The Yuppie Mephistopheles.
Over the last five decades Rupert Murdoch has constructed an international media empire, it began with News Ltd which he inherited in 1953 from his father and he soon sought to expanded the family business horizontally. Politicians fear his wrath as a campaign of vilification backed by Rupert Murdoch is practically unstoppable. David Cameron had a private meeting with Murdoch before being elected Prime Minister, with the full support of Murdoch's media interests in Britain. Even Barack Obama met with Murdoch before taking office and has been the subject of a destructive smear campaign run out of Fox News - accusing Obama of being a socialist - and has openly come out in support of the Republicans for 2012. The current scandal over phone hacking at The News of the World (which began back in 2006) is interesting in this context. When Gordon Brown was Prime Minister and the scandal had just erupted, Murdoch had called for New Labour to back off and then sided against Brown in 2009.
As of last year Rupert Murdoch has contributed $1 million to the Republican Party and given the Tea Party enormous support through his media interests. Just like the way James Goldsmith funded the anti-Communist campaign against unions in Britain back in the 70s. The same framework of a fight of the common man against the liberal elite and the political class is applied by Fox News against the White House to further a right-wing agenda. In the last years of New Labour the right-wing press, led by Murdoch, attacked Brown on numerous incidents. Take "Bigotgate" in which Gordon Brown was caught on tape calling Gillian Duffy a "bigot" because of comments she made about immigration. The 40% of British media owned and influenced by Murdoch led the way in the attack on Brown as an out-of-touch elitist. In a similar manner The News of the World strived to uncover the lies and sordid secrets of the Establishment. The sex life of John Prescott is the business of the public according to The News of the World and any call for his right to privacy is just elitism.
Take the case of Russell Harty, who as he lay dying in a hospital bed from hepatitus found himself hounded by The News of the World. There was an intense undercurrent of homophobia to the media frenzy, which culminated in The Sun blaming Harty for his death just after the funeral in 1988. It was in reaction to the recent attack on the Murdoch empire by the liberal elite, it came in the form of Alan Bennett who pointed the finger at the press and said "The gutter press finished him." Even though reporters had been pursuing Harty in the hospital, posing as doctors demanding to see medical notes and photographers who rented a flat opposite Harty's hotel room, it was decided Bennett had made an outrageous statement. The Sun responded "Stress did not kill Russell Harty. The truth is that he died from a sexually transmitted disease. The press didn't give it to him. He caught it from his own choice. And by paying young rent boys he broke the law. Some - like ageing bachelor Mr Bennett - can see no harm in that. He has no family. But what if it had been YOUR son Harty had bedded?"
Every US President since Truman has met Rupert Murdoch and he has helped elect a few along the way through his media empire. It was Fox News which first declared George W Bush the President-elect and the rival news outlets soon fell in line. The Bush tax-cuts that were supposedly drawn-up to benefit the middle-classes and effectively handed over $1.6 trillion to around 1% of the American population. The surplus nurtured in the Clinton years of austere cut-backs was destroyed by this approach and a huge deficit was soon accumulated. The deficit is used to call for even more cuts to welfare, social security and health-care (notice defence is always excluded) in order for another set of tax-cuts. By 2003 out of the 247 editors, who work under Murdoch as part of his media empire, none came out to oppose the Iraq war and these are supposedly "independent" editors. Even Rupert Murdoch himself has admitted that the corporation actively supported the war until it became impossible to do so - given the level of opposition among the public.
Buccaneer of the Press.
It wasn't until 1968 that Rupert Murdoch took over The News of the World and plucked it from the arms of an old establishment family. Sir William Carr chose Murdoch over Bob Maxwell, whom Carr hated because he was a Czech, as Murdoch had promised that even after the purchase Carr would continue to have a say in the running of the paper. This appealed to the attitudes of the Establishment at the time. Maxwell warned Sir William Carr that if Rupert Murdoch is allowed to takeover the paper "You will be out before your feet touch the ground" and he replied "Bob, Rupert is a gentleman." But as soon as Murdoch had cornered the shareholders in 1969 Carr was forced out. The Establishment decided that Rupert Murdoch was not a gentleman at all, he was a sleazy and destructive buccaneer capitalist. That same year Murdoch bought The Sun, it would be transformed from a replacement to The Daily Herald to the most widely sold newspaper in Britain.
Then Rupert Murdoch announced he was going to publish the memoirs of Christine Keeler in The News of the World. Keeler had an affair with John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, in 1963 which scandalised high society and wrecked MacMillan's government. Profumo had since been rehabilitated after he worked for a charity in the East End. The British establishment had forgiven him and the way Murdoch had exumed the Profumo affair was a blatantly cynical decision motivated only by profit. The destruction of one of their own, who had made a "mistake" but had been reformed", was intolerable. The commentariat came to the rescue and the BBC made a more probing look at Rupert Murdoch with David Dimbleby as it's tool for doing so. It was after this rejection Murdoch moved to the US where he would continue his media expansion. From where he would contine to rail against old liberal elites, like the Kennedy family. To obscure a new array of elite interests Murdoch crafted a reflexive populism capable of slinging mud at any opponent.
At the time Rupert Murdoch had been mingling with the Mayfair Set, which included James Goldsmith, Jim Slater, Tiny Rowland, David Stirling (the man who founded the SAS), John Aspinall and Lord Lucan. The role the Set played in the shaping of the political trajectory of the late 20th Century has been well documented by Adam Curtis. Just as Murdoch was rejected by the Establishment so was the Mayfair Set. In the economic turmoil caused by the oil crisis, Slater Walker went bust in 1975 and Jim Slater was bankcrupted. Tiny Rowland was condemned by Ted Heath as the "unacceptable face of capitalism" and moved back to Africa. Lord Lucan disappeared without a trace after killing his nanny. James Goldsmith was left to pick up the pieces, but followed Murdoch after a petty legal dispute with Private Eye. All of these men were disaffected right-wingers, who believed that the Labour Party and the media had been infiltrated by communists determined to undermine and destroy Great Britain.
Ironically these disaffected right-wingers who would undermine Britain as a nation and as a society in "liberating" the forces of the market and globalisation. Stirling had only succeeded in bringing a great deal of oil money to Britain through arms deals. Slater and Goldsmith smashed the family-ran public companies in order to make a short-term profit. The way Rupert Murdoch pursued his right-wing agenda reduced political discourse to a series of cynical exaggerations, moralising rants and politicised fear. The forces of liberal capitalism lead to a socio-economic, as well as a metaphysical, wasteland in which moral relativism (the very idea Murdoch rails against as "elitist") is nurtured. The market rationality is secular and relativistic, not to mention pragmatic, which has a subversive effect on the moral, religious and political order. This contradiction between the economic and the metaphysical is inherent to capitalism, it is inescapable. Murdoch offers a way of managing this tension, he has the power to reassert morality and nationhood that has been wrecked by the market.
At War with Elites.
The way Murdoch narrativised it, he rejected the Establishment out of a deep-seated understanding of the common man and would never "sell out" to become a "bloody press lord". To get revenge Rupert Murdoch returned to Britain in 1981 and bought The Times, to the outrage of the liberal elite and old 'One Nation' Tories. But the Thatcherites gave the take-over the go-ahead without reference to the Monopolies Commission, which was compulsory under the law. Thatcher made an exception for Murdoch on the grounds that neither The Times nor The Sunday Times made any money and he repaid her with dutiful support. In reaction the BBC, that oh so adversial pack of Oxbridge liberals, decided to shine a light on the business and personal life of Rupert Murdoch in a documentary entitled "Who's Afraid of Rupert Murdoch?" on Panorama. It was a much more hard-hitting look at the man behind the media and was followed by another interview conducted by David Dimbleby. As it turns out, the liberal commentariat hates Murdoch as much as the British establishment.
In 1986 Murdoch had moved all of his operations out of Fleet Street to Wapping. The print unions fell into the trap and went on strike, he sacked them and claimed that the unions were part of the decadent elites. The market system had to serve the people, all obstacles to market forces had to be swept away in the name of this cause. Actually the move increased the value of British papers by over 300%. The lay-offs in Britain were used to cross-subsidise the birth of Fox TV. In 1989 he helped write an editorial to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Sun in which he wrote "The Establishment does not like the Sun. Never has. There is a growing band of people in positions of influence and privilege who want our newspaper to suti their private convenience." By 1991 Murdoch had solidified his position as a global media oligarch and he had the last laugh at Maxwell's expense, who fell off a yacht and drowned. This came after Maxwell had become one of the greatest criminals in the history of business.
As made evident in "Who's Afraid of Rupert Murdoch?" he has been consistently engaged in the take-over of intelligent newspapers only to transform them into cynical right-wing trash. These papers effectively become a propaganda wing for any political party which Murdoch latches onto out of ruthless self-interest. The opposition is immediately subjected to a destructive smear campaign, which abides no rules or moral code. In Britain this helped elect Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and David Cameron. He was also instrumental in the downfalls of Gordon Brown and John Major (among others). The cunning manner in which Murdoch handles politicians, to benefit his own interests, led to him receiving a massive loan from the US government just after he had endorsed Jimmy Carter. Out of a hatred of what he considered to be elitism Murdoch helped conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic undermine old institutions, which were dominated by old money elites, in order to stamp out the network of opposition to him.
Rupert Murdoch supported the Conservatives in 2010 out of the same ruthless self-interest which caused him to attack Labour in 1992 and secure a Tory victory. Kinnock announced that if Labour won the election there would new ownership stipulations introduced to the market. This could have led to the breakdown of News Corporation which would amount to Murdoch's castration. The Oxbridge liberals at the BBC, who have "fought" Murdoch so valiantly for over 40 years, have now offered themselves up on a platter like the pig who wants to be eaten. Perhaps awaiting the Second Coming of Glenn Beck in the form of Richard Littlejohn? All for the sake of free-choice the BBC seems to have caved in to a policy favouring Murdoch's interests. The BBC is the biggest rival in Britain to News Corp, so it must be undermined, weakened and broken down into edible chunks for a smooth digestion. So a freeze of the license fee would be a good start. The only thing Murdoch hates more is Ofcom and that has been highlighted as a quango ready to be cut.
The Truth as a Whole.
At the origins of liberal thought, in the political writings of a certain anonymous Englishman all the way back in 1691, is the idea of the state of nature and notions of consent. Man is by nature free and equal in the state of nature, in which there was no impartial authority and no solid legal framework to resolve conflict. In order to preserve property and constrain the powers, which might oppress the individual, man entered into a social contract and by consent submit to a government. The writer went on to draw a distinction between expressed and tacit consent. The first of which is obvious, expressed consent is the willful acceptance of society and the state. In exchange for freedom and equality the netural state will act to preserve property, as well as the rights and liberties entrenched in property. Tacit consent is a less simple concept. Everyone who has profited or benefited in any way from the state and society has automatically surrendered equality and freedom in exchange for such rewards.
So in one way or another the people consent to society and the government, all freedom and equality is surrendered for the sake of life, liberty and property. As some critics of Michael Moore will point out, Moore has consented to the system and American society in benefiting so much from it all - so why does he make such terrible films? Next comes the demand that Moore should give all of his money to charity and go to live in Cuba. In other words Michael Moore "consented" to American capitalism when he was born in the US and started to benefit enormously from the system as it had developed. If he wants to criticise America he should give away everything he has gained from living the American dream. This is the line of the American Right, reactionaries everywhere and at the fundamental level of it is the idea of "consent". The assumptions of freedom and equality are embellished throughout liberal ideology, concealed at the base of notions of individual responsibility and meritocracy.
Many of the arguments against positive discrimination and political correctness rest lazily on these assumptions. Affirmative action is often slapped down as putting black people before whites, that in itself is a double-standard and an inequality. This assumes that there were equal in standards and background, when in actuality there is a huge inequality as black people have been disenfranchised and kept in a miserable place. A common argument against political correctness is that while white people are not permitted to use racial slurs, the groups of the ethnic groups often subject to such language are themselves allowed to use the slurs. But there is a difference in context and once again the assumption of equality is false. According to the vague distinction of tacit consent just by the use of money people surrender their equality and freedom. We've all bought into this system of free enterprise and competition, individual freedom and responsibility so stop whining about the crimes of the past and calling for social justice! The historical context of slavery, segregation and racial oppression are removed from the picture.
Look at the grounds onto which the soup-run has been done away with in Westminster, it encourages homelessness and brings more homeless people into the borough so it is being scrapped. The homeless are viewed as a public nuisance and as failed citizens, they were free to work and live normally but failed somehow and are responsible for their own plight. This is consistent with the atomised interpretation of the world which liberals adhere to. This is in denial of the 'Truth as a Whole', so the contextual determinants are removed from view and society becomes a mass of autonomous individuals. Hegel held that there is no phenomenon that can be grasped in isolation because this would ignore the network of relations that constitute such things. To understand the world reasonably is to take into account the context of events. In denial of the 'Truth as a Whole' liberals remove all the contextual determinants which led people to become homeless and instead emphasise the freedom and responsibility of the individual. An informed answer would be to have soup-runs throughout London combined with serious efforts to eliminate homelessness.
If we go further than this to look at the Enlightenment interpretation of history as progress we find this same fundamental problem. The material conditions onto which liberalism is predicated, it's foundations are coated in blood, is the accumulative processes of slavery and feudalism. The debt owed to the suffering of slaves and serfs is quietly kicked under the rug. The advances of Western civilisation are often achieved through slaughter, such advances open up new possibilities of barbarism as well as emancipation. The countless generations butchered and terrorised into subservience to advance the mode of production and amass a vast material resources which enable the emergence of new forms of exploitation. American capitalism is indebted to the genocidal bloodbath and centuries of misery and injustice preceding the Revolution and merely change in form after independence. The liberal order providing retrospective justifications for slavery, low-taxes, the theft of Native American land and the accumulation of capital. The huge debt to the slaves, who built the White House, is the legitimate claim for reparations and positive discrimination.
Some of you, my fellow coach potatoes, will note the debate over the "Big Society" was reignited with a notable appearance from Phillip Blond on 10'Clock Live back in February and it will no doubt come up again in the future. As the proponent of a new kind of a communitarian conservatism Blond has found himself influential in the Conservative Party in recent years. The impact of the 'Red Tory' has been to shift rhetoric from the "compassionate conservative" limbo to a consistently conservative message. 'Red Toryism' has been posited as a viable alternative to the failures of the egalitarian Left and the pro-market Right, socially conservative but sceptical of neoliberalism. Though the commentariat have yet to buy it and many feel it is simply a "cover for cuts". On 10'Clock Live he took part in a discussion with liberal columnist Johann Hari and Conservative Shaun Bailey hosted by David Mitchell. The clashes between Hari and Blond were notably entertaining, though the government has still failed to promote the "Big Society" especially in this time of public spending cuts.
The progressive credentials of David Cameron can easily be seen. Cameron is the product of affirmative action for rich white-men, he was born the fifth cousin twice removed to the Queen and got his first job with the Tories after he was recommended by an equerry at Buckingham Palace - not to mention the recent revelations about Clegg's internship. Aligned with the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party David Cameron has joined his German and French cousins in his opposition to multiculturalism. Cameron also maintains the Atlantic alliance between the US and the UK, whilst he is also a friend of Rupert Murdoch as well as to homophobes and anti-Semites in Europe. Never mind his advocacy of small government, austerity and Victorian family values on top of all this. These are not the credentials of a progressive, these are the warts of a reactionary which are hidden behind the well crafted veneer of a youthful, soft and modern conservative. This is an inversion of the 'Nixon in China' principle. Only Nixon, the anti-Communist, could sip tea with Mao and only a progressive can slash and burn the welfare state.
The only sense in which the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats could be considered progressive is in the Enlightenment sense of history as Progress. Conveniently this interpretation of history eliminates the need for radicalism of any kind: We will get there in the end, so why make big changes now? This is compatible with the economics of market liberalism, from which we might hold that there is full employment in the long-run so current trends of unemployment are only temporary. Along this road of Progress towards a liberal utopia, reminiscent of North Oxford, there are numerous obstacles that must be removed swiftly. There are the barbarous ideas and the dangerous enablers of such ideas, in the way that Islamism is supposedly empowered by liberal multiculturalism. Not that there is a need for a common project to unite people, as that would presuppose a different take on history, but rather that a "muscular liberalism" should succeed the multicultural order. Similarly, the culture of dependency has to be jettisoned along with all inefficiencies in the public sector.
Then we have the shattering revelations over the very warm relationship between the Conservative Party and the financial hub of the British economy should not be a surprise to any serious commentator. And if we lived in a free society there would be such a degree of transparency that the ordinary citizen would be informed of all the details, by which I mean all the figures of contributions to the parties. Contributions from the City of London to the Tory Party have risen since Cameron became Party leader in 2005. When David Cameron just came to lead the Party, funds from 'Big Finance' accounted for just less than £3 million which would represent around 25% of total donations. 5 years later and the Conservatives had received over £40 million in funds from Canary Wharf. Though it would be interesting to see the details of all three major parties, as in the US every election is won by the candidate who spends the most on the campaign trail. As I suspect the rich dumped New Labour in favour of the Conservatives in the run-up to the 2010 General Election.
Keep in mind the strong support Cameron received from over 1,000 business leaders and the blessing of Rupert Murdoch, which may well have swung the election in 2010. Notably Blair received similar support from business leaders before his victory in 1997. The Murdoch media empire has been notably influential in elections for a long time and has acted as a base of media support for Thatcher, Major and Blair. From 2006 to 2009 the contributions added up to £16 million and in 2010 the Party raised £11 million from Canary Wharf - this is equal to the amount Labour raised from Unite from 2006-2009. Until recently this is all we knew about the financial ties to the Conservative Party, but now we know that the donations received by the Party are over £40 million since 2005. Under the leadership of David Cameron financial support procured from 'Big Finance' has literally doubled, the wealthy have leaped from 'Blue Labour' to 'Red Tory'. The same old platform has been recycled and refined slightly, it's pursuit of class interests even more brash and vicious than before.
When asked by Dylan Jones as to what his views on the City, and whether a Conservative Prime Minister can be a meaningful critic of the banks, Cameron responded "I think a Conservative Prime Minister can and should be a friend of business, where you praise and reward good business practice and then feel absolutely free to criticise bad business practice." Cameron went on to clarify that he does not believe the answer to every problem is regulation and legislation. Instead he opts for public debate and advocates responsibility in the business community - this is as shallow as it gets. Note Mr Cameron's words as we can now read of the Black and White Party, formerly known as the Winter Ball, where each of the 900 guests paid a minimum of £400 and went on to bid for City internships which could pave the way for their children to become hedge-fund managers and stock-brokers. Five were sold for £14,000 that night. All together the event may have raised £500,000 for the Conservative Party, funds which will be used to tell us all that "We're all in this together."
The "Virtual Parliament" of investors who vote on government policy minute-by-minute and will seek to undermine particular social policies and reforms - that strikes at the interests of the rich - through capital flight, this is the result of the financialisation of the economy over the last 30 years. We're talking about the global ultra-rich now, the people who have accumulated $40 trillion by 2009. The bailouts of 2008 to 2009 were a way of maintaining high rates of profit which could not be gained from the exploitation of labour. The same can be said of the bailouts of Greek, Irish and now Portugese banks. As a man of corporate public-relations David Cameron knows a good slogan when he sees one, which might explain why he ripped off the Obama theme of "Change". But at a time when profits have to be wrested through accumulation by dispossession we are already seeing the re-use of methods of race-baiting and military aggression. The current global situation could lead to movements for independence emerging in developing countries, as seen in the Middle East recently, as well as attempts by organised labour and the radical Left to fight against austerity.
