The media and the mob
The recent riots, triggered but not caused by the Southport stabbings, have reopened the debate concerning who should have the right to disseminate information (news). The ‘establishment’ mainstream media have resumed their unceasing war against the ‘misinformation’ of social media.
At the heart of this debate lies the terror of our rulers and their media that they will lose control of the political narrative that they have monopolised for so long. They conveniently forget that their newspapers’ continual demonisation of immigrants has normalised racism for many and that in their desperation to evade EU banking rules through lying about the benefits of ‘Brexit’ it has been the mainstream media who have created the noxious racist atmosphere that fed the violence.
Loathsome internet ‘influencers’ like Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate and Katie Hopkins would have no cultural platform were it not for the unceasing propaganda of the mainstream media. The media have created a Frankenstein monster and now that it has served its purpose they need to control and tame it. The elite of both left and right politics condemn the ‘mob’ violence without taking any responsibility for creating the toxic cultural atmosphere that made it inevitable.
‘Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism’ (Oscar Wilde).
This was true until very recently when those outside of the media establishment (fourth estate) discovered the internet and found their voice. The powerful have always known that the control of information and, more importantly, its interpretation, is vital to their interests. Sometimes we are told that we have a ‘free press’ but the claim that it is not ‘state owned’ in no way guarantees that it is ‘free’. Owning the mass media has always been a preoccupation with the parasite class and the classic Murdoch versus Maxwell struggle was an example of this pissing contest for status within their class.
Their basic narrative is that capitalism is the only possible, and indeed the highest, creation of civilised economic organisation. This fact turns most of their ‘news’ content into mere political propaganda. Presumably they are aware that they are lying but it is not always as starkly simple as that; take the proposition that high taxes are bad for the economy since they deter investment and thus employment – and from a capitalist perspective this is true. But, from a working-class perspective, low taxation for the rich means an enfeebled infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc) which impacts exclusively on their class and so renders the cuts bad for their economic and social needs – also equally true. No amount of ‘fact checking’ can resolve the reality of this class struggle as within capitalism such internal contradictions are always present. Indeed, this is the primary ‘fact’ contained in any interpretation of information – the rest is pure rhetoric.
From the time of Ancient Rome the ‘people’ are considered to be a mindless mob when they indulge in any protest against conditions. The protagonists of the ‘Farage riots’ were universally condemned as mindless thugs without any reference to their representatives in Parliament (Reform Party) or the legitimisation of such actions by none other than the former president of the USA Donald Trump who lionised the rioters at the Washington Capitol building. The rioters of the infamous ‘Gordon riots’ were similarly condemned with no reference to the toxic anti-Catholic culture which, like the anti-Muslim environment of the UK today, was created by the establishment for their own political needs.
The alleged disappointment of Nigel Farage when he discovered that the murderer in Southport was not a Muslim is an example of the instincts of the monstrous demagogues that capitalism creates. The present political system effectively locks out the people from any democratic expression of their concerns for five years so it is no surprise that such imposed political impotence will erupt into violence occasionally. Only the time-honoured right to a ‘petition of Parliament’ still exists but this cannot change anything in the absence of real democracy.
Although the ‘outrages’ of racist violence are universally condemned by agencies of the state they do provide a useful distraction from the real causes of the symptoms of capitalism. Immigration, racism, culture wars, two-tier policing and myriad other social problems conveniently divert the working class from prosecuting the class struggle.
All of these problems affect the majority who live in the real world of capitalist exploitation but not those who benefit from it. They have no concern for, or knowledge of, those living in poverty; without access to proper health care; poor education; terrible industrial relations, low wage jobs etc, etc.
The former Home Secretary under Thatcher, Willie Whitelaw, said, as he gazed out on the extensive grounds of his mansion, that the race riots of the early eighties did not belong in the England that he recognised. Most of the racist thugs who joyfully attacked hotels containing immigrants have no knowledge or understanding of that other world of luxury and decadence. They only know the daily struggle to make a living that occasionally fails completely to provide for their own and their family’s needs. Someone must be to blame for the misery and the capitalist media always have ready-made scapegoats available to distract the politically naive from the culpability of the parasites whose cause they slavishly serve.
WEZ