A paradox exploited in the last few years, by Katie Hopkins and assorted knaves of the right wing persuasion, is that people actually do seem to want to hear, 'what they don't want to hear'. That is to say revel in the identification & rejection of, that with which they disagree. Just look at the fixation on specifically Muslim rape gangs in Rightwing forums & social media outlets; the perpetual stream of outrage issuing from media outlets who hang on every insipid word uttered by President Trump; the poor focused upon the excessive wealth of bankers; the partisans of the modern leftist movements, getting in the way of the actual police in order to 'police' the public activities of the alt-Right; or indeed the latter's own 'righteous crusade' against "gender bending cultural marxism in the academies".
In these cases & many others, often a caricature or vague idea of, what is "fundamentally reprehensible" is taken as a starting point with which to assert & define one's own tenuous position, thus enabling the shaping of public opinion & fostering of 'resistance' against a chosen antithesis. The kind of opposition founded on such a methodology, as a product of social atomisation, alienation, narcissism -if not downright confusion- can only ever be a substitute for genuine political opposition, if we consider the example of Hitler's Germany this form of opposition actually achieved what it was ostensibly fighting; the destruction of the German nation and people.
In the absence of any insight, or awareness beyond perhaps a rudimentary understanding of politically slanted statistics; sense of some injustice; or feeling that the official narrative is not the whole story; this focus on a mythic excess, on extremes such as portray all Muslims as ISIL, Zionists as bankers, or all foreign policy in Western countries as 'Imperialism', is employed as a means to construct a strawman, or negative container used to unite & simultaneously polarize the animosity of the masses. Portraying this chosen antithesis as dangerous and dislikeable to as many as possible, & situating the most vocal critics of chosen antitheses in leadership roles, increases the likelihood people will adopt the reductive narratives they spew. Herein lies the modus operandi of populism today & secret of the success of various demagogues of all persuasions.
It should be noted that in the case of sexual abuse gangs it was only after the state's judicial processes had performed their functions; police had spent months investigating and had finally prosecuted the abusers & the media had plastered their less than caucasian faces all over the nation, that the impetus towards 'justice' was stoked in these English 'crusaders', including the belief that it should be applied extra-judicially. Likewise it was only once the alt-Right began to feature on people's social media feeds, campuses and televisions, that various tenuous forms of opposition began "combating the hate of the far right", as if their own calls for extra judicial murder, mob justice & repressive violence, were some proven and effective methodology for defeating political reactionaries.
Just as the establishment of an Islamic caliphate opposed to 'corrupt Western values' is looking less likely, thanks in large part to ISIL's attempts to achieve that very thing, in no way are the institutional forms of obstruction, opposition or repression, assisted or aided by forms of popular 'resistance' to "Fascism" or "Islamists". Based in no small part as they are on irrationality, they inevitably represent a drain on the resources, time and necessary attention of the State. It's pretty obvious that the resources of the State being spent investigating and prosecuting members of the prescribed National Action group for planning terrorist atrocities -a recurring theme of Far Right 'activism' since the decline of Empire- is not being spent investigating Islamic fundamentalist networks planning the same thing, the ostensible aim of National Action is actually impeded by their very existence, followers of the subject of Right Wing extremism, and the work of David Myatt may question whether this is infact an intended consequence.
In reality, the true oppositional force to the aforementioned abhorrence's are all institutional, these deviations usually having been pre-empted or pre-existing in legislation, therefore being inherent to the democratic & legal apparatus of more or less all developed countries, which although the majority may experience them as alienated & incomprehensible, often malevolently overbearing systems; in so far as they can be said to work, ultimately represent the general interest of society, & pursue remedy & redress, where a legal wrong can be shown to have been inflicted upon any of it's members. [1]
Is it outlandish to suggest, that in this society where ersatz food, sexual pleasures, & social interaction frequently stand in for the authentic experiences on which they are a loosely based, immediately gratifying alternative, that: perhaps the application of justice & whole spectrum of political thought and action, could also be reduced to a range of immediately available commoditized soundbites? Slogans, styles & symbols circulating in the sphere of private consumption, designed to stand in for actual participation in the political organization, opposition or practical activity they signify?
If this were the case we would see a cheapening of political ideology, it's coming to mean less, to cost less, to require less exertion, less participation, is this not evident in our times & reflected in the trend towards Centrist positions in the Western World?[2] Fewer went to fight ISIL with Kurdish forces than joined the International Brigades to fight the Fascists in Spain, even as ISIL attacked them in their places of work and recreation across Europe. That being said the Spanish Republicans posted fewer well meaning platitudes 'in solidarity with the victims,' on social media. Likewise Western Governments failed to support and defend the attempted democratic revolutions in Syria, Iraq, Libya leading to the empowerment of lawless bands of militants. Perhaps "mean less" is the incorrect term here, perhaps it really has become less, ascending completely to an ideal realm of meaning, which is to say "intended to communicate something that is not directly expressed"?
This would not set Politics apart from other applications of the general trend in Capitalism, towards mass production and consumption evident in every sphere. From the fast food industry which serves mass produced, bland items, too highly salted & full of additives designed to simulate the taste, colour or smell of the real ingredients they replace; to the music industry where botoxed, surgically enhanced entertainers fall off a production line, to mime over an auto-tuned backing track in multi-million dollar video productions, obviously intended to foster aspirational attitudes towards particularly egoic & acquisitive lifestyle choices.
It's my view that politics in general does in large part reflect this process of commodification towards advertising and image management, marketing a range of apparently diverse political choices albeit within a more or less State Capitalist framework, following a trajectory that none of those choices has the capability of altering.
In the past, identities seem to have been far more based in tangible, material differences, in people's life, cultural tastes, their upbringing, housing situation & work. Until quite recently these factors determined whether someone could vote for a representative in Parliament, and only very recently seems to have ceased having an influence on who people vote for. Actual differences between antagonistic sectors of society, who never co-mingled outside professional spheres, resulted in actual political divisions & confrontations. Nowadays worker and landed gentry alike rub shoulders in the local boozer, at the football or in one of the many virtual matrices designed to confine their attention & energy, to a circular realm of exchange. The medieval 'Witch', ever alienated and shunned for her difference, is now welcomed with a range of shops stocking her essential supplies in every high street; supermarkets stock Halal, Kosher, organic, expensive, mid-range, cheap and meat free meat. An insurance underwriter who get's a bonus for finding reasons not to help those who need it, can get the warm glow of the most blessed St's, by embracing a lifestyle of ethical consumerism & saving the rainforest, the little African children, tea picking women of East Asia & any other situation he and his neighbours' lifestyles overwhelmingly exasperate,.
It is perhaps relevant that rather than advocate for crusaders from throughout Christendom to join the war against 'Islamic heretics', organized Christianity has almost completely adopted the attitude of inclusivity, tolerance, generosity & compassion, towards those who would see them crucified, or whom they themselves would formerly have tortured and killed. This runs in stark contrast to periods in History when the religion was the dominant ideology, before the effluent middle classes had overthrown the maintainers of static order to better expand their own influence, forcing the systems of the old World to adapt to a new one where the individual themselves determines and delineates the parameters of order, free (in principle at least) from any spiritual component of hierarchic power. But look at Christianity now, the Pope himself defers to the scientific explanation for the origin of the universe, and does a range of things considered by many of a particularly scriptural disposition, to be ungodly.
Liberal politicians & "centrists" everywhere pat themselves on the back for this castrated adherence to 'diversity', whereby anyone with the money to do so can obtain to the symbols of one o these formerly existing identities. Ruggedly individualistic adherents to the cult of Ayn Rand congregate in online forums, enacting the struggle against collectivism, together. Using the public libraries to obtain examples of heroism by Rand's protagonists, against all forms of authority; international communist insurrectionists, strictly segregate themselves into tribal personality cults, bitching and sniping each other & the proles, for their idiotic opinions about whatever is covered in the capitalist media that week.
We accept that millions are spent on advertising, on PR, stylists, and self help books each year, and it seems that more or less everyone has passively accepted colonization by these modes of representation, at every level of society and everyday life, but are we aware how prevalent and far reaching the effects of these various techniques really are in the minds of the individuals subjected to them? Are gradualism, the socialist revolution or trickle down economics not examples of a kind of modern Lutheranism: predestined to sleepwalk through a half life our dreams redeemed by faith alone? It is no longer a case of the layman’s struggle against the capitalist outside himself, but of his struggle against his own capitalist inside himself, his priestly nature.
That said, the material facts of each persons situation, though they may be completely at odds with their professed ideology, ultimately come to determine where, when and in what manner the latter finds expression; in the private existence of various competing individuals.
Reproduced in the culture industry, appropriated & assimilated into the individual & group's worldview, a decades long war that spanned the globe, driving scientific, military & social policy in irreversible directions, becomes a girl on facebook with a USSR avatar threatening to lock up a young man with a Don't Tread on Me avatar in Gulag; enacting the interplay of antagonistic ideals, through the only means of expressing those contradictions known to them, egoistic competition, each indulging the other's fantasy narratives in the way they attain meaning, as an opposition to something, yet all the time contained within a totality, a matrix of blindingly obvious similarities so fundamental, they're taken for granted, or dismissed as inconsequential.
The participant in this situation comfortably inhabits a well defined framework created directly by the activity of workers (often in other countries) under capitalists, in line with legislators, & influenced indirectly by media proprietors, ad-men, PR execs, defense & social policy. Nothing real can exist which would interpose between the participant and their world of representation. This is what you observe when Johnny Rotten would walk off during a TV interview; in the famous clips of Lou Reed being an asshole to interviewers; or when the Beejees got in a strop over Clive Anderson's gentle ribbing. Each in their own ways embodying a type of excess to the normal framework of 'acceptable behaviour' creating an untenable dissonance. Differences must be only those of opinion, existing in purely hypothetical, 280 character or meme form, for any alternative to the liberal Capitalist framework in which they're given expression, is more or less entirely hypothetical; this matrix having adapted to contain within it both impulses towards creation and destruction. But make no mistake, under such an unresponsive system of planned obsolescence, the general trend is towards the latter.
The only thing that really sets the supposedly 'irreconcilable' divisions apart, is their ideas, but in terms of how these ideas are received, tested, constructed, established and defended they differ very little. This is not to say that these two politically opposed forces are identical, but that they are underpinned by the same realities of human life that determines the similarity of ideas about it's management.
Even if we analyze the more extreme examples, like the (supposedly) civilized West vs ISIL, or 'contemporary fascist vs contemporary socialist',[3] we can see that surprisingly little sets them apart.
Western States engage in torture; arbitrarily bomb their enemies; are dominated by Patriarchal institutions; use violence to expand their influence & secure their interests; legislate from an alienated position, to encourage servility, marriage & the production of isolated family units. Their enemies in ISIL on the other hand are proficient users of social media; use film to glamorize their lifestyles; use propaganda to attract people from all over the World; print Currency; operate a standing army, health system & welfare state, even at the height of their 'success' running a Consumer protection office. Besides this elements of both frequently use the other to justify their actions, ideas, failings etc. We may also quite confidently say they also both contain a spectrum of adherence to these ideas, from completely genocidal maniacs, to well meaning, compassionate & sympathetic subversives, that whether through bad luck, or bad choices came to end up existing under such an umbrella.
At the time I started writing this the University and College Union are on strike over an ongoing pensions dispute. This is in reality a single issue demonstration typical of the UK working classes' limited trade-Union consciousness, but with higher education, the NHS, welfare system & wider society, failing to resist attack after attack from the current Government, there is an obvious desire among those on strike to believe they are fighting the glorious struggle to protect them all, as evidenced in statements such as this: "Today, the biggest ever strike in the UK's Higher Education sector begins. We're striking over an attack on staff pensions. But this is also about the marketisation of universities - student fees, insecure contracts and the commodification of education" [4]
Herein lies the futility of "centrist" critiques of 'extremism': the historical failure to choose one course or another, to attempt to contain produces the same deadlock; a state of affairs leading the proponents of Communism to take Democracy to it's logical & liberating ends, and it's opponents to try once and for all to stamp out the plebeian rising. Liberalism essentially exists in a managerial capacity, regulating and balancing the demands of the owners/share holders, with those of the workers. The deception is that you can live a life free from the inherent antagonisms of capitalism, that despite having to produce money in order to live, your life is what you make it, out of what was made in China. The actual depth of the situation, as with the "marketisation of universities", "commodification of education" & even individual thought & identities, is never touched upon, let alone opposed. The criticism of those inhabiting this translucent matrix never reaches the level of a stone.
Consensus politics in the West has since World War II, been the interplay of moderate forms of these polarities, ever being shaped despite their best wishes, by repeated outbursts from extremists of all kinds. Simone Weil had already grasped this insufficiency in the 1930's, the appearance of a new form of oppression on the horizon, namely the oppression of management.
"It is impossible to imagine anything more contrary to this ideal than' From her collection of essays and reflections on the subject of Oppression and Liberty
the form which modern civilization has assumed in our day, at the end
of a development lasting several centuries. Never has the individual
been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, and never have
men been less capable, not only of subordinating their actions to their
thoughts, but even of thinking. Such terms as oppressors and oppressed,
the idea of classes—all that sort of thing is near to losing all meaning,
so obvious are the impotence and distress of all men in face of the social
machine, which has become a machine for breaking hearts and crushing
spirits, a machine for manufacturing irresponsibility, stupidity, corruption,
slackness and, above all, dizziness."
____________
[1] Despite her likely antipathy towards them, it was the Police who had the duty of arresting the murderer of Heather Heyer, who -targeting a crowd of 'Leftists' publically demonstrating against the alt-Right, Nazism & Neo-Fascism-, hit her with a car. It was a particularly sad story, because it shows the way this tenuous opposition, some might say 'spectacular' opposition, is more or less useful only as a prop, for manipulation by established forms of power, establishment & non-establishment opponents. Reverse the roles the same is true, alt-right 'free speech' advocates have been very quick to appeal to the establishment for the prohibition of anti-Fascist, "leftwing terrorist groups". Hypocrisy is more like the rule than an exception in such cases.
[2] Was Jesus Christ not the first Centrist politician? Insisting upon neutralizing not only the education & religious culture of the Jews, but emerging on an ass in line with Hebrew prophecy to unify the Roman gentiles, with the Jews of Israel resisting their drive to implement taxation without representation. Were the resistance groups to Roman Imperialism not compromised, diluted and depleted by the arrival of Jesus, along with the antagonistic and particular elements of the Jewish religion in the founding of Christianity?
[3] The author of a piece about "Hooking Up With Trump Supporters" does a great job of highlighting some of the things that cause her discomfort, about those who's "ideology" is ostensibly opposed to her own:
"flags everywhere: Ronald Reagan's face was emblazoned on one of them, “Don’t Tread On Me” made an appearance on another. I say it was the “worst” not because the sex was bad, but because, well, see above."; "
To my own surprise, we kept hooking up and—despite the fact that our political opinions were diametrically opposed—it didn't feel weird. When we texted, we'd naturally argue about politics, but also about other things, like if corn or flour tortillas made for the best tacos, or whether Drake or Kendrick Lamar was the better rapper (I said Kendrick, of course)."; "
I could ignore the fact that this guy's family wore MAGA hats. Harder to ignore was his conviction that if Clinton won, we would automatically go to war—with which country, he couldn’t say, but he was certain that a woman president would lead to war because…emotions, maybe? I have no idea. He was ill-informed, sexist, and loved to start arguments with me."; "
in an odd way, sleeping with Trump supporters reaffirms my own political and personal values. I don’t think I could ever have a serious relationship with a one—I can’t be with someone who won’t understand why the news sometimes causes me to burst into tears, or why I want to throw my phone across the room after reading the President’s latest tweet. For me, differing political ideologies are a deal breaker. But that only makes me more OK with accepting these flings for what they are: Opportunities for excellent hate-sex. And to be able to walk away unbothered, unburdened, and sexually satisfied makes me feel powerful at a time when many people with my liberal leanings have never felt less in control."
A real case in point about the totality of bourgeois Liberalism
[4] https://twitter.com/MayaGoodfellow/status/966582311985836032
Binary Oppositions
The
binary opposition is the structuralist idea that acknowledges the human
tendency to think in terms of opposition. For Saussure the binary
opposition was the “means by which the units of language have value or
meaning; each unit is defined against what it is not.” With this
categorization, terms and concepts tend to be associated with a positive
or negative. For example, Reason/Passion, Man/Woman, Inside/Outside,
Presence/Absence, Speech/Writing, etc. Derrida argued that these
oppositions were arbitrary and inherently unstable. The structures
themselves begin to overlap and clash and ultimately these structures of
the text dismantle themselves from within the text. In this sense
deconstruction is regarded as a form of anti-structuralism.
Deconstruction rejects most of the assumptions of structuralism and more vehemently “binary opposition” on the grounds that such oppositions
always privilege one term over the other, that is, signified over the
signifier.
Logocentrism is described by Derrida as a “metaphysics of presence,”
which is motivated by a desire for a “transcendental signified.”https://newderrida.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/some-key-terms/
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