WAD.

 

Western affluence disease, also known by the acronym WAD, is contagious and has not been contained to the West where it originates in the 18th Century. The symptoms are as follows:

1. Politicised cynicism - an inclination to believe that all governments are corrupt because the party-system is motivated by self-interest, no politician can ever solve our problems and we need to resolve our problems outside of the state. We might as well not vote, nothing will ever change and we should just accept that.

2. Obligatory jouissance - the injunction to enjoy, you can therefore you must, to indulge. This is not the realisation of freedom as it lacks the freedom from enjoyment. Instead it leaves you trapped on a hedonic "hamster wheel" constantly chasing gratification.

3. Commodity fetishism - to derive meaning, value, status or identity from possessions and money. Products seem to take on a life of their own, there value determined by "mysterious forces" and not by the market, leaving people working to attain them.

4. Permitted rebellion - hedonistic escapism, e.g. raving, which does not defy the confines of our so-called "permissive society" but remains embedded firmly in the dominant ideology. A rebellion which is permitted, controlled and provided at a price.

5. Sport-enhanced jingoism - aggressive nationalist tendencies evoked by sport events, which act as a substitute for warfare, in a controlled area and is usually characterised by an overtly homoerotic drinking session in which there is a distinct absences of gays.

6. Liberal communism - the tendency to seek a progressive outcome from a system which undermines such an outcome, in accordance with a logic of private vices reap public rewards. For instance, you cannot end world poverty within capitalism as the economic system is partly driven by poverty.

If you suffer from any of the symptoms above notify a dialectician (preferably one with a beard) as soon as possible.

Breakfast in the Big Society.

The Evening Standard has recently boasted of having hit the £1 million milestone as part of efforts to establish the Dispossessed Fund, the paper also featured a list of leading donors including the asset-stripping retail tycoon Philip Green and Maurice Saatchi - who one wrote If this is Conservatism, I am Conservative. The front page story brought to mind the phrase "Big Society" churned out by David Cameron's campaign machine. If you've forgotten about the term, since we've had over 100 days of a Con-Dem Coalition, it was a pillar of Cameron's speeches as the Conservative Party walked into the General Election on a campaign of "Change". The Tory vision of a "Big Society" includes community action and social responsibility as it's foundation. In raising £1 million for London's dispossessed, the Evening Standard has demonstrated such social responsibility.

The notion of the "Big Society" is in stark contrast to the "Broken Britain" phenomenon the right-wing press has spat out to bring popular anxieties - of welfare dependency, teenage pregnancy and binge drinking - together under a party-platform on which a leader can rail against 'New Labour'. The Conservatives have latched onto the idea that Britain is broken and have used it to propel themselves forward, presenting a vision of society which is "big" in the sense that government is "smaller" than it used to be. The logic of the "Big Society" is that charities, community organisers and volunteers will take on the tasks of "Big Government". This explains Gove's "free schools" paid for by tax-payer money siphoned from the funds for free school meals, let alone the talk of "milk-snatching", as a desire to "empower" communities by letting them "decide" (and pay for) what their children eat for lunch - not so rich kids can have access to the best resources that tax-payers can buy, of course not.


The Dispossessed Fund is not an instance of the cuts-driven "Big Society" but it is an example of the kind of community action which David Cameron is in favour of, which would clarify why he praised the fund - a meaningless gesture in itself. The Dispossessed Fund will raise money to help London's poorest via hundreds of grass-roots charities active in five key areas: education; getting people into work; improving mental/physical health; helping the homeless, pensioners and the working poor; tackling gang-related crime. Notice that all of these areas should be the duty of the state, as well as society, and charities are an insufficient means to such problems as poverty. Yes, charitable giving and voluntarism are better than nothing. But there is more at work in the kind of charity that the Evening Standard is indulging in, the kind praised by the Con-Dems.

This is not the kind of "creative capitalism" practiced by George Soros and Bill Gates, in their day jobs they accumulate wealth and property - benefiting greatly from the public-sector and enormous tax-cuts along the way - but give away some of the money to charity in their private lives. It is closer to the kind of consumerism which has redemption, in the form of charity, built into it - the kind practiced by Starbucks and Waitrose. In buying fair trade goods, organic food, clothes from a charity shop etc, you feels better about being a consumer and taking part in passive consumption. This is part of propelling the system onwards as it exploits. Starbucks might be "fairer" to the coffee farmers and the children of Guatemala, but such "fairness" is limited and insufficient in improving the conditions to which such children are born to. It is itself dependent on the exploitation of places like Guatemala to increase revenue, there needs to be impoverished people to give charity to in this system.


This sort of consumerism is almost obligatory in today's world, especially as a leftist or even a liberal you are obligated to engage in consumerism to redeem yourself of living in a capitalist society. Even though the aim of the social democratic reforms, out of which the welfare state emerged in Britain during the late 1940s, was to ensure that the people would not have to rely on the "kindness of strangers" to survive if they themselves could not afford adequate health-care and food etc. Whereas buying a coffee from Starbucks to help the impoverished prolongs the suffering of such people, it does not tackle the real conditions which resulted in their poverty and ultimately is part of the problem. Despite the best efforts of the Evening Standard and Starbucks, among others, the improvement of conditions for the poor does not justify capitalism as even in the slave trade some slaves were treated better and conditions improved.


If we were serious about ending poverty and dealing with the inequalities that plague our society, we would be pushing for full employment, a rejuvenated welfare state, the tight regulation and taxation of "Big Business". The kind of "Big Government" that has existed under 'New Labour' was not a progressive force in British society, it exerted state-power at the benefit of private-power. The "Big Society" is at best an example of "liberal communism", in the sense that it is proposed to achieve radical goals of equality (e.g. solidarity) through liberal means (e.g. public spending cuts). Essentially a utopian idea which quickly saw it's own arm off when put into practice. But that is a very generous and forgiving description to say the least, it might be more apt to sum it up as an instance of Cameron's conservatism - "One World Conservatism" - or, as I like to think of it,  Thatcherism without the penis.

The Noughties - A Solon's Calling.

Living in End Times.

"What would 'September 11th' have been without television?" - Jacques Derrida

In the late 1990s, people were speculating that the new millennium would herald the end of the world. Over 10 years later and Roland Emmerich has made movie with an apocalyptic vision, which might happen in 2012 apparently. We still cannot imagine the end of capitalism, so we imagine the apocalypse because that is easier to envision in this era of mass fear and cynicism. It would be too easy and cynical to simply describe this time period as a decade of shallow consumerism, horrifying atrocities, celebrity worship, impending environmental doom and avaricious excess. The Noughties were paradoxical, in that wondrous luxuries were now available at the click of a button on a keyboard. But all the while there was a sense that we are drifting obliviously into our own destruction - these are the end times. Yes, this occurred in previous decades, but in the Noughties this was taken to an extreme, pressing onwards as if there are no limits except there clearly are limits now. One question comes to mind: How long can we just keep going on like this?

As JG Ballard once wrote "The marriage of reason and nightmare that has dominated the 20th Century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world." It could be that the ambiguity, born of that "marriage", is present in the undercurrents of our lives today. Botox is an interesting case in reflecting the strange juxtaposition, the horror and the beauty, the nightmare and the reason. It was during World War II that fears of Germany using biological warfare drove the Americans to develop the chemical botulinum toxin, the principle ingredient of botox, as part of a germ warfare experiment. Botulinum toxin is actually one of the most lethal substances in the world, it causes the disease botulism which has a rate of almost 100% mortality. But it was later found that non-lethal amounts could be used to treat wrinkles. It wasn't until the early 21st Century that botox became accessible to those who weren't the rich or the famous. At times it seemed as though there was a desperation to push consumerism further and further, breaking down boundaries and pushing the limit. But at the same time exhaustion, at the notion of very real limitations and there banality, leading to a increasing reliance on the past.

This feeling of exhaustion, limitation and banality is explicitly present in music. As it is evident that the mainstream music industry is increasingly dependent on past genres and eras to recreate itself, leaving the listeners feeling that it has all been done before. This reliance may have been what led to an abundance of goods and services which lacked the very thing which they used consisted of. Examples: decaffeinated coffee, nicotine patches, sugar free drinks, cyber-sex, even warfare and capitalism. Nicotine patches are cigarettes without the little white sticks of death, which you light up and smoke yourself to death with. Cyber-sex is sex without the physical act of intercourse. People talk about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as if no one on our side had to die, is this not a desire for war without war? Since in war, people on both sides inevitably die. What about the "liberal communists" like Bill Gates? Those who want capitalism without the inequality, poverty and enormous suffering caused by market forces, who promote the idea that all inequality, poverty and suffering can be eliminated through capitalism with a human face. However, capitalism is not about equality it is about competition, winners and losers,  and dog-eat-dog individualism. Therefore, it could easily be claimed that the liberal communists want capitalism without the very essence of capitalism.

We've seen the politics of fear, along with the most vile forms of Orientalism, put into action following the terrorist attacks on 9/11, which has also reminded us that we're still governed by liars and criminals. The politicians of the West have found a new enemy in "Militant Islam" to replace the communists with, so they can go on increasing defence spending and invading sovereign nations. After nearly 10 years, the "War on Terrorism" has failed to capture Osama bin Laden and bring down al-Qaeda. Though, it has resulted in 80% of Iraqi oil being grabbed by energy corporations and record profits for arms manufacturers - clearly, our leaders have their priorities in order. Never mind the hundreds of thousands who have died. We have seen the Bush administration begin in controversy and end appropriately in controversy. The Bushites were one of the worst administrations in history and has been succeeded by the Obama administration - who were elected by desperation for change. Unfortunately, it appears that the Obama is no dove and that his administration, as they've locked us into a war with Pakistan, are as hawkish as their predecessors. All the while, the media acts as if there should be no casualties of war, again they want war without war.

The truth of free-market fundamentalism has come out in the form of a financial crisis and a series of bailouts after the "liberalisation" in the financial sector. Once their policies began to fail, the Bush administration in the US and the New Labour government in the UK acted in direct contradiction to their rhetoric. In reaction to the monumental hypocrisy surrounding the financial crisis, there has been a rise in reactionary populism on both sides of the Atlantic. It's easier to scapegoat a minority and traditionally the far-Right have always benefited from economic turmoil. Though, in this case the vast majority of Europeans demonstrated maturity in not resorting to anti-Semitism - as Europeans have traditionally. The emergence of some form of racist populism seems inevitable, but at the same time it is certain not to be a return to fascism, as we have seen nationalists gain seats in the European Parliament. Instead, you should expect to see an shift towards increasingly racist immigration policies, as the environment deteriorates and people start to migrate to escape the consequences. The faces of such "moderately" racist policies are Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi, not Jean-Marie Le Pen and Nick Griffin.

The Age of Pleonexia.

"Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality." - Ayn Rand

Here are some interesting statistics about the world from the last decade. Between 1997 and 2009, in the UK, wages for low-earners increased by 45% while wages for high-earners increased by nearly 300%. Under the Bush administration, tax-cuts for the wealthy led to 1% of the American population accumulating over $1.5 trillion in less than a decade. 5% of the world's population owns nearly 90% of the world's wealth and consumes around 30% of the world's resources. $54 billion is spent on feeding every child in the world for a year, but we spend $97 billion on pornography. We literally spend more money on watching strangers have sex, than we spend on feeding the children of strangers. OPEC put $3 billion a year towards research into ways of decreasing damages on the environment every year, but we spend over $4 billion just on erectile dysfunction every year. Just compare the $1.5 trillion we in the West spend on aid, climate change, preventing deforestation, charitable givings and so on, to the $7 trillion  the state has spent on waging wars for oil and bailing out banks. There is clearly something perverse with all of this. Though, when you read of Alan Greenspan's objectivist beliefs or the fact that Peter Mandelson is a fan of Macchiavelli, it all seems to make a bit more sense.

During the financial crisis of 2008, we saw the emergence of previously invisible men who had been raking in millions as they drove the economy towards destruction. In the UK, we had Fred Goodwin who left RBS with a retirement package of £16 million. In the US, Dick Fuld ran Lehman Brothers into the dirt - to the point that it was losing $8 million a minute - and then walked away with $500 million from that year. And then there was Bernie Madoff, who soon became the favourite punch-bag of the media. Bernie Madoff, the man who illegally accumulated $65 billion. The media soon turned Bernie Madoff into the embodiment of the "irresponsibility" and insatiable greed which triggered the financial crisis. As Slavoj Žižek explained, to simply blame Madoff, and others like him for this crisis, is to ignore the fact that Madoff merely took the logic of the system to its extreme. Žižek views Madoff as the ultimate postmodern capitalist, who ruthlessly speculates up to the limit while half of your profits go to different foundations, charities etc. No different than Bill Gates, just taken to excess. But without the system, such an excess would not be possible or encouraged.

The Greeks of the ancient world had a word "pleonexia" used to describe that insatiable desire to own things which rightfully belong to others, in those times this was viewed as a sickness and even a form of enslavement. Pleonexia is similar to the Marxist concept commodity fetishism, which could be described as when people believe that a commodity has an innate value as opposed to the value subscribed to the commodity through labour. That in some way consumption of particular goods is a form of expression, that particular goods symbolise something about your identity. Thus, the obsession with the accumulation of things. If you're living to make money, you have fetishised money, and in a sense money rules you. You are not free as you are bound by that which you fetishise, whether it be money or shoes it doesn't matter. Though, this is not a new phenomenon, but once again it seems that it has definitely been taken further in the last decade. Never before has a crisis of such magnitude been caused by the spending of money which we don't even have. I am, of course, referring to credit. Not only do we want to shop till we drop, but we don't want to spend any money at that time. Shopping without shopping. It was new practices in the way of credit cards, loans, mortgages etc. which brought about this crisis.

Going back to the perverse factoid, that we spend around $44 billion more on pornography than on feeding impoverished children in far away lands, there is something more at work here. First of all, pornography is actually a deeply conservative genre, it is not as some may think a symptom of the permissiveness of our times. The fundamental prohibition, as Žižek points out, that as we cross one threshold - accessing close-ups of penetration, full frontal nudity etc. - but the price is the narrative, which acts as a justification for sexual activity, cannot be taken seriously. The screenwriters are not so stupid that they believe that such vulgar fairytales, misogynistic and even racist stereotypes can be taken as seriously as films or even TV dramas. This is because they not intended to be realistic, emotionally engaging or believable - this is the price of the "filth" on offer. Whereas, in emotionally engaging dramas, which screenwriters have clearly laboured over, always skip over the sexual act. What is most significant of all this, is the almost all pervasive influence of conservatism, as an ideology, parading as the product of permissive liberalism. Another example of this would be "Gangsta Rap" which could be seen as promoting the Hobbesian view of human nature, laissez-faire capitalism, as well as misogyny and racial stereotypes.

Spectators of Life.

"Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation." - Guy Debord 

The Situationist, Guy Debord once said "In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles." Debord, and those of the Situationist International, thought that the capitalist structures, of the late 20th Century, would be based upon images and spectacles, as opposed to the production of goods. In the consumer society, experiences themselves would be commodified and we would be encouraged more so to express ourselves through what we consume. Reducing individuals to mere consumers, fragmenting society along the way, and leading us into passive consumption. We become spectators to life. In the case of pornography, reality television shows, cookery programmes and soap operas this is literally true. This seems almost exactly true of a certain advent of the early 21st Century, think of social networking sites like Facebook and how they could function to replace social interactions. Social gatherings without social gatherings. Friendship without friendship, almost. This is an explicit development in late capitalism, which the Situationists detected in the late 1950s and continued to rail against until the early 70s.

If the Noughties is the preface to the trajectory the 21st Century will take, what is the significance of the worship of celebrities? The attention the media gave to the speeches at the G20 protests, they were mentioned in passing, wasn't anything near the kind of coverage seen at the funerals of Jade Goody and Stephen Gately. The media were sure to give the public access to speeches by mourning relatives. Of course, the magnitude of celebrities in our world is demonstrated best by Michael Jackson, the man who's fame drove many of his loyal fans into denial of his descent into drug addiction and the evidence of his sexual depravity. If their denial, and the failures of justice, is not evidence enough of our celebrity obsession one can find plenty of examples. Just like social networking, the obsession with celebrities is really a fixation over spectacles. Though, celebrities only affect our identities in terms of the opinions we have of them. The obsession with celebrities does not even appear to be an obsession with fame or the reason these people are famous. It is an obsession with the flaws and dysfunctional lives which make celebrities human to us. Deaths and births, marriages and break-ups etc. are all ordinary occurances of life today. To some, such things are represented more in the lives of the famous than in their own.

Take X-Factor, the reality tv-show which simultaneously feigns elements of grass-roots democracy whilst it churns out celebrities for us, as a target market, to fetishise and fixate over. The depth of this fascination the public has developed is evident in the fact that more people voted for Joe McElderry in X-Factor 2009 than they did in 2005 for Tony Blair. Though, at least Rage against the Machine beat McElderry to Christmas Number 1. Then again, either way Sony won. Even the increasingly shallow and cynical nature of democracy is being extended to reality tv-shows, the best we can hope for is the lesser of two evils - e.g. RATM over McElderry and Simon Cowell. The most disturbing thing about reality-tv is that it is almost the modern version of going down to the mental asylum to mock the mentally ill, as many did for entertainment in previous centuries. It should be noted that in the television industry many shows are referred to as "filling", whereas adverts are referred to as "content". It seems quite likely that the one-hit wonder machine that is X-Factor, is merely a bone thrown to the rabble to ensure they'll keep on consuming. After all that was said and done in the decade, it seems that we desperately need radical change to resolve many of the problems that now plague our civilisation. Before we drift off of the edge.

Where were you?
Goodbye Noughties - Freedom Press
Decade of Death (for journalists) - CNN
Decade of Debt - CBC
An interview with Slavoj Žižek - The Culture Show
The Situationist International

On Orientalism - Edward Said

Capitalism with a Human Face.

Creative Capitalism.

In 2008, Bill Gates came out with the phrase "creative capitalism" which is supposedly a new form of capitalism, which has aims higher than just maximising revenue and cutting or externalising costs. Though, preferably the two coincide. The higher aim is that of solving the world's problems, such as poverty, famine and disease in the Third World. Unlike the old idea of market democracy, there is a place in "creative capitalism" for the state and nonprofits. In "creative capitalism", market forces complement the actions of the state, nonprofits and philanthropists, by moving towards innovation that is "tailored" to the demands of the poorest in the world. This is definitely not another laissez-faire approach to late capitalism, which merely a shallow glorification of class war. Though, the old Randian ideas of a "creative geniuses" and deregulated "titans" are still central to "creative capitalism". The main difference, being "creative capitalism" admits that government is needed - "market democracy" is too costly - and that there may be more long-term profits made in altruism than egoism. Notice another old idea remains, that of rational egoism, private vices reap public benefits.

Bill Gates, the world's richest man, is clearly the epitome of capitalist uber-success in the 21st Century and the wonderful meritocratic social structure of the United States. The entrepreneur is quite frank and modest about how his company has achieved such success. Though, there is no mention of his anti-competitive business practices or the Nixonian "blacklists" of journalists he keeps. Gates says Microsoft achieves such enormous profits by "extending and embracing" the ideas of others. This is true. Everyone knows that Microsoft is based on computers, software and hardware etc. What many people are unaware of, is that computer technology was developed in the public sector, beginning in the 1950s and onwards for about three decades. The technology was developed in universities, at 100% public expense, before being introduced into the market in the late 70s, throughout the 80s and even into the 1990s. Microsoft was the company that benefited most from this introduction into the market, even more so when the World Wide Web was established by governments around the world.

As Bill Gates embarked upon his now illustrious career in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration was busily "rolling back" the state and enacting large tax cuts. In 1978, the rate of tax on American citizens earning $400,000 a year was 70%, as it had been since the Kennedy administration first cut it down from 91%, but during the Nixon-Ford and Carter years plenty of tax breaks and "loop holes" for such Americans were found. It wasn't until the election of Ronald Reagan, that the rate of tax began falling steeply. At the same time, wages for working people continued to stagnate or decline, as they had since the late 1970s. While most college dropouts were subjected to massive wage cuts in the 80s, Bill was earning over $500,000 a year. By 1990, the rate of tax on Americans earning over $400,000 had been chopped down to 28%. As a direct result of these cuts, breaks and various loopholes, 1% of the American population made $1 trillion dollars in around a decade. Bill was part of that 1% then and he is part of that same 1% today, which made another $1 trillion dollars under the Bush administration.

Nearly 30 years later, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and he's preaching about "creative capitalism", the market's ability to work with the state in solving problems. His wealth, derived from monopolistic business practices, massive tax cuts and a little "leg up" from the federal government. It's funny how things turn out. Behold the split persona of Bill Gates: the cold-hearted captain of industry, who employs all kinds of dirty tricks to either destroy or buy out rival corporations, in his quest for a monopoly. But Gates is also a major philanthropist, to say the least, who gives billions to charity. To Gates, and others like him, charitable giving vindicates him of the ruthless pursuit of profit and the accumulation of wealth at the expense of society. Charity to the Third World is now what is used to mask economic exploitation. As far as I am aware, Bill has yet to complain about the fact that aid for the Third World has been cut to subsidise men like him - the bankers.

The Future?

In Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew showed us that capitalism does not require democracy and can function under an authoritarian state. He held power for over 30 years and turned Singapore into a developed country. Deng Xiaoping praised Singapore as the model of which China should base itself on. We have seen capitalist dictators in Chile, South Korea, Indonesia etc. but democracy is usually restored after a decade or two. But today, China has emulated Sinapore's success and has maintained a powerful government for 60 years. It seems that the link between capitalism and democracy, as a necessity, is in decline. Capitalism with "Asian values" has been a success, and the West knows it. The likes of Berlusconi and Putin have taught us that the authoritarian capitalism, invented in the Orient, can spread in different forms. In Russia and Italy there is a powerful state, so powerful it is actively undermining democracy and human rights, to pander to the wealthy.

Silvio Berlusconi is an interesting figure in politics, to say the least, because he has achieved the impossible - combining technocratic liberalism with populist fundamentalism. Berlusconi's reign is no joke, Italy's democracy is rotting away from the inside and is gradually being reduced to a mere shell - just like in Russia today. Berlusconi remains incredibly popular, but why? Berlusconi is the embodiment of the Italian stereotypical male: corrupt, sexually promiscuous and bombarded by legal problems. To the average voter, this says "I am one of you." But it is Berlusconi's anti-communism and ugly opposition to immigration which completes this populist device. Anyone who criticises him is either a communist or an immigrant, or part of the "elite" that favours communism and immigration. But Berlusconi is one of Italy's richest men, if anyone is least representative of the people of the Mezzogiorno it is Silvio Berlusconi of Padania. Under him, the state has exerted power to protect the economic interests of the elite that he supposedly rails against.

Berlusconi has clearly mastered the methods of reactionary populism, often utilised by the Republicans in America. Reagan was the first "Teflon President" who succeeded the previous kind of American politician, the tragic crook that was embodied by Richard Nixon. A major part of Reagan's success was that he was not expected to be devoted to his electoral programme. Because of this, the Reagan administration were immune to the attacks by his critics. The President was portrayed as a benign and somewhat forgetful old codger. But this imagery was deeply deceptive. It was in the 80s that Reaganites waged a campaign of terror against South America that spanned a decade and propped up corrupt dictatorships in Iraq, Chile, Romania and Indonesia to name a few. As Reagan played the part of the harmless old-man with the ease of any Hollywood actor, CIA sponsored death squads murdered civilians in Nicaragua and priests in El Salvador. But it wasn't just "poor foreigners" that suffered under the Reaganites. Illegal firings of workers tripled in America as his administration conveniently "failed" to enforce the law against corporations looking to cut labour costs.

In more recent times, the stupidity of politicians has become the subject of jokes. The most recent example: Sarah Palin. A conservative female politician is nothing new, Palin is part of that most ignoble tradition of reactionary iron ladies such as Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir or even Angela Merkel. These are the man-ish women who rub salt into the wounds of Feminists and the Left, who have "failed" to empower women politically. This is a reactionary trap in itself: "I'm a woman and a conservative. Therefore, if I oppose the right to choose, it must be right to do so!" This same trap is present in Palin's persona - "The Piltdown Lady of Alaska". But in stark contrast to her predecessors Palin is in part an exaggeration of stereotypical femininity, all that is lacking is the blonde hairdo. At the same time this "Piltdown Lady" is an obscene parody of small-town America, God-fearing, simple and hard-working, which hides an attack in store for anyone who dare to mock her. Bill O'Reilly recently attacked Eminem as a "sexist" for mocking Sarah Palin and he even had a right-wing feminist on the show with him, to give his "defence" of women an air of "authenticity".

The Right will launch such attacks against any leftists, liberals, secularists, feminists who fall out of the line of silence. Let us not cower in the face of such assaults. Let us not be fooled by the imagery that surrounds individuals like Silvio Berlusconi, Reagan, Sarah Palin or even Bush II. The truth about Bush is that he was probably trained to speak with a Texas accent and to mispronounce words. It seems very doubtful that he spoke like that in Yale or at Harvard Business School, where he achieved two degrees in history and economics. The accent, his mangled use of words, rolling up his sleeves, wearing a cowboy hat etc. was all part of the "Bush Imagery". As a President, Bush worked to serve his "base", with tax cuts geared to reward 1% of the American population for simply being rich, orchestrating invasions driven towards maximising the profits of energy corporations. Now we see Palin smirk at the possibility of reading a terrorist their rights. These politicians are not a benign source of comedy, on the contrary, they are the enemy and should be treated as such.

Barbarism with a Human Face.

The function of this "richness of inner life" is to "disarm" the voter, reducing him to an apathetic passivity, who should opposed to the institutional role one plays in society. Whether this be the shamelessly loutish public image of Silvio Berlusconi, or the new kind of capitalist that Bill Gates claims to be. These are ways for them to avoid the labels of just another cynical politician that stands for nothing, just another fat cat sipping the "milk" of big government. Despite the undignified aspects of Berlusconi's persona, the flaws are what make him human to voters. But it is the apathy engineered amongst the voters, they are presented with only one realistic choice, which is what keeps Berlusconi in office. For Gates, it is compassion and a desire for a sort of "liberal communism" - a classless utopia predicated upon liberal capitalism - that makes him human to consumers. But these "human qualities" are false, a facade that exaggerates what is obvious - the role they play within society - and what makes them different to the others.

In 2008, Silvio Berlusconi called a state of emergency and had 4,000 armed soldiers deployed to points in large cities which were considered vulnerable - to an influx of illegal immigrants. A year before, a group of fishermen were put on trial for saving illegal immigrants in the sea, each of the fishermen were facing 15 years for the crime of "aiding and abetting illegal immigration". This was done to set an example. Now fishermen go out of their way to avoid "aiding and abetting illegal immigration", sometimes by beating away swimming immigrants with sticks and leaving them to drown in the sea. The fishermen responsible for such a crime, do not face trial or even arrest. It seems that illegal immigrants have been excluded from the civil order, of human rights and freedoms, and can be killed with impunity in Berlusconian Italy.

In laughing at Berlusconi's obscene character, we are already engaging with his cynical game - tolerating the war he has waged on immigrants and the Italian poor. The same is true of Bush II and most politicians, but also magnates like Gates. In admiring, the philanthropy of Bill Gates, we are already buying into his false notion of "creative capitalism" - which is merely a form of "honest capitalism", in the sense that it is honest about the fact that a large state is needed for it to exist. We are overlooking what is obviously wrong about the roles played by these men. We'd all like to believe that Berlusconi's policies on illegal immigration are a reasonable necessity, a just barbarism, rather than as racist as the more "direct methods" favoured by fascists. We'd all like to believe that a world in which the market and the state work together for the good of humanity is realistic - and not based on exploitation and double-standards.

We would all like to believe such things, in order, to distance ourselves from the base of immorality underlying Berlusconian barbarism and "creative capitalism". Ignorance is bliss, in the face of such crass immorality. But we should not commit such self-deception, before falling into the modes of passive consumers and passive voters, demoralised and apathetic. We must awaken soon to acknowledge the fact that a slave-master can be a good person - to his friends, family and even to his slaves - does not change the nature of the slave-master's role in society. The slave-master's "inner life", what makes him human to us, is essentially irrelevant, because in his institutional role he is a monster. The same is true of the likes of Berlusconi and Gates. A "human face" slapped onto the packaging of the same old cheap product is not enough. It is the product that needs to be changed, not the packaging.

Microsoft and Corporate Control of the Internet
Bill Gates: How to Fix Capitalism
Making Capitalism More Creative by Bill Gates
Berlusconi in Tehran by Slavoj Zizek

America Decoded by Richard von Busack