It is in the interest of the elites running any given country, including those new forms of dictatorship known as formal, liberal or representative democracies, to ensure social peace and prosperity for their businesses without much fuss coming from the ones who bear the weight of wage slavery. To achieve social peace under conditions of total injustice then, loss of historical memory automatically appears as one of the many prices to pay. Since today everybody knows that Arts, (Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Linguistics, etc...) constitute poorly marketable fields of knowledge that would not give anyone enough money to get rich (unless working for official academia or mainstream mass media) why should we bother about them? Hence in the UK we have a situation in which the average Briton's knowledge about their own history stretches back (if we are lucky) as far as the “Battle of Britain” so mercilessly broadcasted to nausea in countless BBC documentaries. For the average English person then, History resembles nothing but a sky filled with British “heroic” spitfires battling their way against a plethora of “evil” German Meseerschmitt while in the ground the bulk of England's population undertakes the patriotic effort of war economy with nationalistic proud and with no trace of criticism about how all that came to happen in the first place. Very convenient indeed...
In the meanwhile the constant whimper many “experts” and “specialists” pretend to exhibit about the seemingly unstoppable decline in England's cultural and educative levels (almost always among the popular classes, of course) begins to sound like a bad joke. Let us not delude ourselves by conceding any credibility to the concern that these people so awfully manages to feign and keep a healthy level of sceptical suspicion on the possibility that such a situation could be consciously and purposefully engineered. After all the type of sub-human needed to bring Demo-fascism into worldwide hegemony (the future soldiers, journalists, politicians, entrepreneurs, celebrity stars, obedient-patriotic labourers, football hooligans, submissive-money minded ethnic “minorities”, drug dealers and gangsta pimps etc...) will be better manufactured through a pseudo-socialisation based on merciless repetition of media absurd messages (X-factor-like crap from cradle to grave), video-games, and IT gadgets. Definitely, the old fashioned disciplinary institutions (patriarchal nuclear family plus compulsory schooling) are falling progressively out of use, getting outmoded.
Being this the present state of affairs, it comes as no surprise that not many people seem able to remember nowadays the England of Boadicea, Wickliffe, Oliver Cromwell, the Diggers, the Levellers, the Lollards and the Ranters, the Luddite, the Suffragettes... One does not hear to talk every day in the pub about the England that saw the uprising of Cable Street in 1933 or the riots in Brixton and Toxteth in 1981, all of them episodes in UK's History where rioting, street fighting and bloodshed by the authorities of the time were the general rule. Not many scholars, let alone journalists talk too often about the upsurge of squatting abandoned properties among the dispossessed in the years that immediately followed the end of WW2, the 1980's mining strikes, the bombings of the Angry Brigade, the popular rage in the Poll Tax riot... Most of the “finest” brains of the nation seem to receive their substantial wages out of whether ignoring these crucial episodes of UK's History, manipulating the truth about them in a way that matches the aims of present days demo-fascist propaganda apparatus or simply reminding us that vandalism and rioting have no place in a “democracy” without any convincing further explanation.
But what is really that fetish, that totem to which politicians, journalists and entrepreneurs alike desperately cling as a the ultimate justification for their otherwise unjustifiable legitimacy? That mantra that even red-faced leftists haunted by a mixture of fear and anger repeat hysterically every time those “minorities” of vandal demonstrators wreak some havoc bringing (at last) a little bit of fun to those insufferable processions demonstrations have turned into for the last 10 years. What do these people mean when they invoke the magic word... what is it really democracy for them?...
Democracy is nowadays the new face of totalitarianism. Let's be honest, its etymological meaning “power of the people” does not match the reality of a society in which voting every 4 years is seen as the peak of political freedom by its main ideologists. Out of that ridiculous gesture of inserting a paper in a ballot our real power to decide on how to solve our own problems and conflicts, build our own houses or neighbourhoods, arrange what has to be produced and why in the economical realm, even the use of our spare time and the creations of culture, art and popular creativity... is utterly insignificant. Not even one of these and many other crucial issues for every human being belong to us any more. It just happens that every single sphere of autonomy human communities might have been able to preserve for themselves in the past has been taken over by the state. Instead, their management now has fallen in the hands of a myriad of specialists and “experts”. Following this trend we find that it is perfectly OK if a low income family or a group of youngsters applies for a council flat to their “local authority” whereas taking resort to squatting as an immediate DIY solution is completely regarded as unacceptable since the state here would not play any role and its capacity to control and maintain the “civil order” needed by the rich would become strongly challenged. From such an attitude we can conclude that there would be no bigger catastrophe for those in power than seeing how common people seizes back an active role in effecting historical, political and social change on their own way, breaking the law, property and the teeth of a few bastards if necessary. All this after realising once and for all that the most fundamental issues regarding community organisation and decision making should never be delegated in “experts” or “professionals” of any kind.
The only questions left to ourselves now a days are those of how to survive in the daily hell of ridiculously paid jobs in the least badly possible fashion and choosing among the different modalities of the otherwise basically identical degrading way in which we have been taught to spend our free time every weekend. That is the real face of “people's power” in liberal demo-fascisms for most of us; entire lives wasted in earning enough money to eat, pay bills and get drunk or drugged to the ears on Friday or Saturday night. Meanwhile, every single day official mainstream media and advertising show how well their enhanced use of Joseph Goebbels's techniques of mass manipulation and brainwashing work making it very clear that for some the Nazis also came up with some good ideas after all.
Sure, the level of physical repression may have been reduced to a minimum in our “democracies”; however such an “achievement” has been accomplished at the expense of freedom of consciousness, community and intelligence. The present Orwellian mechanism has been implemented by literally murdering in the public's brains any shade of critical capacity, by erasing the very important immaterial features that make us as human beings, the need for truth, the need for independence of criteria, for free-thinking, the ability to build ourselves without mediation or manipulation from external bias. Uniformisation of thinking and behaviour has been nowadays achieved in this so-called democracies to a horrific extent, unheard in other historical periods and social-cultural formations and with a degree of effectiveness that would put Nazi-Fascist propaganda to the shame.
So when a country such as Libya rises up against its local tyrant of more than 40 years the clamour against him and in support of the justice implicit in the cause of the rebels appears nearly unanimous in the view of the representatives of consolidated “democracies” coveting whatever the advantages or “deals” they may get from the situation. However at the same time, these very same people cannot bear the sight of broken shopping windows, rocks being pelted at the police, smoke, fire and barricades just down the road in their own city. They truly seem to struggle to understand that people can also get angry and upset here at home, especially when they are on the verge of getting deprived of some of the few crumbs that occasionally fall from the table of the very well-off national elites. What an outrageous view!! can't these ragged, thankless subjects of the British crown understand that we are all in this together?, that it is “the nation” as a whole the one who actually needs everyone to shoulder up in these difficult times, that our poor motherland “suffers” from such a display of uncivil behaviour by some of their beloved sons?
No Sir, we are not all in this together, we have never been and we will never be. Emphasizing the good of the nation as the ultimate target is nothing but a way of diverting attention away from the real issue. Those who have to endure an existence of sweat, lack of sleep and deprivation will never get anything from national glory but more of the same pain, exploitation, lies and violence they have always been rewarded with by army generals, politicians, cops, journalists, intellectuals, and businessmen. Conversely, they are much more likely to find their peers in anyone who shares their sufferings and their dreams, beyond borders, languages and nationalities; enough reason in itself to justify the massive deployment of the global modern media entertainment industry as a total psychological war poised to kill off any shadow of freedom of consciousness.
Supposedly, the right thing to do in 26/3 demonstration would have been to follow Unison's, SWP's, or Labour boring-as-hell parades and passively listening to Milliband or any other of our self-appointed representatives in Hyde Park talking bullshit and trying once again to make us swallow their already worn out recipe, namely that voting the left back into rule remains the only way of saving the fatherland. Fortunately it seems that more and more people are starting to realise that something must be wrong in the present capitalist economical and political structure itself, something beyond the scope of those pseudo-solutions to which the utterly despicable collaborationist left has for decades grown so keen to. The reality is not that we are being deprived from a future but just the opposite. It is the state and the capitalist labour market in their finest functioning what whisks away any possibility of a dignified future for us since the only thing they can offer is the endless cycle, the eternal return of wage slavery-home-back to wage slavery-drunken weekends-holiday-back to wage slavery... If that is the future so many people misses so much and cannot grow above such a narrow vantage point their struggle cannot do anything but collapse or get profited by the next in line to be their masters.
Future is open right now, that is the truth. The present “recession” that is affecting Europe (UK included) and most of the whole world so badly has its origin in the increasing trouble capitalism and the states are finding to carry on with their business as usual due to the very same contradictions they have never stopped creating and which are insolvable within the same logic and state of affairs that gave rise to them. Our real future, if we truly want and are to have one, lies in the uncertainty of the present times. We may be approaching a formidable historical crisis in which all possibilities are open again, a total fracture of “normality” as we have known it for the latest 3 or 4 decades. From now on social struggle and common people's mobilisation may well (fingers crossed) be back to stay. New struggles seem to be looming in the horizon beyond the decadence of the West. That could be perhaps, the realisation that anarchists and Black Blockers alike may have embraced and in this point, as well as in many others reality is proving them right. Their honesty in thought and deeds, is out of question.
If perhaps we should not jump too fast into the conclusion of being at the gates of a social revolution or an overnight radical change or destruction of the present economical and political system, considering that a new awakening in radical politics far away from being contented with a few legislative reforms is under way has clearly stopped sounding as an exaggeration. We may be witnessing the beginning of a new period in which street rebellion will increasingly reflect the decadence and pose a challenge to a establishment more and more undermined by the problems that itself creates. We may be looking at decades of instability and growing awareness among common people that a radical change may be needed. After all even Rome considered as the “eternal city” for so many centuries came to an end, so capitalism and the very same existence of states should not be an exception to this. Everything in live and History has an end, nothing lasts forever, let alone political and economical systems.
In the end what scares the hell out of the rulers of this country is the prospect of a growing number of their youth, followed by more and more members of older age groups losing all the respect and fear towards them and the material expressions in which domination is expressed. If the entire profession of journalism was not the embarrassing collection of sell outs they actually are, may be it have occurred to some among these unnameable bastards to write and publish a deeper analysis on the motivation driving the destruction of banks and other capitalist material manifestations by anarchists in the 26 of March London demo. They could at least have tried to understand the causes of so much rage, to reflect the different trends among the demonstrators apart from the official leftist parties and the bureaucratic trade unions, to pay attention to the different pamphlets that were given away and what they were saying, even to have noticed (and reported) the presence of big banners and placards demanding nothing less than a total regime change... Apparently this is of no significance whatsoever for the press boys who have made it very clear the side they are in. Hiding behind the excuse of “objectivity” is not acceptable as their attitude cannot be deemed anything but disgustingly servile and far from objective.
Thus, these shameless “professionals” are the ones endowed with the power of setting what has to be thought and what hasn't, which are the appropriate behaviours and which ones aren't . The ones who spread the view of “bad” and “violent” versus “good” and “peaceful” protesters (the old “divide and conquer” trick), the ones for whom we should all be celebrating how there is always money when it comes to the wedding of two Royal parasites on 29th of April 2011 rather than messing around in demonstrations ignited by a situation to which we were brought by bankers, millionaires and other privileged “VIP's”. Today, just one week away from Prince William and Kate Middleton's royal wedding, not even a single word of criticism has been said by any journalist or intellectual whatsoever about such a rotten vestige of the Middle Ages impersonated in the Royal institution. And this is not happening even in spite of the fact that supporting Monarchy nowadays cannot be other thing that a task for dunces for at least banks, armies, police forces, parliaments and politicians are usually provided with quite elaborate alibis to justify their existence in the name of “common good” for the whole society and no matter how bullshit these arguments are the truth is that they at least work. Nevertheless, the uselessness of the Monarchical institution, their parasitic nature even within the standards of capitalistic cult for profit as a useless political appendage that only absorbs money without producing any revenue, deserves for most of these “communicators” nothing but the most coward of silences or even worse, a total display of ass-licking undignified exhibitionism.
This is in the end what “free press” is all about in our wonderful liberal democracies, the political template that according to Western propaganda needs to be exported, if not imposed with the dear help of missiles and tanks all over the world. The reason is so futile that it moves to laughter... it apparently constitutes the “least bad” of all political systems... quite unlikely for it is the most perfect type of dictatorship humanity has ever known and leaves no room at all for real and effective opposition aside from what is undeservedly called that way within the parliamentarian farce. The recipe for the success of such a charade can be summarised in the following sentence: Preventing is the best way of banning. That is, no matter what legislation says about anything at all, whatever comes up that challenges official propaganda and public conformity must be rendered impracticable by a whole arrange of subtle mechanisms, among which the complicity slander or silence (depending on the situation) of mainstream media is probably the commonest one.
Going back to the resistance against demo-fascism that might be emerging it must be said that it still has a long way to go if it is to play a role at all in the coming years. The lack of political and militant experience among their members is quite clear as they demonstrate by sticking to the leftist slogans about “getting back the public sector” and so falling in the trap prepared by the social-democratic branch of demo-fascist totalitarianism (aka real existing democracy). They do not appear to realise that such a thing will never happen and that the government is making it very clear through its actions. The times in which benefits systems were needed in order to keep the working as well as the unemployed population appeased and away from strikes and rioting are over. Benefit systems have proved to be extremely expensive, highly ineffective and above all incapable of fostering any love towards wage slavery among those appointed to suffer it. Hence the high levels of “benefit theft” and work dodging among the lowest social strata who obviously fail to feel any sense of guilt by taking advantage of anything that can possibly keep them away from having to waste their lifetime in being productive.
The downside of this however, can be perceived in the ethical as well as physical degradation of the average inhabitant of any council flat, in the epidemic of absolute indifference of many among the one time combative “working class” towards their own kind, the total lack of solidarity and community among the dispossessed in general, more ready to get on the move for spurious if not openly reactionary and nationalistic “causes” than for the titanic duty of social radical change. Indeed many of these present day “proletarians” can be counted in the ranks of the British National Party or the English Defence League. It is exactly because of this state of absolute anomie that the masters feel confident enough to take back what one day gave in order to keep the majority of the population appeased. The skills for leaderless or horizontal grassroots self-organisation, the lucidity to come up with a clear analysis of the social situation, the incorruptible hatred against any kind of authority, against the state, against capitalism against the reformism of left social-democratic parties and other sold outs, have all long ago vanished from the repertoire of basic individual as well as collective instinctual abilities among the working and unemployed population. Thus, from the power's standpoint the present situation is safe enough to eliminate the last vestiges of Welfare State once this has already fulfilled the functions it was created for; namely deactivate any possibility of grassroots resistance from inside the community and the psychology of the individual. This has been attained through a purposeful project aimed at degenerating individuals by accustoming them to be fed rather than fighting for what they want, making them used to state beneficence and “charity” and seducing them into putting the needs of comfort, consumerism, “fun” and hedonistic evasion before any sense of dignity, self-value, mutual aid, freedom and responsibility towards themselves and to one another.
Certainly there is a whole lot of work to be done by everyone within him and herself as individuals as well as in re-building networks of mutual aid and true community at UK's and why not, even at European and eventually worldwide levels. Networks of self-organised communities capable over time of challenging the present establishment should be started right now. Communities used to live with less material wealth but much more fighting spirit and communality; skilled in existing, feeling, living, working, acting and enduring any sort of difficulties while remaining always outside and below state and capitalism. As long as the aspirations of most of the people involved in the “Anti-cuts” movement continue shamelessly showing no more intention than timidly returning to the “land of plenty” falsely represented by the “Golden Age” of Welfare State they will remain stuck in a rut. They will continue living under the present dictatorship whose existence owes more to millions of next door guys and girls (including many workers, poor and even homeless) who sincerely embrace with all their heart Gottfried Benn's definition of “happiness” as “being stupid and having money” than to any politician, businessman, high military commander, cop or journalist.
If the main source of submission and conformism to the present demo-fascist order carries on embedded in the deepest layer of most people's minds and hearts then nothing will be achieved and (we can be absolutely certain about this) everybody will get fooled again by the same or the new masters to come, be them from the right or from the left wing of parliamentarian politics or by any random opportunistic pseudo-revolutionary “avant-garde”. Should this happen nobody will be to blame for it but ourselves for ultimately a successful revolutionary social change, if it is to happen, will hinge on the moral quality of the individuals involved in the struggle more than in any external influence.
It may be about time therefore, of stepping further once and for all and go beyond useless legislative reforms that have never changed (in a positive way) any truly substantial part of people's lives. It may be time to totally abandon the simplistic philistinism inherent to Utilitarianism, UK's official moral Philosophy turned into a very subtle form of political propaganda in whose application to Law equates the existing rules with guaranteeing the maximum amount of a very vaguely defined principle of “happiness” to the majority of the population. This mediocre lie eventually translates in the “happiness” of the elites who exploit and dominate the rest since these latter find themselves totally stripped of the power to decide what that “happiness” must consist of or if it is really “happiness” the ultimate goal of living in a given community. The raw truth here is that there is not direct link between Law and rightness but the one we can or want to give it, let alone if such Law is designed and imposed by scholars and “experts” with no direct experience beyond their luxury ivory towers of what happens to those obliged to abide by it even if they ignore it and are left, by principle, out of the very same process of legislating themselves. Thus, breaking the law, or any random rule does not mean to incur automatically in “evil” behaviour and if an angry mob of demonstrators take their anger out on banks, luxury shops or cops out of feelings of frustration, a sound understanding of what the situation is like and a basic instinct of justice they are right, no matter what any law says about it; no matter the unanimous barks of all the journalists in the country.
These times then, demand people to start thinking and talking again in terms of social revolution. Giving up any faith in states and capitalists alike might well arise as a crucial question in the next decades for after all, society is nothing but the common, working people minus the whole lot of parasites whose only purpose in live is to extract profits from their toil and keep them in a state of permanent submission and sub-humanity.
In the same way rioting is OK but if the rebels truly wish to accomplish at least some of their short or medium-term aims they will need a more consistent and perseverant way of action, combining both peaceful protest with more violent clashes and sabotage actions according to every situation. Simply they need to rebuild an extra-parliamentary political scene that has been nearly dead in the UK for many years and that cannot do otherwise but embody clear elements of anti-capitalism and anti-state feelings in both its practice and targets.
Let the elites who think of themselves as eternal in this part of the world worry, fear, and froth in their mouths while confronted to the possibility that the Greek fire had at last reached the British islands and hopefully (fingers crossed) that will stay with us for a pretty long ride. When it comes of making history, angry people wishing freedom and disrupting social peace are as inevitable as rain falling downwards and not in the opposite direction and no legislation naively regulating the way protest must ideally be carried out can prevent this from happening. The Greeks made it very clear on December of 2008... “We are an image from the future” they said, and it is towards that future that we are walking now.
Let us enjoy the journey for the best.
Welfare or freedom, that is the question.
Up to you.
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