I’m going to be frank: I don’t really know where to go with this blog. Usually, the thing with ‘vibe checks’ is that I go over what over what was happened in the extended period I was absent. But honestly, fuck all that. It’s way too much hassle – and it’s not something that I’m interested in doing anymore. As far as updates are going, I can give a few:
So, the ‘Decent left’ thing? It’s not going to happen until next year, at best. I’ve barely written anything for it and I’m still doing research for it. I’ve literally just finished Saddam: An American Obsession by Andrew & Patrick Cockburn, which gives an idea of the attempts to remove him since the Gulf War, and chronicalling the instability in Iraqi society caused by him and his kin, and the fragility of Saddam’s own regime inversely proportional to the determined efforts made to topple him – both by the US and within Iraq. I’m currently going over The People’s History of Iraq: The Iraqi Communist Party, The Worker’s Party, and the Left 1923-2004 released by Haymarket Books, so it’s bound to be Trotskyist. Which is probably just as well, since if nothing else it is an influential tradition of the Left in the Near East, and Trotskyism will (or would) feature prominently, positively and negatively, in the project. Even The Liberal Case for Murder was written by Richard Seymour, who’s kinda able to temper that stuff (until of course, on the occasions he starts talking about the USSR where all that sectarian ‘Obnoxskyism’ comes out). Meat on this thing won’t start happening till the first third of next year, assuming I stick with it at all.
Asider from work and school, I’ve not really updated this thing often – and even when I had free time, I focused a lot of energy on a project on the (sigh) Labour Party. I think that I might give a few more updates soon, but I’m probably gonna wrap this blog up at some point. It’s a bit weird since I do have ideas, but I don’t really have the inclination to do them. After maybe three more posts, I might definitely tune out, or shift how I engage with it.
“In so far as neoliberalism values market exchange as ‘an ethic in itself, capable as a guide to all human action, and substituting for all previously held ethical beliefs’, it emphasizes the significance of contractual relations in the marketplace. It holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach of market transactions, and it seeks to bring all human action into the domain of the market.”
David Harvey
Neoliberalism broadly describes an epoch in capitalism in which the dominant set of ideas, and political and economic practices are characterised by the emphasis on limited regulation on markets, increasingly financialised set of practices emerging in various institutions, the introduction or expansion of marketisation to services previously held by the public sector, the lowering of barriers to free trade, and the free-flow of capital to anywhere in the world. To put it simply, neoliberalism is “the subordination of the social world to the will of the market”.
Neoliberalism is sometimes believed to be a buzzword in left and progressive circles, but it is a very real political and economic ideology with promoters and practictioners who sought to bring 19th century ideas and practices into the 20th century. It should go without saying that neoliberalism replaces an epoch of Keynesianism which has at times been described as “the golden age of capitalism” due to the rapid economic growth, high social mobility, strong welfare systems and relatively limited unemployment in the advanced capitalist nations. This is not to say that neoliberal programs implemented in various countries (e.g. the so-called “Asian Tigers”) did not lead to economic growth – just that it never did so without undermining nearly all of the features that made Keynesianism seem attractive. Despite this, neoliberalism has endured from the 1970s until today, defining not only modern economic practices, but our political and social life.
It is believed that neoliberalism emerged sometime in the 1970s, and even argued that the basis that its building blocks were set up right after the Second World War. However, its ideological framework was developed in the 1930s by a group of classical liberal economists in a conference held in Paris in 1938 – Among them were Friedrich A. Hayek, Walter Lippmann, Louis Rougier and Ludwig von Mises. The aim of these conferences is to develop a means of combatting what they believed to be the rise of collectivism throughout the world (in the forms of communism, Nazism and social democracy) by introducing a set of laissez-faire capitalist principles fit for a new era. They agreed on the term, neoliberalism to define their ideas described as “the priority of the price mechanism, free enterprise, the system of competition, and a strong and impartial state”.
Many of these economists would set up a think tank known as the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947 as a hub for their ideas, and eventually – the locus of a global network of think tanks, with the accompanying deluge of financial backers and a coterie of academics, journalists, corporate leaders and politicians moving within and through the MPS – they existed as a niche movement during the heyday of Keynesian capitalism, and its alternative in communism across the world, with pockets of fascist-inflected corporatism. The influence of the neoliberal ideas emerging within the MPS led to the creation of various institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute, as well of the reconstitution of others such as the University of Chicago via its economics department, even the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – organisations which were the brainchildren of Keynes, came to embody neoliberal programs. The early German neoliberals were able to forge an alliance between the intellectual, business and political forces to build an early iteration of what was to come known as ordoliberalism – a system that eschewed the Keynesian welfarism, and maintained competitive markets in exchange for state interventions in prices. The once marginalised collective of classical liberals became an international movement that was reshaping the Western world.
The crisis of capitalism that emerged in the 1970s had forced the decoupling of the US dollar from the gold standard, leaving it a floating currency. The introduction what would become neoliberalism took place in Chile, which was already a target of covert involvement by the American intelligence services, who sought to overthrow the socialist government of Salvador Allende. In 1973, a coup was launched by several high-ranking members of the armed forces led by General Augusto Pinochet, with the assistance of the CIA. The result was the collapse of the Allende government, and the emergence of a dictatorship led by Pinochet. The Pinochet regime’s economic policies were informed by a team of economists trained in the University of Chicago (nicknamed the “Chicago Boys”) who advocated monetarist policies, resulting in 40% of Chileans thrown into poverty.
As the compromise between capital and labour became unmoored, as the former sought greater profits – the labour unions which maintained the security of social welfarism would be smashed – in many cases literally, and their power would be legally curbed. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher sought to place Britain at the centre of the increasingly fierce global economy, and decided to do so by bolstering the financial services sector. Commission rates were abolished and trading was was deregulated, while a state-of-the-art digital trading system was introduced. The changes took effect on the 27th October 1986 – the spike in market activity from deregulation of the City of London was dubbed “the Big Bang”. Many old firms were swallowed up by larger banks – both foreign and domestic; it had solidified the British economy’s shift to financial capital over industrial capital, and indeed – it had come to place London among other financial centres as the preeminent hub of global finance. It was part of an overall process called ‘financialization‘, where financial institutions and financial elites become more influential in the economic policy of nations.
With the onset of various global commodity booms experienced during the ‘high’ point of neoliberalism, the socialist world attempted an rapproachement in order to have access to the global market by either opening up its markets through internal restructuring of their economies, or through IMF loans to those seeking to develop their economies after the success of their anticolonial struggle which had achieved the same thing. The most violent result of this has been the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc nations, and the adoption of some form of market socialism to the surviving communist nations. The IMF’s ‘structural adjustment’ packages had also imposed a retardation of the so-called post-imperial nations of the Global South, ensuring their continued dependency to Western economies – making a mockery of their struggles for independence.
In the 1990s, thanks to the IMF and the World Bank, a set of policies promoting low tarriffs on trade, privatisation of key sectors of the economy, and deregulation – spread across the world; the trend had come to popularise the term, “globalization” to reflect its scope. As if to solidify this trend the GATT had reformed into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1994 which promoted anti-protectionist policies. The absence of a rival system counterposing capitalism, and concurrent trends in Western societies (post-Fordism, new managerialism, “knowledge economy”), gave rise to highly optimistic predictions (some of which ironically made during the Keynesian epoch) by a number of academics around a supposed “post-materialism” defining social and political engagement, a supposed “death of class” resulting in the decline of organised labour and decomposition of political bases in favour of a politics by value frameworks.
In political and cultural analyses, globalization was also perceived as potentially leading to a relative peace, and also a synthesis between disparate cultural frameworks across the world – a(nother) ‘benign’ era of capitalist world economy. This conceit only served to obscure the intensification of exploitation in the world outside of the Western Hemisphere. And even then, some of the claims with respect to “the death of class” in advanced capitalist societies were shown to be flat-out wrong, confusing the specialisation of work – especially the rise of immaterial labour (knowledge is a key example), and increasingly fecund expressions of consumption for the disappearance of a unified experience of class (which never existed), to say nothing on the wage/capital relation. The new system ushered in globalization was not a harmonious interconnected world, where all commodities and cultures mix evenly. It was the unfettered expansion of new markets, the free flow of capital, the creation of a new global working class (many of them experiencing the same labour protections resembling that of the 1920s for advanced capitalist societies), and if anything – in a cultural sense, was closer to the “Americanisation” of the world.*
Rather than enact a new kind of freedom and autonomy, neoliberalism had in fact led to the immiseration of large scores of people, the retreat of the social safety net, and the atomisation of the experience of social life. In the Global South, this is felt even sharper – with the presence of transnational corporations (TNCs) exploiting the local labour force in their pursuit of ever-greater profits – with the advantage of weaker labour protections offered by underdeveloped nations**. Neoliberalism has also transformed almost all spaces of social and political life – from education, work, healthcare, to even the conduct of politics. Interestingly, neoliberalism has been a feature of global capitalism for a period even longer than the Keynesian era***, which should give sobering reflection towards the context of the dominance and eventual decline of Keynesianism, and what its purpose actually was, along with that of neoliberal hegemony. But neoliberalism had produced its own set of contradictions, with global consequences.
Chaos in the market New Eden
The progressive reaction was the anti-globalization (or alter-globalization) movement emerged using the uprising of the Zapatistas against the Mexican government after it accepted the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreements (NAFTA) launched on January 1st, 1994, as a launchpad. The movement demanded greater political transparency, the scaling back of the power of corporations, and the restoration of public institutions. They tried to bring to attention how TNCs were exploiting the Global South, and their facilitation by the WTO and the World Bank; and operated in a decentralised and horizontalist style, drawing inspiration from the Zapatistas. They were said to represent a new kind of anti-capitalism, or resembled one that had not been seen for over two decades. The dynamics of the movement culminated in the protests in Seattle, Washington outside the WTO conference in 1999; the World Trade Center attacks in New York, US in 2001 had shifted their momemtum and they were largely integrated into the anti-war movement in the 2000s – in so far as the Global North is concerned, this movement, while key to the establishment of the World Social Forum, and raising concerns around debt relief on an international scale, its capacity for systemic change had diminished significantly following the War on Terror (see below)
The reactionary emergence of right-wing “anti-globalism” was also a feature, developing into outright conspiracism around the formation of a global elite establishing a “new world order” (ironically taken from the 1991 speech of George H.W. Bush). Former Nixon consultant Pat Buchanan and Vladimir Zhirinovsky were prominent figures around movements which promoted ultra-nationalism in face of what they believed to be the loss of national sovereignty to financial and political elites. Given that anti-materialism is a consistent feature of this kind of nationalism, all kinds of mystification around globalisation ensued, such as the belief that the UN had the kind of hard power usually assumed from the US, and so hysteria arose around a planned invasion of UN armed forces to signal a “new world order”; and the belief that a globalised world economic system is some kind of Zionist conspiracy. A nationalist worldview reduces everything to national struggle. Figures like Buchanan and Zhirinovsky initially caused concern over their popularity within their respective countries but events overtook them and their chauvinistic causes taken up by their leaders (the 9/11 attacks and the rise of Putin, and the swift conclusion of the Chechen War respectively created a fervently nationalistic sentiment in the US and Russia) leading to their decline. However, the conditions that created them, and what they represented did not disappear….
The collapse of nationalist movements in an anti-colonial struggle in the Middle East, had led to a movement which synthesized a revivalist Islam with insurrectionist politics known as Islamism. While Islamism was already a political force which had adopted the party form, this new version mostly eschewed the capture of state power, they nonetheless claimed authority within the Islamic world, and some of their most prominent figures adopted special titles to signify their authority. The primary concern of the new Islamists is the presence of the American empire on what they considered to be Muslim lands, and the acquiesence of the leaders (religious and political) of these countries to the West. For them, it solidified that they indeed lived in an “age of jahiliyya” (‘age of ignorance’), in which even established Islamic authorities were corrupt – indeed they were seen as false Muslims. The aims of Islamism are restorationist in their function, in that it seeks to remove all elements of jahiliyya and revive the ‘true’ expression of Islam, and to purge the cultivators of this jahiliyya – which they attribute to Western and Zionist influence. Islamists – particularly Salafist Islamists/jihadists differed on questions around the creation of a caliphate; who represents its foremost leaders; and whether the “near enemy” (the ‘corrupt’ Arab nations) or the “far enemy” (the West, principally the United States) should be the main target. Since the 1990s, the focus of the jihadists was primarily to go after the “far enemy”: in part due to the optimistic enthusiasm in the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghanistan war and the following collapse of the Soviet Union, which had convinced them of their ability to challenge the imperialism of the premier economic superpower and bring it to its heels. The attack on the World Trade Center in September 11th, 2001 was the most notable engagement with Islamism and its adversaries, although cells claiming affiliation to active jihadist organisations are active across the world – in particular, South-West Asia, Africa, and East Asia. The features of Salafist Islamism was the creation of non-state entities which drew the ire and the military might of the United States – along with her allies, the accompanying disdain of the religious establishment and of the majority-Muslim governments, the rejection of a democratic practice, an emphasis on direct engagement with the Qur’an over the long-standing exegetical and legal traditions of Islam as justification for their acts, the decentralised networks that these organisations functioned in, effective usage of new technologies in propaganda, and rearticulations of Islamic concepts like jihad, shari’a and the ummah emphasizing individualistic interpretation. It is for this reason why Suzanne Schneider argues that modern Islamism, contrary to claims that they represent a call to pre-modernism, are in fact hypermodern; in that they represent an expression of the tensions produced by globalisation, the dialectic between individualistic ethos and highly authoritarian practice, and the decentralised nature of the organisations and the claim by Islamic State of a “global caliphate” with authority over all Muslims across the world reflected the neoliberal era it arose from.
The social dislocation experienced by the working and middle-classes of Latin America as a result of the authoritarian governments between the 1970s-1980s, and the emergence of neoliberal/’Third Way’-type policies meant that the anti-globalization movement in Latin America took a different form. Various social movements around indigenous rights, feminist groups and trade unions mobilise in opposition to Latin American governments (some of them center-left) which had enacted neoliberal policies, and the colonial system which still defines their existence. These groups would become incorporated with left-wing political parties which went from strength to strength, starting with capturing municipal governance to their ascent to forming national governments, often with the alliance – even incorporation of the social movements to their political base. The rise of left, and centre-left governments of the 2000s was dubbed: the ‘pink tide‘. These governments focused on programs emphasizing the nationalisation of companies, massive social welfare programs intended on tackling poverty, and incorporating the participation of various marginalised groups (women, black people, indigenous people, etc.) The combination of these programs came to be dubbed ‘post-neoliberalism’; the rapid economic growth experienced by these countries as a result of the high prices of their main exports (oil. gas, etc.) and the Chinese commodity boom of the 1990s/2000s was what sustained their ‘interventionist’ programs. The ‘pink tide’ had also saw an attempt of economic integration across the South American nations, as Cuba and Venezuela spearheaded the establishment of the Bolivaran Alliance for Peoples of Our America or ALBA – a supranational organisation which had come to incorporate the membership of several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. ALBA is explicitly stated to be anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal – in some contexts, even anti-capitalist. It was used as a means for its members to use the oil brought from Venezuela to support various social welfare programs and even set up a virtual currency called the sucre. However, the success of the ‘pink tide’ had apparently relied strongly on the Chinese commodity boom, and the high price of oil on the global market – the resulting slump in the price of oil would lead to a reversal…
And this is describing global trends even before 2008. You know what happens next…
The big crash
In 1999, US President Bill Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. The act was introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to prevent commercial banks from dealing with non-governmental securities for clients in Wall Street. Clinton argued that the bill was all but dead anyway; he had simply finalized what was the new normal. Banking regulators had since the 1960s interpreted the Act as allowing for commercial banks to engage in some securities activities – a list that had gradually expanded over time. The result was the immediate frenzy of mergers between firms which created huge financial conglomerates hungry to get into securities ventures well outside the scope of their underlying business. The introduction of computer-based mathematical models to financial risk management led to the promotion of increasingly complex financial instruments to buy and sell securities loans. The billions of investment dollars flowed into ‘residential mortgage-backed securities’ with the promise of big payouts from the mortgage securities. This created a massive property bubble which burst around 2007, leading to the devaluation of housing-related securities, hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, and collapse of major financial institutions such as Fannie Mac, Freddie Mac, IndyMac Bank, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch – and many more, had either declared bankruptcy or faced it, leading them in desperate need of salvation.
The Bush, and later – the Obama administrations made it their priority to issue massive bailout packages to save the financial institutions deemed “too big to fail”. The UK and other advanced capitalist nations followed suit. The massive injections of capital to rejuvenate the financial markets came at a price: the US government would own shares in the businesses that were affected. The banks seeking to rebuild their capital base could no longer afford to give massive loans in the way they did before. Due to the global credit freeze, businesses reliant on credit found it harder to obtain, leading to massive layoffs of workers. Unemployment skyrocketed as a result of the slump in industrial output, and the stock markets dropped substantially.
The Group of 20, or G20 – 19 heads of state/government along with the President of the EU, were hastily assembled to discuss solutions to the global financial crisis – the first of the meetings took place in Washington, D.C. on 14-15 November 2008, and the second in London on the 2 April 2009. Their overall goal was to “start the process of reform so as to manage globalisation as a force for good in the medium term”. A $1.1 trillion stimulus package was agreed to several programs in order to improve international finance, credit, and trade, and provide overall economic stability and recovery. Other outcomes were the creation of a Financial Stability Board to work with the IMF, and rising economic powers – China and India, having the ability to determine IMF and World Bank policies.
The global financial crisis had created a profound scepticism on the viability of neoliberalism, and that the outcome of the G20 summits did not conclude with a commitment to establishing greater regulatory oversight on the national and global level had, for many observers marred the entire summit. When arch-libertarian Alan Greenspan, who formerly served as the Federal Reserve Chairman, says that the entire period had shown that neoliberalism no longer worked, then one should take heed. Naturally, the period had for many people in the Global North led to a discontent around globalisation, with one outcome being a more explicitly socialist**** politics reviving, and another being the reemergence of nationalist or nativist ideologies. Some commentators observing these developments described these phenomena with the flattening and unsophisticated term “the rise of populism”; The following ten years through this paradigm saw a kind of chaos engulf the world. A much more materialist analysis would suggest that the contradictions produced in the neoliberal mode of capitalism gave rise to new social, national and global tensions, producing various reactions in response.
When you just keep doing wrong knowing it’s wrong
Whatever sentiments emerged from neoliberalism, its institutional operation was not going to disappear. No international commitment to build an alternative economic system emerged from the Great Reccession. However, what came next was the very opposite of a return to the normality of the period prior to 2008 crisis:
Fury towards the government bailouts of the major banks, worsening standards of living, the layoffs of workers, and the economic recession, protests across the US built up occpying university buildings, until enough momentum built up to an action to occupy Zuccotti Park on the 17 September 2011. Organised by the anti-consumerist activist group Adbusters, the inciting demonstration was coined #OccupyWallStreet, and was believed to be one of the first large-scale demonstrations organised via social media. The general demands of Occupy Wall Street were for the major banks to be reformed, for the influence of money to be removed from politics, for the forgiveness of student debt, and for a more distributive income. The latter underpinned the OWS slogan: “We are the 99%” (of which late anthropologist David Graeber was credited with coining), in opposition to “the 1%” made of CEOs, hedge funders, industrialists, and other capitalists or “elites”, distorting the ideal of democracy. The protest itself lasted 59 days before the police were ordered to clear Zuccotti Park of the protestors. From there, the targets shifted to banks, corporate headquarters, foreclosed homes, to universities to be occupied by protestors. The spirit of OWS spread internationally, and similar protests were held in the UK, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Cyprus, Nigeria, Brazil, Colombia and the Czech Republic. OWS did not necessarily have a firm ideological base beyond its call for a more democratic process, and had everything from anarchist to libertarian tendencies – some of which declaring to represent the ‘real’ character of OWS. However, its general economic concerns, reliance on direct democracy , and overall reformist character has lead some observers to describe it as ‘left-populist’. OWS is said to have overall failed in its goals, however segments of people who engaged in OWS and were politicised by it had gone on either to incorporate their radical democratic politics into the institutional political framework. In turn, the innovations from the Occupy movement – from the “human microphone”, engagements in participatory democracy and general assemblies, and use of the “progressive stack” – giving priority to people from marginalised communities to speak first, had all had significant influence on the expression of the New New Left of the 2010s, especcially those in the Global North. The politics of OWS is also said to have led to the rise of left-wing politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Melenchon, as well as the formation of the Progressive International. Ultimately, Occupy Wall Street at best can be seen as the final form, or logical conclusion to the kind of formation seen in the alter-globalization movement – its commitment to the liberal framework – especially in its understanding of democracy had ultimately limited its ability to create a new kind of politics, and ultimately to address the economic problems that created the movement.
The Arab world, dominated by autocratic leaders faced their greatest test of legitimacy since the end of the Cold War. The spark was said to be a Tunisian street vendor setting himself alight after police confiscated his material, the outrage from this incident – along with broader issues around economic inequality, and poor living standards – exacerbated by the Great Reccession, government corruption, and political repression, had led to the eruption of protests – largely organised by labour unions. After 28 days, the government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled. Popular unrest spread across several Arab nations – in particular: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain; as well as smaller protests in Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and Sudan. While Tunisia and Egypt were the most successful revolts resulting in a change of government – and even then, the latter resulted in Mohammed Morsi of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood briefly taking charge, before removed in a coup installing military dictator Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; Libya and Syria descended into civil war. If the entire regional conflagration were not initially great power politics struggling for influence in the Arab world, then this was eventually the character of the ‘revolution’: Libya, abandoned by the Arab League – was subject to a NATO intervention primarily led by the US, UK, and France, to assist the rebels opposing the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi was brutally executed by these rebels in Sirte, and in no time, Libya was turned into a glorified slave market – with its stock primarily being (guess) able-bodied dark-skinned Africans. African refugees seeking to escape the barbarity found themselves blocked from entry into the European Union, and returned to the Libyan Coast Guard. Two civil wars have erupted since the overthrow of Gaddafi; Libya is now under a so-called “unity government” formed of the competing factions. Time will tell how long this will last. As for Syria, The government of Bashar al-Assad at first had to contend with the “Free Syrian Army” formed by defected members of Syrian Armed Forces, and other groups unhappy with his regime, to the emergence of Islamic State. While the US surreptitiously provided aid to the FSA and other anti-Assad forces, and attempted to mobilise a coalition for an outright invasion; The presence of Islamic State had pushed Russia to directly intervene and assist the Assad government in fighting Islamic State along with any anti-governmental forces. Meanwhile, the stateless Kurds in Northern Syria declared the creation of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) – popularly known in the West as Rojava, fighting off the Syrian government forces, along with IS and the FSA. Turkey, threatened by the presence of armed forces controlled by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), invadedSyria once the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) went into alliance with the US to fight IS – to prevent the Afrin region from linking with the rest of Rojava. They had in effect created a proto-state in Syria, leading YPG to allow the Syrian government to form a buffer zone between them and Turkish-controlled Syria. In short, the whole situation there is a mess. Yemen likewise descended into civil war following the overthrow of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saudi Arabia – concerned with the regional stability and its threat to national security from Iran – suspected of backing the Houthi insurrectionists, launched a military incursion pounding Yemen with drone strikes – provided primarily by the UK and US. The humanitarian crisis is dire – indeed it is the worst in the world: UN figures suggest that around 375,000 people were killed as a result of the war – 70% were children. Over 3 million people are dying on their feet due to starvation or disease: The coronavirus outbreak had made things even worse. 6 million people have been displaced as a result of the war; 4.5 million internally. With these into account, there have been accusations that the Arab Spring was not really a popular revolution – with one or more powers – notably the US – accused of weaving it wholesale. That the movement had no intellectual anchors, or even a demand for a new social order (even for Islamism); not to mention that the monarchic regimes in Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia were left virtually unscathed has only fuelled suspicions of foreign interference. The US State Department-supported National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is even alleged to have been involved in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. Whatever the truth of foreign involvement, the issues around the results of the Arab Spring – which is said to have inspired by OWS above; underscores the abject ineffectuality of horizontalism, and the hollowness that the “NGOfication” of a civil society does to a people in need of tools for revolution. That the ones who gained the most out of this were organisations with a political program or long-term aims (Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian officer class, Gulf state monarchies, ruling elites of regional hegemons), or that the whole thing turned into regional power plays is perhaps fairly unsurprising. At least the AANES has armed militias (oh, and a concrete idea of what they want their society to look like). A case study of “capitalist realism” on an entire region.
The Great Recession had built up enough economic turmoil that the Eurozone itself came to be under threat in what was known as the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. The crisis had deeply affected one country in particular – Greece. The Greek government was trapped in deficits that it couldn’t meet and its funds were running out. The explanations given to the Greek crisis was generally ‘government corruption’ once the Greek government revealed that it had been underreporting the extent of its debt for years. The reality is much more stark: Greece was allowed into the Eurozone with knowledge (or at least, indifference) of the financial irregularities performed by the Greek government. In fact, Greece was the hub of a financial bonanza in the 1990s, as investors – in anticipation for the euro bought government bonds as if were a fire sale, as interest for them drove the prices for the bonds down – a manner curiously similar to the subprime mortgage crisis – though at the time, it was politically convenient for the Eurozone project to ignore signs of the Greek economy overheating. In 2002, the Greek government struck a dealwith Goldman Sachs with the offer to swap government debt with dollars and yen as currencies, in exchange for euros for a brief period of time – to be exchanged back to the original currency at a later date…but the 2008 crash put the kibosh on that. As a result, much of Greece’s expenditure was used to pay off these investors who lost money as a result of their own speculation. The crisis had threatened the stability of the Eurozone, and so the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission – the ‘troika’ – stepped in with the offer to bailout Greece in exchange for harsh austerity measures – Greece agreed and received £275bn as various cuts to public services – especially welfare. As Greece experienced severe economic hardship, its economy shrank, and unemployment rose to 25% – massive anti-austerity protests spread throught the country. The political consequence was that the ruling party, PASOK – a giant of social democratic politics for four decades, collapsing. The decline of PASOK, and of various centre-left parties across Europe gave rise to the term, “Pasokification” by political analysts. As PASOK smouldered, the left-wing Syriza Party superseded them – led by Alexis Tsipras, Syriza secured victory in the 2015 national elections, on the pledges to reverse the austerity measures. However, Syriza’s time in the sun would not last. Multiple times did the troika offer bailout packages which was rejected by the government. Not wishing for Greece to crash out of the EU, yet also trying to make good on his promise, Tsipras decided to put the decision to the Greek people in a plebiscite whether Greece should accept the package deals offered by the troika. The referendum resulted in 61% voting “no” to the deal – an overwhelming rejection. However, pressures from the EU, the Greek Parliament, and fears that Syriza will be held responsible for the economic ruin of Greece, had put Tsipras between a rock and a hard place, and he eventually acquiesced to the demands of the Troika, and accepted the deal. As expected, tax increases were given to Greece’s farmers, and the public pension system received major cuts. The capitulation of Syriza and Tsipras in particular to the EU and IMF, had to many disgruntled citizens and to international observers, signified that they had disregarded the weight of a public vote, which had severely harmed Syriza’s popularity and that of the prime minister. The EU creditors offered further packages to last over three years with austerity demands, to which the Greek government accepted – but with the slow economic growth, a lack of improvement into the lives of the Greek people, and the fact that the money had primarily gone to pay off their creditors – notably major German and French banks, Greece experienced sharp social divisions, and social unrest; the climate was fertile for the spread of nationalism and anti-immigration – seeing the rise of the far-right Golden Dawn. The 2019 general election had led to Syriza was thrown out of power to the right-wing Democracy Party, led by Harvard-educated lawyer Kyriakos Mitotakis. With Mitotakis as prime minister, promises were made to the Greek people that Greece will become economically stronger under his leadership, and the key to Greece’s recovery, according to Mitotakis – is stricter immigration regulations. As it stands, the Greek debt crisis is a prime case study on the effects of financialisation to a middle-tier economy, and had generated profound scepticism on the supposed benefits to globalisation – and more specifically, to the European Union – whose purported aim was to create a federal institution where all members had equality, yet promoted the neoliberal politics that saw Greece as a subordinate member, and then saddled them with debt bondage after a global economic crisis.
‘We hate this ride and want to get off!’
As the ‘New Tens’ set in, across the world, recovery from the Great Recession introduced social dislocation, and a decidedly negative attitude to transnational organisations or institutions said to determine or influence policy of the nations within them. Public figures and politicians associated with globalisation, of technocratic managerialism, who spoke of the inevitability of the market – specifically the global market – were denounced as out-of-touch elites removed from the concerns of the people. Popular appeal for globalisation had evaporated. The only kind of leader that had many sway among their people seemed to be ones who rejected the kind of modernity globalisation represented, but such politicians is as likely to be outside ‘traditional’ or consensus politics as is generally understood. As mentioned before, popular support for a redistributive politics in Europe had resurged leading to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Melenchon, Podemos, and briefly – the aforementioned Syriza. Their positionings were firmly reformist, yet their prominence had represented a commitment to break with the neoliberal order.
However, they had also come in an age of a particular international crisis: the aforementioned Arab Spring as it had taken place in Syria had led to a massive exodus of Syrian refugees to Europe. It is often suggested that had the European Union not been ‘constrained’ by the capacity of the member states to make policies affecting their respective nations, then the EU would be much closer to realising its universalist ethos, and a much more humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee crisis would have been possible.
This assessment generally ignores that the EU could have easily objected to the border security measures – but is itself committed to hard borders as part of the project of ‘securitization’ it had followed since its creation. The Syrian refugee crisis was a catalyst for the rise of nationalist sentiment across Europe, and the emergence of a new kind of reactionary politics to articulate the festering anxieties. Sentiments around a declinist narrative of the United Kingdom had produced the Brexit referendum in which 52% voted to leave the European Union*****. In the United States, similar anxieties around deindustrialisation and the outsourcing of jobs, unemployment, and declining living standards led to the rise of Donald Trump as he secured the presidency of the US. Viktor Orban of Hungary maintained political legitimacy by appealing to national anxieties around globalisation erasing the domestic culture – and so used convenient scapegoats like immigration, LGBTQ+ communities subverted traditional culture, and multiculturalism. He blamed his one-time ally, the Hungarian-born American billionaire George Soros, for orchestrating Hungary’s problems. In India, the rise of Narendra Modi in 2013, saw the culmination of the project of Hindu nationalism that lay in the shadows of India since independence. Jair Bolsonaro, a retired military officer, soared into office amidst a severe reccession in Brazil, and the collapse of legitimacy of the Workers’ Party through the supposed ‘anti-corruption campaign’/military orchestrated coup plot “Operation Car Wash” – leading to the impeachment of Dilma Rouseff, and the imprisonment of Lula de Silva.
The post-GFC left, or so-called ‘left-populists’ promoted the reassertion of state intervention, and for a reversal of austerity programs ushered in after the Great Reccession. However, lacking institutional influence, inability to meet the challenge of nationalism (either through the effective promotion of a new universalism, or succumbing to its ideology) their social bases composed of disparate ideological tendencies either without undergoing a process of synthesis or even a stable enough coalition, and the very parties they led (or parties embedded in the establishment) reacting to their politics like an organ transplant rejection – and it was eventually defeated, with only authoritarian nationalism, or the so-called ‘right-populisms’, the new normal. These nationalists promised to turn away from globalisation and cater to the national economy, but their purported protectionism did not break from neoliberalism – quite the opposite.
The Trump administration consciously converted the affairs of American politics more overtly into that of a corporation, with Trump himself as the CEO. Trump introduced anti-labour regulations, tax cuts to major corporations, and advanced deregulation as part of a neoliberal logic just like all the presidencies before his up to the time of Nixon. The US trade wars with China had expressed a ‘neoliberal protectionism’ of which the US has yet to deviate from. The Modi government introduced neoliberal reforms opening Indian agriculture to national and foreign companies in the ability to produce, sell and market agricultural products. The fury from Indian farmers was such that it led to the largest recorded strike in history. Bolsonaro likewise opened up the rainforests to domestic and foreign capital – a process that meant the erasure of fauna, wildlife and the indigenous peoples there, as well as evacerbating the climate crisis in the long term, while committing to deforestation and triggering forest fires in the short term – removing the indigenous groups from their home, and exacerbating the climate crisis.
A world in stasis; a runaway planet
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant effect on global economic activity as governments across the world initiated lockdowns to reduce the spread of coronavirus. The global response was far from effectively coordinated, and even today, a “vaccine apartheid” – where an inequitable distribution of vaccines between the Global North and the Global South became apparent, undermining the goodwill and ambitions of organisations like COVAX, was itself catalysed by the patenting of COVID-19 vaccines; Intellectual property rights had hampered aims around the development of a global supply of vaccines ready for distribution; as it stood, access the vaccines couldn’t be paid for by its poorest nations*****. In response, India (a rising economic superpower), and South Africa appealed to the WTO seeking a waiver on vaccine patents, which was granted in mid-2022. The results have been mixed: While the waiver has been beneficial to India, Africa still continues to have low vaccination rates, highlighting the continued dependency of the continent to the Western capitalist powers.
Tensions were still building in Latin America, specifically Chile – over the the expansion of privatisation as the national protests, briefly interrupted by the lockdown, mobilised again to topple the government of Sebastian Pinera. “Pink Tide 2.0” had brought into power left-wing governments in not only Chile, but Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Bolivia as well as Venezuela’s PSUV staving off a coup attempt. Brazil’s Worker’s Party and Bolivia’s Movement for Socialism avenged successful coups with their electorical victories – and in both instances, reactionary agitation resulted in violent protests ending in the jailing of many of those involved. Peru is the exception as it was subject to ‘lawfare’ by its National Congress – largely composed of ministers either affiliated with or had their tenures going back to the period of dictator Alberto Fujimori, resulting in the impeachment and imprisonment of the left-wing Pedro Castillo.
In the West, the results of the 2020 presidential election in the US had confirmed that Joe Biden would be the 46th President of the United States, with Donald Trump out of office. Having built his reputation as a force against globalism, Trump and his political allies were able to organise a protest outside of the Capitol, which later turned into a riot and attempted capture of the Capitol. The restoration of order by the security services and the military had suppressed the insurrection, and led to the discrediting of Trump. Even so, Biden was broadly not deviated significantly from the “neoliberal protectionism” characteristic of Trumpism. In the UK, Boris Johnson – who completed the Brexit process – resigned from his positions as leader of the ruling Conservative Party and as Prime Minister. Beneath accusations of his conduct during the pandemic, forces within the Conservatives were unconvinced that he was a suitable neoliberal steward, and so after a party leadership contest, Liz Truss emerged victorious. However, Liz Truss – inspired by the ideas of the neoliberal Institute for Economic Affairs – introduced a wildly unpopular tax bill, which the party elites panicked after seeing the reaction to it. Truss was pressured to resign, and another party election – albeit a carefully managed one, brought in Rishi Sunak as the leader of the Conservative Party and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In France, to see off the far-right in Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour as well as the hard-left Jean-Luc Melenchon, the centrist Emmanuel Macron leaned in to the former’s anti-immigration rhetoric, to considerable success, and retain a second term. Macron has since restructured the political party which brought him into power – including a rename from Republique en March to Renaissance in an effort to insist on neoliberal modernity. In Italy, following the collapse of the unity government (which itself was a non-partisan government brought into being after the collspse of both left and right-based coalitions) in response to domestic challenges of its very own ‘cost-of-living crisis’, in October 2022, the Brothers of Italy – a far-right party drawing its lineage to the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, became the ruling party on September 2022, with its leader Georgio Meloni becoming the Prime Minister of Italy. The result has led observers to claim that there had been no party so far to the right until the current one since the end of World War II. The “post-fascist” Meloni has made an effort to tone down (or conceal) the more radical of her political stances – including the repudiation of some of Mussolini’s policies, and her opposition to the EU. Almost certainly, Meloni is conscious of the suspicion within the European Commission of her – and for good reason, since their fear is of the development of a hard-right bloc from the formation of an alliance between Meloni and Orban. The EC are also fearful of the rise of the far-right Sweden Democrats in Sweden, and of Vox in Spain.
Institutions, along with political and economic figures in support of the continuation of globalisation, have now come to terms that the luster associated with it had long-since disappeared, and are ever reliant on leaders committed to a managerial approach to maintaining neoliberalism. One of the side-effects are political figures coming out of the discontent of globalisation finding expression…and thus far, the institutions that maintain its operation had used its sheer weight to push them into line, at least for the time being. In a sense, neoliberalism today operates as what it always was in clear sight: not as an integrative process melding all societies, and bringing them into prosperity; but the unfettered expansion of markets across the globe, unequal exchange in the periphery, and a vigorous form of capital accumulation concentrated in the core (US, Canada & Western Europe). To put it simply, it is the current form of capitalist-imperialism – only that unlike in the Keynesian era, even who gets to share the world’s wealth is largely denied to the masses of the global North.
So will neoliberalism ever end?
One way or another, neoliberalism will certainly come to an end. What is depends on, is the terms that it does end on. After the financial crisis of 2008, many commentators said that neoliberalism has come to an end. And after the COVID-19 pandemic, a new batch of commentators that neoliberalism has come to an end. Neoliberalism is very much trudging on, although it is long past its sell by date – either already one foot in the grave, or already undead. With that said, studies have shown that even in such volatile conditions such as a global pandemic and a global economic downturn, the largest firms will somehow find a way to make more profits – either because of government patronage, or because of being economically well-suited to profit out of the circumstances. Workers’ wages have not slowed in rising, they stagnated altogether since before the pandemic; and with the rise of the cost of commodities, the conditions for inflation and the ‘cost-of-living crisis’ emerges. But even those on their own are not enough to bring an end to neoliberalism. Time and again, we have seen that the business and political elites are very invested in its continuation – no matter the cost. But in order to properly explore why neoliberalism continues to define our era, we must also understand why it is it became our current reality in the first place.
As mentioned before, the 1960s – 1970s was the period that global capitalism was in crisis, and Keynesianism had reached its limits. The major economies experienced the slowdown in growth, and inflation was high. The intervention of US President Richard Nixon by way of an incomes policy had failed to reduce inflation. Moreover, unemployment was rising in places like Britain, the US – which had created a ‘stagflation’ crisis – and was resistant to Keynesian methods to curb inflation and unemployment, making both worse. Wider context being the fallout of the Vietnam War (The US were printing money like crazy just to fund it, and many countries placed the influx of dollars into their reserves), and the energy crisis caused by OPEC (Saudi Arabia) raising the global price of oil.
When the neoliberals came with their solutions, they saw the pillars of Keynesian capitalism in strong labour securities eg. high wages, interventionist state willing to issue payments to firms and support those who were unemployed; and argued that to restart economic growth that you can have low inflation, or high wages – but you can’t have both: one has to go. The neoliberal epoch exists primarily to resolve the falling rate of profits in global markets. This worked, for about two decades – now economic growth even in the advanced capitalist nations has slowed down, with them increasingly reliant on financialization and the creation of new mechanisms to deal with the flow of financial capital. This led to the buying and selling of securities, which led to an economic bubble, which to led to…you know the rest.
In other words, the very thing that the introduction of neoliberalism was supposed to address: economic stagnation, has itself become a feature of the neoliberal era – the difference is that within the nations that make up the Global North, stagnant and low wages in proportion to profits generated by capital are a common feature – to say nothing of the discrepancy generated in the Global South. With the end of neoliberalism over the horizon, we find ourselves at an impasse. The real question appears to be what comes next?
To its advocates and detractors, neoliberalism gave the appearance of the terminal point of capitalism – its most advanced manifestation to date. And depending on how you look at it either from the left or the right, the acceptance of this reality can either be very distressing or a very positive state of affairs. But what possibilities appear on the routes beyond neoliberalism?
The crisis of neoliberalism has led to calls within the US and Europe for new social welfare proposals such as the introduction of a universal basic income, or setting up an enivronmentally-conscious economic program as the Green New Deal. Other proposals include the creation of a new Bretton Woods system, with added restrictions on transnational companies (TNCs) from interfering with a country’s economic goals. Naturally, all three – especially the first reflect concerns within the Global North. The more pessimistic possibilities include the manifestation of new methods of social control: the first by corporations, specifically the companies in online communications, in the compiling and selling of personal data; with the potential from anything to tailor-made advertising to the management of “digital dossiers” on people as a liaison for the security services. The emergence of an immanent “surveillance capitalism” means the potential of new disciplinary powers at work (such as breaks, attendance, performance, etc.), management of consumer activity, and the profiling of subjects deemed to be potentially threatening.
And the second, a product of domestic and international politics in response to the climate crisis: in the event that measures to halt or reverse the problem become untenable, climate change will almost certainly impact the Global South earlier and significantly harder than anywhere else, with the largest refugee crisis the world will ever see an existential risk. This is likely to be met with a highly securitized border regime maintained in the global core – especially the US*****, and in Europe – with steps to establish these hard borders already in place. “Exterminism” is the appropriate term for a future where most of the planet is doomed to conflicts over resources, starvation, displacement, and in the possibility of entry into the wealthy nations – near-permanent second-class citizenship in a hostile culture. And the rest represent, in effect, a permanent global underclass, with the global elite shielded from the worst effects of climate change.
It is for this reason that within the Global South, the search for an alternative has led towards a restart of dirigismes and “post-neoliberal” programs – except that in doing so, they would be attached to the “Belt-and-Road” initiative launched by China; with favourable loans that they would not receive from the IMF, and the push towards “de-dollarisation”, with the Chinese yuan as the reserve currency over the US dollar, for more amenable conditions for import substitution. Basically, an ‘inverted Keynesianism’ even with the hypothetical anti-Bretton Woods system.
One thing is clear: neoliberalism has proven and made simple that the interests of capital and the interests of labour are diametrically opposed and irreconcilable. With 600 million people in the Global South dragged into the global working class, they have the greatest impetus to put an end to neoliberal capitalism. Any project, organisation, or general demand for the end of neoliberalism has to acknowledge and be in solidarity with the global working class – and overcome any boundaries, whether cultural, social and especially material – to accomplish this, and bring about a more equitable, and freer world.
Components
Privatization – The transfer of companies from the public space to the private sector.
Deregulation – The removal of state regulation in the economy, i.e. parts of the industrial sector.
Liberalization of trade – The removal or reduction of trade barriers between nations.
Financialization – The increased role of finance via markets and institutions in economic functions.
Ideological inspirations
Liberalism
Libertarianism
Austrian school
Chicago school
laissez-faire capitalism
rational choice theory
Organisations & Institutions
Mont Pelerin Society
Business Roundtable
International Monetary Fund
World Bank
World Trade Organization
World Economic Forum
Organisation of American States
European Union (you heard me)
Heritage Foundation
Institute of Economic Affairs
Centre for Policy Studies
Adam Smith Institute
American Enterprise Institute
Cato Institute
Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action
Institute of Public Affairs
Hayek Society
Liberal Institute of Rio de Janeiro
Institute for Liberty and Democracy
Tools ‘of the trade’ (or weapons)
Structural adjustment program (generally comes with an IMF loan)
“It wasn’t really a movement, barely even a moment, but the Daisy Age was an ethos that briefly permeated pop, R&B and hip hop. The name was coined by Long Island trio De La Soul; they claimed D.A.I.S.Y. stood for “da inner sound, y’all”, but then De La Soul said a lot of things.“
Ace Records
The so-called “Daisy Age”, or the “D.A.I.S.Y. Age”, was a period used to describe the musical and cultural trend forwarded by the New York-based hip-hop group De La Soul, who despite coining the term, mostly represented a promotional campaign around their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, which was released in 1989. Outside of De La Soul, a number of associated acts – most of them connected to the hip-hop collective The Native Tongues were cobbled together as representing “the Daisy Age”. Indeed, a compilation album was produced of these acts and the sound of that period, which is said to have lasted between 1989 to 1991.
When De La Soul came on to the music scene in the late 1980s, there were two major things still in style in hip-hop. One of them was rappers acting like hard men (and hard women, for that matter). Other than the increasingly competitive nature of emceeing, rappers from Run-DMC to Ice-T had either cultivated a tough, fierce persona, or presented an aggressive hard-hitting sound designed to invoke a bit of edge to their presentation. Even the Beastie Boys engaged in fratboyesque hijinks, and hell even Rakim got into it on occassion. De La Soul started as three teenage friends from the suburbs who liked to rhyme with each other, and doing what they thought was fun. In this sense, it invoked some of the earliest trends of hip-hop: to have a good time, and to promote positivity. The other trend was the usage of backronyms, which by the late 1980s was a thing those involved in hip-hop culture used to show everyone how clever they are (sometimes “too clever by half”). Consider KRS-One, or Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone. Even by the 1990s, groups like the Wu-Tang Clan (who admittedly had a fondness for playing with naming conventions) used backronyms like RZA=Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah, Wu-Tang = We Usually Take All (a) Niggas’ Garments or Wisdom, Understanding, The Truth of Allah and the Nation of Gods, and cream= Cash Rules Everything Around Me. When De La Soul came out, they represented the ‘daisy’, which stood for “da inner sound, y’all” – a clever play on their group name.
De La Soul were discovered by Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest who identified in the group kindred spirits and immediately told Baby Bam of them. De La Soul were then almost immediately added as part of the Native Tongues. They were then introduced to DJ wunderkind Prince Paul, who would go on to be involved in their first four albums. After securing record deal with Tommy Boy Records, they produced a series of songs for their album 3 Feet High And Rising – the title a reference to the Johnny Cash song “Five Feet High And Rising”, and indicative of the still integral component sampling was in hip-hop at the time – With Prince Paul, they created an album that was unlike anything else that was out at the time – at various times, it was mellow, fun, positive, relatable, and more importantly for music executives looking to sell to audiences in Middle America, it was consumable. Prince Paul’s innovative and eclectic sampling drawing from several songs from multiple genres of music and eccentric skits had produced a distinctive sonic experience that had turned De La Soul into overnight celebrities. However, this had led De La Soul’s sound to be described as “psychedelic rap”, and the group themselves as hippies – mostly due to “baby boomer” music executives reminded of the 1960s counterculture they experienced. This had in turn influenced the promotion of De La Soul, and the group would be involved in promotional stunts such as giving out daisies – even the iconic album cover, produced by radical art collective The Grey Organisation evoked the hippie image.
De La Soul would become increasingly frustrated with their association with hippies, and even produced a song that directly commented on this association, called “Me, Myself and I” reacting against their pigeonholing. As a general commentary, it is a fascinating case study on White America’s reaction to rap that wasn’t about dominating someone, taking on “sucker MCs”, or killing. It had to be ‘psychedelic’ and therefore, they had to be hippies. Never mind that De La Soul drew from a very different subculture emphasizing the promotion of peace, unity and harmony. “The Daisy Age” was as much an artistic period where an act would have a certain phase as David Bowie with is “Ziggy Stardust” and “Thin White Duke” eras, and The Beatles with their “Sgt. Pepper” era*. Oh, and De La Soul got sued by actual fucking hippies – the musical group The Turtles took expection to the sampling of their 1969 song, “You Showed Me” for De La Soul’s interlude track “Transmitting Live From Mars”. Apparently, Prince Paul was under the impression that their record label was on top of clearing the songs but Tommy Boy felt that Paul’s usage of the samples were so minimalistic that no-one would object. No-one but the Turtles, it seemed. The ensuing legal saga led to a reported settlement of $1.7 million. From then, a more cautious outlook on sampling in hip-hop had set in.
The Turtles episode, along with a particularly negative experience performing on the Arsenio Hall Show*, in which they were introduced as “the hippies of hip-hop” (They would perform “Me, Myself and I” – a song that explicitly has as lyrics that they are not hippies, which implied that Hall didn’t know very much of their music) and were still performing as the credits rolled, had led to the group developing a rather jaded outlook on the entertainment industry, and had pushed them to “kill the daisy” and themselves. Their contemporaries A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Black Sheep and others involved in the Native Tongues had also produced sounds regarded as optimistic and positive, even if most of them were more explicitly Afrocentric. In any case, for De La Soul, while their sound and style invoked “feel-good music”, it would be a marked departure from anything like 3 Feet High and Rising, delving into darker subject matter like rape, and drug addiction for a more realistic approach. The Daisy Age was over. The De La Soul they thought they knew, was dead.
Notes:
*All things considered, they actually killed it in their performance for the Arsenio Hall Show
See also
De La Soul
3 Ft High And Rising
Golden age of hip-hop
Alternative hip-hop
The Native Tongues
Jerry Rubin (no real reason to add him. He’s just the kind of sellout dickhead who got all alternative lifestyle, until he found money and became a Reaganite freak like the music execs De La were dealing with)
This is something slightly different than usual in that it isn’t really a regular post, although it is an update of sorts in that this presents an opportunity to flesh out something that I’ve been wanting to do for over a year. I’ve just been reminded that next month (effectively) is the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War – a grotesque conflict which had set the standard for imperialist conquest in the 21st century. The Iraq War raged for eight years, and led to the deaths of nearly a million Iraqis and displaced millions more. Quite often to people in the West, what makes a war ‘bad’ is the cost of what happens to the soldiers involved in these conflicts, how many of ‘our boys’ are getting killed in war compared to the supposed progress met in achieving the objectives. This is a line of argument used from political and military figures at the very least critical of aspects of the war, to sections of the anti-war movement itself. I think that such framing is at least implicitly chauvinistic – especially given that they always serves the role as aggressors and occupiers, and renders the largest victims of the conflict invisible, or without the form of human dignity afforded to soldiers. In the case of the Iraq War, less than 200 UK military personnel died in the entire conflict, while the US in comparison lost 7,000 military personnel. The question that needs to asked that is in the heart of these conflicts, and how they are framed is: what are the lives of a million Iraqis – men, women, and children – worth to us in comparison? Too often, the answer given is that the lives of people under occupation is worth less than their occupiers.
Many of us who are critical, or had in time come to dislike the Iraq War, are very familiar with the mendacity of the leaders who launched the war, and of the kinds of lies that were used to sell the war to their people – some of which are still used to justify commitment to subsequent wars. Many will recall the ‘link’ been made of Saddam Hussein’s regime and that of al-Qaeda, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction according George W. Bush and Tony Blair, that he could even launch them within 45 minutes according to Tony Blair and more specifically, Alaistair Campbell. We saw Colin Powell hold up a vial of what he said was anthrax produced in Saddam’s chemical weapons plants before the UN. We know full well of these lies, and the liars who told them. In the run-up to the anniversary of the war, documentaries and perhaps even online video essays will be released going over the consequences that these had. It is likely that even the people themselves who launched the war will get another opportunity to tell lies – only ones more self-serving. As some of the architects behind the war are now deceased, what may follow is a hagiography, a eulogy, or at least a more sympathetic assessment of their actions.
What will not be highlighted in these vignettes will be the activities of members of the Western intelligentsia who pushed for the war persuaded by, or found useful, one of the most deceptive narratives mobilised to curry its support: that it was a war for democracy, and an effort to stamp out a new form of totalitarianism in the turn of the century. The people who said this believed not only were they progressives, democrats, socialists and so on – but they represented the real Left tradition – and those who did not share their position, those who were completely opposed to the Iraq War, were either: useful idiots to Islamism – or Islamists themselves, cultural relativists (and therefore ‘moral relativists’), possessed by a inverted Manichean conception that perceived the West as a uniquely malign force, were hysterical or maniacal or foolish, etc.
These people called themselves the Decent left or were alternatively called either the Decency tendency or The Eustonites. The other name, the ‘pro-war left’ does not properly situate them in a historical context, but can reflect as part of a larger trend in advanced capitalist societies. The ‘decent left’ as a movement is gone. But unlike Bush and Blair, who received a clear and significant damage to their image among the American and British people respectively due to the war, the war cheerleaders who were too bourgie for Fox News slunk back into their universities, their newspapers and their parties with little – if any reputational damage. They believed themselves to be a ‘non-totalitarian left’, the true believers of a universal humanism, and heirs of Enlightenment principles. What they actually were, was a callous crew of liberal chauvinists, post-Cold War converts to neoconservatism which the shame to admit was nearly all-consuming, yet animated by the prospect of a civilising mission as much as any old colonialist. They created an intra-left culture war that is largely forgotten save for old blogging fogies reminiscing their best years, and impressed with the perpetual paranoia of the security state built in the era. Their influence still remains, and their story is yet to be told. The question is in how to tell it?
Why this project should be in video (or audio) form
It’s all well and good doing write-ups of what this actually was, and indeed – I do intend to write about it even if it is simply part of a script for an online video. But I find that for something like this, an audiovisual format is more suitable than another drop in the deluge of blog posts around this movement mostly stemming from the mid-2000s. It would be the best way to inntroduce to a generation of leftists what was taking place domestically during the Iraq War, what networks were established, and how far the whole thing ultimately went to before falling apart. I also believe that it will be far brisker than a sertoes of articles could be.
What will be covered
What I plan to cover is extremely broad, but it will be done to emphasize that the emergence of the ‘decent left’ as a phenomenon under a certain historical context, even if it is a phenomenon that follows a continuous historical trend in the European Left, and the American Left for that matter. The topics that I have in mind to be under discussion broadly circle the following:
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the self-confidence of the left in Europe
The emergence of neoconservatism and the globalised world
The ethnic conflicts that took place in the former Yugoslavia – and the reglossed “humanitarian intervention”
Post 9/11 media culture, the case for war in Iraq, and the left-wing arguments in support
The creation of Saddam Hussein
The building of Decency and the networks formed around it
The works and publications around Decency, and the building of their foreign allies
The demonization of Noam Chomsky
Decency versus Stop the War
A ‘people’s history’ of the Iraq War; Iraq’s transformation into a client state – hollowed out for privatisation
The Euston Manifesto- and the signees
A post-mortem on why Decency ‘failed’; how the reality of the war sharply differed from their proclamations
The afterlives of Decency
So what do you think? Sounds pretty huge, but I definitely see this in multiple parts.
When will it be done?
I don’t know. I’m spinning quite a few plates at the moment. For all I know, it could take anything from 3 months to a year to get done. But when it is, it’s probably going to be the best work I have ever done. I’d rather sooner than later, but life doesn’t always give you that you want. Incidentally, I’m still trying another post, so you can imagine what it might feel like to work on this every weekend, alongside the ‘regular stuff’. So, I don’t really know if will get done at all.
Anyway, thanks in advance, and for your continued support.
This is a surprisingly brief list of leftist online content that I either discovered in 2022, or otherwise greatly enjoyed specific works in that year. This will also include specific videos especially for the latter.
Please check out:
Balkan Odyssey – (link): Serbian Marxist-Leninist with a focus on the history of the Balkans, and contemporary Serbian culture. Also challenges misconceptions around socialism as a thought and practice.
Lady Idzihar – (link): Historian on Soviet history and culture. Makes an effort to demystify and dispel narratives around Soviet society that had developed in the Western world.
Think That Through – (link): A team of Polish guys who make long form video essays covering environmental concerns, particularly contemporary frameworks around tackling climate change.
First As Tragedy – (link): American disability activist exploring disability politics through a poststructuralist framework.
Prolekult – (link): British team producing ABSOLUTELY QUALITY videos, short films, poems and educational guides on Marxism. Explores the cultural and (geo)political impasse we find ourselves in through class analysis.
LabourMedia – (link): British guy (probably in twenties) doing primers on Marxist theory, and issues involving the British politics. Please support. He seems to be finding his feet.
Black Power Media- (link): A collective going through current events and historical struggles from a Black Power perspective.
See some of this other good stuff from last year:
If some of you have about two and a half hours to spare not watching a Marvel movie, you can watch the demolition project of the strange hugbox of the crankier sections of the left produced by Sophie from Mars. Specific targets include George Galloway, Jimmy Dore, Max Blumenthal and the Center for Political Innovation*, along with rather opportunistic trends (by comparison) in the “debate-bro”/online streamer sphere:
Well, There’s Your Problem podcast covering the history of the settler-colony Rhodesia, its international isolation, and its strange advertisements marketed towards white supremacist types:
This guy really goes into postmodern theory a bit too much for my liking***, but nearly every video I’ve seen of his has been good, and this is no exception. He explained Deleuze in a way that wasn’t only beautiful, but very relevant to our cultural dillemmas, and did it in under 20 minutes. The man is a gifted communicator.
Finally, theres Lunaoi! – a Vietnamese communist interviewing one of the organisers involved in the Poor People’s Campaign and the youth section of the Communist Party USA. Don’t know why I liked it. I guess I just liked how earnest the whole tone was from both.
I’ll try to look for more online lefty stuff as the year goes by. Until next time.
If nothing else, it’s been an interesting year. I thought that I’d get up to more pieces this year and even finish some old ones. I was even hoping for 100 posts by this year’s end, but it seems that couldn’t happen. Although some I’ve done, and 20+ posts this year is not that bad. There was a roughly four-month hiatus, and ever since this blog was up, I’ve never at least did a post a month, but there’s always next year, as the saying goes. Here’s a breakdown of some of the shit that’s gone on:
Sri Lanka uprising that sent the president running
Anti-Refugee Bill passes
Macron reelected in midst of far-right rise in France
UK nationwide council elections inexplicably shows Tories to be big losers, but Labour gains not all that good either. Lib Dems and Greens seem to have benefitted the most
Salman Rushdie stabbed as he gave a lecture in a university in New York (the state)
Massive flooding in Pakistan, killing over a thousand people. Pakistan declares a “climate catastrophe”
Liz Truss becomes Prime Minister of the UK
Queen Elizabeth II dies two days after
Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region sees sparks fly before a ceasefire is agreed
2022 Italian general election leads to far-right party Brothers in Italy in a right-wing coalition gaining the most seats, resulting in its leader Giorgia Meloni becoming Prime Minister
Liz Truss resigns as Prime Minister of the UK after serving for only 49 days; Rishi Sunak succeeds her
Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44bn and sets himself up as CEO. He steps down from his position within two months
Lula defeats Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian general election
World population confirmed at 8 billion
COP27 takes place in Egypt – very little is agreed on.
Massive protests in Haiti erupt from anger over mass unemployment, skyrocketing energy prices, and food shortages. The Haiti government requests the assistance of the United States to suppress the anti-government protests using the real problem of armed gangs taking advantage of the unrest
Pedro Castillo is deposed as President of Peru following his attempt to dissolve a hostile Congress
Former Argentinian president Christina Kirchner is jailed on charges of fraud and corruption
Some entertainment stuff being the ‘slap heard around the world’ from Will Smith to Chris Rock in the Oscars, Kanye West spiraling out of control into the waiting arms of neo-Nazis spouting dangerous anti-Semitic and anti-Black talking points. And of course, an aggressively social media saturated court trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, which ended in a settlement. Torey Lanez is going to jail though, for shooting at Megan Thee Stallion’s feet.
In terms of cultural phenomena, it looks like we’re seeing the beginning of the end of Jordan Peterson as a prominent cultural figure. Just as we’re seeing the rise of Andrew Tate despite the best efforts of YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. He still turned out to be the the most searched peron in Google this year. But it appears that his luck has run out. Greta Thunberg brushing the fuck out of him on Twitter had apparently led to Romanian authorities successfully tracking him based on one of his responses to Thunberg, and raiding his home. Tate is arrested on charges on rape and sex trafficking. Tate has cultivated an image of an ultra-luxurious life that could be attained through a lifestyle course emphasizing hypermascinity and a reinforcement of traditional gender norms. He has implied that he likes Romania because it isn’t very strict on trafficking. Well, it turns out Romania sure don’t like him for the same reason. A lesson to prospective ‘heirs to the throne’, ‘kings’, ‘solomonites’ and what have you: Even the lords of the earth suffer from hubris, and the gods made sure that their downfall was swift and brutal. Do not go to an Eastern European country to set up a sex trafficking ring, and especially don’t do it while bragging about how much petrol your burning in our fancy car. Fuck Ceausescu, but actually – Fuck you.
Sportswise, it appears that in Qatar, football wasn’t coming home. Good thing the women already brought it home – or kept it from leaving in England. ‘Golden boy’ Anthony Joshua after failing to knock down Oleksandr Usyk, had a meltdown and threw the championship belts and stormed off. There was other stuff in rugby and cricket, but I wouldn’t know because I don’t really follow those sports.
Can’t actually remember all of the books I’ve completed this year. It’s probably around ten to be honest, and it was a mix of short reads (predominantly) and fairly decent sized ones. But for all of the Theory, and political and historical texts I’ve read, there was nothing that moved this year, and didn’t see myself in more than the book Life In The Debt Trap: Stories of Children and Families Struggling Under Debt by Sorcha Mahony and Larissa Pople.
The next four books are the following:
The First New Left: British Intellectuals After Stalin by Michael Kenny
The Candidate by Alex Nunns
The Labour New Left: From Benn to Corbyn by Leo Panitch
Soviet Socialism by L.G. Churchward
I’ll be writing a bit more about all of the books that I’ve read in 2022, including the ones that I didn’t get to finish that year (Update: No I wont).
Oddest interview of the year:
This wasn’t really an interview, but a ‘debate’ between Twitch streamer/Former staffer of The Young Turks Hasan Piker and Youtube commentator/hip-hop media personality DJ Akademiks. It might as well have been an interview though. It was incredibly stark how different their outlooks are. On many occassions, Akademiks seemed to be under the impression that Piker should think like him based on his own success. The initial point of discussion was Akademiks’ grievance that Piker had him pegged as an exploiter of black suffering based on his reaction to the ‘O Block’ video produced by Andrew Callaghan – specifically Callaghan’s interview with Akademiks on the impact that his “War In Chiraq” series had on the youths involved in the area’s violence. Akademiks is indeed an exploiter and a parasite since this video series amplified, exaggerated and even mocked (including through racial epithets) some of the figures involved in the South Side Chicago feuds for a largely disconnected audience – and made money out of it, while those same figures died on the streets.
Unsurprisingly, he refused to take responsibility for flaming the feuds taking place around South Side Chicago – saying that he didn’t put the guns in their hands, while Piker explained to him what ‘systemic problems’ mean in the context of somewhere like O Block. There’s a back and forth, and in between Hasan calls Akademiks out on his support for ‘top cop’ Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Around forty or so minutes, the penny drops and Akademiks identifies him as ‘one of those socialists’ which Hasan confirms. It is here that I am dismayed at what the consequences of the commercialisation of hip-hop meant for class consciousness among the black community in America. The rest of the debate is spent with Akademiks trying to find ‘gotchas’ through PRATTs* at socialists – this is particularly irksome because Hasan is really a Bernie Sanders-style social democrat, meaning that he doesn’t so much want to abolish capitalism, than to reform it with more redistributive programs to rescue poor Americans – and specifically Americans – from the sharpest edges of it.
DJ Akademiks’ problem, which is the problem of many Americans – is that the way his personal identity is tied to capitalism, is through the narrative that he worked hard to get what he has. DJ Akademiks’ success, was mostly due to gaming the ‘attention economy’ at a particular time, and selling gossip. A kind of salacious gossip around a subculture in South Side Chicago where black youths were beefing and killing each other. He did not create the climate there – but he did profit out of it. He reinvented a wheel that is easy to reinvent, for a emergent media apparatus. DJ Akademiks’ ignorance of socialist politics, and lack of understanding of his role as a taste-maker is not his fault. It is the fault of intensive propaganda campaign that says we must address societal problems in an individualised and moralising manner, a near-century of anti-collectivist propaganda by the state from the fear of socialism, and the collapse of the radical Black movements – from the ashes that hip-hop emerged from. What hip-hop carried from these movements is the snippets of cultural nationalism, but not the class politics of the most radical of them. As a populist musical genre, it had no immunisation from capitalist influence, and so it was quickly captured. DJ Akademiks is its logical conclusion.**
Saddest interview of the year:
A surreal and unsettling interview with a young Ukrainian journalist forced to flee her home due to the Russian invasion. I watched this live (or rather, it was broadcast during a Novara Media livestream) and as she described her situation as a refugee, the tone suddenly shifted to a tirade against Russians as a whole, not just the Russian government. It is worth noting that she was from Eastern Ukraine, and this put into context her refusal ‘to be a ‘bargaining chip]’ for Russia, since part of the initial rationale for the invasion was ostensibly to defend the Russian-speaking demographic of Ukraine along with the Donbass separatists (she also speaks Russian). She recounted an admittedly hurtful text from a now former Russian friend reading, “If it’s you, I hope you survive” which illustrates well how nationalism can poison relationships, she herself asserts that the Ukrainians don’t need Russian culture or language and implies that she’d rather see these influences gone. The host, Michael Walker, attempts (and it can be debated as to how much effort he could have made while still keeping the interview on course) to bring to attention that Russia is effectively an autocratic regime – so there’s little control in what average citizens of Russia over their government, or that they are not responsible for Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, she only sees what the Russian military has done to her home, and demands that the Russian people be held accountable.
There’s an elephant in the room in respect to what the implications of this war is bringing in terms of nationalistic and chauvinistic sentiment, and what it could mean when people of certain nationalities are marginal. An increasingly frequent phrase I’ve come across online is “no Russian is innocent”. Not all of them who are saying this are Ukrainian, but some are from nationalities which have had historically bad history with Russia (and even those that aren’t of these nationalities). This is fairly predictable when two nations are at war – indeed, the British are far from immune from similar sentiments eg. “the only good Kraut is a dead Kraut” and such. The supposed permission to condemn people based on nationality is seldom interrogated especially if the nation the target is from is an enemy to the one you live in. If anything, this hostility is implicitly (and in cases explicity) encouraged in our media. The cultural bans of Russia that took place earlier this year are part of consequences of this, but also, what I’ve seen online are this kind of chauvinistic vigilantism where convenience stores with Russian flags are shared on social media – with the implicit (and again, even explicit) aim of targeted harassment. The other obvious consequence is racist attacks on people who are believed on be Russian. This does not make Russian nationalism – the kind of Russian nationalism that Putin has built his power base on, and used to launch the war – disappear. If anything – the grievances of a Russian diaspora met with hostility in foreign lands is something he’s likely to exploit. I don’t think that even if the current regime of a certain country is one I find distateful, that should give me permission to go after average people from that country, especially if they’re trying to make a living in another country. Whatever one’s thoughts on Novara Media, it is telling that this interview provided a shamefully rare instance where this kind of nationalistic rhetoric from an interviewee was challenged. Which actually says a lot about the health of mass media here.
Best interview of 2022:
I have to say that I very much liked this one:
I mean Vijay Prashad comes out with some bangers and all, but he’s no Mutabaruka. Especially a Mutabaruka pissed off that Jamaica was mourning her colonizer. I only learned about Mutabaruka this year, but I very much like the way he puts his points across. This is a very, very close second though.
Favourite post of 2022:
Mine has to be ‘pomo left‘. Didn’t even intend to make it that long, and certainly wasn’t happy during writing it. But I’ve come to see it as a labour of love. What’s your favourite post from this year, readers?
Favourite film of 2022:
Easily Everything, Everywhere All At Once. One of my all-time favourites and it just came out this year.
Favourite series of 2022:
The Boys season 3 (it actually hurt to write that, but I barely saw anything else. Not even Arbor or Obi-Wan)
Favourite animated series of 2022:
Bleach: The Thousand Year Blood War
People we lost:
Sidney Poitier
Bernard Cribbins
‘Ghostface Kafka’
Jean-Luc Godard
Nichelle Nichols
Hilary Mantel
Ray Liotta
Olivia Newton-John
Antonio Inoki
Bruno Latour
Robbie Coltrane
Sacheen Littlefeather
Coolio
Angela Lansbury
Mike Davis
Kevin Johnson
Jose Maria Sison
Maxi Jazz
Pele
Vivienne Westwood
People we were happy to see go:
Shinzo Abe
Darya Dugina
Ayman al-Zawhiri
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Leonid Kravchuk
Madeline Albright
Jerry Lee Lewis
Pope Benedict XVI
People that we’re at least ‘meh’ about going:
James Lovelock
Mikhail Gorbachev
Ayaz Mutallibov
Queen Elizabeth II
Jiang Zemin***
There’s a lot of posts that I wish that I got to write this year, a few that I’m especially not seeing the point of finishing. Some I never even got around to starting, and am unsure if I even will. But a several month hiatus was had. I’ve come to terms with the fact that a certain topic will arise quite often. I’m hoping to write a bit more on pieces inspired by the studies that caused me to take a break. It didn’t saw the visitors of 2021, and I’m fine with that. Anyway, this was 2022. Have a happy new year.
Notes:
*- PRATT means “points refuted a thousand times”.
**-I haven’t seen the ‘Drink Champs’ interview in completion hosted by N.O.R.E. where Kanye West goes on his first publicized anti-Semitic rant. If I did, it would probably easily be there.
***- Who am I kidding? This is the guy who announced the “four civilisations” heralding China’s move to renewable energy. And he was memetic as hell. Rest well, toad man.
Michael “Mick” Lynch (1962-) is a British trade unionist. He has served as the General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) since May 2021. Currently, he is possibly the most (in)famous living trade unionist in Britain in 2022, due to leading the rail worker strikes over the second half of this year, which had in turn – precipitated a series of strikes from various sections of the public services sector, many of which are ongoing industrial disputes as of the time of writing. Mick Lynch is personally distinguishable for his curt and direct manner of speech, and sardonic sense of humour.
Lynch was born in West London as one of five to Irish Catholic parents – his father from County Cork in Ireland and his mother frow near County Amargh in Northern Ireland. He was raised Catholic but no longer identifies with any religion. His personal hero is James Connolly – the Irish trade unionist and revolutionary.
He grew up in Paddington, and left school at 16 to become an electrician. He later worked in construction but was blacklisted for joining a union. Struggling to find work, he began working at Eurostar, and later became involved into the RMT. He would later receive a settlement for the earlier blacklisting twenty years prior.
After the announcement of the strikes, Lynch’s various media engagements were so well-handled – particularly from a trade unionist, which the British mainstream media is largely hostile to, that in July 2022 when Lynch’s media engagements became more infrequent, it was speculated by sections of the British left that the national news broadcasters were seeking to limit public support to the rail workers, while they discovered a means to undermine this support. This public goodwill even extended to an extent amongst parts of the press themselves, if only briefly once it was discovered what he voted for in the referendum.
Lynch, as was the position of the RMT, supported Brexit in 2016. He still believes that it was right to leave the EU, viewed its project as political centralisation and economic liberalisation, and the weakening of trade union rights. He says up until recently, this was the position of the Left. In response to questions around the economic consequences of Brexit, Lynch believes that it is better to fight for a future for workers, rather dwell on supposed past regrets.
In December 2022, Lynch announced that the RMT would be undertaking a series of strike actions across the month, including during the period of Christmas. The British press, particularly the Sun, had taken to nicknaming him “Mick Grinch”, in response, blaming him for preventing people from going to spend time with loved ones for Christmas – and seeking to scupper support for the strikes. It hasn’t appeared to have taken so far.
While Lynch believes that there should be a government willing to support workers and tackle the ‘cost-of-living crisis’, he doesn’t appear to see the potential for one in a future Starmer-led government, and suspects that it may present the same problems encountered with the three Conservative governments he’s encounted so far. He is one of the leaders involved in the Enough Is Enough campaign – a coalition of trade unions, the Labour left and the Green Party seeking to tackle the ‘cost-of-living crisis’. He is confident that the strikes will be successful and the power of labour will be stronger in Britain than it has been in two generations.
See also:
National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers
Eddie Dempsey
Bob Crow – the British media’s former main union antagonist
There are two meanings to the term ‘Fortress Europe’.
The first is its former usage as a military propaganda term used by both sides of World War II. Fortress Europe for the Allied forces was the battle honour given to the Royal Air Force and Allied Squadrons during operations against the Axis powers in the European theatre in the period between France falling to Axis powers and the Allied invasion of Normandy. Additionally, the Nazis used the term to describe Hitler and the Wermarcht’s plans to fortify all of Nazi-occupied Europe which included the construction of the Atlantic wall to deter invasion from the British Isles, and a restructuring of the Luftwaffe to reflect an increased focus on air defense, after invasion plans of the British Isles were thwarted as a result of the Luftwatte’s battles with the Royal Air Force.
Said Atlantic Wall extended 200 miles from Denmark to the Spanish-French border. Over 17 million cubic metres of concrete and 1.2 million metric tons of steel was spent in the fortifications, and Hitler boasted he was the greatest fortress builder of all time. After two amphibious assaults on the wall in 1942, the Allied forces launched Operation Neptune – or D-Day – the largest seaborne operation in history, setting into motion the liberation of France and what would later be the Allied victory in the Western Front.
The other meaning of Fortress Europe in modern contexts is as a pejorative to describe the border security measures exercised by the European Union.
Migrants and refugees coming mostly from Sub-Saharan countries await at the dock of Catania port before being identified by the Italian authorities and Frontex. ; On 14 November 2015, 407 people were disembarked from the Norwegian vessel Siem Pilot at the Sicilian port of Catania. They were rescued from four different boats that departed from Libya. Among the migrants and refugees were 72 women, 37 minors, 35 of which were unaccompanied. Most of the people came from Sub-Saharan countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Guinea Conakry, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Cameroon. There was also one person from Egypt. Since the beginning of January 2015 more than 800,000 people have done the dangerous journey via the Mediterranean Sea in order to reach Europe.
Migration is always mediated through economic demands and the domestic concerns of a territory that receives them. This is as much the case with the European Union in which freedom of movement is one of the “four economic freedoms” enjoyed by citizens of an EU member state. In the mid-to-late 2000s, the EU enjoyed the greatest expansion of its territory as ten former Eastern Bloc nations (Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania) joined the EU, in addition to Cyprus and Malta. Hysteria around immigration from Central and Eastern Europe had pressured politicians – especially leading politicians to signal that they were indeed going to restrict the flow of migration; for instance, the slogan, ‘British jobs for British workers’ associated with former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to allay anxieties of displacement, especially around the deindustrialised sections of Britain. For the most part, the flow of migration though the EU has gone unhampered. Which is more than that can be said for the treatment of migrants outside of the EU – particularly those seeking refuge.
People from outside the European Union are permitted to stay for 90 days, if they wish to come over for work, study or join a family member – though an EU nation can have a specific set of requirements for residence and work permits. Those non-EU nationals who are eligible for an extended stay beyond 90 days would have to be the following:
highly-qualified workers
intra-corporate transferees (essentially employees of a company with a branch in an EU territory)
seasonal workers
researchers
students
trainees and volunteers
Non-EU nationals staying in an EU country are permitted to bring their family members, and become a long-term resident after 5 years of residence. Non-EU nationals are also granted the same rights as nationals and can stay up to 6 months if they lose their job within a year and register with the relevant authority as ‘involuntary unemployed’. EU countries can also require that non-EU nationals report their presence to the relevant authorities within a time-frame after arrival (usually 3 months) – they would need a valid identity card, certificate of employment, and if self-employed, proof of status – after which they receive a registration certificate.
The nominal protections for residency rights for non-EU nationals even then implies that the EU has a preference for so-called skilled workers, prioritizing the potential of immigrants as human capital, and in turn – illustrating that the EU’s priorties lie in the management of the globalised market economy, rather than lofty notions of the development of the global citizen. The EU’s migration policies also reflect a wider trend towards highly securitised border protections from those seeking to enter its territories.
At its height, as much as 1.2 million applications were made for asylum from non-EU nationals in a single year (2015) in a period between 1990-2021; Most of the applicants of that year were Syrian nationals affected by the Syrian Civil War. The EU while known to grant protections to refugees and those seeking asylum, it is much more likely to stymie attempts to entery in the first place. At the end of August 2022, Lithuania announced the completion of its 502km border fence – four metres high, and made with razor wire, built on its border with Belarus – to deter migrants from the Middle East and Africa.
This is still far less perilous than entry through the ‘natural border’ into the EU – crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Refugees and migrants undertaking this journey often do so travelling on highly unsafe boats and dinghies. According to data produced by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as much as 3,231 people ended up dead or missing at sea attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea in 2021. According to the Missing Migrants Project, the number is over 25,000 dead or missing since 2014. The UNITED Network put approximately 50,000 deaths of migrants and refugees attempting to enter EU territories since 1993. The EU’s priority in meeting the migrant challenge is primarily in border security which the European Border and Coast Guard Agency or Frontex advances.
A notable method that Frontex deals with migrants crossing the waters of EU territories are in “pushbacks” – the forcible return of people without an assessment of their rights to claim asylum or any other form of protection. It is illegal under international, and even EU law. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) concluded a report that Frontex covered up several instances of pushbacks of migrants, including the sharing of unreliable (incorrect or biased) information with EU institutions such as the European Commission and the European Parliament. In April, Fabrice Leggeri resigned as the organisation’s head following the allegations of human rights violations towards migrants. Even so, Frontex in 2022 received a budget of €754m (a €200m increase from last year) and expanded its staff to over 2000. It is likely that trends towards increasing funding towards Frontex will continue.
Border security has proven to be a highly lucrative endeavour for enterprising corporate lobbyists seeking to offer surveillance technologies and military hardware for those juicy procurement contracts from the EU. Investigators are calling it the “border-industrial complex” – the merger of corporate interests with (trans)national security.
Migration from the Global South is fuelled by regional destabilisation as a result of war, political persecution and climate change. Faced with the impending migration crisis set to occur over the following decades, the European Union has chosen the path of violence, increasingly focused on the securitisation of its frontiers. European governments, including ones outside the EU have tiresomely given blame to human traffickers putting migrants in danger, when the problem is the lack of safe routes towards Europe, a situation which these governments have been hesitant to remedy. Traffickers themselves don’t give migrants the idea of travelling to Europe either – the obvious wealth of European nations, and the possibility of new economic opportunities are also powerful incentives – though again, some European nations (eg. Italy) respond by restricting the rights or access to welfare available to migrants in comparison to those with citizenship with an EU nationality.
Even with all of these measures to make migration as hostile as possible, it will still not be enough to deter people attempting to move to Europe. The EU’s desire to stop the flow of migration from outside its territory would require it to give up its neocolonial program with the Global South – which appears to be integral to the European project.
Exiting the Vampire Castle is a 2013 essay by the late British cultural theorist Mark Fisher. In recent times, the essay is largely remembered for its opposition to the mode of public excoriation known as “callout culture” or “online shaming”, and in part for the responses that it received as a result of its publication. Fisher viewed the left as it was in the 2010s as gripped by a puritanical moralism revolving around identity – specifically atomised identities, which confused priggish chastisement for empowering and unimpeding the agency of marginalised social groups. The piece proved highly controversial and was subject to considerable discussion, and received a number of prominent responses. Its influence is felt on the so-called ‘dirtbag left’ represented by Chapo Trap House, and other sections of the Left hostile to the expressions of the so-called ‘social justice warrior left’ – this concentration is mostly seen among the core writers of Jacobin, the former editor-in-chief of Zer0 Books – Douglas Lain, and the late Michael Brooks as examples. It is interesting to note that so far, the list of names who had claimed influence from the book were from the United States – and that Fisher is, again, British – that said, Fisher’s frustration with callout culture and his belief that it was an impediment to class solidarity, much less the liberatory politics affected by those given to callouts had likely resonated with them precisely because of historic difficulties in mobilising working-class organisations in the United States, in contrast to the perceived (and sometimes real) instances of identity politics used by various social climbers within the media ecosystem, as well as political careerists playing into clientelist politics (usually by the Democratic Party). But did Exiting the Vampire Castle address more than just callout culture? What else did Fisher discuss within it? And how well does it hold up as critique of the left as it exists today?
Background
As mentioned before, Exiting the Vampire Castle was written in 2013. By then, austerity measures implemented by the Conservative government had set in. The Health and Social Care Act had passed the year before – which was a restructuring of the NHS to include further marketisation, which was met with resistance from direct action groups such as UK Uncut and Disabled People Against the Cuts. Students were confronted with the fact that the tuition fees for attendance had tripled, and protested against the rise in costs to their studies. And it was within the umbrage of the Occupy Wall Street protests which had spread internationally. Early discussions around the potential to mobilise mass protests through social media were highly optimistic, and specifically the functionality of Twitter ‘flattened’ and ‘squashed’ the space between influential users of the medium and everyone else in the dynamic of exchanges – the consequence was in some cases, a disruption of the prestige in the public space that these prominent figures acquired ‘offline’ or the support base of these figures en masse targetting a user deemed to have offended or written something offensive about the figure. These interactions both fell under the rubric of ‘dogpiling’ and became but one example of how conversations on Twitter were quickly becoming toxic.
Furthermore, activists on the online space – – particularly from the ‘new social movements’ lionized as alternatives to an ossified Leninism from the 1990s onwards, had a framework which synthesized the various gender, racial and queer struggles into a practice referred to as intersectionality – informing contemporary identity politics, which itself sat alongside the various poststructuralist theories which had become prominent in academia the generation prior. The framework provided a lexicon of terms, as well as interrogated its contemporary culture – and at times, this had led to confrontations with prominent people on Twitter – the accessible packaging of this lexicon led to it being used widespread, representing an early expression of what would become identified with contemporary social justice activism, or alternatively these activists were derisively referred to as “social justice warriors”.
In the climate of austerity, various left-wing writers, broadcasters and activists came into prominence – among them were: Laurie Penny, Dawn Foster, Fransesca Martinez and Owen Jones, in addition to the emergence of the Everyday Sexism Project headed by Laura Bates, and Novara Media. Of particular importance to the social context was the profound epiphany that was to occur to the comedian and broadcaster Russell Brand, who was still affected from the death of his friend, the singer Amy Winehouse from a drug overdose. Initially, Brand wanted to make the case on how to address addiction in British society – particularly from the a public health perspective, which from there became a call for a revolution – one based on love and care as the basis for society, rather than the individualistic atomised existence that characterises it. Brand was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman for the BBC current affairs programme Newsnight, which aired on 23 October 2013, in which he expressed his disinterest in voting and articulated that as person that emerged from a working-class background experiencing severe deprivation, there’s no reason to legitimise the callous and indifferent political system in the ballot box, and denounced the whole thing as a charade. Brand also called for a redistribution of wealth from the most powerful corporations in the country, and praised the Occupy movement for putting in the public lexicon “the 99 percent” contesting the greed of “the 1 percent”. For many observers, even though Russell Brand had not entirely specified the details of the revolution he called for, or alternatively, declared was coming, he did not only hold his own against a presenter infamous for grilling politicians like a George Foreman BBQ, he articulated the frustrations of the underclass seldom recognised and did so with panache.
In online discussions after the interview, including on legacy media, Russell Brand received praise for boldly expressing that a flawed system doesn’t warrant support, as well as scorn for launching into a juvenile tirade with no clear outline on the society that he wants to see and declaring that the most disadvantaged should disenfranchise themselves for some millionaire’s vague, barely detailed revolution. A particular form of criticism from another angle came in questioning why Russell Brand should be the centre of this revolution for social and ethical transformation – when taking into accounthis history of misogyny: Of particular note was the infamous Andrew Sachs prank phone calls made on his radio show, where he prank called the actor claiming that he had sex with his granddaughter. It was also pointed out that his revolution even as he called for it, did not address the role of feminism in his outlook.
So what does Russell Brand’s political ventures have to do with Exiting the Vampire Castle and its author: Mark Fisher? Quite a lot, actually. Despite his pessimistic analysis of the health of the radical left in Capitalist Realism, Fisher saw “Brandmania” as a cultural and political breakthrough, but more so, he very strongly identified with Brand – to Fisher, Russell Brand was a distorted carnival mirror reflection of himself: someone who came from the same working-class background he did, experienced the same deprivation, maybe even did some of the same drugs – yet Brand became this famous entertainer who in the eve of 2013, is bringing people to the idea of revolution – while the cultural disruption he sought to acheive had up until that point, had only led him to a frustrating job as a Further Education lecturer. More so, Fisher was irritated with the interrogation of Brand’s attitudes towards women – viewing it as myopic, moralistic and irrelevant to the problems faced by people in Austerity Britain – for men and women. All of these issues, from Twitter, austerity, Russell Brand, to third-, well fourth-wave feminism were all things that Fisher felt strongly about and they were the soil that his essay was produced from.
This culture is full of snarky, moralistic jerks delivering regular put downs that he couldn’t refer to any specific examples for fear of being mobbed*
Solidarity with Owen Jones, who somehow became a target of “everyone’s a lib, but me”-types
No seriously, why would you fuck with Owen Jones? He’s done the most for class consciousness!
Such is the self-righteousness of Left Twitter slacktivists that they slag off the Ipswich People’s Assembly rally, while they do nothing**
Solidarity is beautiful to see, as with was in the People’s Assembly rally. Also, they’re a fine example of the horizontalism we like to see on the left grabbing attention, not by Leninist burn-outs
Russell Brand is a working-class hero (unlike that ultra-posh nincompoop Michael McIntryre. Yes, Fisher literally says this), and from attending his show, Brand is different from what the ‘poststructualist left’ moralisers paint him as. In fact, Brand’s show is the model for ‘acid communism’ should be***
Brand pwned the infamous rottweiler presenter Jeremy Paxman, doing what Johnny Rotten couldn’t with Bill Grundy
Focusing on Brand’s sexism is not important to what he was saying, or calling for, and the “petit-bourgeois narcissistic left” were for some reason under the impression that Brand was himself going to lead the revolution, even though he hasn’t told anyone to do anything****. In fact, bringing to attention sexism from Brand is a thought-terminating cliche
Class consciousness is weak, and the academic Left is dominated by a petit-bourgeois culture which narrows any discussion of class politics. Indeed, the fragmentation of class has led to the moralism we see in interpersonal exchanges within the Left
The toxic, moralistic, tribal and self-congratulatory culture on the (Twitter) Left has produced the ‘Vampire’s Castle’, turning the nominally liberatory demands in identity politics into identitarian silos. The Vampire’s Castle reproduces liberal identity politics to take the conversation away from class
Nietzsche’s portentions of something worse than the slave-morality of Christianity – ‘the priesthood of bad conscience’…is perfectly expressed in Left Twitter
The Vampire’s Castle produces individualistic actions over the structural critiques that they claim to engage in; has an aura of humorlessness and guilthood, and produces essentialist liberal attitudes.
The immature, cynical ‘neo-anarchists’ of Left Twitter are subjects produced by the capitalist realism of the New Labour era, have a shallow undertanding of what creates change in society, and misidentify the problems in parliamentary politics without understanding the context – and are just pretentious hipsters giving a pseudo-radical affect
Faced with this current dilemma, it is imperative that identitarianism is rejected, and that the Left returns to class politics
Social media is under capitalist control, and that the Left musn’t lose sight of this, despite its faux-egalitarian presentation, the Left needs to recognise that class struggle is the motto, and solidarity the core value. Capitalist social media is enemy territory, and we need to fight to win. The goal is not to be an activist, but for the working class to activate and to acheive victory
It is perhaps a surprise to a small constituency of people that people had stuff to say in response to Exiting the Vampire’s Castle – in particular the tone that permeated throughout the essay. It is, and still remains – a very controversial work, engendering praise for capturing the zeitgeist of the period and making a defiant call for class solidarity, and by (perhaps more than) equal measure derided as a ridiculous tirade from a middle-class white academic upset that his nonproblematic ‘problematic fave’ was getting stick, and trying – as many embarassing socialist groupings and figures have done in the past to dismiss the problems faced on the basis of identity – and apparently those that women face. Before I get into what to make of Exiting The Vampire Castle, I think that it’s worth that we go over more context from the some of the people that knew Fisher personally what they thought of him and his work.
The Passion of Mark Fisher
“Reading Vampire Castle against the grain a bit, how Mark describes [Russell] Brand is how he is describing himself — slightly effeminate and glam, working class, eloquent (although Mark was rather more stocky and wasn’t wearing make-up quite so often by this point) — and yet he’d probably have flunked the interview by telling [Jeremy] Paxman he was being ‘delibidinising’ or insufficiently Spinozist or something. Mark never really did go overground, but he wrote constantly about how important it was that people did. I’ll admit that one of my many reactions to Vampire Castle was wondering why he was wasting his time with this rubbish, wasn’t he meant to be becoming our public intellectual or something by making TV programmes or writing think tank reports rather than arguing with prats on Twitter (although — credit where it’s due — he did do the think tank report for Compass).”
Owen Hatherley
The Sydney Review of Booksdid athree-partseries on Mark Fisher’s influence on the blogosphere, and his body of work ranging from cultural criticism (or to be more specific, his music reviews) to cultural and social theory. It took the form of an interaction between some of his contemporaries (among them were personal friends or at least acquaintances), and those who were influenced by his work. The cultural and social context where Fisher as ‘k-punk‘ posted, the ideological trajectory of Fisher’s outlook, and the kind of personality Mark Fisher had. There was indeed praise for how appropriate k-punk was for the time it existed, and even where it was felt Fisher took overly strident positions was accompanied by attempts to contextualise these actions. When discussing Fisher’s impact in the blogosphere and his work as a music reviewer, the cultural backdrops of both those environments in the late 1990s & early 2000s are presented for the former as a rather subterranean and for the latter as a particularly male-dominated subculture with all the flaws that come with it.
They also discussed Fisher’s own ideological journey from the technolibertarian accelerationism reflective of the thought-mode of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit collective he was a member of, to a somewhat sentimental social-democratic position; and how this shift was mirrored by his own experiences as a philosophy grad student, his time in precarious work, to his eventual literary career. Of additional importance is his formative experiences in northern England as the industrial backdrop was reshaped by the neoliberal turn.
For the interviewees, Fisher’s work during his more overtly leftist positioning was very welcome, even if it didn’t have the flair or aestheticized appeal of his blogosphere years. Though among them, those that recalled the release of Exiting the Vampire’s Castle mostly remember the bemusement that they felt. Owen Hatherley specifically recalls instances in which Fisher during what he calls his most intellectually productive period, dismissed people as a result of various intellectual debates that took place, or at least engaged in practices very similar to the ‘cancelling’ which is now of some cultural concern. For recent fans on Mark Fisher (say post-2017, the year of his death) – the so-called ‘acid communists’ who are unaware of this context, or those who intentionally demphasize focus on this period, it stands as a rather conspicious tenure not to explore – especially considering Fisher’s post-mortem acclaim to apotheotic levels among the New New Left, and the discussions around cancel culture.
Not a lot of focus is made of it because for them it is part of a broader context of where he was moving at the time, as well as the reccuring themes of alienation, depression, and the class-defined social scripts given to people that had been features of his work. Rhian E. Jones, who also grew up in working-class area in Britain where the process of deindustrialisation led to a communal fracturing, rightly pointed out that Fisher’s exhaltation of Brand as the archetypical ‘class warrior’ for our age, did not need to come at the expense of feminism, especially feminists within the working class – or that somehow that objection to sexism was a middle-class malaise, and the intervention in the way that he did undermined the importance of an articulation of class politics. For her, the issues that came about from it were had a tiresome and predictable quality to it (in the sense that they were “points addressed a thousand times”) and had foregrounded the so-called “dirtbag left”, an ostensibly left-wing positioning defined by its hostility to identity politics. She also mused on the irony of Fisher’s arrival at a politics that for her, seemed almost natural and commonsense in her youth – even antiquated by the 1990s, now resdiscovered and championed by a left blogosphere – chalking it up to a deemphasis of praxis and overemphasis on theory the the age demanded; and possibly a lack of engagement with the organised left, and even the parliamentary left. Considering that Nick Land and Nina Power are now fascists, I’m inclined to agree.
Conclusion
So what are my thoughts on Exiting the Vampire Castle? Do I agree with the writers above on their reactions to it, is my position different? And how is it different? Well, unlike the interviewees in that article, I’ve never spoken to him, worked with him, nor was I exposed to his work in the 2000s where his cultural insights apparently looked like the Holy Grail to a certain kind of disaffected grad student a few years away from taking part in those aforementioned tuition-free protests – and even then, I wouldn’t really fuck with post-punk back then, so I wouldn’t have the same emotional connection to Mark Fisher’s works. That it was also a group of professional writers, if only for different genres, could possibly add to the grounded response to it, and in my mind, a necessary contextualisation of this piece among his general body of work.
However, I’m not a professional writer. Or a journalist for that matter. I’m a blogger, and one who had only so much as heard of Mark Fisher a year after his death. Which is why I fully expect readers to not be surprised that given my flippant reaction to various parts of Exiting the Vampire Castle, that I consider this to be probably the funniest piece that Mark Fisher had ever written, and the fact that he was apparently so self-serious about this makes it even better. And by better, I mean by incredulity of the status of the work, not the quality of the work itself. Seriously read it, it’s super-funny. I don’t know if he was intending to call to attention the gradual erasure of working-class culture from television, but going on about how Brand’s so amazing and Michael McIntyre and the army of ‘bland graduate chancers’ doesn’t do much for bringing the issue to attention. In fact, at several points, Fisher undermines the concerns that he is trying to raise with melodramatic diagnoses. I mean, should I really take seriously that Left Twitter is the personification of Nietzsche’s “preisthood of bad conscience”? Should you take that seriously? I know Doug Lain might take that seriously, maybe Ben Burgis and the Jacobin people take it seriously. I sure as fuck don’t.
The decent points that he raises are either underdeveloped, or replaced by an attack on a particular target. And there are even some targets that he won’t get specific about in details (i.e. who did what online?, etc.), for the fear that he himself will be a target! That’s the irony: the essay itself expresses the same kind of moralism that he accuses ‘identitarians’ of doing. This is probably why Owen Hatherley dismissed it as Twitter BS that was a waste of his talents. And more so: it as a consequence barely attempts to get to the structural issues at play here: Twitter as part of an overall process of the commodification of intellectual labour in the backdrop of post-industrialism, the highly addictive qualities built into it (“the scrolling function” being an obvious feature) as context is being churned out, the way that it covertly encourages conflicts between users to generate more content, etc. But instead of daring people to imagine what a communistic approach to online communication might look like (aspects that intitially, were identifiable in the early history of the Internet, as is often the case with these things), we get this individualistic castigation. In fact, he claims the inhabitants of the ‘vampire’s castle’ existed before the Internet – even though social media is such a heavy feature of the piece.
He rightfully identifies a fragmented class consciousness of his era (though I personally believe that in spite of my occassional whinging, class consciousness has slowly consolidated since the time Fisher wrote this) and I agree that identity politics shorn of class struggle is cack – that the problem really is capitalism – not some amorphous, transhistorical power structures (though a lot of the so-called ‘identitarians’ I’ve come across would not really disagree on that point either, but it does need saying), he’s correct in saying that personal virtue and castigation does not lead to the construction of liberatory possibilities and undermines solidarity; Hell, I might even agree on his point on the ‘neo-anarchists’ campaining to protect the NHS.***** But I can’t help but feel that this was an essay written where instead of taking a friend’s advice to sleep on what frustrates him to see whether it still gives him the urge to write on, that he just churned out immediately after a particularly bad exchange – which might be why his points around the preponderance of identity politics over class politics, and personal virtue passed off as “awareness” seem so malformed. I don’t oppose criticism of the prevalence of identity politics at all. I certainly don’t oppose critique of the relegation of class to “another relation” by which those on the lower rung can be oppressed as primarly experiential. I just have read better criticisms. Even from the same author, and where they weren’t even the main focus of the essay. It’s actually strange to me that it this essay, even from critics – which even I’m participating in giving this sort of cultural significance, was granted this kind of importance to his legacy, because it feels so unfinished.
In my attempt to answer the question whether Exiting the Vampire Castle aged well – I can only suggest, that it was likely, well definitely considered ridiculous at the time – at least among some sections of the left, and it time has made it even more absurd. At the same time, I think that it’s OK that it feels absurd. I’m actually glad that it was written, published, and engendered a discussion around it – because many of the concerns that it rose are still very relevant nearly a decade on. I think that as a work, it is probably more optimistic than Capitalist Realism for example, in that Fisher now saw a possibility of an effective working-class mobilisation. Though the idea that two men – particularly two white men – occupied as cultural commentators and producers, could not only articulate the multifaceted social realities of the working-class in Britain in all of its diverse and reproductive adjuncts, but focus them into a coherent aim appropriate for austerity Britain – was always preposterous, whether the year was 2013 or 2022. Since we’re up for another round of austerity, if we’re going to revisit this work and situate it in its context, we have to remember this particular implication in Exiting the Vampire Castle, just doesn’t work.
I think that the Jacobin and 2016-2021 era Zer0 Books guys/ Doug Lain adjacents, who are themselves inhabitants of Left Twitter identify with the critique of identitarian-based moralism, to the point of treating it like some major revelation – primarily and ironically because it’s actually an easy and not especially significant point to make, especially in the context of online behaviour, and questions around the sustainability of online-generated activism (which in the era of Occupy had a much more optimistic outlook towards) and the building of social movements was if not something to avoid, certainly harder to resolve. After all, if you’re already inclined to hate or distrust identity politics, then blaming it for the fracturing of organised labour as a force and an active impediment to rebuilding of socialism as a global force is pretty convenient******. But always, I digress.
So my ultimate conclusion is that it is a rather odd essay that felt unfocused and emotional (which is fine, by the way), that does admittedly have a continued resonance in various cultural concerns. As with all essays, there are going to be parts that aged poorly, especially with the passage of time – and some things will be outright wrong. The thing with Exiting the Vampire Castle is that it has an unusual level of infamy mostly owing to the significance given to the issues raised in it, specifically those around “cancel culture”, movement-building on the left, and the implications of social media. I might think that it’s half-assed, but a number of people smarter than me (all of them dorks, obviously) have praised it, in part because some of the responses to it (admittedly) were of poor quality. I think that a critical, rather than this strange hagiographic engagement with Mark Fisher’s legacy will open the door to a more grounded assessment of this essay.
In short, it ain’t Blood In My Eye, but it sure as hell ain’t “Why I’ve Given Up on the Left” either (Nick Cohen, June Lapine, whoever – all these ‘I left the left’ pieces have always been dribbling dogshit).
Notes
*- This of course doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist, just that he didn’t want to cite anything in relation to this point, apparently.
**- This is perhaps a clear sign as any, that there are times we netizens should find the time to – as the kids now say – touch grass.
***- If that’s the case, then perhaps it’s just as well that “Acid Communism” was never really fleshed out.
****- Brand did tell people to not vote, though. So it’s easy to see why some people mistakenly treated him like he had some kind of alternative program.
*****- Lifestyle anarchists to many will be annoying, no matter what new neologism you give them, especially when they fall back on existing positions, though I strongly suspect that Mark Fisher was telling on himself, with his previous “cyber-Stalinist” edgelord posturing.
******- I do find it curious that none of these folks ever addressed the weird ‘Britishisms’ in the essay, since they’re fairly integral to his championing of Brand and Owen Jones for building up class consciousness. It seems that only the cancel culture and anti-identity politics stuff will do for them. Sad.
Links:
– A video that illustrates the strange acclaim of Exiting the Vampire Castle (done in part, by portraying Fisher’s critics as a formless, hostile mob who only responded to it with aggressive moralism) created none other than the then-editor in chief to Zer0 Books, Douglas Lain. As mentioned before, he as with other fans of the essay, exclusively emphasizes the parts of its content that is hostile to identity politics, and deemphasizes the parts of its content where it appears that Mark Fisher had never been to a demo before.
See also
Mark Fisher
Cancel culture
TV presenters who wrote or did a documentary on cancel culture
For a large segment of the British left, today is a sombre commemoration – it is the 3rd anniversary of the 2019 general election which saw a Conservative Party led by Boris Johnson comprehensively defeat the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, and consolidate a 80-seat majority – owing largely to the collapse of traditionally held Labour seats, the so-called ‘red wall’, as the Conservatives seized them. There are many reasons as to why this election went the way it did – and some of them are down to the Labour Party and even Jeremy Corbyn, and others within his inner circle. I don’t think that I’ll talk so much about how it was that Labour came to lose than go over what the entire experience was like for myself, and how I’ve come to terms with what had come afterwards.
In pretty much most of my life, I didn’t have very much – or rather, what I had didn’t feel as much as what my peers had. And once I had to take responsibility for own finances – it always felt precarious and fleeting. 2019 was no different. I’d left the second and so far – last job with a contract with the company on my 28th birthday – health issues, various engagements, and ironically enough – finances, made continued employment unworkable, and I partially suspect that there were attempts to get rid of me at the workplace anyway. While I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Corbyn project, the reality of the precarity was keenly felt, and it affected my involvement in the local Labour Party’s various activities – and even ones that weren’t local. This wasn’t entirely new for me – after all there were various points during the nine years that I was a party member – when I did canvassing without a penny to my name. There were even runs that I attempted to join that most would probably try to reach by bus, but I decided to walk there to see if I could find them. Was it all to see a left-winger actually win? To see a different social arrangement than the one I was used to? The emotional need to feel like a part of something amazing? I don’t know – it could be any one of those things, none, or all of them. But by late November, with my favourite uncle passed away, my therapy sessions long over, and the benefits and personal earnings from my job drying up, I got sick of it all.
There were a lot of left-wing commentators online or otherwise around the UK who talk about how excited and energised young people were to see themselves represented in Corbyn and trying to fight for it. By November 2019, I wasn’t one of them. And it had nothing specifically to do with Corbyn, McDonnell, or any of them. What it had more to do with, is seeing people around you who you called ‘comrade’ in two-hour long canvassing sessions get to go home to their cozy middle-class lives – and plan their holidays, while I every day received headaches either from not eating enough, or trying to figure out how I’m going to manage using the 20 quid in my wallet over the week for food and transport. It was this maudlin, saccharine tripe – the sloganeering, of ‘getting tough’, that I once parrotted – that began to weigh on me. I was getting blamed for my own financial hardship by people who are supposed to help me. It was shit. Even as I signalled solidarity for the social media to see. When I discovered that yet again, I had no money in my account near the end of the month – I had reached my limit. I had decided that days weren’t going to get any better so I might as well try to act normal and have it as good as possible, because it was going to be my last. I don’t know how it happened, but on my way to Croydon – I received messages from an old friend. I think that my nerves were pretty fried, so didn’t feel joy – but told him of my intent to end my life. I think that he phoned me to distract me and at the time, I wish that he didn’t because I got scared of the passing cars again. When he hung up, I got upset – because I realised that I wanted to live, even with everything as painful as it was. It was then that I called my other friend and told him about what had happened, sobbing as I did. I said that I’ll wait at the nearby McDonald’s and that he was coming over.
Somehow, I was still able to engage in ‘political mode’ in my head, even as it was coloured by my depression. I expressed scepticism that so much of what was promised could really change – more so, that I could feel it change – and he agreed. I think at that moment, I felt recognised in a way that I didn’t from my other fellow members. There was another fallout from Croydon Council that we were still reeling from that was also personal – but that might be for another story for another – likely distant, time. In any case, I am grateful, that he came when he did.
I think that it was about a week until in a lot of respects I was back to activism mode. I even went to a Stop the War rally the week before the election, even getting a People’s Assembly T-shirt. Throughout that week, I leafleted – even in the rain, and canvassed the doors of Central Croydon. One memorable evening canvassing session had me forgo the advice I was given (not by a campain organiser – who in Croydon, was likely to feel strongly about it) to not talk about Brexit, and discuss housing and public services – only to learn that this was what all anyone on that street would go on about – one have out with its line about how he wouldn’t vote Corbyn because “[he didn’t look] strong” like he used to in his birth country. Eventually, it became simply about getting the party’s supporters out to vote – the televised backdrop is Labour MPs such as Jonathan Ashworth causing stirs with openly antagonistic statements towards the Corbyn leadership for the voyeuristic press to chew on. Another one with Rebecca Long-Bailey explaining the free broadband scheme with a vast fiberoptic infrastructure concentrated in the deindustrialised north, was given the caption: “Broadband communism?” by the BBC, demonstrating that infamous impartial reporting of Auntie Beeb. I was very much burnt out at this point, and commented on feeling like a cog in a machine, and I was consoled by mostly fellow activists – many of whom have since left.
The final day was spent doing one last canvass run, and completing a proxy vote for another friend and his wife, and getting soaked in the process. With the final evening run, by the time everything was finished, it had taken me more than an hour to walk back to Ruskin House in South Croydon. I went there with the belief that we probably lost, but at least gave a good showing. When I walked into the building, it was so much worse than I imagined. A large fella, who I number met before clasped his hands onto my shoulders something indeterminable – but I sensed it was bad. As I walked into the bar room, I mused that whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be that horri-holy fuck! Is that the results on the screen!? I saw that the Tories had roughly a hundred more seats than Labour. I was baffled, how could our failure be so complete? Weren’t we going to take Boris Johnson’s Toxteth seat from him? Wasn’t he a blatantly dishonest and cowardly politician? So why did this happen? Another room – titled the Nelson Mandela room in which I enter, full of Labour activists with wistful and sour expressions, even though Croydon North and Central were secure – MP Sarah Jones had even increased her share (though MP Steve Reed’s clear majority fell by a third from the prior election).
Apparently, the country never believed in the change that Corbyn represented, for varying reasons – but I suspect that what it broadly comes down to, is that he challenged so many comfortable certainties. Certainties like “will my property value raise?”, “will I get paid by that private firm that wants a stake in the NHS?”, “Will my shares I have in this company raise in value?”, “Will I finally get the peerage or title I’ve been aching for years under this?”, that sort of thing. The kind of worries poor little boys who roll in worn-out jackets can’t imagine. The irony is that a lot of those things would still would happen, and as for stock – well – it’s actually hilarious how emotions like fear and anxiety from capitalists, can so easily affect the markets, which tells me all I need to care about financialisation as a good. The other problem comes with nostalgia – used and abused alike by both sides of the insipid Brexit screaming match which allowed people to take leave of their senses. I concluded that Britain is governed by a deep, self-indulgent pessimism emanating from segments of the propertied class, and the embourgeoised – this malaise is highly infectious and difficult to control, but it robs any emergent possibilities, which is the tragedy experienced by those living and working precariously.
Aftermath
Some time later in the following year, during the election post-mortem in the Momentum meeting, I got given an officer position. Not sure if I deserved it, or did a lot with it – certainly not as much as I wanted to. But I did canvass like a motherfucker, so I took it. Some time later, the mission was to save Corbynism by supporting Rebecca Long-Bailey and Richard Burgon, which I threw myself into, to the point of getting heckled outside the Indian YMCA. Even as I went further into it, I wondered if it really was the final days that I got engaged with social democracy. All the Croydon nominations werestage-managed farces, but beyond my frustration around them, I came to realise that from hearing Starmer’s supporters, that Labourites use the term “socialism” in a very weird way. Both those on the Left and Right seem to believe that it’s – to reference Richard Wolff, “when the government does stuff”. Starmer did win, and I ignored social media for three days – lest I bitch out all of Croydon Labour, especially the councillors I was convinced voted for him. The reality was I’d be painted as a divisive, marginal asshole, so I stayed largely silent – if somewhat snarky. It was the pandemic, and lockdown nearly everywhere, so it’s not like I was going to do anything else.
I did attend nearly every meeting Momentum had that year, and I think co-hosted one, though by the end of 2020, any enthusiasm that I had for Labour snapped like a twig after Jeremy Corbyn was suspended. Mentally, the only thing that I wanted to give left to Momentum was my prescence, a few stuff that I planned to either finish or put forth to them (like stuff involving political education and presentations), and would pop my head up for stuff that piqued my interest, like housing, or democratisation of the party. By 2021, I was done with all of it, and left. I was going to hop off the boat anyway, but the straw that broke the camel’s back, was hearing how malicious locally the Labour right bureaucrats and jobsworths could be.
So that’s that. I think that I will accept a marker of my politics as “disgruntled post-Corbynite” or something, even though it did admittedly take a while to get into it and came in later than most. What else can you call me after writing so much on Labour? I don’t think that had Corbyn won, it would be all sunshine and rainbows. In fact, I was expecting to for him to compromise on many things in his program, and for our role to change to push for a commitment to it. I’m now unsure that given the revelations around the 2017 campaign of the dirty tricks from the Labour apparatus, not even from the Tories – that such a government would not be allowed to last very long. Whether it’s backbench rebellions, recalcitrant civil servants, a rabidly hostile media, even foreign intervention (not in the Latin America-kind, just the kind where ‘Atlanticism’ is revealed to be a one-sided relationship), or Civil Assistance-style plots, these were the possibilities of a Corbyn government.
Other Corbynites, ‘post’ or otherwise, seem to suggest that it would lead to the beginnings of the creation of ‘New Jerusalem’ or something, but I kinda think that this is the kind of melodramatic mush the Labour left have been prone to. I don’t believe that anything close to the story of how Corbyn’s Labour came to lose the 2019 election has been told, and what has been given is this shallow narrative for media pundits, and Social Review-style wonks to tell: that he was incompetent, or some kind of Assadist maniac who will run Jewish people out of the country, or the most personally irritating – that just as Blair went too far to the right, Corbyn went too far to the left, conspicuously leaving out any discussion around the Party apparatus, its functionality, and even whether it worked towards the same agenda as the LOTO office. I think that there are questions to had around whether Corbyn’s personal demeanour was suitable for the pressures of leadership (and it appeared that he mostly led a pack of fucking jackals), or around whether there was a serious commitment to the deepening of party democracy, or a serious attempt to incorporate dying Labour strongholds, instead of what appeared to be a purely electoral strategy which focused heavily on comms, centralised management, and backroom dealing.
For myself, I’m not really emotionally attached to those questions anymore. I don’t think ‘exposing betrayal’ would be as emotionally satisfying as it was two years ago. As I like to tell myself, I’ve bypassed the Labour Party, and don’t imagine joining back in the forseeable future. Out of all the quotes the laconic Tony Benn gave, the “toughen up” one is one of my least favourite ones. Toughen up for what? So I can get fucked by petit-boug bully boys for some dream of a fleeting settlement? Nah, that doesn’t enthuse me at all. Given the narrowing of horizons, we should in etching out new possibilities not measure ourselves by our tolerance of abuse and suffering – especially from those that are, ostensibly, ‘on the same side’; we should instead measure our capacity to embrace other, to show understanding, to feel love, and to have solidarity – for those would be the foundations upon what the new society will be built on. If anything else, although it was funneled into a parliamentary program, it was indeed many of those features that did emerge in the Corbyn project – it’s a reason to be wistful, but also an inspiration to build in another, more expansive form.
Because It Doesn't Affect You 