November 7, 2011
The Ethics of Derren Brown
Over the past decade the illusionist, magician and psychological manipulator Derren Brown has produced some of the most consistently entertaining and provocative television available. But my appreciation extends beyond mere entertainment, and well into the professional.
A large part of my research consists in understanding the foundations of the major western schools of moral philosophy. To simplify rather a lot, probably the two most influential and important approaches to moral philosophy in the modern Anglophone tradition are as follows. First, that which locates our moral commitments and beliefs in the operations of sentiment and emotion and relegates reason to the role of handmaiden. Second, that which privileges reason and makes rationality foundational.
David Hume remains the great proponent of the first, “sentimentalist” tradition. For Hume, “reason is, and ought only ever to be, the slave of the passions”. Moral codes are built on patterns of emotional reaction to our peers, developed over time, and heavily influenced by custom as we sympathetically identify with each other to build bonds of psychological commitment. Our moral judgements originate in our inner sentiments. They are brought by us to the world we experience and which we “gild and stain” with the passions; they are not found there by some faculty, or revealed to us by the operations of reason alone.
The alternative, rationalist, view receives its most sophisticated formulation in the work of Immanuel Kant. Simplifying terribly: Kant proposed that each rational agent could discern universal moral laws founded in the operations of reason by applying a test of universalizability to any proposed action. In essence, a highly sophisticated extrapolation of the principle that you should not do to others what you would not have done to yourself, but now on pain of fundamental contradiction as an agent engaged in practical reasoning, inviting moral failure by the transcendent and immutable standards of reason and logic. (It is a not-insignificant fact that Hume preceded Kant, and that the apparent limitations of the Scotsman’s project were a motivation to that of the East Prussian’s. And although Kant wasn’t Anglophone, his influence on English-speaking philosophers has been enormous.)
Derren Brown’s output surely lends support to some species of the Humean position (though it may generate a darker view than the great optimist Hume himself entertained). Take Brown’s latest series, “The Experiments”. In week two, a crowd thinking they were taking part in a comedy game show systematically voted, by clear majorities, to inflict ever more unpleasant events on a hapless, unwitting target. From having this unsuspecting man falsely accused of sexual assault in a bar, they then framed him for shoplifting, ordered somebody to enter his flat and smash his TV, then voted for him to be kidnapped by a masked gang and thrown into the back of an unmarked van. All in under an hour.
The power of reason was conspicuously lacking there, as the passions of mob-mentality rapidly took over. In previous series, Derren has performed a range of stunts, from manipulating ordinary people into committing armed robberies, to directing them to pick seemingly random objects and “predicting” this in advance, to getting strangers in the street to hand over their wallets and keys just by being asked. Brown’s work consistently shows just how malleable we are; not only in our behaviors, but in our reactions to each other and in particular to figures in authority.
Of course, proponents of Kantian positions will say that this is all besides the point: “out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made”, as Isaiah Berlin famously embellished. That human beings are in fact prone to manipulation, and that reason is frequently over-ridden by their passions, is allegedly irrelevant to the question of what they should do, and whether a more fundamental moral law does exist. Maybe so. Though perhaps one might wonder what the point of such a law is, if it seems to easily ignored, assuming it’s ever even discovered by any human being in the first place.
Rgardless, the implications for politics (as distinct from abstract moral theory) are surely different. Politics absolutely is about what will happen, and not merely what it would be nice in an ideal world. Yet the evidence from Brown, handily available online at 4OD, is that rationality and reason are just about the last things governing most of us. Not only are we buffeted about by our passions, but more worryingly, those who understand how to manipulate those passions can buffet us in directions they choose. This was something well known to Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, and now variously credited with the invention of both modern political propaganda and mass consumer advertising.
Kantian political philosophies that emphasise the rationality of citizens as the primary loci for discussions of (for example) what more just and equal societies might look like, may thus be barking up two wrong trees simultaneously. Firstly, if rationality is not be the primary matter of political action and reaction, taking it as one’s starting point may well doom one’s conclusions to parochialism and irrelevance. Secondly, waxing hypothetical about what a more just or equal society would look like risks missing what really matters in politics: working out who controls who, how they do it, and making sure they do it in ways that are less nasty than others. To spell the point out: the symbiotic relationship between Fox News and the Tea Party, with the specter of the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election now firmly on the horizon, surely does not reflect well on the dominant trend for rationalist political philosophy in many North American and British universities.
In these respects, Derren Brown offers important materials for thinking about both moral and political philosophy, at least for those willing to accept that dusty tomes and wise authorities do not have a monopoly on insight. Of course, it may be replied that there’s nothing in Derren Brown that can’t be found in the properly peer-reviewed experimental psychology literature. Don’t we know all of this from Milgram and the Stanford Prison experiments? Actually, this simply raises another host of questions. Because in his latest series, Brown has been conducing “experiments” that would never pass a modern academic experimental ethics committee.
Take his latest offering: The Guilt Trip. In this special feature, Brown systematically manipulated a totally unsuspecting man, Jody, into feelings of guilt, whilst inducing situations which caused him to repeatedly doubt his own memory. Over the course of a weekend, Brown – working behind the scenes – used systematic deception and manipulation to maneuver Jody into confessing to a murder he did not commit. Jody was subjected to increasing stress over a series of days, and his every move was filmed without his knowledge (including the use of cameras in his hotel bedroom). During his first interview with the “police”, and in the interval between this interview and his walking to the local police station to hand himself in for a murder he did not commit, Jody exhibited high levels of stress, confusion and panic. He consented to none of this. Given how uncomfortable this was as viewing “entertainment”, one can easily imagine how it felt to be Jody. And to know one would not like it.
I say that this “experiment’” would not have passed an academic ethics committee. How do we know? Because by the standards of modern experimental ethics committees, no academic department would now permit the Milgram or Stanford Prison experiments. (Indeed it was partly because of these experiments that the rules on what you could and could not do to volunteers were dramatically tightened). Yet, arguably at least, judging by the standards of prolonged distress and acute anxiety – not to mention systematic manipulation, deception and unwitting surveillance – what Brown did to Jody was worse than, say, what Milgram had his subjects think they were doing to other people.
But does this simply mean that vital psychological experimentation can now only be conducted outside of the academy? Brown’s results in his latest series – pace any discrediting hidden trickery – are fascinating. Getting a hypnotized man to think he’s shot Stephen Fry; directing a masked television audience into advocating the kidnap of an unsuspecting man; manipulating an innocent into confessing to a murder he did not commit. These “experiments” stand to tell us not just about our psychologies as individuals and groups, but about the moral and political philosophies compatible with those internal workings. Has academic science now become so restricted that truly important work has to be done in the intellectual wild west of television?
That’s a difficult question. But it wasn’t the one that bothered me the most when watching a traumatised Jody agonise about whether he had been capable of murdering a man with a croquet hammer, and not even remembering he’d done it. What most truly disturbed me was the feeling that Brown had simply gone too far this time. My sympathetic identification with Jody ensured I spent most of the hour wanting this “experiment” to stop. Here was a man being put through hell, and not primarily in the name of science (let’s be honest), but for mass entertainment.
When it comes to science, questions of the benefit some potentially harmful experiments might yield versus the rights and welfare of the individuals affected are notoriously difficult to settle. Was the insight gleaned from Stanford sufficient to justify the abuse the “prisoners” went through at the hands of their “guards”? Do utilitarian benefits trump some of the rights of some individuals? Given the value of scientific and intellectual advance, those are genuinely difficult questions. What seems more clear cut is that framing a man for shoplifting (with corresponding “arrest” by “police”), or getting another to think they have killed another human being in cold blood, simply in the name of Friday-night-fun, is not acceptable.
But then, Brown has a strong reputation for looking after the psychological wellbeing of his subject (victims?) after the show is over. And in the case of Jody, several minutes were dedicated to his personally enthusing after the event about how great the experiment had been. Cue numerous shots of Jody immediately seeing the funny side of it all, laughing along with not-a-little relief. By pulling the emotional heartstrings so adeptly, Brown dramatically lessened the sense of viewer guilt that what had been done to this man was wrong. All’s well that ends well. Right? And who’s to say whether Brown was wrong to so manipulate us viewers – isn’t that part of what you accept when you tune in to this sort of show? And if – and it’s a big ‘if’ – we actually learn from Brown’s “experiment”, does that make it OK? Even when bearing in mind that what he ultimately gets paid for is the provision of our entertainment?
March 9, 2011
That Egypt Thing
During the Egyptian uprising, I didn’t have much to say. Far too much was being said already, and little of it well-informed. I was, of course, struck by the fervent optimism and passionate belief espoused by almost all on the Left. For this uprising – we were assured by many – was a truly democratic revolution, by a people yearning to be free. These were Democrats In Waiting, slaving beneath the Yoke of Tyranny. We had only to wait for The People to cast off Their shackles and a New Age of Democratic Freedom* would dawn.
Amidst the excitement and hubristic proclamation, it seemed to me consistently unwise to pass any judgements during the heat of the moment. For three considerations in particular seemed, if anything, to tell in the direction of pessimism about Egypt’s prospects.
Firstly, that the entire Middle East sits atop a pile of what Flying Rodent so aptly labels “democracy kryptonite”, aka oil. Given this particularly pressing truth, the long arm of America was never likely to withdraw its hand. After half a century of careful investment and planning, the US was hardly going to let things go all Venezuela in a key military and economic hotspot. At least, not if it could help it – and so on into the future.
Secondly, and closely connectedly, even the most cursory glance at the political situation during the Egyptian uprising revealed that the army always held the final balance of power. It was clearly with the support of the army that Mubarak would stand, or fall. In the end he fell. And now the army’s ruling council runs Egypt, following what was technically a military coup d’etat. Of course, it is quite possible that the army will cede power following elections in September. But it’s actually unclear whether there will be any elections in September. And as there has been no effective opposition in Egypt for decades, it’s also unclear whether will be any viable political alternatives on offer even if the ballots go ahead.
Furthermore, a kindergarten knowledge of history reminds us that never, ever, anywhere, has a ruling section of society willingly and freely given up power to those beneath it. Political revolutions – by which I mean proper revolutions, not eventualities which see nasty Mr Mubarak go to Sharm el Sheikh and his generals simply take over the running of affairs – are achieved by the forceful and bloody seizure of power by one group from another. The army is highly unlikely to let power go to any whom it does not approve of. Now at this point, note that democracies tend not to flourish when the military is the primary political power within a state. Now further note that for decades the primary source of American leverage over Egypt has come in the form of military aid. Things, to put it mildly, do not point in the direction of Hope and Change.
Thirdly, given that Egypt has no history or tradition or functioning democratic governance, the transition to any such regime is likely to be precarious. This is a country without democratic norms; a country where ordinary people have not yet had time to adapt to a political system which involves putting enormous amounts of trust and responsibility into the hands of parties whom one did not vote for. (Because the logic of democracy is that nobody’s favoured candidates can win every election, every time.) It is a country in which those who hold the strings of power, patronage and influence have not yet evolved the mechanisms of reciprocal deferred trust when out of power. The arrangements whereby electoral losers amongst the elite abstain from recourse to violence and thuggery, on the guarantee that their interests will not suffer too much in the short term and that they’ll get another meaningful shot at power shortly.
All of which is not to say that Egyptians – or Arabs, or Muslims – “cannot do democracy”. That is a piece of crass racism, against which we recall that less than a century ago respectable British individuals in respectable British newspapers urged the folly of democratic systems. Men who called for the imperative of strong rule; the clarity and good governance provided by Messrs Hitler and Mussolini during times of straightened economic woe. But it is to say that democracy is a difficult, complicated thing. It takes time to emerge, and requires favourable historical, geographical, social, economic and political settings. At present, Egypt appears to have none of these – albeit in significant part thanks to the grubby paws of The Land of the Free.
But then blaming everything on America just won’t do, either. For bound-up in the over-excited and premature rhetoric of Democracy and Freedom for Egypt was often the assumption that here was a democratic people simply yearning to be free. The implicit assumption being that They (what, all of them? young and old? rich and poor? muslim and christian?) were really just like Us. And that when They were given power, They would behave just like Us – a situation happily dovetailing with their new Democratic Freedom.**
But recent reports show that this is all a little too lazy. With dead Coptic Christians following religious clashes with sections of the majority Muslim population, this appears to be a society which hasn’t had the good fortune (and placatory economic development) to get beyond the bloody religious frenzies that our own blessed Isles used to play such sanguinary host to. And then there’s the International Women’s Day march in Tahir Square, which saw angry men charging the marchers, dragging them to the floor, beating and sexually harassing them, as police and army watched from the sidelines.
Certainly, these events are too isolated to tell us anything about “Arab culture” (or if you like, “Muslim mores”). Societies, religions, peoples and cultures are complex (and there’s plenty of violent hatred against women in the UK too, let’s not forget). To infer anything from the above in terms of positive substantive content would, again, be crass racism or outright stupidigy. But these happenings are nontheless enough to put the lie to the naively optimistic (and self-servingly convenient) assumption that They are just like Us, sharing Our Values, the outward political expression of which will necessarily be Democracy and Freedom.***
Those whom this piece is primarily aimed at will likely mistake the above for a sort of petty schadenfreude. They will think that I am indifferent about the sufferings and poor prospects of ordinary Egyptians, in service of some wider self-satisfied political cynicism. But that is wrong. I would genuinely like for it to be the case that Egypt could enjoy the prosperity, security and advantage of a nation like Britain (for all its faults). It sincerely saddens me that so many people’s lives must be made abject by forces beyond their control (such as the profitability of the British arms and oil industries). The point, however, is that just because I would like it to be otherwise, it does not mean that it is otherwise. And I adapt my assessments accordingly. I have this funny idea that other people should do the same.
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*notice the marriage of two complex concepts, introduced unexplained and unsubstantiated as though nothing in the world could be more obvious.
** that conjunction again.
*** in for the third, whatever it actually means.
January 11, 2011
A History of Violence
Like Shuggy, I am conflicted. Blaming Caribou Barbie and her Tea Party for the shooting of Gabrielle Gifford sits uncomfortably with a general suspicion of ascribing easy mono-causal responsibility. Chris Dillow, as usual, offers the sober corrective.
On the other hand, Michael Tomasky is surely onto something:
“Direct responsibility for what happened Saturday? No. Mentally ill people are mentally ill. The Beatles weren’t responsible for the messages that Charles Manson heard in their music. But there’s a difference…Today’s Republicans and conservative commentators, however, surely understand the fire they’re playing with. But they do it, and a tragedy like Saturday’s won’t stop them, as long as they can maintain a phoney plausible deniability and as long as hate continues to pay dividends at the ballot box.”
Dave Osler points to the pervasive violence of American popular culture. Although I resist the inference that violent films/video games/rap music lead to political violence (loose gun laws seem far more important), again I think Dave is onto something.
For America exhibits an extraordinary history of violence, which I don’t think is comparable with the modern histories of (say) west European states. (It’s always worth remembering, of course, that American only has a modern history; this is often important in its politics and culture.)*
Not forgetting the 17th century religious persecutions of the North-Eastern seaboard (perpetrated, of course, by believers who had fled persecution), pre-revolution colonial America was arguably characterised by two things in particular. Firstly, violent competition for territory between (especially) Britain and France. Both recruited Native American mercenaries who were employed to kill the other side – but who were then defrauded of their own lands, or exterminated by their erstwhile allies. Secondly, slave-based agriculture, especially in the South. These are social and political foundations simply shot-through with violence, which then lived long in both the reality and mythology of the western frontier.
The modern Tea Party, of course, takes its name from an early event in a violent political revolution – and ultimately, war – perpetrated by white patrician slave-owners. An uneasy compromise between North and South following the implementation of independent federal government held until the mid-19th century, when this new nation tore itself apart in the bloodiest and most brutal war the planet had ever seen. (It would have to wait until 1914 to see a worse one).
Even with the abolition of slavery, something approaching black equality was only seen after the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And despite the left-liberal white intelligentsia adopting the pacifist Martin Luther King as its poster boy, we really shouldn’t forget Malcolm X. Or the fact that King himself was assassinated. In the same decade, incidentally, that one President and his President-hopeful brother both met violent ends. And whilst we’re talking about the legacy of slavery and presidential assassination, let’s not forget how the Great Emancipator left this mortal coil.
This is a very potted history; one blog post can’t sustain a worthwhile historical thesis. But the point I want to drive at is that although the Tea Party are, without doubt, batshit crazy, they are batshit crazy in a very American way. We’ve all been reminded of Sarah Palin’s infamous healthcare crosshairs. But who said this?
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty…And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
Why, Third President of the Republic Thomas Jefferson, of course.
Certainly, Tea Partiers don’t have a monopoly on political Americana. We’re talking about a very multifaceted entity, and its political traditions and heritages vary and may be represented in many ways. But when people point to the latest tragedy and intimate that this is about more than just permissive gun laws, I think they’re probably right.
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*Which is not to say that west European states don’t exhibit their own varieties of internal violence – just that they are, I think, substantially different.
January 3, 2011
Why are we all democrats now?
I don’t see eye to eye with Norm on a fair few things, politics-wise. But his recent piece on the self-serving abuse of the word (and concept) “democracy” amongst much of the left is basically spot-on:
“… what is worst here is something captured not by any single quotation, but by a kind of miasmic subtext. This is that there exists somewhere underneath the deficiencies of ‘electoral democracy’ an already formed will of the people, a will in support of what Gopal and other meshuggeneh-leftist spokespeople want, but which is blocked by the distorting mechanisms of the non-real democracy they lament. This extraordinary assumption, supported by no empirical evidence, never seems sufficiently to agitate those who hold it into trying to explain why no party or movement standing on the kind of political programme [they] would want to see has been able to come even half way close to winning an electoral majority.”
That there is a “real” democratic will of “The People”, lying behind what is currently actually being expressed by the people, is not a particularly new thought. It also has a fairly long and somewhat ignoble history. (Les Jacobins, anyone?)
In the rush to equate “democracy” with whatever particular value or outcome political leftists favour, the complexity of that concept is almost always overlooked. (Ditto when smearing any opposed position as “undemocratic”.) Yet democracy refers to at least two things. Firstly, a process by which decisions are made. Secondly, a value about the ordering of political systems and activities.
Indeed, the word “democratic” is now thoroughly loaded with positive value-connotations, whilst “undemocratic” is an unambiguous political slur. Yet this is actually a quite remarkable fact. Because until roughly the 20th Century, no sane person ever thought democracy was a good idea. Rule by the people? Power in the hands of the mob? You’d have to be stark raving crackers to want that.
The only place it was ever tried was a slave-owning Greek city two and a half thousand years ago, where the adult male citizenry of just 40,000 was given direct decision-making power. The experiment lasted about 100 years, in which time a devastating war was lost to neighbouring Sparta, before Macedonian conquerors put a stop to it all.
For the next two millennia “democracy” was a term of denigration; a synonym for anarchy. So how did a very different modern take (i.e. electoral representation) on an ancient Greek idea about processes of decision-making undergo such reversal of fortunes? How did “democracy” become the only legitimate form of politics admissible on the world stage today, and in turn the cardinal political value in the West?
One very interesting answer is offered by the political theorist John Dunn.* That at some level, it basically comes down to the rise of American power.
Despite its federalist political system having been originally sold as republican (and as explicitly not democratic), by the 20th century America found itself an ascendant global super-power. As well as having just contributed to the defeat of Fascist Germany and Imperial Japan, the USA was facing down the world’s other global superpower: Soviet Russia. Which of course claimed to be a workers’ paradise, run by and for The People.
After the defeat of Fascism in Europe and in the face of Communism in Russia, American-style representative electoral democracy was enthusiastically promoted by that Superpower (and its allies) as the only legitimate form of rule. And by the mid-20th Century, that form of rule was now universally known (for reasons that would take too long to explain) in the West as “democracy” – despite looking nothing like the original Greek experiment.
To keep cutting a long story short, America won the Cold War. If this didn’t quite bring The End of History, it did do an awful lot to finalise the ubiquity of “democracy” as the only legitimate form of political organisation, and its inauguration as the cardinal political value. In a Europe where only 75 years ago significant sections of both left and right would have pooh-pooh’d “democracy” as either fraudulent or undesirable, we’re suddenly all democrats now.
If Dunn’s answer is broadly right, however, it leads us to noticing a certain irony. Much of the unreflective left, which brands all its values as synonymous with “democracy”, trades precisely on the ubiquity of democracy as the cardinal political value in order to advance its aims. Yet much of that same left typically rails against American hegemony and “imperialism” – without considering that it may be the rise of American power itself which largely explains their felt need to equate all approved political values with “democracy”.
Of course, there may be no significant practical consequences to this; ironies need not have any applied pay-out. Then again, one might believe that a touch of (historical) self-awareness helps to breed more considered self-reflection, and perhaps better political judgement. Or at the very least, the penning of marginally less banal political polemics.
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*See his Setting the People Free (by far the most accessible of his work, though this theme is pursued in his other writings).
October 27, 2010
Necessities of War
Saturday’s Wikileaks revelations – of British and American troops in Iraq covering-up civilian deaths whilst systematically ignoring and facilitating torture – have begun to expose the full horrors of a war that long-ago went terribly wrong. Yesterday’s Guardian revelations – that British troops systematically employed torture methods that violate the Geneva Convention – makes the picture darker still, even if only by adding detail.
One consequence of the latest revelations is that they demonstrate the nonsense-thinking behind the original case and “justification” for war.
A central plank upon which the Mad Mesopotamian Adventure was floated was the claim – made tacitly or overtly – that this would be a new kind of war. Our troops would not be invaders but liberators; warriors of peace welcomed by grateful Iraqis. Smart bombs would target military installations only ensuring a minimum of civilian deaths. The Axis of Evil would be confronted by the Forces of Freedom; if there was violence only Bad Guys would receive it, as Good Guys basked in the death-lite glory of Shock and Awe.
Such, at least, were the assurances given by a Bush Administration salivating for war.
Connectedly, what came to be known as the “Decent Left” in the UK criticised those who refused to back military action. The Decents chastised what they claimed were the gutless faux-principles of an anti-war left which wouldn’t put its cruise missiles where its mouth was.
Underlying this rhetoric of decency was precisely the American assurance that a new kind of war could and would be fought. A very special kind of war, in fact: one which transcended the horrors that history teaches have attended every other war in history. Somehow the Republican Party – with Tony Blair in tow – would negate the logic of all previous conflict and be back in time for Christmas.
Hence: no longer would the presence of armed victors over invaded peoples lead to the use of planned and calculated violence against civilians. No longer would senior officers employ violent tactics to deal with rebellious native populations who viewed their “liberators” as oppressive invading conquerors. No longer would scared and exhausted young men (sent into a country to act as killing machines and operating in permanently hostile environments) enact revenge on civilians or suspected enemy fighters they (rightly or wrongly) believed had killed their comrades and were trying to kill them.
Rather, the logic of what armies do in conflict situations – or even what individuals in positions of power are prone to do to those they control – would be magically left behind. The Bad Guys would get their comeuppance, the Good Guys would ride off into the sunset. This would be, precisely, a Decent War.
We now know for sure that it didn’t work that way. Abu Ghraib, for a start, was no aberration. “Our” side did profoundly horrible and nasty things for the fundamental reason that profoundly horrible and nasty things are constituent features of all wars – and they are perpetrated by all sides, albeit in varying degrees in varying places and times.
Chris Bertram is thus right when he says:
“During an earlier phase of discussion, when those advocates [of war] were still unapologetic, but whilst the slaughter was well underway, we were treated to numerous disquisitions on moral responsibility: yes there is slaughter, but we are not responsible, it is Al Qaida/the Sunni “insurgents”/Al-Sadr/Iran ….
Well the latest Wikileaks disclosures ought to shut them up for good (it won’t, of course). “Our” side has both committed war crimes directly and has acquiesced, enabled, and covered up for the commission of such crimes by others. The incidents are not isolated episodes: rather we have systematic policy.”
But we can and must go further. The latest revelations are much more than just a reminder that the advocates of war were wrong in this instance. They drive-home a fact about war that should never have been forgotten in the first place: that war is always, and by necessity, hell.
The next time a Bush (or a Blair) comes offering “humanitarian” war of liberation, we would do well to remember such a basic fact. Iraq now sadly confirms an already long-established judgement of history: that “humanitarian war” is inevitably oxymoronic. Even if some wars, very occasionally, have to be fought regardless.
September 12, 2010
Frankenstein Media
If you were to draw up a list of “People Most-Well Suited for Initiating Inter-Faith Dialogue and Putting Pressure on the U.S. President”, a redneck loon threatening to hold a Burn the Koran Ceremony would probably not be near the top.
Similarly, those consulted on how to deal with the results of a terrible tragedy – and empowered to bring public pressure on politicians and decision-makers – should not include victims of that tragedy.
That’s because being a victim (or the relative of one) is no qualification in itself. Indeed, just the opposite. Victims, and their friends and relatives, are often the worst people to offer advice on how to deal with a tragedy, precisely because they are emotionally involved in a way that severely distorts judgement. When my friend was murdered, I would have been the worst person to decide what happened to his killers precisely because my desire for revenge was barbaric.
Yet 9 years on from the tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we’ve seen exactly the opposite of what sanity would prefer.
Pastor Jones – leader of a congregation reported as being between 30 and 50 – has been catapulted onto the international stage by threatening to carry out an act of gross stupidity and bigotry. He is now in New York, demanding to speak to the Imam behind the “Ground Zero Mosque”. Which of course isn’t a Mosque, and isn’t at Ground Zero.* Thanks to the saturation coverage he has received, Jones has been able to put pressure on President Obama himself, and conspiracy theories of back-door deals are rife.
In turn, families of those killed on 9/11 have been quizzed relentlessly on how they feel about Pastor Jones, before naturally moving to subjects like the “Ground Zero Mosque” (WIAM,AIAGZ), Muslims in America, and the Afghanistan conflict. And whilst some of these interviewees have shown admirable restraint, reflection and forgiveness – that’s not the point.
The point is that the modern 24 hour media has this effect: it elevates people who are the least qualified and suited to offering policy advice and opinion – and in turn bring pressure to bear on politicians – precisely to positions of influence.
What’s interesting (and scary) is that for the most part this isn’t done on purpose. Whilst the Murdoch Fox News vanguard does seek to manipulate ordinary people – whether they be innocent mourners or hick loons – most news outlets don’t. They’re just reporting lazily on the “human interest” angle, going for cheap and easy stories by covering what everybody else already is, and filling schedules with handy telegenic victims. The process is self-perpetuating, and grows to be something none of its makers intended…or controls. Call it the Frankenstein Media Effect.
This weekend, the Frankenstein Media Effect will probably not result in further tragedy, at least not directly. And as far as insane and illogical responses to 9/11 go, the US-UK military adventure in Iraq is pretty hard to top.
Admittedly, sometimes the Frankenstein Media secures positive outcomes; think Joanna Lumley and the Ghurkhas, even if the Coalition has forgotten its promises already. But usually the results are more negative. Mountains of statistics on recreational drug-use may as well spontaneously combust, the minute a bereaved mother calls for a substance ban on the 6 o’clock news. Anecdotes from statistically anomalous cancer survivors power a “debate” about using scarce public resources to purchase medicine already proven not to offer justifiable value for money.
Our (global) Frankenstein Media is a fact of life. And because it’s a Frankenstein effect we’re dealing with, there’s nobody we can go to and demand that they shut it off. At least, short of abolishing the free press altogether. Which, obviously, is not recommended.
Nice world we have here, eh? Sleep tight.
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* BBC reporting on the matter prefers to call it a “Mosque and Cultural Centre”. When it’s not a Mosque. Why? Because if they report the truth, the right will accuse the BBC of left wing PC gawn maadism – so the BBC distorts the truth in the name of “balance”. Kafka would be proud.
August 31, 2010
The Conservative Left
John Stuart Mill once remarked:
“…the enemies of religious freedom, when hard pressed, occasionally accept this consequence, and say, with Dr. Johnson, that the persecutors of Christianity were in the right; that persecution is an ordeal through which truth ought to pass, and always passes successfully, legal penalties being, in the end, powerless against truth, though sometimes beneficially effective against mischievous errors.”
Mill thought this was nonsense. To assume that an idea or argument would triumph in civil society simply because it is true (or valuable) was complacent and false. Persecution could destroy truth; there was no guarantee that right would overcome might. The counter-measure was to guarantee free expression and the conflict of ideas, without fear of persecution, so as to provide the best chance for true – or valuable - ideas to flourish when they might otherwise be suppressed and lost.
The correlate to Mill’s suspicion is the realisation that victorious ideas – often meaning the ideas we now take for granted – will win not because they were right or the best, but because they had the most powerful backers at crucial junctures of history.
Hence, although the American Founding Fathers were clear that they were setting up a republic and explicitly not a democracy, America now presents itself as the leader of the Free World, membership of which requires express commitment to democratic political arrangements. Indeed, on a day when American troops officially pull out of Iraq, many of that conflict’s apologists will claim that the hundreds of thousands dead are a price worth paying for “democracy in the middle east”.
Somewhere and somehow between 1776 and 2010, democracy went from being a byword for anarchy and disorder to the only legitimate form of government in the world – and the rise of American power is at the heart of that tale.
For better or for worse, we now often assume that democracy must have triumphed in the course of history simply because it was right to triumph. We don’t tend to pause and consider just how slippery a concept “democracy” really is. Nor do we often reflect upon the extent to which democracy’s victory was the direct result of two totalitarian states waging a war of mass attrition 70 years ago. It’s easier not to think about complexities; nicer to assume that if things turned out this way, that was because they deserved – and all is better because they did.
Yet how one thinks about the rightness of a set of ideas will often influence how one thinks about its consequences. For example: if one believes that free-market orientated Thatcherism won the battle of ideas in the 1980s because it was the best option for the country, that perhaps makes the resulting socio-economic inequalities 30 years down the line easier to swallow. By contrast, if the British rightward shift post-1979 is perceived as having more to do with the contingencies of a disorganised and suicidal Labour Party than the absolute superiority of right-wing market ideology, then the victory of Thatcherism may seem rather less ordained, and the consequences rather more open to criticism.
Given the importance and power of ideas regarding what people find acceptable, open to criticism, or positively sacrosanct, it’s unsurprising that battles of ideas are frequently waged by powerful figures. This eye-opening New Yorker article illustrates the extent to which the billionaire oil baron Koch brothers fund and direct right-wing campaigns designed to push anti-government libertarian agendas, whilst co-ordinating covert attacks on the Obama administration. The Tea Party movement brands itself as grass roots, but its string-pullers are a tiny, plutocratic capitalist elite.
And this observation of a Tea Party leader seems entirely correct: “Ideas don’t happen on their own. Throughout history, ideas need patrons.” Certainly. For if truth and veracity are insufficient to secure victory, then ideas will indeed need patrons. And the wealthier, more connected and successfully organised those patrons, the better.
But ideas don’t just need patrons, they also need energy. Passion, commitment, fervent belief and a sense of righteous purpose. The Tea Party movement and the ever-more radical American right clearly has these in abundance – even if it presently lacks control, direction or sanity. But even here in the UK, political energy and dynamism has been – for as long as I’ve been politically aware, at least – the property of the political right (in which I include the rightward drift of New Labour and its liberalising, pro-market reforms and acceptance of the Thatcherite settlement).
The left, when not campaigning (usually with futility) on single issues like the Iraq War or climate change, expends most of its energy fighting a rearguard defence against attacks on the welfare state and the remaining non-marketised areas of society. This rearguard defence is made more difficult by the evident fact that the modern left – following the collapse of even the pretence of a viable socialist alternative post-1989 – has no co-ordinated vision of what to put in place of the dominant right wing advance. As usual, the late, great Tony Judt put it best:
“The real problem facing Europe’s Socialists (I use the term purely for its descriptive convenience, since it is now shorn of any ideological charge) is not their policy preferences, taken singly. Job creation, a more ‘social’ Europe, public infrastructural investment, educations reforms, and the like are laudable and uncontroversial. But nothing binds these policies or proposals together into a common political or moral narrative. The Left has no sense of what its own political success, if achieved, would mean; it has no articulated vision of a good, or even of a better, society. In the absence of such a vision, to be on the left is simply to be in a state of permanent protest. And since the thing most protested against is the damage wrought by rapid change, to be on the left is to be a conservative.”
July 27, 2010
Being Careful What You Wish For
I’m too young, and too new to blogging, to have participated in the acrimonious debates over the Iraq war. Similarly I wasn’t fully aware of the rise of the Decent Left until well after it had happened.
In 2003 (at the tender age of 16) I opposed the Iraq War, and even went on anti-war demos. I was aware that Nick Cohen’s articles in my dad’s copy of The Observer were getting very odd, and I didn’t agree with them at all. That David Aaronovitch guy seemed to be progressing to the logical conclusion of being David Aaronovitch. I was aware of Christopher Hitchens, too, and aware that he was, well, Christopher Hitchens. More generally I thought it very odd that the supposedly left-wing Observer was supporting a war clearly based on disinformation, lies and what somehow passed for Bush-era American “strategising”.
When studying as an undergraduate Cohen’s What’s Left? was released. I read it, and thought the arguments based around Iraq were conspicuously bad. As I got older and more aware, I realised that Cohen’s depiction of the British left was a deeply deluded fantasy, apparently cooked-up for the purposes of subconscious self-vindication.
Fast forward three years and I’m blogging regularly. I know about Harry’s Place and Johann Hari’s turnaround. I appreciate the genius of the Flying Rodent. I can even happily accept that Norman Geras possesses some bonkers views but writes a very good blog.
But thus far I’ve missed the battles between The Decents and the anti-war left. Yesterday’s news of the leaked Afghan war logs changes things.
I could go for that nauseating holier-than-though, sitting-on-the-fence, not-picking-sides type blogging. This could be done by, firstly, pointing to the failings of The Decent left. So when Aaronovitch tweets (and Richard Kemp repeats) that:
“The stuff that recent Russian spies managed to filch won’t have been 1,000th as damaging to security as the Wikileaks material. Big moment.”
I could point out that this is hyperbolic nonsense. Because in case Dave and Rich haven’t noticed, we’re not only badly losing the war in Afghanistan, but the pashtun tribesmen and Taliban we’re fighting already know this. And furthermore, the war in Afghanistan is going so badly precisely because it is being waged against loosely organised guerrilla forces. The idea that the War Logs somehow reveal top-secret military strategy to a rival centralised intelligence source is not only stupid, it entirely ignores the dynamics of the situation.
Of course if I was doing the whole rise-above-it blogging thing, I’d then go on to criticise Sunny Hundal, arch-enemy of The Decents. In yesterday’s Pickled Politics blog Sunny criticised the Decent Left for its hypocrisy over approaches to free speech, human rights and so forth. I could easily castigate Sunny for being allegedly immature, and refusing to acknowledge the complexities of the enemy positions he’s outlining. Some boring blogging could ensue.
But y’know I’m a factious sot of guy, so to emulate the Decents and adopt an Americanism, fuck that shit.
The Decent Left has egg on its face, and there’s one overwhelming reason why (and it’s not getting the airing it deserves). Namely, that the War Logs are deeply embarrassing to the Decent Left precisely because this is what they wished for.
Oh sure they didn’t want a war that would go so catastrophically badly. But they did want war. They did want a world where American and British military power charged around the globe, stomping into countries re-ordering them for Democracy and Freedom overnight. As if history never happened in any of these places. As if interventionist foreign policy with no forward planning but chronic under-funding would be as easy as A,B,C.
The logs are war, laid bare and cold in all its macabre glory. And you know what the rub is? That if our military forces had focused singularly on the messed-up conflict in Afghanistan, concentrating resources and personal there, the situation being faced today might not be such a catastrophic clusterfuck. Instead we also went to war in Iraq – and promptly opened up two fronts which will now surely be looked back upon as military disasters far outstripping Suez not least by drastically heightening the domestic terror threat.
And the gains to the people of these places are what, exactly? Hundreds of thousands dead and mutilated? Power in the hands of gangster regimes and tribal warlords? Social destabilisation, economic devastation and ethnic violence? No doubt the history books will proclaim Blair and Bush the great liberators of our age.
In future The Decents ought to be more careful what they wish for. For who knows when inconvenient reality might spring forth in such public manner to show them the horror of their own deluded ideals.
June 15, 2010
David Cameron’s Splendid Isolation
Although I’m half French by birth and citizenship, I’ve only every used my British passport and I (with a certain amount of resigned despair and disgust) am currently supporting England at the World Cup.* But visiting France is always a useful experience to gauge our neighbours’ reaction to British politics and politicians.
Given that foreign interest is almost inevitably superficial, it’s hardly surprising that the French for a time were generally well disposed to Tony Blair – albeit for little more than he spoke decent French. Of course, that changed after the ill-conceived Mesopotamia Adventure of 2003. And indeed for much of the past 7 years Britain’s reputation has not stood particularly high on the continent.
Yet this summer it seemed Britain was finally enjoying something of a rapprochement with our French cousins. Again, the distance of foreign political issues means that most French don’t care for the particulars of UK domestic politics. Hence the worst failures of Dumbo Gordon were generally lost in translation, and he was instead seen as a firm and stable economic heavyweight, rightly credited with taking a decisive post-crisis recovery.
As for the Lib-Con coalition, the French have a certain difficulty appreciating just how rare a situation in Britain this is. For them, politics is generally built around particular personalities who conjure parties into existence for the transient purpose of putting whichever Chief into power. Coalitions of varying degrees are the French norm, and until Jacques Chirac introduced a bunch of reforms it was not unusual for the French President to be on the opposite political side to the Prime Minister (so-called co-habitation).
But one thing some of the French I spoke with did find disconcerting is Mr Cameron’s decision to pull the Tories out of the European People’s Party to sit with far-right crazies that D-Cam’s new best mate Nick Clegg recently called “nutters, anti-semites and homophobes“. In France the Front National polls up to 20%, and fascist leader Jean Marie Le Pen made it to the final head-to-head round of the 2002 Presidential election. Playing with the far right at the international level, for personal domestic gains, is no trivial matter. Not least because President Nicolas Sarkozy is himself a well-worn practitioner, but one struggling to remain popular.
Nonetheless, Britain seemed to be enjoying something of a renewed period of good-will.
I’m not sure how long it will last.
Mr Cameron has, after all, decided that the most important – and strategically wise – thing to do regarding the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is speak out about the importance of BP as a British company, and defend it from American criticism.
Just to recap: we’re looking at one of the absolute worst oil spills in history, which some experts are saying could go on until Christmas, and which is getting media coverage around the globe. The offending corporate party has chosen to show as little contrition as possible, and to blow repeated raspberries in the face of the American people. What does D-Cam do? He accuses Obama of picking on Britain.
The mind boggles, because Cameron’s reaction just seems so pointless. Why do this, when he could just say nothing at all? Why irritate the beleaguered Democratic administration – especially after Obama has already previously described Cameron as a “lightweight”? One suspects that Cameron is not tuned-in to the fact that half-Kenyan Obama with an acute awareness of British Imperial legacies (who conspicuously refused to talk of a US-UK “special relationship”) is cut from a different cloth to previous WASP presidents.
This does not bode well. If Cameron’s judgement of international matters is so poor (or his capture by interest lobby groups so extreme) that he wrongly calls one of the most blatantly obvious early diplomatic relations tests he could face, we can forget about the legacy of a 100 year entente cordial. Instead, prepare for a return to splendid isolation. But this time imposed instead of chosen, delivered by the cold shoulder of needlessly alienated nations.
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*I have never, ever supported France and indeed the only thing making England’s perenial awfulness bareable this time around is the fact that France are shaping up to be even worse – albeit sans extreme goalkeeping incompetence.
May 27, 2010
The Digital Front?
Today I received a most bizarre email.
It was from a woman called Elizabeth A. Lawton, who is apparently Research and Editorial Assistant at the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, George Washington University. The email was sent to the address available on this site, and therefore looked like it was targeted. I.e. somebody has obtained my email deliberately, and then attached it to a large mail out (recipients are hidden, indicating a large BCC-d email list, I suppose).
Attached to Lawton’s email is a PDF article, which I’m making available here. Lawton summarises the argument helpfully in her email to me:
“Bombing Iran’s non-nuclear military facilities is suggested by an article in a new issue of Military Review, an official publication of the U.S. Army. The author, GWU University Professor Amitai Etzioni acknowledges the futility and risks of attacking the nuclear sites. But he argues that instead of such attempts at “capacity reduction,” one can motivate Iran to engage in “behavior change.” This he argues can be achieved by bombing sites such as the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard, air defenses, various military encampments, airports and railroad centers. These attacks would be slowly ratcheted up, until Iran agrees to live up to its international commitments—that is, allows full inspection of its nuclear facilities and the dismantling of any that are designed to produce the material needed to make nuclear bombs, and the bombs themselves. Etzioni compares such causing of “pain” to the effects of sanctions, which also aim to change behavior, but which are much less potent. He adds that by warning the populations when such attacks are imminent, one can greatly reduce the number of civilian casualties.”
What on earth is going on? This blog doesn’t really deal with foreign policy issues, and I’ve only ever written about the middle east tangentially. So why am I being targeted by GWU staff, pushing a hawk bomb-Iran line?
To be honest, I don’t know. But I suppose one obvious possibility is that American military hawks in favour of launching an attack on Iran are attempting to a) raise the profile of a possible bombing campaign, b) advocate in favour of that possibility, and that c) they think a good way of doing this is by targeting political bloggers, even those in the UK who don’t write about the middle east of foreign policy.
Somebody with money has authorised this sort of (presumably) time-consuming exercise. So, is this the digital (home) front in 21st Century military propaganda?
Ideas welcome. I’d love to know if any other bloggers have received this weird mail out.
But for the record: I am not in favour of bombing Iran, and indeed think that launching another war in the middle east would be in all likelihood disastrous.
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Thought: I don’t think they can have gotten my email via WordPress, as the email address I was contacted on isn’t the email address that the blog is registered to.
