Victims of Porn.

 

In The Whole Woman (1999) Germaine Greer situates pornography as the "sexuality of the information revolution". If this is the case then we face serious questions. In a more recent debate Greer said "Sex is a blood-sport", she went on to suggest that pornography actually promises to regulate the potential mess of sexual relations. It has no capacity to reject you, nor to disappoint, or to fail in its purpose as an aid to masturbation. After all masturbation is easy compared with building healthy and fulfilling relationships. Pornography enters not as a substitute, but as a means of shifting the problem around. Perhaps too crudely, Greer puts this down to the fear of commitment among men. She notes "Women are not the point of pornography". Instead it is the "flight from women, men's denial of sex as a medium of communication, their denial of sex as the basis for a relationship". On these grounds Greer claims "The victims of pornography are men not women."

 

Somehow I doubt that the masculinists of this world in their campaigns for men's rights will bear this in mind and add 'Defeat the Porn Industry' to the agenda list. Though it wouldn't surprise me if someone out there already has jumped onto this, I suspect they have other priorities. After all A Voice for Men posted an article on 'male vilification culture' (a counter-term for rape culture) featuring this line "Possibly, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the concept of the penis as a machine emerged." Perhaps rape denial could take a back seat for once. Your guess is as good as mine.

No Values Left.

 

 It is often assumed that the conservative Right has the monopoly over social values, culture, tradition and the family. Like the liberal pretension to a monopoly on free-speech, democracy, human rights and civil liberties, it should not go unchallenged. This will come as a shock to Americans, the politics of whom may be described as an oscillation between liberal and conservative positions. On the battlefield of the culture wars it may seem curious to postulate that the Left can challenge the Right on its own turf. For it was none other than Leon Trotsky who put forward the claim that we leftists have always lived in tradition. It's just a difference of which traditions the Left values (such as the right to vote, honouring the struggles of the past) over right-wing fetishes for fox-hunting and the Queen. Broadly, the radical Left aim to challenge the economic forces which dominate and shape life in all sorts of ways. Conservatives aim to preserve tradition and culture in the midst of the very same economic forces, which they themselves defend.

 

 The culture wars are merely the externalisation of the conflict internal to conservatism: social control versus economic freedom. It's worth noting that the socialist movement, itself a tradition, was born out of Christianity as well as a conservative disposition towards the horrifying consequences of industrialisation. The Left was defined early on by its conflict with liberalism, in a way which conservatives have yet to really get over - mainly because it's fundamental to their constitution. Take note of Rousseau's scorn for the market society favoured by such classical liberals as John Locke. The leading fetish of liberals is for the market, whether it is embodied in the arenas of culture, ideas or economics. The nihilist writer Michel Houellebecq writes about the dating scene as a sexual marketplace where all sorts of pleasures and relations are readily available. It then follows that the primary exit from the precarity of the market is monogamy and marriage. Those who scorn marriage as a social construct forget that everyone except for John Zorn buys into social constructs.

 

 The founding fathers of Marxism contributed plentifully to left-wing criticism of the family as a social unit with its own structural tendencies towards oppression. Though it could be said that Karl Marx in his critique of capitalism really left feminism for Engels to engage. In his mammoth magnum opus Marx notes that the family as a social unit has the capacity to hold property in common. Though the wise dialectician notes this in the same breathe that he notes this characteristic can also be found in the primitive epoch of feudalism. It's worth noting that the dialectical current that runs through the Left from Hegel. In this sense socialism should be a more radical advance on the advancements of bourgeois society, its legacy of human rights and civil liberties. Capitalism is an obvious advance on feudalism and slavery, while socialism takes the best of capitalism - its material surplus and social freedom - as its origin. This is worth keeping in mind with the points we'll explore next.

 

 The late Christopher Hitchens articulated his own brand of left-wing humanist arguments for limiting the right to an abortion. It boils down to a pragmatic balance of conflicting values, life and choice. If we first accept that there is such a concept as an 'unborn child' then we can debate at which point a cluster of cells becomes a person. It then follows that that person has rights, specifically to its own bodily integrity. This is the point of the whole debate over how long the window should remain open for an abortion to remain optional. There used to be much more of a division on this question on the Left and among feminists than there is today. It's not so much anti-feminist as non-feminist. The Right definitely has no monopoly over this position, often cultural reactionaries undermine themselves in their opposition to contraception. The left-wing proponents of limited abortion rights are often much more consistent and thorough-going when it comes to women's liberation. By contrast, self-proclaimed 'pro-lifers' are seldom concerned with women's oppression.

 

 As for same-sex marriage it really comes down to the question of equality. If we're talking about an equality of 'sameness' then it follows that the homosexual couple should enjoy all the social possibilities as the heterosexual couple. The best argument against same-sex marriage, and by 'best' I mean non-homophobic, is that the 'difference' of homosexuality is worth preserving. It's a case that Philip Blond has caved out. Furthermore, the 'difference' of homosexuality can be defined insofar that the sexual identity of the individual opens up an array of cultural options for them. The gay community hardly has to worry about the less beautious side of marriage, its deathknell of joy and its fragility. Until recently the average gay man has always been free from divorce, child-rearing, shared bank accounts and alimony payments. There are obvious advantages for those who aren't partial to marriage (which doesn't equate to commitment) and adoption.

 

 It's certainly true that the reform of marriage laws to extend religious ceremonies to gay couples is conservative in that it will preserve the institution of marriage - itself something that the Left has criticised plenty. Notice this isn't an argument against homosexuality in terms of moral conduct and human rights. It doesn't even take a side on the rather absurd claims made against homosexuality on 'moral' and 'natural' grounds. Part of this comes out of the same attitude that can be found in the morose works of conservative John Gray when he writes "[Christian] Morality has hardly made us better people; but it has certainly enriched our vices." In this frame of mind the greatest aphrodisiac is moralism, in any case conservatives are the real perverts. You have only to listen to the rants of Rick Santorum to notice that he has been thinking about homosexual relations just a bit too much. Only a real deviant could see the male anus as a gateway to bestiality.

 

 I may not endorse these positions myself, but it can't be said that the Right has the monopoly over these arguments. It's always worth keeping in mind there are a great many overlaps between the Old Left and the conservative Right when it comes to cultural questions. That was well demonstrated in the debate last year between Terry Eagleton and Roger Scruton.

Womb Wars.

Since the beginning of 2012 we have heard the usual blather about welfare 'reform' (a most dodgy word in political language) with the defenders of family values reserving a particularly cold place for single-mums. The Conservative Party have pushed for a cap housing benefit at £26,000 on commonsense grounds of "fairness". Of course, this isn't nearly enough for the gutter-press which would like to see the whole benefits system scrapped followed by the swift return of workhouses. It would hit large families hardest even if they have managed to find cheap housing outside of London. There are now pushes in Newham to boot the poor out of London altogether. Clearly the London City-State is just for the ultra-rich to swan around in limousines. The next kick was to single-mothers in a bid to make them pay for trying to get child support from their former partners.

Even though it makes far more sense to cap private rents in London, at least in the short-term, as everyone knows that the rent is too damn high! Of course it isn't enough to cap rents, there needs to be serious public investment in affordable housing. And yet the Conservatives have no time for this discussion. It's just assumed that the problem is that they haven't gone far enough. But there's plenty of ink and phlegm to be wasted on calls for an end to dependency culture. There's even been time to entertain nonsense about morality legislation. We've seen Nadine Dorries, that arch-custodian of the sacred foetus, go after sex education in the wake of failure on her campaign to sledgehammer the right to choose. This is the politics of reaction at work again, it has nothing to do with any moral values. Whenever politicians talk of 'family' you should expect an attack on women to follow.

This is where class and sex converge, where feminism and leftism are conjoined at the hip. Everyone knows the word "proletariat", but not every rascal with a Marxian phrase book know that the term is derivative of the Latin for "offspring". Terry Eagleton reminds us that it referred to those who were too poor to serve the state with anything other than their wombs. Too deprived to contribute to economic life in any other way, these women produced labour power in the form of children. Society demanded reproduction, not production from these women. The proletariat was originally outside the workplace, not within it, just like the single-mother living on benefits. But the work these women endured was a lot more painful than breaking boulders. The average worker is a woman in the world today, as it was in the days of Marx and Engels when Britain was the workshop of the world.

As the workers' movement suffers in this time of regression, so do women. We can see this in America. The Georgia House has passed a 'foetal pain' bill that stipulates women must continue to carry to term a stillborn baby as pigs and cows do. The lot who think its proper that a women should die in back-alley abortion clinics to save a foetus have seen victories recently with 'Let woman die' bills. There are businesses spying on potential employees and judge them in accordance with their use of birth-control. This is the nation partly founded by Aaron Burr who hung a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft in his office and insisted that his daughter be educated at the same standard as a man. And we expect this of women for no reward. It's not like we recognise motherhood as work, so many of us don't think the raising of children has any worth at all that we support cuts to child benefit. It's just something women do for free, like a lot of wonderful things.

We've seen people like Rick Santorum pop up, an Opus Dei Republican who believes that life begins at erection. The sort of lunatic who is opposed to abortion in cases of rape. This comes from a man with no kind of social conscience at all. He wants to legislate what consenting adults do in the bedroom. The state can intrude into that area, but not emancipate individuals from wage labour. Santorum's rotten mind fixated on the rigidity of hierarchy and the strength of authority. It is no coincidence that Santorum's politics consist of a return to theoconservative values with the state as a nanny for the rich, a bludgeon of the poor and of the foreign. It isn't coincidental, the opposition to the vital freedom, for women, over their rate of reproduction fits neatly into this platform of sadism. It's about making sin fun again for a privileged few in a way.

As noted by Peter Singer if abortion was illegal then it would be poor women who die from botched abortions in droves whereas well-off women can travel to another country in search of the treatment. Think of the number of people who travel to Switzerland in order to commit suicide. Clearly, the value of life only applies to some in the world of Nadine Dorries. The sacred foetus trumps mummy almost every time I'm afraid to say. Of course, when mummy can fly out to another country and hire a doctor to perform the procedure without a coat-hanger then a blind eye will be turned. Furthermore, as women gain greater control over their lives economically then they're less likely to get pregnant. In a society where there are greater opportunities, better education and better pay for women there will be less children born but there will be less abortions too. Primates like Mr Santorum are unable to see this, men like this have no right to claim to be "pro-life".

Male Mythology in Gonzo.

The Americans based in Puerto Rico as journalists, businessmen and soldiers are depicted as a horde of corrupt, perverted and sex-crazed sociopaths. There is Moberg who is obsessed with cannibalism (a twisted form of the unfulfilled longing) and Zimburger who is described as "more beast than human". Then there is the reckless Yeamon and the inexplicably unfuckable Sala, between them we might situate Kemp as a kind of "moderate witness" who is never as passive as Sala nor as rebellious as Yeamon. Paul Kemp participates and observes the mayhem, but manages to pull-back from the edge and gets to walk off towards the sunset as it were. This is a standard lesson of literature, the passive will destroy themselves and the rebel will be destroyed by the system. It is being able to participate and pull back from the edge just in time that makes for a great story. Especially when we're talking about Gonzo journalism, the journalist is a participant in his story in the full subjective sense. With all of this mind we should look at when Paul Kemp finds himself on a beach after a night of festivities with a woman called Lorraine:

We talked for a while, drying off as best we could, and suddenly she reached over and pulled me down on top of her. “Make love to me,” she said urgently.

I laughed and leaned down to bite her on the breast. She began to groan and jerk me around by the hair, and after a few minutes of this I lifted her onto the clothes so we wouldn’t get full of sand. The smell of her body excited me tremendously and I got a savage grip on her buttocks, pounding her up and down. Suddenly she began to howl: at first I thought I was hurting her, then I realised she was having some sort of extreme orgasm. She had several of them, howling each time, before I felt the slow bursting of my own.

We lay there for several hours, going at it again when we felt rested. All in all I don’t think we said fifty words. She seemed to want nothing but the clutch and howl of the orgasm, the rolling grip of two bodies in the sand.

Paul Kemp promised to call Lorraine - the lie we all know so well - and never does, as far as we know, whereas Kemp later returns to the US where Chenault waits for him. She had left Yeamon for Paul soon after she reappeared after the incident at the carnival, in which she was almost certainly gang-raped at a party - a trauma never fully explored or resolved in the book, it just happened. After turning up at Kemp's place Chenault asks Paul Kemp to get in the shower with her and then comes a flash of impure Gonzo "I heard a gong somewhere in the back of my brain, and then a melodramatic voice saying, 'And this concludes The Adventures of Paul Kemp, the Drunken Journalist. He read the signs and saw it coming, but he was too much of a lecher to step out of the way.' Then there was organ music, a sort of feverish dirge, and then I was stepping out of my shorts and into the shower with Chenault." It is clear that our hero did not go celibate between the chapters, but the sex scene with Chenault is significant in its difference to the earlier tryst on the beach.

I felt totally defeated. For a while I paced around the apartment, barely hearing her happy chatter, then I gave up entirely and went over to the bed and took off my clothes. I fell on her with such a violence that her smile quickly disappeared and it became a desperate business.

She kicked her feet in the air and shrieked and arched her back and she was still trying when I exploded inside her and collapsed with exhaustion. Finally she gave up and locked her legs around my hips and her arms around my neck, and started to cry.

I leaned on my elbows and looked down at her 'What's wrong?' I asked.

She kept her eyes closed and shook her head. 'I can't,' she sobbed. 'I get so close, but I can't.'

We might reach for the term 'courtly love' to denote the way in which Chenault was pursued by Paul Kemp simply because she was forbidden to him as Yeamon's girlfriend. It began on the plane over to Puerto Rico where he was desperate to see to it that she could sit next to him and ended up getting into a fight with an elderly man over his seat. Keep in mind that the perpetuation of the 'courtly love' structure hints at the ongoing attempts of man to compensate for his reduction of women to mere vehicles for his fantasy.In turn woman comes to inhabit this fantasy as her 'femininity' and she is deprived of her particularity as a woman. As the pursuit moved beyond 'loving' her (for lack of a better phrase) for something in her more than herself - as an object - to seeing her as a subject of lack. If we continue along this Žižekian line we find that this leads us to the conclusion that sexual difference retains the Real which cannot be symbolised and lovers are fated to settle for a relationship that is a "non-relationship".

Then again we might be tempted here to accept the conclusion that the point of the tryst on the beach with the "dark skinned" Lorraine was to stand as the exotic Other with a certain authenticity in contrast to the anemic and inhibited whiteness of Chenault. A racism turned on its' head where Lorraine was an exotic and wild lay on a beach by comparison with Chenault. So the only point of Lorraine was to point us towards Chenault's deficiency, once she has served her purpose on the beach she can disappear. It is only after Kemp beds Chenault that the narrative can reach a conclusion - the return to home - so we might designate Puerto Rico as a vanishing mediator on it's own. But then what might we read into Chenault's disappearance as she heads onwards to New York? A rendezvous in the Big Apple remains a genuine possibility for Paul with Chenault. It is never fully resolved what happened at the carnival, through Paul's eyes it is as if Chenault was "asking for it" in the standard misogynist contours of rape as in some way the fault of the woman.

As Žižek has pointed out there is a sense in which the excessive desire of female fantasy and male fantasy fails in a bid to overcome such an excess. It poses a threat to male identity and the woman has to be erased as it were. One way to escape from the excessive Real encountered in fantasy is to 'make love', not to reenact the fantasy but to escape from it. Perhaps this is the reason that Chenault has to 'disappear' from the narrative in order for it to be able to reach any conclusion. What might that say about her appearance in the narrative as a whole? Effectively she was only present as her desire for phallic enjoyment. In the note she leaves for him to find Chenault writes "I can't stand it anymore. My plane leaves at six. You love me. We are soul-mates. We will drink rum and dance naked. Come see me in New York. I will have a few surprises for you." This is the only space which opens up for Chenault's subjectivity, yet she can only express what we already know and expect of her. There is no active part to play and in actuality woman "therefore does not exist" in the Lacanian formula.

The "Scourge" of Single-Mums.

I am one of the generation deemed scum by so many newspapers and reactionary fuck-pigs. It is a generation raised by women without the hand of a man to slap them around and all the while these women - designated simply as 'single mums' - are faced with a torrent of misogyny and bad faith from a narrative of the gutters. Incidentally the attitude of many single-mothers is not one of entitlement, but of guilt, shame and self-loathing. The narrative of the right-wing media has been that the person on benefits is a parasite on the successful and hard-working, that the families which survive on the crumbs of the state are the froth of the scum which has been amassed at the very bottom of society. These people choose not to work in order to get a free ride on the backs of 'real' workers. Notice there is no mention of the severe lack of jobs in our society, the lack of opportunities, the pervasive inequality and the absence of any policy to create jobs.

One major cultural change which has been accomplished by the Feminist movement of the 1970s is the sense that women have a lot to be angry about and should be angry. We live in a time of the 'token woman' and the widespread dissemination of feminist ideas, at least at the level of a kind of Barbie Doll feminism, whilst the conditions of women's lives worsen and everywhere there seems to be a backlash against the steps forward made in the past. The women who have to raise children on benefits are often treated with scorn and even from working-class people, who are jeered on by middle-class journalists and newspaper editors. The explicit attitude of the gutter press to women is anti-feminist, it is almost as if woman is the guilt of man realised and only if he can cleanse himself of his "dirty desires" can woman cease to exist. We have only to glance at these papers to catch the orgy of misogyny in full motion, where a life on benefits is a 'choice' undertaken by the exploding numbers of women who don't think being a housewife is "rewarding".

The fact that the media is a business for which the aim is to maximise profit by driving down costs and stimulating advertising revenue. Let alone that the media is dominated by middle-class white men and has been for decades. The superfluous population are a cost to be minimised. So the press run endless stories about women living in houses worth millions on housing benefit and child-benefit, as if these crumbs are equal to a house in London that they don't even own. Incidentally housing prices have been inflated in London as council housing has been decimated and the economy has been finance-driven. The average age of the single-mum is 37 and 55% of single-mums had their children within marriage. 33% suffer from disabilities and illnesses while 34% of their children are disabled. No wonder there are working-class people cheering on the government as job centres are set a minimum target of chucking three people a week off of benefits. The disabled are a prime target because they won't kick up a fuss. But neither would most single-mums, the attitude pervasive amongst the superfluous population is apathetic parody of the stiff-upper lip.

As David Cameron rants about "runaway dads" he supports policies which make it more costly for women to pursue them for financial support. The blame is still fundamentally pinned on the woman for opening her legs and seducing the man who just can't help himself. Naturally Melanie Phillips responded by fanning the flames of misogyny and tells us that it is not the father who is the problem it is the single-mum who is just trying get by. Even though it will be single-mums who will be hit the hardest by benefit cuts, losing a month's income every year and three times as much as a childless couple. At the same time, single women will lose a little less than a single-parent on benefits due to the tax and welfare changes. Even though around a quarter of children live in single-parent households, and a high number of them do so below the poverty-line. The statistics will tell you that these children will go onto do badly in school, suffer poor health and may even fall into long-term unemployment themselves.

There is an irony in the obscene lies of the Right against single-mothers on benefits. The term "proletariat" is derived from the Latin for "offspring" which refers to those who were too poor to serve the state with anything other than their wombs. Too deprived to contribute to economic life in any other way, these women produced labour power in the form of children. What society demanded from them was not production but reproduction. The proletariat started life among those outside the labour process and not from within it. Though the labour these women endured was a lot more painful than breaking boulders. We live in a world in which the typical proletarian is a woman, as we can see in sweatshops and agricultural labour. After the decline of heavy industry it was women who staffed the huge expansion in shop and clerical work. Even when Britain was the workshop of the world the industrial working-class were outnumbered by domestic servants and agricultural labourers. In other words the majority of the workforce was female in the 19th Century.

The picture we all carry in our heads of the working-class is of the blue-collar brawny male off to toil away in a factory with lunchbox in hand. But the working-class is not defined by manual labour. The working-class includes anyone who is forced to rent their labour power to capital, languishes under its oppressive disciplines and have little control over the means of production. Thus Karl Marx ranked commercial workers along with industrial workers and refused to identify the proletariat with just "productive" workers, in the sense of those workers who churn out commodities in exchange for a wage. The unemployed are not part of a so-called "under-class" but are actually central to the working-class. The way unemployed women in particular are regularly singled out by the reactionary media along the usual misogynistic lines is the essence of class warfare. This is how the important role of child benefit has been jettisoned over the years, it is not even seen as an investment anymore by the elites and the commentariat.

The Obscenity of Berlusconi.

"I am absolutely sure to be the most democratic man to ever become Prime Minister in Italy." - Silvio Berlusconi

The long awaited and final downfall of il Cavaliere may come in the form of a conviction for paying an underage girl for sex, as well as other charges of fraud, it is clear that these allegations are just the tip of the ice-berg with this man. For Berlusconi it is all an elaborate conspiracy cooked up by communists, just like the months of legal battles over corruption allegations, constitutional crises, political infighting and a lot of sex scandals - which have become an obsession for the media. These scandals and crises left Berlusconi hanging in power by a thread. Back in February women demonstrated against Berlusconi, who personifies the rampant sexism and misogyny which is endemic in Italian society. The sexual excesses of Berlusconi have been widely documented and chewed up by the media, though we ought to remember that, as Noam Chomsky once said, "When the press focuses on the sex lives of politicians, reach for your pocket and see who's pulling out your wallet."


The glorious accomplishments of Berlusconi style authoritarianism include a stagnant economy, one of the world's highest levels of public debt and 30% youth unemployment. He has seen to it that the state will sanction the murder of illegal immigrants, the boats they use to travel over to Italy can be sunk. As for those people who dare to try and climb aboard fishing boats can be beaten without any serious chance of prosecution. Berlusconi has also been keen to introduce legislation to raise the prison sentences for illegal immigrants to a third higher than for an Italian. With the state of emergency implemented in 2008, thousands of soldiers were deployed to "combat" illegal immigration, organised crime and sexual deviancy... Oh the irony! Berlusconi was eager to speak to the hysterical fears of Italians with a populist line of delivery on policy which was supported by the mass-media that he dominates. At it's weirdest and most disturbing moment Italy saw Jewish-Italians voting for neo-fascists on the basis of Berlusconi's support for Israel.

The populist campaign Berlusconi has launched against the judiciary, who were heroes after Tangentopoli in the early 1990s and to whom Berlusconi is partly indebted in that sense. Since then he has consistently portrayed the judges as agents of the radical Left and has succeeded in doing so, the judiciary has been left widely discredited. In 2009 it seemed as though the separation of powers had been seriously undermined by Berlusconi in this way. Through the mass-media which he dominates directly and indirectly, a new commonsense supplanted old values and ideas. There was a common belief that there was no alternative to Berlusconi, which has some ring of truth to it as the Italian Left has yet to recover from the collapse in the early 90s. Then there is the notion that he embodies the country and that the Party of Freedom is the people of Italy. Meanwhile, the Italian state has become a shadow of Big Business as Berlusconi hurled himself into politics to defend his empire from the Left.

"The real Italian anomaly is not Silvio Berlusconi but communist prosecutors and communist judges in Milan who have attacked him again and again since he entered politics." - Silvio Berlusconi

Keep in mind that Berlusconi first came to power in May 1994 in the shadow of Tangentopoli - the biggest bribery scandal in post-war Italian history - which led to the collapse of the major political parties in a quagmire of corruption charges. As Forza Italia was founded in the midst of the crisis prosecutors found that Berlusconi had made a payment of 23 billion lire, the equivalent of more than £10m, to Bettino Craxi. It was the single largest bribe ever paid to an Italian politician. Berlusconi was convicted in that case but the conviction was quashed because of the statute of limitations. The Socialist Party which was led by Craxi collapsed and the former Prime Minister fled to Tunisia rather than face a prosecution. In retrospect, the current Prime Minister of Italy has made Richard Nixon look polished and not just clean in morals. The lurch to the Right in the midst of political turmoil in the 1990s might be matched by a lurch to the Left after Berlusconi finally falls.




It appears that the regime that he has been constructing all these years may not last until 2013. The conflict within the government over major issues like the intervention in Libya. Even Gianfranco Fini has abandoned il Cavaliere to found a new party of his own after he helped to secure the five-point programme of the incumbent administration back in September. It is seems quite strange in retrospect that it looked as though Berlusconi would no doubt serve a full 5 year term in 2009. It should also be noted that there is still a need for a Gramsci or a Togliatti, just as there was in 2009. There has been a resurgence in support for opposition parties in local elections which has further undermined Berlusconi's position. There is also a growing youth movement to force him from office on the streets, it looks as though the government might finally crumble. But there is still a serious need for a viable alternative to Berlusconi, which is the only reason he has been able to hold on this long. 

The lack of formidable opposition to Berlusconi has been made evident over the years by his unsettling ability to constantly reinvent his political platform and relaunch himself. Even when Romano Prodi won the General Election of 2006 by a small majority Berlusconi could resort to the game that he was "robbed", the insinuation of vote-rigging and the refusal to concede victory. Then the legal wranglings, which constrained the ability of the opposition to gain a majority in the Senate, he had personally crafted contributed to the crisis which led to Prodi's downfall in 2008. Remember this is the same fellow who claims to be the target of intense scrutiny from a left-wing elite which has exercised a campaign against him through the judiciary and the media. The line that there is a conspiracy against him is constantly used even though he dominates the media in Italy. After Avvenire questioned the moral fibre of the Prime Minister il Giornale, which is run by his brother Paolo Berlusconi, vilified the editor of Avvenire as a closet homosexual who had harassed the wife of his lover.

"I always win, I'm cursed to win." - Silvio Berlusconi

The man is no underdog, which is clear as Silvio Berlusconi is the only Prime Minister in the history of the Italian Republic to rule for a 5 years. He has had unprecedented influence on the country's culture in the last 30 years and has dominated the political discourse for over 15 years. Two years ago he commanded the biggest majority in Italian political history. He has garnered the hospitality of such political leaders as Vladimir Putin, Muammar al-Gaddafi and Tony Blair. To each of whom he has "donated" at least nine watches. He has used the money he has accumulated over the years to purchase splendid homes at home and abroad, including one in the Bahamas. The paranoia of elites is befitting of an aging reactionary, similar to Richard Nixon in that sense, who sees a sinister network of enemies unfolding before his very eyes. Though it is also a convenient way to explain away the flaws of policy, fall in approval ratings and mass-demonstrations in the streets.

The result of a referendum has undermined legislation Berlusconi introduced in favour of nuclear power, the privatisation of water and trial immunity for cabinet ministers. In spite of il Cavaliere's call for a boycott of the referendum 57% of the electorate turned out and 95% of them voted against Berlusconi in effect. So it looks like Silvio Berlusconi might actually face trial for the liaison with an underage prostitute Karima El Mahroug, whom he saved from a prison cell with the pull of a few strings. Then there is the case in which David Mills, the estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, was sentenced to four and a half years in jail by a Milan court for taking a bribe. In spite of the fact that the conviction was annulled on appeal, because of the statute of limitations, magistrates in Milan are bent on prosecuting Berlusconi for bribing Mills. Two other cases pending concern alleged tax evasion by Berlusconi and his son Pier Silvio, as well as the sale and purchase of rights to American TV shows by Berlusconi's companies.

In spite of all this the man has managed to win the last vote of confidence by just 24 votes, with a great deal of help from Lega Nord in spite of the frustrations with the coalition. The coalition government he leads is about to initiate the first series of cuts which will amount to $57 billion by 2014. Of course, a crackdown on tax evasion would be out of line even though that is the only way to reduce taxes in the long term. Clearly it would seem that the resistance to austerity measures in Italy has the same problem as the anti-cuts activists in Britain. The mass-media has no room for the alternatives to spending cuts, which is bad news for the Left in Italy and elsewhere. With an approval rating of 29% it would seem that Silvio Berlusconi is doomed, it might be that the Italian people do not require a viable alternative to shunt Berlusconi out of office. But it remains unclear what would come from that in regards to real change, even if Berlusconi is left to die in jail, another political vacuum could follow as seen in the early 90s and the damage done will reverberate in Italy for a long time.

Republican Reptiles for 2012.

Rick Santorum joined the Republican Presidential race on a socially conservative ticket which is opposed to abortion and gay rights. It is worth mentioning that the former Senator for Pennsylvania enraged gay rights activists in 2003 when he compared homosexuality to paedophilia and bestiality. For Mr Santorum the state has the right to ban any behaviour deemed to be antithetical to the "healthy, stable, traditional family". Ironically, Rick Santorum has a "Google problem" which equates his surname with gay sex. The man also clinged to the theory that there were weapons of mass-destruction in Iraq until long after the Bush administration dumped the suggestion. The Santorum brand of conservatism was rejected by voters in 2006 when he lost his seat in the Senate. In the race to the White House in 2012 Santorum lacks connections to the Tea Party, though his conservative outlook is attractive to the Christian Right, he also lacks a 'big persona' which will only mean his "Google problem" will be exacerbated further on the campaign trail.

Mitt Romney has made it clear that he is running for 2012 with his usual lack of sky-high charisma and witticism, which would work well on Fox News if Romney had not passed a suspect health-care reform in Massachusetts. Even though the conservative position used to be for the individual mandate, the Republican opposition to "Obama-care" has been a strictly opportunistic strike against Obama. As the costs of health-care in the US have driven the car industry to bankruptcy the debate over the health system was re-opened in 2008. The fight which took the dynamic of Republicans against Democrats was more like a clash between the interests of health insurance and the car industry, which easily transcended the boundaries of party-affiliation. Even as Romney has lurched further to the Right he is still viewed with suspicion, for he is a Mormon and the Christian Right will not go in for someone who thinks that Jesus Christ was the brother of Lucifer.

Despite all of this, Mitt Romney is a serious contender and it is no surprise he is running as he has basically been in campaign mode since he failed to win the GOP nomination in 2008 and, in doing so, pissed $40 million of his own cash into the wind. On an amusing side-note the announcement was made with a scenic backdrop in New Hampshire which has been subsidised with $1 million from the federal government. Similarly, New Gingrich has presided over a multi-billion dollar boondoggle in Georgia which produces F-22s at tax-payers' expense even though military spending in the US amounts to 50% of military spending in the world. Though it would appear that Gingrich is finished after the controversy over his comments regarding "right-wing social engineering", so the Newt no longer looks conservative enough in a race in which purity matters even more than usual. Then there are the disagreements which have led his campaign team to go AWOL.

Typically, Sarah Palin out-shined the dull Mitt with the credentials she garnered from the McCain-Palin ticket and the links she has established with the Tea Party movement. Combine that with the books, the reality TV show and the work Palin has done at Fox News there is a ready source of support once she has declared she's running. So she can afford to come in late, perhaps just as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are looking especially weak. We might not have long to wait for her announcement in that case. At the same time it might be the case that she has outlived her run as the populist symbol of American motherhood. Especially as Palin was linked with the Tucson shooting, from which Giffords has only just recovered. We also have to keep in mind that it is Corporate America which matters most in American elections and right now Sarah Palin only has a 4% rating, she has been surpassed by Michelle Bachmann at around 8% and the forerunner is still the damp Mitt at 33.5%.

Michelle Bachmann stood out in the recent Republican debate in New Hampshire and may have even upstaged Mitt Romney. She wooed the crowd with the kind of hard-hitting populist rhetoric, early on she declared Barack Obama to be a "one-term President" before promising to repeal Obama-care when she takes office. Bachmann inevitably won a warm reception as she has five children of her own and 23 foster children, which meshes well with working-people who vote out of an opposition to abortion. Just like when she compared raising taxes to the Holocaust, the Tea Party and the conservative shock-jocks loved it. But as Gingrich and Romney have demonstrated, the GOP has not had a tradition of opposition to the individual mandate or state-intervention for that matter. So it would seem that Michelle Bachmann is not a part of this tradition on the American Right, or more accurately that she doesn't wish to be associated with it, for it is an impure aspect of the conservative movement.

Bachmann is still not as prominent as some of her rivals, the attention she has drawn has inevitably led to comparisons with Sarah Palin. There have also been some interesting revelations about Palin recently. We find that she had begged Tony Hayward for a 1,700 mile BP pipeline, which would have stretched across America. This came a year after BP was responsible for the biggest oil spill in the state's history. In 2007 Palin slashed $237 million in funds for around 300 construction projects as she initiated a budget of $6.6 billion - the largest budget for the state of Alaska - before vetoing an additional $238 million in funds for 350 projects the following year. Recently it was announced that Sarah Palin is to visit Britain and Sudan, she has already been snubbed by Thatcher much to the chagrin of Rush Limbaugh and others. Thatcher represents the earlier generation of women politicians, the "iron ladies" who out-manned the men.

As Jacques-Alain Miller pointed out Palin is a break with this in that she displays her femininity and motherhood. The imagery has a "castrating" effect on male opponents, it is not that she is more manly than them but it is the use of the sarcastic put-down of male authority. She knows that the phallic authority of her opponents is just a posture which can be mocked for her gain. Note the way in which Palin mocked Obama as a "community organiser", exploiting the sterile aspects of Obama's appearance - diluted black skin, slender features and big ears etc. As Slavoj Žižek goes on, in Palin we find "post-feminist" femininity without a complex and the roles of mother, prim teachers, public figure and sex object converge. All the while Todd Palin is displayed at her side as the First Dude of Alaska, a phallic toy if anything. The implicit sting which adds insult to injury is that it is a Republican woman who has ran for the Vice Presidency and may even run for the Presidency in 2012. So it should be a surprise that the Palin effect offers false liberation.

At this point it looks unlikely that Sarah Palin will run for President as she was notably absent at the debate in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Michelle Bachmann has drawn considerable attention from the shock-jocks and support from the Tea Party. It remains questionable whether or not the Right would put forward a woman candidate. The Tea Party movement sprung out of the legitimate grievances of working-class Americans, but it was also manifested as an expression of a feeling of loss. The white man had finally lost his majoritarian status in America, along with the appearance of loss in power over the state and the privilege derived from that. The consequent anxiety and fear collides with grievances that go back decades in a classic instance of displaced class struggle. The idea that a Republican woman could ride this wave into the White House seems delusional. If anything the Tea Party functions as a bulwark against the Left, not a spring-board for a particular candidate.

Then there is the man who took over where Bush left off in Texas, who has been elected three times and has ran the state for over 10 years now. Rick Perry has not declared whether or not he is running yet. If he were to run he would automatically become a serious contender for the Presidency given his 10 years  as Governor of Texas. Perry supports the Arizona immigration act, which could have been written by the American Nazi Party. Rick Perry supported the execution of Humberto Leal Garcia, which was opposed by his cold predecessor. It is worth noting that Rick Perry has signed over 200 death warrants in his time as the Governor of Texas, whereas George Bush executed 152 people in his time as Governor. In 2009 Rick Perry joined in his own special way and started to spew secessionist rhetoric in response to the stimulus spending by the Obama administration. This kind of rhetoric is still popular in Texas, where even the liberals wouldn't mind a Republic of Texas.


The rhetoric Perry came out with was welcomed by the Right and he has cultivated a rugged image with tough talk and going for jobs which culminate with the shooting of coyotes. He has courted the Christian Right and the Tea Party movement successfully, but he has also held onto his mainstream status as a conservative. So Rick Perry is capable of the rhetoric needed to rally the crazies around him, but he can do so whilst holding onto his ties with Corporate America from which he derives his "mainstream" status. Without the close links with corporate power Perry could find himself in the right-wing limbo where Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and Michael Savage can be found any day of the week. It is a balancing act of bringing together the most reactionary elements of the working-class together with the political forces of capital. This is what the fusion of economic liberalism with social conservatism was designed to accomplish. The slogan of which might be "Tax-cuts for the rich, no rights for fags!"

It is possible that Rick Perry is the "dark horse" of the GOP. Just the other day Rick Perry gave a rousing speech on conservative principles at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans and it is plausible that he was posturing as a conservative heavy-weight just before he makes the "decision" when Texas wraps up legislative business at the end of the month. Perry then went on to detail a four-point prescription for the economy which began with "don't spend all the money" which followed with an emphasis on low taxes, legal reforms to prevent frivolous lawsuits; a fair and predictable regulatory climate. The crowd then showered him chants of "Run, Rick, Run!" He received the greatest applause from the audience, at an event attended by Bachmann and Gingrich. It is clear that he would immediately become the forerunner given the banality of the Republican line-up and might actually give the incumbent a run for his money.


As President Rick Perry might repeal the "Obama-care" reforms as a populist gesture, deregulate further and impose greater anti-union legislation where it is necessary. In regards to taxation it remains unclear whether Perry is a part of the Goldwater tradition, which cuts spending in order to cut taxes. As the Bush tax-cuts have been renewed the spending cuts will be enormous and may even be bigger than the cuts seen under Clinton. This is true regardless of who is elected in 2012. It is also true that the next term will still be dominated by the fiscal stratagem known as "starve the beast". The justification for which comes in the form of trickle-down thinking, tax-cuts will lead to the investment necessary to create jobs. It will also be defended on the grounds that it will lead to less spending. In actuality the tax-cuts will lead to another enormous deficit in years to come and will only function to facilitate even greater cuts in the long-term. This is the reason we will probably see the privatisation of social security within a few years.