Going Around in Circles

A post inspired by yet another person blaming the entire Left for what they see as the transgender debacle.

People need to stop doing the Right’s job for it by using gender issues as a stick to beat the entire Left with. Americans need to realise that the Left elsewhere in the world is a very different thing from the modern, liberal wing of an essentially Right-wing party of empire.  

In very broad (and simplistic) terms, Neo-liberal capitalism’s (NLC) ideologues and commentariat attacked Red Left theory and praxis. The resulting dominance of NLC ideology had the effect of pulling the political fulcrum point to the right, making centrism appear to be “leftist”.

The left of NLC,  the White Left, abandoned the old Red Left’s class-based theory and praxis.

Many of the White Left did so nicely out of NLC’s hyper-commodification and its creation of a well-remunerated “buffer class”, they either didn’t notice, or chose to ignore the fact that identity politics in general and the transgender orthodoxy in particular, are essentially individualistic and individualising. 

As such they pose/d no threat to NLC, and in fact they created a load of ideological and market opportunities.  

As NLC economic policies pushed a lot of the western working class into forms and degrees of economic and social “precarity” that they’d never experienced, but with which their ancestors were well acquainted, some of them were easily persuaded by the Right into blaming it all on some designated “other”, and to cleave to apparently “powerful” leaders, etc etc.  

While the majority of people did not drift to the Far Right, in the absence of any sort of unifying political-economic theory and accompanying forms of mass organisation on the broad Left, they remained easily diverted and divided.

The utility to the Right-wing of identity-focussed politics and praxis in general, and the transgender orthodoxy in particular, lies in its capacity to both divert and to divide. 

For the Left-liberals who remain/ed attached to the idea of some sort of opposition to capitalism or to the “establishment”, IP provided a theoretical focus and a rallying point – with a load of slogans, tropes, mantras and memes to put in place of solid theory and action. 

It made them feel that they were doing something tangible even though, as I have said elsewhere, it’s like a bunch of people on a train with a maniac at the controls driving it towards a cliff, arguing about who gets to sit in first class. 

It’s all complicated by some, on what we used to call the Ultra-Left, having gone full circle to meet up with the Far Right. 

Identity politics, and its most divisive manifestation, transgenderism, was possibly not created by the Right other than in the sense of someone rolling an ideological snowball down a steep mountainside, but the Right has been quick to take full advantage of the ensuing social, political avalanche, which now puts a mass of wider social advances at risk of being swept away.

If we can’t agree on anything at least let’s agree on the utility to those who hold the reins of power, of the old maxim, “divide and rule”. Just as with older forms of left sectarianism, splits and divisions among any oppressed sector only ever benefit the powerful.

From Chris Kahui to Rush Limbaugh via Christine Rankin

On the Yahoo Xtra news poll recently, the question was "should Chris Kahui be given a clean slate?" 

87% of respondents, more than 15000 people, voted NO.  This was three times the total number who responded to an earlier news poll on climate change. I do not know why there seems to be so many members of the Amygdala Brigade who subscribe to the oh so aptly named Yahoo Xtra.  

For those not living in NZ, Xtra is the country's largest ISP, and it runs a daily news poll which they claim is an accurate indicator of public opinion, and Chris Kahui was charged with the murder of his twin baby sons, Chris and Cru in 2006. He was found not guilty in 2008 but Police said after the trial that they would not be looking for anyone else in connection with the murder  – in other words, they still think he did it.

In an extraordinary move earlier this year (2012) in an inquest into the twins' death, the Coroner pointed the finger of blame directly at Kahui. However, because no new evidence was available to the Coroner in arriving at his decision, Kahui is unlikely to be retried in a criminal court because of the double jeopardy principle.

Kahui is subject to controls, imposed by Child Youth and Family, on his contact with children. He has a daughter from a new relationship but he is not allowed to be alone with her. His challenge to these conditions is what the Yahoo Xtra poll referred to.

Christine Rankin, Child Advocate, Chief Executive of For the Sake of our Children Trust, and former Chief Executive Officer of the Department of Work and Income said that a lot of people in NZ think someone got away with murder and they are angry about that and think Kahui should never have anything to do with children. 

Unfortunately the sort of people Rankin is referring to often do not think, they suffer various forms and degrees of knee jerk reactions which deliver killer blows to even robust things like facts and logic. More delicate concepts like humanity and natural justice don't stand an earthly.

Ms Rankin is used to skirting the boundaries of what is acceptable conduct in a public servant and is sticking with her MO when she used her celebrity to promote Ian Wishart's new book about the Kahui case by urging all New Zealanders to read it.

Rankin was a controversial appointment to the Families Commission in 2009, with MP Peter Dunne being especially opposed to it because he said, Rankin is such a divisive figure.

The Trust, of which she is CEO, appears to be a politically neutral organisation but appearances can be deceptive. The Trust's website states that it believes "every child is precious and entitled to safety, care, and access to health and education" and that "strong families are the best environment for preventing child abuse and neglect".  In a foot note they clarify what they mean by a family – ie "two parent homes consisting of a mother and a father".

It's interesting how the modern nuclear family is offered up as the natural child rearing arrangement and no doubt any questioning of the ahistoricism or ideological nature of such claims would be met with outrage and counter accusations of PCness and left wing bias.

Of course this depiction of the monogamous, heterosexual, nuclear family and the "strong communities" in which that family should be embedded is very precious to right wing "think tank" The Maxim Institute. You remember the MI – it got its knuckles rapped over plagiarism of articles written by conservative organisations in the US – like the Heritage Foundation. 

The MI continues to maintain its close links with the Heritage Foundation, the aims of which are: to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defence."

Like the right in the USA, the right here seeks to mobilise (aka exploit) the "grass roots" by pushing its own profoundly political agendas under the guise of "common sense" and '"raditional values", and the establishment or support of what seem to be grass roots organisations like the Sensible Sentencing Trust.  

They are also busy on talk radio. Although there appears to be a balance of political opinion on talk radio it is in fact heavily biassed towards the right, a fact which does not stop the right from ritually attacking the "liberal media". 

In the US, the funding of influential right wing talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin by powerful right ring lobby groups is well documented.  

The Heritage Foundation (HF) sponsors schlock jock Rush Limbaugh who is the most listened to talk radio host in the US.  Limbaugh is responsible for coining phrases like "feminazi" and is so over the top so often that sensible Republican strategists have spoken about the need to "muzzle" him. I can think of other things to do with him that involve leaky boats and deep water, preferably oil-polluted deep water.

"Obama's America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama's America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,' and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he's white." 

Welcome to Limbaugh's world.

The HF also sponsors schlock jock Sean Hannity who sagely opined, "it doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.'" 

I'd imagine that few of his listeners would register the hypocrisy inherent in his question 

"is the president purposefully using propaganda and hyperbole to garner the American public for support?'", and his statement, "why wouldn't anyone want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, unless they detested their own country or were ignorant of its greatness?"

But of course that's not propaganda or hyperbole, that's good old common-sense and traditional values.

Lawyer and talk show host Mark Levin has an endorsement deal with Americans for Prosperity which claims its aim is to educate citizens about economic policy and mobilise citizens as advocates in the public policy process. In pursuit of that aim, it was instrumental in the emergence and promotion of the tea party and was a major player in the Republicans' take over of Congress in 2010.

Levin is a mate of Hannity and Limbaugh and no doubt they all spend a lot of time stroking each others egos which obviously require a lot of tactile stimulation to remain so inflated. Examples of Levin's wit and wisdom may be found in his analysis of the state, and for those who cannot be bothered wading through its verbose, ahistorical nonsense, there are such delights as "Liberalism is mind-boggling and stupid". Well, he would know quite a bit about mind boggling stupidity given he practices it on a daily basis.

Glenn Beck is another one who appeals directly to the Amygdala Brigade. 

"Not a single time have we gotten a right from Congress or from the President. We get them from God."

Yes, Glenn, of course we do. 

Would this be the same God who told George Bush Junior, "to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them"? 

Beck has a sponsorship deal with FeedomWorks which originated in a group called Citizens for a Sound Economy that was set up by David Koch of Koch Industries.  CSE underwent a sort of political mitosis, and one part became Americans for Prosperity and the other merged with Empower America and was renamed FreedomWorks. 

It might seem a loooong way from these charmers to Christine Rankin, Garth McVicar and whoever heads up the Maxim Institute these days but give them time and enough astroturf support and who knows? Meanwhile, here's  a collection of some of the thoughts of the American Taliban, all chronic sufferers of Over-active Amygdala Syndrome. 

This land is my land .....

This was submitted to The Press but not accepted for publication.

I was born in Christchurch. I went to Aranui Primary and High Schools and was trained as a teacher at the old Christchurch Teacher’s College on Peterborough Street. I wasted way too much time at the students’ union building in the Arts Centre when it was still a university and I visited the many fine old buildings that my stone mason great-great grandfather William Brassington and his son Claudius helped build. 

My great-great-grand parents came to Christchurch in 1863 and met the full force of a class system that consigned them to the hell of the steerage deck on a poorly run ship ravaged by disease.  But they had a vision of a better future and they survived and put down the roots that

have resulted in my great-nephews being the 6^th generation to be born in this place. 

Our family home in which my father died, was a lovely old house in the Wainoni red zone and it was bulldozed a few weeks ago. The neighbourhood my mother lived and worked in for 50 years is slowly dying and most of her friends and neighbours are dispersed. The community she belonged to no longer exists, and that is a shocking thing. 

My brothers and their respective families have lost the security they once had, and I see the effects that these two years of anxiety and stress have had on them. They too no longer live or work in stable communities and sometimes find it hard to believe in a better future for the city they were born in. 

Margaret Thatcher once said that "there is no such thing as society." What she meant was there is only a collection of individual men and women and families, and that the individual is paramount or more correctly, the rights and privileges of certain individuals are paramount. This asocial view lies at the heart of all that is wrong and unhealthy in our world.

A community is more than the sum of its parts. A sense of belonging, of continuity, of mutualism lies at the very heart of what it means to be human. United, people are strong; divided, they are weak. It is a cliché but no less true for being one.  

We deny the importance of community at our peril. We live increasingly alienated and asocial lives and the effects of this are obvious to those who know how critically important community is to the mental and emotional health of such profoundly social beings as we are.  And community is never more important than for the young and the old. 

Change is a constant and change sometimes hurts some people and yes, most of us adjust, even to radical change. Since the 1980s many rural communities have experienced disruptions to schools, seen local services destroyed in the name of progress and economic rationalisation, and some may feel that this situation in Christchurch is no different.  

But there is a huge difference. This is not a rationalisation of education as part of a general process, it is the calculated use of a natural disaster to advance a political agenda.  The education plan is no more in the interests of the city’s children than the sacking of the ECAN councillors was in the interests of local democracy or organisational efficiency.   These proposals are the overt means of achieving the twin political ends of making huge reductions in the education budget, and ensuring that the people of Christchurch and Canterbury remain weak and divided and unable to have an effective say in their future. 

A government that was genuinely committed to democracy and to the future of the city and the region would never have sacked the ECAN councillors in the first place but, having done so, it would have reinstated elections as promised to enable the voters of the region to elect the people to run the Authority which they fund entirely through their rates.  

A government that was genuinely committed to the rebuilding of a strong, vibrant local economy in Canterbury would know that there is no more vital investment than in the education of the region’s children. Yes, Christchurch and Canterbury have lost many children because their parents have moved away but surely we want them to move back. What better way is there of ensuring they do not or cannot, than these sort of draconian proposals? 

A government that was genuinely committed to rebuilding Christchurch would keep open as many of the city’s schools as possible; it would see both the humanity and the sound economic sense of smaller class sizes for the region’s traumatised and unsettled children; it would take steps to keep skilled teachers and their families here to help build the future; it would understand how good schools form hubs around which communities can, and will, naturally coalesce. 

We cannot blame the planet for doing what planets do, but we can and should blame a government, which, through its actions and lack of them, has added hugely to the destruction of our city and region.The rebuilding of our city and our region needs the sensitive touch of intelligent, humane hands not more dunder-headed, ham-fisted destruction.

Blue Blood

Remember that advert for tampons that depicted a face off in front of a toilet mirror between a woman and a man dressed as a woman? The woman's trump card in the "who’s more feminine" competition, was a tampon. 

I didn't like the ad because it plays on stereotypes that offend me but the fact that a tampon was the trump card was actually quite funny. But, funny or not, the ad was lambasted by transgender activists as being transphobic. And they harassed Germaine Greer for her comments on transgenderism.

Staying with menstruation for a moment, why does no one ever comment on the fact that, in ALL ads seeking to demonstrate the effectiveness of "feminine hygiene products,  the fluid is BLUE?

This is an industry that cannot deal with the fact that post-pubescent and pre-menopausal women shed endometrium every 28 days or so – i.e. they BLEED – and, myths about the aristocracy aside, blood is RED. 

Of course it's not the industry that's squeamish – it's simply pandering to a society which is still so uptight about aspects of the ffemale sex and sexuality it cannot cope with seeing a true representation of the function of tampons and pads. 

So, sorry transgender activists, but there are bigger issues here than whether a company was guilty of being transphobic.

The notion of "transphobia" is the inevitable outcome of interest group politics. A  loose coalition of people with similar interests, through various forms of lobbying, bring pressure to bear on politicians and corporations. 

That's fine – they should go for it. If men who feel they want to dress up as or have surgery to "become" women want to join me in the biologically female part of the population they are welcome – but if they want my respect, they have to take on our historic struggles. 

I'm all for diversity – and I really do not care whether someone feels the need to strap his penis down, pile on some makeup and a wig and put on women's clothes. If a woman wants to strap her breasts down and dress up and act like a bloke, it's all fine with me. 

But I have to say that very few men who are dressed like women, even those who have had gender reassignment surgery, fool me. They act, mostly, like they are think women should act; they are too studied and too often the part they are playing is too close to a caricature of femininity. 

It’s the same for women who dress up as men. They may look, talk, stand, act just like men, but invariably it’s a certain sort of blokey bloke.  The drag king is very often as much a caricature of masculinity as the drag queen is a caricature of femininity.

Let's face it, towering heels, skin tight clothes, big hair, extremely long fake fingernails and eyelashes, exaggerated makeup etc worn by genetic males or genetic females are not exactly everyday wear for most women in the world, historically or contemporaneously. 

I struggle to feel much in common with people who were born as biological men, who dress and act like caricatures of an already fetishised notion of what a woman is. 

The transgender community is a very broad church – and like all loose coalitions it can fall in sectarian squabbles at the drop of a wig. There are cross dressers who have no interest in having surgery or taking female/male hormones to change their appearance, they just like wearing men's/women's clothes, and there are people who, because they feel they are in the wrong body, may undergo extreme surgery and life long hormone therapy to try to feel right about themselves.

These are very different things it seems to me.

I have body parts that make me biologically female, and I am lucky to have an "identity" that fits (pretty much) comfortably with my biology. A person born biologically male who has a sex identity at odds with his biology may be able to have his penis turned into an approximation of a vagina and take female hormones to encourage breast growth and discourage hair growth; he may be able to become legally female in some parts of the world and marry, but s/he can never be biologically female. 

Transgender activitists argue that the fact of child bearing is not the measure of femininity as not all women can have children and we enter our child bearing years through puberty and we exit them through menopause. 

But the fact that the chemical messengers which made me able to become pregnant have gone on strike does nothing to alter the social and biological reality that I have lived in all my life.  

The fact is sex and related behaviours exist on a continuum, and most of it sits somewhere in the middle ranges. I don't doubt the misery of feeling trapped in the wrong body, and being judged as deficient or deviant by the rest of the world.  Intelligent,  talented, independent women thoughout the ages have felt that.

I do get the fact that prejudice against transgender and cross dressing people is harmful and hurtful  but we live in a violent and socially fractured world in which a range of prejudices lead to acts of physical and emotional violence against a whole range of people, and transgender people are not alone in being targeted. 

So ditch the heels and get on the barricades.

A prat by any other name

I suspect I’m not alone in finding the term "boy racer" as irritating as the antics of those it’s used to describe.  Most aren’t boys and, for the most part, nor are they racers.

They are poseurs whose cars are the equivalent of a body builder’s fake tan, baby oil and G-string. The size and sound of a car’s exhaust, the cost of its wheels and the decibel level of its sound system are what matter to them. The baldness of its tyres due to incessant burnouts, and the inadequacy of its handling due to modifications to increase its street cred, attest to the inaccuracy of the term "racer". 

A true racer would sacrifice the flash for added dash.

No, these are indeed poseurs, and I think we need a new name for them.

We could simply run car and poseur together – carposeur has a satisfying Latinate feel to it.

The Yiddish term "schmuck" has a certain gender relevance and onomatopoeic appeal, and as their behaviour is both self-motivated and involves a vehicle, autoschmuck is both punchy and punny. 

The good old English word "prat" is apt, given the schmucks spend most of their time sitting on that part of their anatomy. Prat also has the advantage of being gender neutral thus satisfying political correctness by reflecting the growing involvement of women.  It lends itself to other amusing puns like praternity and – given they think they have the right to do whatever they want, when they want – autoprat is a definite front runner.

It seems bizarre that so much time and money is invested in dealing with this phenomenon when it would be easily fixed by making people pay directly for third party insurance. Specialist insurers may well boast about how they will insure modified vehicles – but that’s for vehicle insurance which is never more than a few thousand dollars. Let a few multi-million dollar law suits for third party personal injury and death happen and see how quickly the underwriters leave town.

PC or not PC - that is the question

On March 17th, in the Christchurch Press, the resident cartoonist Al Nisbet's cartoon shows a shipping container being waved off shore by a group of Kiwis. The premise is that another use for containers (post-earthquake Christchurch is held together by them) is to use them to deport "refugees who commit violent crimes".

The cartoon relates to the front page story about a Somali-born man's knife attack on two people. The man was found sleeping in a school yard. When challenged, he hijacked a car and eventually stabbed the female driver in the shoulder. She escaped and he hijacked a second car driven by a Christchurch City Council employee and stabbed him also. Such was the Somalian's state of mind he was hit on the neck by a young man wielding a steel bar, pepper sprayed, tasered and then shot twice by the police before he could be stopped.

Clearly he was either on some sort of craze-inducing drug – which is unlikely given the circumstances – or he was in the grip of a psychosis. He may have been demonstrating great rage but equally he may have been demonstrating great terror.  We simply do not know what his state of mind was. We know he committed the acts but, before he can be safely labelled as a violent criminal, his mental health has to be assessed and, if he is fit to plead, he needs to be charged and convicted in a court of law.

What we DO NOT NEED is to excite the Amygdala Brigade. Its members are all too ready to dispense vigilante justice and don't need encouragement. We saw that in the Lipine Sila case  – more of that one in another post.

Right on cue, zombie members of the White Power chapter of the Amygdala Brigade slither out from under their rocks and start ranting on about  "black devils" and "2 legged maggots".  According to the slightly less stupid talkback, Somalis are the worst of all refugees because they are black AND Muslim.

No doubt I will be labelled - and reviled  – as a namby-pamby, bleeding-heart, do-gooding, tree-hugging, feral-feminist, nigger-loving, PC-imposing loony-leftie.

Oh, how the Right loves its hyphenated insults. 

It mainly reserves its calumnies for its political opponents but it does a good line in insults for the poor and dispossessed as well.  Feral underclass is the label du jour in NZ.  It's Angry Right speak for "poor brown people".

Every time some poor brown person commits a crime, the Angry Right starts pontificating about the feckless poor and the social welfare system that keeps them in ciggies, beer and betting money. Invariably they believe that ALL social ills can be laid at the door of the nanny state. Society was law abiding and sensible before there was a social welfare system for the feckless poor to bludge off.

One of the main cheerleaders for the Angry Right is Michael Laws. Unlike those of his political ilk who are so slow they think that "feral underclass" means a wild cat under a schoolroom, Laws lays claim to an intellect. In fact, his belief that he’s smart is his professional and political bouyancy aid. Deflate it and he’d sink like a stone.

I think he looks a bit bonkers. Put a wig on him, remove his goatee, hang a handbag off his arm and add some pearl earrings and he’d pass for Margaret Thatcher.

He has suggested that the State should pay the "underclass" to be sterilised, and he defined the socially inferior as those whose children "won’t become doctors and brain surgeons". Duh.

Clearly this is not about logic or reason. It's all about anger and resentment and fear. I don't for a moment think Michael Laws and his ilk are in the grip of those emotions, but they certainly want to whip them up in others. Nothing like a bit of horizontally-directed rage to divert attention away from the REAL issues.

I've no doubt that a lot of the yelping classes agree with Laws. If Yahoo! Xtra were to run one of their infamous polls, the 10,000 people who habitually respond would come down overwhelmingly in favour of neutering the feckless poor – or possibly starving them to death.

A lot of the people who lurk around on the Yahoo! (how very apt) Xtra website, and who are very likely the ones who participate in the polls, are Laws’ natural constituency. So stupid they think Laws is clever; so right wing they think he’s a moderate, and so racist they are blinded to the implications of these sort of fascistic proposals.

 Or maybe not; maybe they know full well where they lead and can’t wait to get there.

Laws of course is just one in a long and dismal line of rightwing ideologues who attack the "feral underclass" and use it as a scapegoat to pin all society’s other ills on.

Perish the thought that this "underclass" may be not just a product of the society but a necessary part of it.  Let’s face it, along with the promise of rewards if you are hard working and / or clever, capitalism needs the threat of slipping into the nether regions of society where you are no longer even a member of a lower class  – you are a non-person.

Once down there it is pretty hard to clamber back out but their failure to do so is always laid at their own door – if they had the will, the brains, the talent etc etc, they could succeed. And isn't that a Tui moment?

Read about these people in the media and you’ll see that they don’t have children, they "breed" or "spawn"; they don’t have relationships, they have "sexual unions". They are portrayed as being subhuman, and we have plenty of examples in history of where that sort of stereotyping ends up. 

Anyone who seeks to put the actions of the very poor and marginalised into context – is written off as a do-gooder, a bleeding heart liberal. What sort of mindset turns the phrase "do good" into an insult? And isn't "bleeding heart" something to do with Christian forgiveness?

The rightwing solution to the existence of brutal people is to be even more brutal. It's a local version of the view that the solution to terrorism is to nuke all countries whose name ends in ‘an’ – except Japan because where would you get your car parts, and besides, they did that already and it didn’t work.

Such are the times we live in. Laws of course feels on safe ground since it’s now okay to be politically incorrect – de rigeur for some folk on the right.  Influential commentators are easing rightwing rhetoric into the mainstream media where it gains respectability and legitimacy, and (the truly demented fringes aside), the leaders of the extreme rightwing are toning down their rhetoric to broaden its appeal to the increasingly impoverished and angry white working class.

Kyle Chapman and his little band of merry men are reinventing themselves as guardians of the Kiwi white working class, protecting them from the invading hordes of lawless brown people.  Nick Griffin has coopted indigenous claims by arguing that white people in England are aboriginal and have indigenous rights, and Pat Buchanan in the US, son of Irish immigrants, is appealing to the sons and daughters of other (white working class) immigrants about the threat to them of more recent (brown working class) immigrants.

And of course they all whitter on about the mass media being dominated by the left. YES – that media which is controlled by corporations and dynasties hardly renowned for their progressiveness. 

The voices of reason and moderation in the media, when posed against  rightwing ideologues like Laws do seem to be left leaning but this is not so much a measure of their political leftness as a measure of Laws' and co's political rightness.

Another one who annoys me is Nigel Latta – that psychologist  with the really annoying voice and mannerisms who has become a household name by making TV shows and writing books about being politically incorrect.  The discombobulated middle classes line up to buy into his post-PC common sense approach to parenting.

He is tapping into the belief that all our social ills have been created by the "social engineering" of left / liberal elites who want to undermine the excellent society that we once had. This of course is another one of those really useful multi-purpose scapegoats – blame the whole sorry mess on the people who want to fix it or at least ameliorate its worst effects.

Divide and Rule

We had a situation here a while back when a Māori MP, Hone Harawira, made a couple of statements about white NZers which created a firestorm of outrage  from the white Right, and from some brown people as well.

The response was that Māori 'racism' is the same as white racism, they cancel each other out, it's  proof that the attitudes which lead to racism are natural to all human beings etc etc .

Apply the term 'racism' to all prejudiced conduct and you empty it of political meaning - which might of course be the agenda.

The old mantra – racism is prejudice plus power –  is often taken to mean that no "powerless" people can be racist because, whilst they might have all manner of prejudiced views,  they lack the power to adversely affect the lives of the powerful.

But, who – objectively speaking – possesses power and who doesn't?  

Does an unemployed, under-educated young white man from a sink hole estate have more power by virtue of being white and male than a rich, educated black woman, for example? Does his membership of that problematic category of whiteness give him a sort of power by proxy because the country is still governed by and in the interests of a group made up mainly of obscenely rich white men? 

It would be wrong to deny the fact that the advantages of being white trickle right down the social hierarchy, but it's pretty obvious that  they are well and truly diluted by the time they reach the bottom. 

it would be equally wrong to deny the fact that these days, the disadvantages of being black become diluted the further up the social and financial hierarchy a person is located. 

These days, especially for young people, many of the dominant images of style and privilege (access to which has been granted via sport and entertainment for the most part), are of black people. Take all the black out of youth culture and what's left?  

In the US it's socially acceptable to refer to and make jokes about  "white trash" or "trailer trash'". There's an entire sub-culture devoted to "redneck jokes" but how often do we hear the black equivalent in the mainstream media these days? 

White racial prejudice does of course rear its ugly head but often commentators who allow their racial prejudices off the leash are censured or lose their jobs. (It has to be said that here in NZ they often escape censure or they bounce back once the story has fallen out of the headlines.)

The counterpoint to the images of black success in the US – that echelon of stylish, glossily perfect people  epitomised by the Obamas – is not just the poorly nourished, badly housed, drug-dependent, desperate masses of the black poor, but the millions of poorly nourished, unemployed, badly housed and dentally challenged poor whites who are also shut out of Richville.  

Most of the peoples of the "feral underclass" don't even get to go in to clean the toilets of the well-off.  Most of them  are, quite literally, surplus to requirements – not even necessary any longer as cannon fodder or servants, or as reminders of what happens if you don't play the game hard enough or well enough. 

There is a far higher proportion of black and hispanic people in poverty in the USA than white people, (25% and 22% respectively), but poor white people outnumber them. An estimated 22 million white people in the USA live in poverty and that's a large and potent source of disaffection and anger.

As more of white America slides into poverty, how much more effective could it be than for the power elite to ramp up that old trusty division by telling them that the foot inside the boot that's pressing their faces in the mud belongs to a person of colour?  And, cold-hearted cynics that they are, they then point the finger of blame for racism and religious intolerance at those poor white people who typically produce the most unsophisticated and visibly extreme expressions of it.  

Keep them all at each others' throats.  Divide and rule.

Poor, dispossessed, uneducated white people living shit lives, shut out of the dream that they've been told was their's by birth right, gobbling up all the unhealthy products (physical and metaphysical) that the corporate state sells them, trying desperately to fill the empty holes where community, pride, and sense of purpose used to be  – and who do they blame? Not the cynical corporate power elite that has staged a coup detat and taken over the world – no, of course not, they blame those other poor people with skin tones and/or belief systems different from their own.

The ideology of racial difference is, like petroleum jelly, volatile and deadly in itself, but  mix in the white phosphorous of religious intolerance, and you have social napalm.

Divide and rule. 

A sense of "racial" superiority is an illusory compensation for the objective lack of power of the white under class, just as the sense of sexual superiority is an illusory compensation for economically powerless men. 

Divide and rule. 

So, who really benefits from the twin ideologies of religious and racial difference – those essential components in the foundations and walls of Richville? 

The international power elite is still largely white and male, but just as they don't have any loyalty to country or nation in their pursuit of power and profit, they will happily ignore skin tone, gender and religion when it suits.

BUT, we only have to look at which continent is still being raped and pillaged, what peoples remain at the bottom the world’s hierarchy of power and privilege to know that, in the cruel and divisive hierarchy of colour, white still trumps everything. 

Of Monsters and Men

Are the makers of the Kony video naïve or is there a more sinister motive behind what they are doing? I am torn between thinking this is a great movement and knowing that it actually serves the interests of the corporate elites and their servant politicians, technocrats and bureaucrats. I’ve no doubt that most of the supporters are as well meaning as they are naïve but I reserve judgment on the movers behind the movement.

Vile, sociopathic, religious nut job that Kony is – he is NOT the world's worst criminal.

Kony is currently hiding out in The Congo and hasn’t been active in Uganda for years.  And the fact is that if the Uganda army wasn't so busy doing Washington's dirty work it could probably have captured or killed Kony years ago.

Look at the way propaganda works, and we can see that the demonisation of individuals has the useful by-product of obscuring the role of political, industrial and financial institutions and diverting attention away from their activities.

This Facebook movement – great though it may be in awakening the consciences of the children of the world's privileged elite – is, ironically, doing USA Inc’s dirty work by justifying Africom's role and expansion in the region. 

Are these people really so naive that they think the reason Obama sent in US advisers (remember Vietnam) is to help the Ugandan army capture Kony? Are they unaware of the role that Africom plays in the neo-imperialist scramble for Africa's mineral and oil resources – and in combating China's growing influence on the continent?  Do they expect the Ugandan army to invade the Congo in pursuit of Kony?

In that very clever, tear-jerking video, there was not a word about the IMF and World Bank; not a word about the reasons WHY "99% of the world doesn't know who Kony is" – and not a word about the 4 million who have died in The Congo, for example – and how much blood is on the hands of the new imperialists who may not have wielded the pangas or fired the bullets but who created the conditions in which that has happened and will continue to happen.

Who sells Kony his weapons? Who manufactures them?  Who funds their purchase?  Most importantly, who benefits from the creation and perpetuation of a bloated, self-serving domestic elite in Africa? 

Look at Nigeria – behind Libya, it has the greatest proven oil reserves on the continent.  Lagos has the greatest concentration of billionaires in Africa but most Nigerians live on less than $2US a day; half of young Nigerians are unemployed, and 80% of people do not have access to safe drinking water.

And take a look at the role of the IMF and its Structural Adjustment Policies which require "austerity measures" such as currency devaluation, lifting of trade tariffs, the removal of subsidies and budget cuts to critical public sector services as a condition of loans.

Mugabe was okay while he played the game according to the rules but the moment he said no to the IMF and got into bed with the Chinese, he became a dictator. We can see the same spin at work in the way the media portrays other ‘dictators’; the Saudis may be dictators but they are good ones. Saddam and Gadaffi were clad in monster costumes the moment it suited the elites.

I despise all men of mindless violence – especially those who stay safe in their corporate HQs or seats of government or places of worship and send young men and women out to die.  I reserve my greatest odium for the mega-monsters who directly create the conditions in which mini-monsters like Kony can exist. The mega-monsters would have us believe they are defending all that is good and true and are at great pains to hide the essential truth – their own cold, calculating, antisocial self-interest.

It’s so transparent it’s hard to believe that so many people fall for it – but they have been carefully groomed to do so.

Most first world people are addicted to immediate gratification. They have a belief in their own entitlement. They have a reduced attention span – so much so that even the dumbest reality TV show or doco requires a reprise of what happened before the incessant ad breaks. They struggle to deal with an unprecedented information and sensory overload. They live in conditions of social isolation and dislocation characterised by a breakdown of community and – critically – of belief and trust in communal action.

This is not accidental.

That this movement encourages a belief in the ability to make a difference and promotes the power of  the communal voice, is a good thing. BUT the Kony video and the movement behind it does very little to shed light on what is actually happening in Africa – and more importantly, it does nothing tor challenge the international power elites which are profiting from it.

When they call for a similar movement to really challenge the corporate giants in order to further the legitimate demand that the peoples of Africa benefit from their own natural resources – I’ll be impressed. 

In the meantime, the hope is that some of those who have been awakened by this video will start to utilise the internet to find out the real whys and wherefores of the rape of Africa.