What does this tell us about the State?

The killing of Mark Duggan has been found legal. The anger around this case is legitimate as were the first sparks of protest and unrest in Tottenham (though what came later is another matter) in which locals mobilised around the police station. It is only middle-class white people who feel an instinctive sense of being on the side of the police. Ordinary people know what it is like to be stopped and searched by the police, especially if they're black or if they fit the profile of a 'terrorist'. It's not a testament to the character of individual officers - who may be awful or munificent - it's about the structural role of the police as a repressive institution with a dismal collective unconscious.

By the way I think the content of the ruling is not expressly problematic. What did we expect of the justice system? Even if the ruling had found that the killing was unlawful it would only serve to reaffirm the sovereignty of the state in its authoritative claims to legality and justice. For this reason I don't think there could by any just result as I question the authority of the state, and that is the fundamental question here. It's hypocritical to suggest that the jury finding the police killing illegal would serve anything other than reasserting the sovereignty. That may be understandable given the high emotions around the death of this man. But it is not the political issue at hand. Andrew Robinson produced an excellent couple of articles on Agamben's work on the area of exceptions in law:

“Homo” means human/man, and “sacer” has the double meaning of “sacred” and “taboo”. Homo sacer is defined as someone who can be killed, but not sacrificed. They can’t be sacrificed to the gods because they’re defined as outside the recognised terrain of valued life (there’s nothing left in them worth sacrificing; to sacrifice them would be sacrilege), but for the same reason, they can be killed with impunity.

I have deployed this concept before in the past with regard to the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of the US army. On that occasion I was prompted to write by the incessant gurgling of Douglas Murray, who took the predictable position that it was fine for the US to violate Pakistan's sovereignty and commit an assassination. I think it can be said that Mark Duggan is a 'homo sacer' in that he is excluded from the sphere of rights and liberties (because he's a violent gangster, to quote the BBC) who can be legitimately killed by the police. Not even in controlled circumstances, not a public execution that has been legally ratified. Instead the killing is legalised by the very system which excluded Duggan in the first place. Thus, the departed was included insofar as he was excluded. It is in this process that the sovereignty claims its basic authority, the authority to make 'exceptions'.

Sectarianism be Praised!

The Left has long been prone to sectarianism, and famously so, due to its fissiparous condition and natural inclination to the narcissism of fine distinctions - to borrow Freud's words. Socialism comes in about a thousand different shades of red. The same can be said of anarchism, communism and feminism. It's probable that the sectarian tendency will never be overcome, partly this is because there has to be disagreement and debate. Dissensus rather than consensus. It's clear that there is a need for discussion over serious issues in practice as well as theory. This is true of morality as well as the organisation of government. In such areas there is a need for a lot more dissensus and not less. The same can be said of the refinement of principle and development of theory itself. This isn't to endorse the destructive strain of sectarianism which tears apart groups and grinds away at mass-popular movements. It's this which has helped to further the Left's decline around the world since the end of the Cold War. We can't blame it all on the CIA, I must concede. But it's important to always insist on a subtle distinction.

It's the problem is the shift to an intolerant variety of sectarianism which is so troubling, and with good reason too. The point at which the disagreement becomes a hindrance to a social movement. To borrow the words of the late Alexander Cockburn "The Left's idea of a meeting is to form a circle, point the guns inward and then fire." This is exactly the kind of sectarianism that the majority of people find problematic. It can drive a wedge right into a movement, first causing friction and then leading to schismatic bursts that threaten the whole thrust of the organised efforts. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the successes of a movement in its commitment to a cause often in turn produce greater unity and solidarity. The sectarian elements are usually marginalised in this way, as it becomes more important to unify around a cause which is more important than our petty differences of theory. The victories of a movement are self-propelling in this way. This could go against Gramscian sequential schemas about the primacy of politics, in that the material conditions may come before the political - likewise, theory very often struggles to keep up with practice.

Sadly it's also true that the destructive sectarian streak of the Left is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Very often the Left is in a state of paralysis thanks to its own bitter squabbles and petty infighting, which would embarrass the Church of England - it truly does come down to a narcissism of fine distinctions! The inability of some to build alliances within the Left has even been matched by those who find it easier to coalesce with the Right. Alexander Cockburn received no end of criticism for consorting with Pat Buchanan over the Iraq war, yet it was a pragmatic move of a committed anti-imperialist. Though it's worth saying that the left-wing worry of a descent into a state of affairs where we take the side of anyone who is critical of US foreign policy is not an confused one. Many conservatives saw Fascism as a "lesser evil" to socialism, even libertarians thought Mussolini was a "moderate" who had saved private property from the red plague. No such calculation would go uncriticised on the Left. One of the reasons why the Right is not as sectarian, and not in the same way, as the Left is that leftists are better than rightists. It's about questions of action.

The rigorous assessment of principle and practice among leftists is not a reason for despair in every instance. The Left ought to be sectarian in this sense, in its commitment to outmatch liberals and conservatives when it comes to democracy, equality and liberty, as well as art, culture and even tradition. This requires a certain refinement and maintenance of principle. It is often overlooked that the conservative claim to a monopoly over culture and tradition is as ludicrous as the suggestion of a liberal monopoly over freedom. Notably it was Leon Trotsky who said "We Marxists have always lived in tradition." He wasn't speaking as a conservative, because there is an alternative conception of tradition to be found in radicalism. It is a cultural body which is constantly remade, as well as opening itself to the participation of ordinary people. At the same time it's not just conservatives who want to preserve the great canon of literature, whereas radicals are about accessibility and dissensus. But it's a fetishistic tendency of conservatives to take something as good just because it stood the test of time. Quality control is something the Left does better.

Gaddafi is Dead.

As the old order has been obliterated in Libya it appears the country is passing through a zero-level of violence onto which the bourgeois framework of law and order can be constructed. The term 'law-creating violence' was used by Walter Benjamin to signify such instances of violence which underpin the enforcement of laws later on. In the battle to take Sirte, Muammar al-Gaddafi has been captured and killed. Before that it was clear there had been numerous civilian casualties and the killing of black men suspected of being mercenaries working for Gaddafi. Perhaps we should bare in mind that each advance made in civilisation is an advance in barbarism, as such an advance arrives head-to-foot in blood it heralds new possibilities of emancipation. The real problem is whether or not the enormous suffering was worth it in the end. It seems thoroughly doubtful that the effects of colonialism, slavery, genocide, war and capitalist exploitation can ever be compensated for in Africa. So we might be best to note a profound historical sense of tragedy here.

The new regime defines itself by its exclusion of Gaddafi, this is a basic aspect of the state as sovereignty constitutes the political body in its inclusion of people. The state holds the monopoly over the power to declare an exception, to suspend normal legal guarantees and deny basic rights to people. The situation might be extended across an entire society in the case of a state of emergency and even a civil war as the expectations of normal everyday life no longer apply. The state divides the people into those who qualify as fully human and those with the lesser status of bare life. The qualified life of politically recognised people is adorned with forms of meaning derived from political recognition and representation. This is what the bare life is devoid of, in fact the difference might be aptly described as the difference between being a human bodily organism and being recognised as a citizen or a person in the moral sense. These are the people who can be carted off to be tortured in Uzbekistan, as well as be killed at home in the middle of the night.

The Roman Empire had a word for an outlaw who could be killed and their property seized legitimately by anyone - homo sacer. The life of a homo sacer cannot be taken in ritual as a sacrifice, as the person has been expunged from society to a realm where all civil rights and civil religious functions are in suspension. To be more specific, the homo sacer resides on the boundaries of political and religious law which means the homo sacer is at once included and excluded from law. Only in the way that the individual has been excluded by law does that individual continue to be included. It is not law but the realm of valued life that the individual is excluded from when they become homo sacer. These people can't be sacrificed to the Gods because they belong outside the recognised terrain of valued life and there is nothing left in them worth sacrificing. To sacrifice such an individual would be sacrilege and for that reason they can be killed with impunity.

The power to distinguish between bare life and recognised life arises from the sovereignty claimed by the state. We'd like to think that the establishment of a liberal society of law based on rights and freedoms would inoculate society of these practices. But it seems that, at best, it just means everyone is potentially a sovereign as well as a homo sacer. It may be that in any state everyone is at risk of being declared a homo sacer. It is interesting that the Western media reached for the old label "mad dog" to describe Gaddafi, as states have traditionally relegated groups of people to bare life by rendering them to the level of animals with labels such as savages, feral, scum etc. It is quite a leap for Gaddafi to go from sovereign to homo sacer, from qualified life to bare life as he was deprived of his political status and reduced to a hunted man. This came about as the Transitional National Council laid claim to sovereignty as Berbers in the West of the country sought revenge against the regime which had brutalised them.

The death of Gaddafi, as homo sacer, is convenient for NATO and the Western governments that supported him even as he helped maim, mutilate and murder 1.2 million people in Sierra Leone. We can go back to moralising about the Lockerbie Bombing with the Colonel out of the way. The Left can theorise about what could have been in Libya if the revolution had not been "corrupted" while the Right will bask triumphantly in the light of a country set ablaze by over 30,000 bombs. The revolution in Libya might herald a bourgeois democracy in North Africa or at least a moderated form of the old regime. Potentially Libya could become a wonderful holiday destination for white people, whether or not that would lead to less poverty and injustice in the country is another matter. The fact that the rebels initially called for economic justice as well as freedom and democracy has been lost amidst the media hype over yet another "humanitarian intervention". Coverage of the Arab Spring shifted to the Libyan Civil War as it provided a normal narrative for the West, so who cares about what's going on elsewhere?

See also:

The Autumn of the Colonel

We are the People!

Gaddafi's Greatest Hits

The Zeitgeist of '68.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Interlude: The above excerpt is the 'Wave Speech' from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas written by Hunter S Thompson in 1971 just as the zeitgeist of the 60s came crashing down to earth. The cultural revolution of '68 was assimilated into the dominant ideology where sexual liberation, free-speech, equal rights for black people and women became secondary parts in the system as a whole. The individualism of the 60s burst through the old hierarchies of power and prissy conventions to establish itself as the status quo. The rise of a ferocious turbo-charged capitalism came a decade later after the stagnancy and disappointment of the 1970s. Fear and Loathing is about the collapse of the zeitgeist in the early 70s as Hippie spiritualism is subsumed in hedonist despair. The 60s left to us a lesson about power which was summed up by Thompson as "the essential old mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel."

A few words about Dr No.

The Principles of Harm.

Once again we find Ron Paul is running for the Presidency as a Republican. The planks in his platform are libertarian in content and populist in form, with a strong isolationist stance on foreign policy which is attractive to less hawk-ish Americans. In the debates between Republican candidates, Ron Paul stood out as a maverick politician as usual and came second to Michele Bachmann in the Iowa poll. Even as the majority of the Republican candidates agreed that there should be a constitutional ban on gay marriage, Paul maintained that the government has no role to play in marriage at all. On foreign policy Paul maintained that the US had no role to play in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya, whilst he called for significant cuts to the US military. As Ron Paul is appropriately dubbed "Dr No" because of his voting record to oppose any legislation which is opposed to the principles of the US Constitution. At a deeper level this is significant of the brand of libertarianism to which Ron Paul subscribes for it rejects some of the most basic aspects of government and society which we take for granted.

The libertarians who say "No!" to paternalism will reject any legislation which is meant to protect the individual from harming themselves. So the laws which obligate individuals to wear seat-belts in cars and helmets when driving motorcycles can be burned. The people hurt must also pay for their own medical bills, the government has no right to dictate what risks a person can take with their bodies and lives. We might think that it is reckless to ride a motorcycle without a helmet and we know that a helmet law would prevent devastating injuries, we should oppose such laws anyway. We should do so on the grounds that it is a violation of the right of the individual to decide what risks to assume. It might be that a law on this issue is a slippery slope to totalitarianism. Of course, a libertarian may concede such laws from the position that these laws will prevent the harm of others from reckless decisions made by others. But that would presuppose a certain utilitarian leaning which is not always the case for free-market libertarians.

The opposition to paternalism leaves room for Ron Paul to stand in opposition to gay marriage and abortion in that the removal of legislation against such behaviour would in itself function as a form of paternalism - just as the imposition of legislation to ban gay marriage would be a form of paternalism. This is the same reasoning behind much of the libertarian opposition to civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Conveniently Paul can rely on this platform to bring in a portion of the homophobic vote. Effectively the same social constraints which are necessary for an unbridled marketplace emerge in the Ron Paul 'revolution' just as it does in mainstream American conservatism. Opposition to abortion might be justified along libertarian lines by taking the side of the baby over the woman, as in the Harm Principle limits the freedom of the individual to decisions which do not harm other people. This is a contentious issue as it is disputable whether or not a fetus constitutes a person in the same sense as an adult woman does. One of the implications of such an opposition to abortion is that the stance of isolationism may be broken.

The Politics of "No!"

A libertarian of this kind can also say "No!" to morality legislation in that the coercive force of law should not be used to promote any values at all. Just because the moral convictions expressed are majoritarian in nature does not mean it is automatically right to impose such convictions on everyone. We might object to prostitution morally, but that does not justify legislation which prohibit consenting adults from engaging in it. The same can be said of homosexuality and abortion. Of course, we find that these libertarians had no problem with opposing legislation which might strengthen or defend the rights of minorities. Both Reagan and Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights act on the grounds it violated the rights of the individual and gave too much power to the government. Here we find the liberal framework of rights and freedoms which is parasitic on the beliefs of individuals provides a space for racism to be expressed. The same goes for homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitism. So we should not be surprised by Ron Paul's meandering racial populism.

The libertarian subscribes to a theory of rights which rules out any law that requires some people to help others, especially taxation for redistribution of income or wealth. The benefits that can be derived from welfare state measures to provide health-care, education and housing come at a cost to the individual. It should not be the role of government to mandate that cost. Charity is the name of the game for libertarians. Progressive taxation is a form of coercion and even theft to some. The state has no right to force affluent tax-payers to support social programmes for the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. The slogan "Tax is theft!" is often bandied about by this crowd. Of course, the suggestion that the sudden removal of welfare provisions in health-care is a form of theft escapes them. A free-market libertarian has no time for needs, wants and merits matter much more. So even though a patient on dialysis could do with one of my healthy kidneys it doesn't mean that they are entitled to my kidney. It's my kidney! The needs of another person cannot be allowed to trump my right to do what I want with my body and what I own.

You may notice a pattern here, these self-proclaimed libertarians are not on the side of a lot of people in society and certainly never on the side of the under-dog. The closest a free-marketeer like Ron Paul can get to the common man is to appeal to the prejudices of the American working-classes. There is no serious attempt to represent the interests of working-people at all. That's probably because it is up to working-class people to pursue their own interests as obedient atoms of consumption and the cogs kept turning for the extraction of surplus value. This is not the time for market liberalism, when BP has ruined an entire ocean and Wall Street has tore the US apart at the joints like a chicken.  Ron Paul's America would be one in which federal power is decentralised for the benefit of business while blacks sit at segregated tables in canteens, women die in back-alley abortions and poor people drop like flies from curable diseases on street corners. Meanwhile the state would be there to function only as a security apparatus in the defence of the borders and the incarceration of the population superfluous to the economy.

Interpellate This!

Ideology is not simply in the heads of human beings it is material in nature, in order for a belief to be held the minds of the masses it must first of all shape the lives of the people as a whole. Only in this way will the ideology retain its hegemonic status and continue to function in spite of what thoughts might go through the heads of certain people. It could be argued that the Saudi state preceded capitalism on the Arabian peninsula and so it played a large role in the way it emerged in the Middle East, though it might be more nuanced to say that the state can be deduced from the structural needs of capitalism. The state-repression in Saudi Arabia has guaranteed the free reign of capital. But it takes more than the repressive agencies of the state (e.g. the military and the police) to protect the social order and to reproduce the existing social relations of production. This is where Islam as ideology comes into the picture as embodied in the institutional forms of the state apparatus, which ranges from the family and schools to corporations and the media.

Osama bin Laden was born into the Saudi bourgeoisie, his father was the head of a company which built 80% of roads in Saudi Arabia and has done rather well out of the relationship between the Saudi ruling class and the US government. The life Osama bin Laden led mirrors the contorted relationship between corporate base and Islamic superstructure in Saudi Arabia, the transition from Saudi oligarch to radical Islamist. Initially it might seem as though a thing is defined by its function in the arrangement, while a hammer may be used to knock nails into wood it can also be used to bash someone's head in. But it is not that the hammer has been removed from it's intended usage, rather it is defined as a torture tool when it is used as one. So we might understood bin Laden's place in ideology as defined not as the "leap" from his privileged origins to his life of fanaticism. Rather we should designate him in regards to what exact function his actions played in the world, the impotence of Islamist Terror and the way al-Qaeda contributed to the ideological constellation in the West.

At the end of the Cold War the grand narrative that the US was in a war with the Soviet Union finally drew to a close as "shock therapy" swept Russia clean of really existing socialism. The interests of capital that were invested in that narrative were now deprived of a way to make sense of the world and, in particular, the actions undertaken by Western governments. Eventually a new narrative had to open up and the attacks of September 11th 2001 heralded a new narrative of the "War on Terror". The ideological development served the Bush administration, the liberal commentariat and even al-Qaeda. It gave the government and the media a meaningful way to report on global events for public consumption. It also sells papers, boosts approval ratings for politicians and provides a way for Islamists to recruit young angry men in the Middle East. The materiality of all of this was the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Osama bin Laden became the face of international terrorism as the constellation shifted from anti-Communism to counter-terrorism.

Louis Althusser developed a fascinating account of the way individuals become the subjects of ideology. It is through interpellation by the state apparatus in the process of socialisation that the individual is hailed. The individual recognises themselves in this call of a grand Subject capable of legitimately holding them accountable. The grand Subject might take a form appropriate to the context, from God and the Nation to the King and the Ulama. The media, as well as educational institutions and corporations are the materiality of ideology and each is a segment of the state apparatus. Ideology is not just belief in the heads of politicians, it is in the fabric of society and the practices of life on a day-to-day basis. It is more like the Freudian unconscious, it is not just a residue but it is central to the way we imagine our relation to specific experiences. This is the way ideology becomes engrained in the minds of citizens. Only through shaping the material can ideology shape people, so that the system and by extension the world can be understood in unquestionable terms as almost a natural phenomenon.

Ideology does not primarily involve theoretical explanations of 'how the world works', so much as provide accounts of who individuals are and where in the political world such individuals fit. In this ideological process, the relation of the subject to the world can become distorted as the subject is ascribed a functional role (as a citizen, a voter etc.) as if it is chosen by them. Thus, we find a man can go from an upstanding member of society from a respected family to a wanted criminal. The places we hold in such structures are politically decisive, whether it be in the pecking order in a corporation or in kinship as a son or a mother. People will perform as if these roles are the free realisation of their subjective potential. It took many years for Osama bin Laden to go beyond just the conservative reading of the Qur'an which he delved into as a student of economics. The notion of the autonomous individual is a product of ideological misrecognition. As Marx wrote in The Brumaire "Men make their own history, but not of their own free will not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted."

Self-Hating and Israel Threatening?

 

The anti-Semitism of Zionists.

In the disgraceful history of anti-Semitism there is an irony that the Jews have traditionally been depicted as both upper-class and lower-class, overly intellectual and too earthly, lazy and workaholic. For the Third Reich the Jew represented both the decadence of liberal capitalism and the Bolshevik spirit of socialism, the Fascists offered an alternative modernity devoid of class struggle and affirmed through a rebirth of the nation. For the Nazi conversion to Christianity is out of the question as the "guilt" of the Jews does not need to be proved, the "guilt" resides in the biological constitution of Jewishness. The source of the damnation was not theological but racial. The Jew first appeared as the enemy as the dark ages came to a close in Europe with the role of money in the rapid development of market exchange. The anti-Semitic depiction came in the form of parasites who disrupt the social fabric of society. Later, the wandering Jew came about just as capitalism began to emerge and as society was transformed it began to display the features that were attributed to Jewry.

The form of anti-Semitism prevalent today can be summarised in the words of Croat nationalist rockstar Marko Perkovic "I have nothing against [the Jews] and I did nothing to them. I know that Jesus Christ also did nothing against them, but still they hanged him on the cross."  Then there is the more recent development of Zionist anti-Semitism, which Žižek has pointed to, as the establishment of the Jewish state came so did the emergence of Jews who resist identification with the Jewish state. These are the Jews who insist on the "public use of reason" over the "private" domain offered by the nation-state being constructed in the Middle East. A standard case would be Noam Chomsky who stands against the self-designation of Israel as the state of the Jewish people on the grounds that it is based on the exclusion and oppression of the Palestinians. Chomsky was a Zionist Youth Leader and lived in a kibbutz in Israel for 5 years before leaving out of disgust with the ideological atmosphere of ultra-nationalism and even Stalinist sympathies expressed by some on the Left in those days.

A classic case of Zionist anti-Semitism can be found at www.masada2000.org where a list of over 7,000 S.H.I.T. (Self-Hating Israel-Threating) Jews can be viewed. The names listed often include detailed descriptions and unflattering photos of the person, along with an email address provided to enable hate mail. It has a lot in common with Red Watch and looks just like a Nazi list of decadent Jewish freaks. You will no doubt find Chomsky and Finkelstein on the list. The Jew who does not identify with the state of Israel is reconstructed along anti-Semitic lines as we can read in the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik. The latter drew a distinction between "loyal" and "disloyal" Jews which is presupposed by a fundamental rejection of the Jewish contribution to European identity, which is a radical universalism. In Breivik's terms the "disloyal" Jew is a liberal opposed to nationalism and Zionist, for him these Jews are complicit in the multicultural experiment and the rise of cultural Marxism.

The Vilification Industry.

It is this reconstruction of the Jewish critics of Israel along anti-Semitic lines is how the anti-Semites of the Christian Right can support Israel. There's a great deal of projection involved clearly, notice that the Christianists will attack the media and the elites as left-wing whenever criticism of Israel is given public space. The conspiracy theory of Jews ruling the world is ripped from it's context to explain away negative reports of Israel as the plot of a ultra-leftist cabal in media. At the same time, the Christian Right support Israeli expansion out of a perverse attempt to bring about the Rapture which will herald the end for the Jews and the Muslims. Generally, the logic of anti-Semitism remains prevalent in Western civilisation as particular characteristics are still considered "Jewish". We find these features are sometimes morphed to the point that the greedy Shylock becomes the entrepreneurial spirit of Alan Sugar. Apparently, this is a compliment and not a racist insinuation!

Then there is the special case of the vilification of Norman Finkelstein orchestrated by Alan Dershowitz. Finkelstein had slammed the work of Alan Dershowitz on Israel and so Dershowitz went after him. The aim was not to refute Finkelstein's argument, it was to blast him out of the water, ruin his career and muddy the discourse to the extent that there can be no step forward. Dershowitz opted to go after Finkelstein's mother, who is a survivor of Auschwitz and he actually had the nerve to claim that she survived because she was a collaborator with the Nazi regime. It has been described by Chomsky as a "jihad" to try and prevent Norman Finkelstein from being appointed to tenure at DePaul University, a Catholic university, which is vulnerable to accusations of anti-Semitism that Dershowitz certainly has no qualms about making. The use of anti-Semitism as a label to vilify critics is cynically used to shoot out the opposition to the moral degeneracy of the Israeli government.


The consistent line of Alan Dershowitz is that all of the criticism of Israel comes from anti-Semites and self-hating Jews. This is nothing unique on his part, these same claims are often made to undermine the critics of Israel. The double-think here is that if you're opposed to mass-murder then you're a Nazi of course. It is clear that the facts of Palestinian suffering evoke outrage from normal human beings and not from people with a warped view of the world. The fact that (as of June 4th 2011) 124 Israeli children killed by Palestinians and 1,463 Palestinian children killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000 should move a normal human being. The same goes for the Israeli reaction to the deaths of three Israeli citizens as a result of around 2,000 rockets being fired into Israel, the reaction being that which had left over 1,400 Palestinians dead and thousands more injured. Of course, 10 more Israeli soldiers were killed in the mean time and the slaughter was called to a stop just before Barack Obama was inaugurated as President to avoid any embarrassment for the US.

Immodest Proposals?

At the time of the establishment of the Jewish state Hannah Arendt was one of the vocal critics of the particular statist formula that the leadership of the Zionist movement embarked upon. For Arendt the worst model for the Jews to emulate is the racial nation-state because that model had produced the horrors of Nazi Germany. To secure a future free of conflict it seemed imperative to Arendt that the Palestinians and Jews had to have equal rights and recognition as citizens based on justice. Instead of an Israel based on race carved out of the Arab world by force, Arendt proposed an independent state for Jews and Palestinians as part of the British Commonwealth of Nations that would ensure both ethnic groups got a fair deal. A Jewish homeland was a solution to the perpetual "rootless" status of the Jews and a federation amongst the Arabs and Jews in Palestine would be vital for the survival of a Jewish homeland. This was the alternative to the violence that has been used to carve a Jewish state out of a predominantly Arab region.


The concerns Hannah Arendt had about the future character of a Jewish state that had to live in agitation with its Arab neighbours were somewhat prescient. She foresaw that the Jews would have to live surrounded entirely by a hostile Arab population and secluded inside ever-threatened borders. The state would become inward looking to the extent that all other interests are marginalised by "self-defence". We have seen that the social programmes and welfare measures taken in other states have been reduced in Israel in order to raise military spending. The external threats would overwhelm social experiments, which we have seen as the most radical Kibbutzim were suppressed, whilst the military would take the centreplace of political theory and economic development. Israel was once an almost socialistic society for many years, but it is now in a state of immense inequality in which 18 families control 60% of corporate equity. Israel is second only to the US in terms of inequality.


Noam Chomsky has commented that the ideas which were considered Zionist before the establishment of the state of Israel would be considered anti-Zionist today for it is anti-statist. When Noam Chomsky was a Zionist Youth Leader he was for Arab and Jewish working-class cooperation to construct a bi-national socialist Palestine. The establishment of the state of Israel was a day of mourning for Chomsky and his pals. We can see the break between the kind of Zionism that Chomsky was involved in and the trajectory of Israel. In the country inequality has exploded as the military-industrial complex and high-tech industry (which are interconnected) have taken precedent over the welfare state. The wealth generated through financial services, chemical fertiliser and diamonds is concentrated in very few hands. Arendt went as far as to claim that the Jews of Palestine would change character to such a degree that they would no longer represent world Jewry as a whole. We find this is the case as the Israeli government differs greatly in policy to the liberal values of American Jews.

Economy is Ideology.

Rob Ager is a film analyst and specialises in psychology, so it's fair to assume that he's no layman when it comes to Kubrick or Freud. Ager has reviewed such films as The Shining, The Big Lebowski and Blade Runner, providing internet-surfers everywhere with an interesting and enthralling take on cinema. He's explored the political themes of Kubrick's films, finding important messages relating to the genocide of Native Americans but also a strange conspiratorial strain in Kubrick's work. Politically, from what I can gather, Rob Ager is a supporter of UKIP and a fan of Antony C Sutton, which might place Ager on the libertarian right as opposed to the nationalist base that UKIP often panders to. Ager's political leanings are further outlined in his articles, particularly Economy versus Ideology (see here) in which Ager argues that capitalism is the absence of ideology.

In Economy versus Ideology, Rob Ager claims that ideologies are philosophical, spiritual and moral doctrines which would mean that capitalism is not an ideology. The implication being that capitalism does not include philosophical, spiritual and moral doctrines. The intellectual patriarch of capitalism was Adam Smith, a classical liberal economist and a moral philosopher of the Enlightenment, and the ideas of a free-market are embedded deep in liberal thought. The liberal conception of freedom, as the freedom to do as you like provided you harm no one, is built into capitalism and advocated by libertarians like Friedrich von Hayek. Early liberals like John Locke were defenders of the private property rights, but property in the sense of land, water, businesses, hospitals etc.

Liberals are supposedly dedicated to a pluralistic vision of society, in which individuals are free to live as they want provided they do not harm others. Theoretically, a liberal society leaves room for people to live their lives as they see fit. But in such a society you have to accept certain doctrines, you must accept all of the rights and freedoms espoused. The right to private property is a perfect instance, what about people who think that education and health-care should not be run privately but publicly for the Common Good. These views are against a human right, in theory, which is a central piece of liberalism and by extension capitalism. The claim that liberalism and capitalism are neutral seems absurd since both make assertions as to how people should live.

Interestingly, Ager labels the claim that "democracy has prevailed" over ideologies as "misleading" and suggests that a more accurate term would be that "science, industry and economics have prevailed". This is ideology at it's purest, as ideology can and often does imitate the form of a science - e.g. Marxist science in the Soviet Union. Ideology is reflexive, it can redouble on itself, presenting itself as neutral knowledge which opposes itself to common "ideology", as Ager does in his own article. Both claims are ideological since "democracy" has prevailed in the guise of a polyarchical system, as an extension of state-capitalism, and the same is true of economics, industry and science. All of which have "prevailed" in a form which is embedded in the dominant ideology - e.g. liberal economics, evolutionary science which sanctions egoism, industry as state-subsidised and deregulated.

I think it's about time that we put forward a definition of capitalism. Capitalism is a socio-economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, it is characterised by the free-market and the profit incentive. This is a vision of society, not how it runs naturally, that has developed in Western thought. It could be argued that capitalism is the absence of ideologies other than itself, as it seems unlikely that the freedom of individuals would extend to the freedom of breaking apart the dominant ideology to put in place one which they favour. Ager should know this himself, as UKIP stands for liberal freedoms and rights but only as part of a vision of an independent United Kingdom in which the veil is illegal and all citizens are obligated to speak English.

An ideology is a system of beliefs, values and theories about the world and how it works. But it does not necessarily require the belief of it's participants. Take South Africa, you didn't have to be a racist to be complicit in the racist ideology that was dominant for so long in that country. Say you come along a bench designated only for white people to sit on, your immediate reaction is one of disgust as you're totally opposed to Apartheid and white supremacy. But because you're a tired person with white skin you sit down on the bench anyway. In doing so, the dominant ideology is maintained and perpetuated without your consent or dutiful belief. Capitalism is even more subtle than fascism and communism, which were crude in the imposition of their ideology. For instance, the free-market may appear to be freedom from interfering doctrines but it in itself is a doctrine.

Capitalism is an ideology in the sense that it includes a vision for society, based on assumptions about human nature and theories about the way the world works. Competition and the profit motive are held up as natural ways of running the world, as we have evolved through self-interested behaviour we should act to further our self-interest. This is the reason that CEOs read The Selfish Gene, liberal capitalism sets the bar low for human nature asserting that we are naturally selfish. Economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, the ideologists of liberal economics, have shaped the world as it we know it. The mass-privatisation of state-industries has largely been down to the theories they propagated throughout their careers, this has radically altered society transforming it into an arrangement, prone to malfunction, between atomised individuals.


It's also interesting that Ager mentions that ideologies, like fascism and communism, were used to manipulate the masses into passivity to the growing gap between the rich and the poor. In Britain we're more unequal than we were 40 years ago, wages for working-class people have risen by 50% in between 1997 and 2009 while income for the upper-classes has increased by around 300%. It was the economic policies of the last 30 years, which were significantly more right-wing, that have resulted in this inequality. The way the Republicans and Democrats in the US, as well as the Labourites and Conservatives, have promised greater freedom and equality through such policies as deregulation. Interestingly in Ager's article, capitalism is presented as a way for the working-class to empower itself but nothing could be further from the truth.

Related Links:

Economy versus Ideology by Rob Ager
New Labour, New Fascism, New Racism by Rob Ager
Man-made Global Warming is not Scientific Consensus by Rob Ager
Antony C Sutton, Speeches and Interviews

Alarm Bells are Ringing.

The fugitive Raoul Moat has shot himself after a week in hiding from the police which he so loathed. It seems plausible that the recent spate of spree-killing and teenage knife crime in Britain is closely related to social deprivation and the inequality it has resulted from. As there is a correlation between inequality and social deprivation, in more unequal societies there is greater illiteracy, obesity, teenage pregnancy, violent crime, mental illness, depression, drug and alcohol abuse etc. So the "Broken Britain" that David Cameron whined about could be the result of the economics of the last 30 years, which have welcomed inequality and we are now more unequal than we were 40 years as a consequence. Over the same time period, symptoms of social deprivation, such as violent cirme, teenage pregnancy and obesity etc. have all risen sharply. What can we learn from the actions of men like Moat?

The Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995 was a product of the rise of a militant anti-government sentiment in the US, who want to tear apart the Federal Reserve and “roll back” the state, and was a violent response to the Waco siege. This anti-government sentiment developed as corporations sought to direct all anger and hatred against the state in a bid to further deregulation and privatisation in the US. The bombing was an “alarm bell” to the collapse of America’s civil society and the welfare state, for the benefit of “Corporate America” and completely supported by the federal government. Timothy McVeigh probably hold-heartedly believed the emotive rhetoric about the “invisible hand” and the free-market, his criminal actions were a response to what he saw as a tyrannical government contrary to the individual liberties and rights guaranteed in the US Constitution.

In Britain, we have seen Raoul Moat shoot police after shooting his ex-girlfriend and her lover. Moat’s letters expressed a deep and burning hatred of the police, it could be that the police represented a “destructive force” to Moat just as the state appeared tyrannical to McVeigh. Moat had been harassed by the police; his car had been stopped by police around 100 times over a period of four or five months - in the lead up to his brief incarceration. In his first letter to the police, Moat accused them from taking his "freedom" from him. The police are supposed to be a helpful presence in the community, but to Moat and many in this country, the police have become more like a “pest” and a “threat” – fining us for saying “bad words” etc. Perhaps, this rampage is a sign that the violent anti-statism of American militias has come to Britain. Moat could be a precursor to something far much destructive.

In February of 2010, Joe Stack flew a small plane into an IRS building in Houston, Texas and in his suicide note he expressed a similar rage to McVeigh’s – except it was aimed at corporations as well as the state. Nevertheless, the target of Stack’s desperate rage was an IRS building, he chose to attack the American tax system – a common target of disdain for many Americans, for tax is theft to them. Stack’s note ends by outlining what he refers to as the “creeds” of capitalism and communism. “The communist creed: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: from each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.” Though Stack's plane crash and notes are a more clear expression of rage, against the political class and the economy, than Moat's shooting spree. But Stack's attack on the IRS shares the same connotations as Moat's shootings of police.

The desperation of these men, in the face of such problems, is evident in their actions. Destroying the state is not an answer to the problems created by the economy, as the state is merely complicit in the misdeeds of a deregulated and privately-owned financial sector. The chaos of the financial crisis was enabled by the state and the structure of “Big Finance” has not been altered by the state, so it is the government who are responsible for the perpetuation of an economic system which will enrich the few at the expense of the many. But as far as the state’s role goes it is merely complicit in the irresponsibility and greed built into the system. Nevertheless, this is a common reaction to the chaos of the economy. Just like MPs expenses, when bankers were walking away with millions of pounds in bonuses, the newspapers and the public turned on politicians who had claimed thousands of tax-payer money.

It would appear that Raoul Moat, and others like him, should not be ignored and forgotten after death. Alarm bells are ringing and we have a responsibility to respond. How should we respond? By focusing on changing government policy to compromise on these spending cuts, which will worsen the situation, and to further redistribute wealth, improve education standards and create jobs in deprived areas. It's like the rise of fascist groups in Britain, like the Aryan Strike Force, the problem will fester if allowed to and we could see a resurgence in militant racism. The media coverage Moat's killings, and his hiding for a week, with a 24/7 zeal for bloodshed may have turned Moat into a nihilistic anti-hero. Forensic psychologists often expect one or two copycat killers, Moat may have acted to emulate and "outdo" Derrick Bird's recent spree. The coverage of such stories should be minimal and utterly boring, to avoid inspiring further violence.