standard of living for all citizens. This could offer an opportunity for individual fulfillment in various domains, to the ultimate benefit of society at large. It requires additional funding to educational and cultural facilities, and depends on the state regulating the housing market.
An often parasitic financial services industry should be regulated and taxed effectively, while life’s essentials: especially a roof over one’s head, nutritious food, and public transport, must all become affordable; if not the cheap air travel to which we have grown accustomed. This may seem a Communist ideal, but greater distribution of wealth can work to the benefit of the small-time entrepreneur and lead to a thriving local market.
The Financial Crisis from 2008 originated in failings within the banking system, unconnected to what were, in fact, increasing efficiencies simultaneously occurring in the real economy. Rethinking economics in its wake involves questioning theoretical limitations on fiscal stimuli. The value we attribute to money is a product of the human imagination, and governments possess a singular capacity to generate more of it through expenditure, as exponents of Modern Monetary Theory demonstrate.
Magical money.
Thus George W. Bush’s administration spent its way out of recession without generating inflation. On the other hand, the austerity measures characterising the response of E.U. member states brought prolonged recession, which disproportionately affected the poorest.
This was not only unnecessary, but economically counter-productive as those on low incomes tend to spend money on day-to-day goods, generally patronising local businesses. Whatever else one may say in favour of the E.U., the Growth and Stability Pact, enshrined in Treaty, represents an obstacle to any member state’s capacity to adopt a fiscal stimulus in periods of recession, and needs to be done away with.
Aligning policy to the basic needs of the population should be the role of democratic government, but this is often derailed by special interests. Socio-economic rights could ultimately be enshrined in European treaties so as to avoid a repeat of the disgraceful impoverishment of ordinary Greeks and Irish after the 2008 Crash. But generous government expenditure must avoid the bureaucratisation and careerism often found in the state sector, where many seem to stay in jobs through fear of the alternative.
Intoxication
Objections to ideas such as basic income and other socio-economic rights, often stem from a pessimistic assessment that if not spurred by the need to work, most of us will indulge our vices, especially excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol. Yet it is apparent that the oblivion of intoxication is associated with the end of the working week in jobs that do not inspire. It is also clear that feelings of worthlessness generate excessive, and often self-destructive appetites.
A legal right to economic security would take much of the fear, and even boredom, out of life, while affording the possibility for many of us to follow our dreams, and engage in the kind of blue-sky thinking from which innovations arrive. The pursuit of money as an end in itself, is a lust for power held in common with the warlords of yore. Billionaire moguls are a rare breed requiring containment (who in their right mind would have the motivation to earn more than a billion?), and perhaps even compassion.
Naturally, many of us enjoy the regularity and community of daily work. There is nothing wrong with that and numerous roles will survive the technological onslaught, preserving the satisfaction many derive from a regular schedule.
Home-makers, farmers, carers, and teachers of all kinds will always be required. The satisfaction of craftsmanship and independent enterprise should be enhanced, so as to generate greater pride and commitment in a chosen field. Goods produced in an ethical and sustainable manner could be encouraged through education, and targeted subsidisation aimed at a diminished carbon impact and reduced waste.
Technology professionals are particularly prized in our economy, and their continued usefulness is assured. Many wish to devote their talents towards altruistic goals, however, rather than work for vampire corporations, which exploit people and the Earth. The model of the open source Linux operating system – such as I avail of in this software – shows how a spirit of cooperation endures to make technology a collective resource.
Open-source Linux operating system.
Company Law
We might also contemplate a radical shift in company law. The inherent danger of profit-seeking corporations was once widely recognised. Thus, between 1720 and 1825 it was a criminal offence to start a company in England, during a period of rapid economic expansion.
In the United States until the nineteenth century there were two competing ideas regarding the purpose of companies: the first involved those with charters restricted to the pursuit of objectives in the public interest, such as canal building; the other regime issued charters of a general character, allowing companies to engage in whatever business proved profitable.[ix]
The latter category emerged triumphant, divorced from responsibility to fellow citizens; an unaccountable abstraction with separate legal personality established in the landmark 1897 case of Salomon v. Salomon. By altering the nature of the company under law we may continue to harness the thrusting energy of entrepreneurship, but for positive ends.
Acquisition of wealth is not the be-all and end-all for most of us, especially if basic needs are met: we may still have a real dedication to what we do and the drive to achieve it without the promise of untold riches. Changes in company law requiring any enterprise to have a public interest purpose contained in articles and memoranda of association could prove hugely beneficial to society at large.
Human creativity is manifest in a wide variety of fields. We may discover different vocations throughout our lives, some economically productive, others seemingly desultory, but perhaps crucial to individual development, and sanity, at particular junctures in life. How many criminals – a huge financial burden on any society – are the product of unhappy careers?
The technologies we have developed should allow many of us to indulge our passions, which can ultimately be to the benefit of all.
For some of us, the orthodox structure of the working day is unsatisfactory, and diligence occurs in pursuit of self-ordained objectives, rather than via external imposition This may seem like the privilege of an avant-garde, who tend to have enjoyed educational privileges, but many are increasingly imperiled by current economic structures, and wish to stand apart from what amounts to a conspiracy promoting the purchase of property.
We might draw wisdom from the lifestyle of the early modern craftsman, who was not beholden to a dictatorial clock, which has cast its shadow over the working day since the Industrial Revolution. Households would retire for a few hours after dusk, waking some time later for an hour or two, before taking what was referred to as a second sleep until morning.
During this interlude, people would relax, ponder their dreams, or perhaps make love. Others would engage in activities like sewing, chopping wood, or reading, relying on the light of the moon, or newly invented oil lamps.
Nor was the working week set in stone, and the seasons would dictate the extent of one’s labour. Naturally, the number of burghers who dragged themselves out of a generalised misery at that time was limited, but those managing to do so could operate in tune with their own bodies and the rhythms of nature, rather than the demands of the omnipotent factory owner who emerged ascendant after the Industrial Revolution.
The Factory Clock.
Winners and Losers
The level of poverty we permit in our superficially developed societies is, simply, unconscionable. Insecurity and fear afflict far more than those living in destitution, and are the silent forces that drive addiction and insanity. We have our winners and losers, but the number in the former category has declined considerably in recent decades, as the technological race stretches out the field.
Just as the Roman Empire grew out of economic imbalances resulting from conquest, our own societies confront unassailable capital, which feeds a delusion that chosen people can be saved from barbarian hordes.
The possibilities for homo sapiens are boundless. But we require basic safeguards to flourish. Companies can operate for the benefit of society as a whole, harnessing the dynamism of the entrepreneur, and working cooperatively as the craftsman once did. Let us avoid the fate of the Roman Republic, and prosper together.
An earlier version of this article appeared in February, 2018.
[i] Fintan O’Toole, Varadkar’s vacuous slogan reveals a mean streak,’ Irish Times, December 31st, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-varadkar-s-vacuous-slogan-reveals-mean-streak-1.4127418?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffintan-o-toole-varadkar-s-vacuous-slogan-reveals-mean-streak-1.4127418
[ii] Elaine Edwards, ‘Irish inequality blamed on ‘unusually high’ levels of low pay and weak protections’, Irish Times, February 19th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/irish-inequality-blamed-on-unusually-high-levels-of-low-pay-and-weak-protections-1.3798081
[iii] David Graeber, Debt – The First 5,000 Years, Melville, London, 2011, p.390
[iv] Theodore Zeldin, The Hidden Pleasures of Life – A New Way of Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future, Maclehose Press, London, 2015 p.77
[v] Ted Knutson, ‘Income Inequality Up In Every State Since The 1970s, Says New Report From Liberal Think Tank’, Forbes, July 21st, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedknutson/2018/07/21/income-inequality-up-in-every-state-since-the-1970s-says-new-report-from-liberal-think-thank/#3f0e83a023e9
[viii] Gabriel Sherman, ‘“I Have Power”: Is Steve Bannon Running for President?’ Vanity Fair, December 21st, 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/bannon-for-president-trump-kushner-ivanka
