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 31, 2011
Fight Back!
Last December and January a group of extremely dedicated bloggers and activists assembled an e-reader – Fight Back! - collecting some of the best writings related to the student protests.
Dan Hancox did huge amounts of spadework, but Laurie Penny, Guy Aitchison, Siraj Datoo, Cailean Gallagher, Aaron Peters, Anthony Barnett and Niki Seth-Smith all made huge contributions too.
I – on the other hand – was mostly useless, dealing rather badly with a relationship breakdown whilst engaging in some hardcore academic navel gazing. Nonetheless, the others were kind enough to put my name on the cover, which I didn’t really deserve at all.
The original e-reader ran to 350 pages with contributions from 43 authors (one of them being myself, where I did actually contribute something semi-useful in the form of a chapter). It picked up a staggering 13,000 downloads in its first four weeks. Thanks to this enormous demand, Fight Back! is now being launched as a proper book.
Here’s the press release, for your information.
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Fight Back! A Reader on the Winter of Protest
Tasha Bell, 16, describes her experience in a kettle: “The police have pushed us from the top of the road to the bottom, using their thick lines, their horses and their batons. The crowd has thickened, and now I’m not on the front line anymore I’m deep in the middle. I have no control. I can feel my phone vibrating and I’m trying to move my arm to get it but I can’t.”
Joanna Biggs (LRB) describes the UCL occupation: “I hear words like ‘alert’, ‘critique’, ‘offensive’ and even ‘Marxism’. At the edges of the room students sit around circular tables hunched over their laptops, as if they knew how much they look like the photogenic Harvard students of The Social Network.”
Laurie Penny in “You Say You Want a Revolution”: “There can be no question that the conditions are right for a youth movement. The young people of Britain are suffering brutal, insulting socio-economic oppression. There are over a million young people of working age not in education, employment or training, which is a polite way of saying “up shit creek without a giro”.
For review copies, interviews, or for details of the London launch event on 6 April, contact the publishing team on fightback@opendemocracy.net // 07824 807 142 // 07552 569 196
March 29, 2011
Disrespect and the Media
Reading Stuart White’s Next Left piece on the media’s disrespectful coverage of minority violence, I’m left unsatisfied. Whilst the article – written with typical intellectual incision, accuracy and the parsimony – has been well received by almost all I know, I just don’t buy it.
I have to be careful here. Whereas I generally don’t care if I annoy people on the internet, Stuart is very much an exception. I greatly respect him not only as a blogger and political activist, but as an intellectual and an extremely talented political philosopher.* But in this instance I think he’s quite seriously off target, and it’s worth spelling out the (rather depressing, though these are hardly Stuart’s fault) reasons why.
Stuart wants to make two central claims, both captured in this paragraph:
“But let’s stop and consider ‘the media’. Nothing forces the media to focus, as much as it does, on the violent behaviour of a tiny minority. This is a choice. And in dealing with the media – for example, in launching a complaint to Sky or the BBC – we need to insist on what a profoundly disrespectful choice it is.”
The first claim is that the media is choosing to focus on activist violence, and moreover (and most importantly) that this choice is relatively free and (by implication) could easily be substituted for a more palatable alternative. The second claim (pursued in the rest of Stuart’s article) is that the media can be induced to switch from its unwelcome focus on minority violence to a more welcome focus on wider peaceful events, and this can be achieved specifically by emphasising how “disrespectful” its behaviour is to non-violent protestors and ordinary people generally.
Unfortunately, Stuart’s first claim is untenable when properly examined. The second claim rests upon the tenability of the first. Insofar as the first claim fails, so must the second. We see this as follows.
Stuart says that “Nothing forces the media to focus, as much as it does, on the violent behaviour of a tiny minority”. In a certain, very narrow, sense, this is true. Nobody holds a gun to “the media’s” head and says “focus on the violence”, or anything of that sort. But to set things up that way is to rule out far too much, far too quickly. Instead we must look at the environment within which the modern media operates, in particular the economic circumstances of the modern news industry.
Mass media organisations are almost all profit-seeking firms in a fiercely competitive industry threatened by obsolescence. The Guardian is a partial exception with its basis in the Scott Trust – but if it doesn’t find a way to make revenue soon, then like its competitors it’s headed for the toaster. The BBC is also a partial exception – but then in order to justify its license fee it must be able to show big numbers. So in a very real sense, it necessarily plays the numbers game too (competing especially with Sky News, who are always happy to scrape the bottom of the barrel).
How does a major media outlet secure numbers? By focusing on and pushing news stories that grab attention. What grabs more attention: thousands of people plodding along listening to some rather dull speeches, or face-covered anarchists smashing windows and lighting fires? QED.
Certainly it would be nice if individual editors took a bold stand. But then their superiors higher up the food chain would quickly come knocking. The same goes for the guys on the ground feeding in reports. “You don’t like it? No problem, the doors over there – somebody else will gladly do it for us. Oh, and how’s your pension fund?”
The media isn’t “forced”, in any simplistic sense, to focus so dogmatically on violent outbursts amidst otherwise peaceful mass demonstration. But to assume it does so for trivial, petty, vindictive or any easily escapable reasons is a mistake.
You really want to know why the mainstream media focuses on violence and unrest so excessively? Look in the mirror, meet your neighbours, and speak to your colleagues, all whilst considering the crisis of news reporting against the backdrop of early 21st century information technology capitalism. This is the media’s iron cage, and your friends and family are some of its bars.
I completely agree with Stuart that what the media does is disrespectful. But when we get clear on why it is so disrespectful it seems to me a hopeless pipedream to suppose that pointing out the fact of disrespect is likely to change anything at all. Respect may be part of the currency of egalitarian justice, but it doesn’t keep copy rolling.**
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* I can honestly remember reading his work as an undergraduate, and feeling proud to be at the same institution he worked at.
** That’s a cynical little joke for Oxford-trained political philosophers.
March 27, 2011
On Violence and Recent Protest
As previously noted, I have no problem per se with political violence. Its use and justification must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, with reference to myriad factors such as likelihood to succeed, ability to justify harm to victims, long-term advantages gained, greater evils averted, and so on. Use and justification of violence – like any other tool of politics – depends on firstly the judgement of those who deploy it, and at a later stage the judgement of those (if different) who must assess it (and quite possibly, sentence it). As a general rule, it is wise to hope for better judgement than worse, and from all concerned.
Some situations allow for more judgement, particularly with regards to strategy, than others. The leaders of the ANC, or the ETA, or Hamas, typically control the means of violence in hierarchical command structures. A few men will decide when and where to use violence, and dictate orders to subordinates. In such cases, judgement (including strategic planning) is in the hands of specific individuals with relatively high degrees of control. In turn, moral judgement by other parties as to the justified or unjustified use of that violence will in large measure focus on the decisions of the commanding individuals. The same, incidentally, goes for the aparatus of the modern state – though for complex and important reasons we tend to shy away from recognising the deeply and necessarily coercive natures of the states we find ourselves in and under.
But certainly not all instances of political violence fit this model. When the so-called “Black Bloc” of anarchist militants attacked stores on Oxford Street yesterday they were not part of a (para)military organised hierarchy with a leadership exercising strategic-tactical judgement – still less the militant wing of the 250,000 peaceful marchers congregating in Hyde Park. When UK Uncut protestors launched their non-violent direct action against Fortnum and Mason, they can hardly be held responsible for the spontaneous vandalism that enthusiasts in the assembled crowd promptly launched.
In these latter cases the problem with considering the use of political violence from the perspective of strategic judgement in particular is that it quite simply doesn’t apply. Before Saturday’s outbursts of violent direct action no hierarchy of command could exercise the sort of command and control upon which strategic judgement is predicated. Yet after the violence talk of strategic judgement seems largely besides the point. Insofar as there was any, it was exercised by individuals or small groups in loosely organised ways, in a situation of mass happenings over which nobody had meaningful control.
In turn, this makes the task of passing retrospective moral judgement over the uses of political violence on Saturday a nuanced affair. For a start, we must distinguish between the actions of opportunistic vandals, committed anarchists, young enthusiasts caught up in the moment, and those goaded and provoked by police tactics (if any of the above indeed turn out to apply).
Nonetheless, it remains possible to assume a third-party perspective in order to analyse yesterday’s events. Specifically, we can adopt a position of hypothetical strategic judgement. It is quite sensible to ask: if I had absolute control over what actions people did and did not take yesterday, which would I permit? Personally, I would have preferred an entirely peaceful protest. Not because I’m opposed to all political violence (I’m not), but because yesterday’s outbursts were unambiguously counter-productive, and predictably so.
By contrast, my strong sense is that if the student movement had remained entirely peaceful at the end of last year, it would certainly have achieved absolutely nothing. The broken windows at Millbank and the riots in Westminster attracted levels of attention that peaceful marching never could have. And importantly, I believe that the student violence did not lead to the same outcomes that purely peaceful protest would have (failed to) achieve.
Certainly, the Parliamentary vote was passed and in that sense the student protests failed. Yet the carnage witnessed in Parliament Square – chronciled by myself, Jeremy Gilbert and others in Fight Back! – will have sent a shiver down many Coalition MPs’ spines. Lib Dems in particular must know that the ferocity of student anger means that particular constituency is lost for the very foreseeable future. Tory MPs must know deep down that if things can get that bad that quickly before the cuts have even started to bite, the next 4 years will contain some very difficult fights. Perhaps this will only make the present Government even more determined and bullish – but my sense is that it will quietly make key decision-makers more wary, and Lib Dems more skittish. And even if all of that is wrong, I still think that the student protests stood a better chance the way they actually happened than any peaceful alternative could have offered.
By contrast, Saturday’s march needed something entirely different. It needed the other face of protest: the face of hundreds of thousands of ordinary, reasonable and respectable people calmly registering their disapproval. As Paul Mason has noted, if you can get your entire workforce out to a Saturday demonstration, this means something. The scale of yesterday’s protest, quite obviously not made up of the “usual suspects”, would have been very powerful just because of its sheer size. If only it had been the main news story.
Instead, much coverage was given over to actions initially started by the “Black Bloc” idiots. I call them idiots because that is exactly what they are. Either they like to smash things just for the thrill (in which case they are Basic Idiots), or they are so politically deluded they think throwing paint bombs at TopShop will light the fuse of revolutionary explosion (in which case they are Advanced level Über-Idiots). Whichever camp of idiots yesterday’s Black Bloc thugs fell into, they did the anti-cuts campaign huge damage. By distracting attention to the loudly spectacular and meaningless away from the quietly awesome and meaningful they ruined it for everyone. Except the Tory Party.
Yet, crucially, there is more to say. For although the actions of the Black Bloc started the trouble – as Ryan Gallagher has noted – it is undeniable that many others quickly joined the violence without premeditation. Likewise the kids who stuck it out in Trafalgar Square, or who angrily confronted police outside Fortnum and Mason, cannot be dismissed as merely extended members of the Black Bloc.
Rather, they were the people who don’t any longer see the point of maintaining peaceful protest if the opportunity to descend into confrontation arises. And at a certain level they have my sympathy, for two reasons. Firstly, my generation learned quite spectacularly in 2003 that even enormous peaceful demonstrations of over a million people can make precisely zero difference. Tony Blair invaded Iraq, and didn’t give a flying damn what any of us thought.
Secondly, anybody who has been on even a handful of protests – especially in London – knows full well that the police do not hesitate to use violence, and frequently instigate aggressive confrontational situations amidst previously jovial and peaceful atmospheres. At the G20 protests in 2009, trouble only started when the police moved in – and it is probably significant that following that experience increasing numbers of protestors are drawing the obvious conclusion: if you know the boys in blue will baton you regardless, why wait around passively for them to do it?
It is significant and telling that so many recent protests have seen flare-ups of violence. The Black Bloc has been around a long while now and they cannot alone explain this. A better explanation is that many people – especially the young – are angry, justifiably untrusting of the police, and contemptuous of the old (failed) channels of political expression. As the cuts really start to bite, their numbers must surely increase.
So whilst I regret yesterday’s violence – if I could have had my way, there would have been none at all – I can understand why these outbursts of wider political violence are happening. And they do not make me optimistic about the future.
March 23, 2011
Deep Pathologies
According to Liberal Conspiracy:
“The TUC held a 60-second ad contest, with a theme of public spending cuts, last month and received a record-breaking 41 entries.
Fourteen entries were shortlisted – many of which will be shown on the big screen in Hyde Park at the March for the Alternative.”
This is the winner:
I hope you will join me in agreeing that it is absolutely terrible.
What, exactly, is the video’s message? That ordinary people are in the position of pre-pubescent infants? If so, that’s hardly a very flattering portrayal. Indeed why exactly is this a father-daughter relationship at all? Are the makers of the video implying that our rulers and masters stand in relation to us as controlling parents – more precisely, exploitative and abusive parents? Come to think of it, who is the father figure supposed to represent, exactly? A banker? The Government? If these are metaphors, they are mixed indeed.
And if that weren’t all bad enough, there’s the bombshell closing slogan: “Don’t burden your kids with a lifetime of debt – Oppose the cuts”.
I had to think for a good few minutes to figure out exactly what this was supposed to mean . For it appeared to make no sense at all. But I now think the reasoning is supposed to be as follows: if we force the next generation to bear the brunt of austerity measures now, that is effectively saddling our children with the effects of debt, manifested through the cuts, and that’s not fair, so we must oppose the cuts, so as to prevent the effects of the debt, as experienced via the impact of cuts.
Which is not exactly snappy. But what is worse, the Coalition response is likely to be far more effective, to wit: we quite agree that we must not burden out children with a lifetime of debt! Indeed that’s precisely why we are making these cuts – to bring down the debt!
On every level this video is a disaster. Yet apparently it will be screened at the end of Saturday’s major anti-cuts march in London. Which very much presses the outstanding question: how is it that such a bad video could not only be dreamed up and filmed, but then selected by the TUC as their prize-winner and flagship piece of propaganda?
It would be nice to explain this away as merely the work of “iPhone-wielding wonks“. That it is merely the product of the mental narrowness exhibited by those who spend a lot of time in Westminster, but very little time meeting real people and their real political concerns.
Yet I strongly suspect there’s a deeper pathology at work here. Namely, that many on the left are frankly uninterested in clarity, accuracy or political efficacy. What they are interested in is lumping all their preoccupations together in one ungainly amalgamation of thinly veiled incoherence, and then shoving it down the throats of passers-by whilst expecting them to happily agree and acquiesce.
So, for example, it doesn’t matter whether the father figure is supposed to represent a greedy banker or the Government. Because in the minds of rather a lot of over-enthusiastic and naive leftists, there’s basically no difference between the two anyway. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if depicting ordinary working people as exploited children is offensive to ordinary people and thus strategically stupid. Because what takes priority is not strategy, but coming up with a (supposedly) funny dig at the powers that be (whoever they might be), regardless of whether it alienates the constituency that needs to be convinced.
In short, the point of the video appears not to be the promotion of a well-thought-out political strategy to fight the cuts. Its point appears to be an enthusiastic thumping of the political drum with unreflective self-assured and self-righteous pride. The pathology runs deep: so deep that people involved in political activism can not only come up with it, but that the TUC can in turn endorse a video which shrieks of an incoherence likely to cash out in practical political suicide.
Welcome to politics on the left. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.
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Indeed what makes it all even more shocking is that there are manifestly better videos on offer, and yet which were passed over for the big prize.
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UPDATE – Here’s how to do it properly (nsfw):
November 29, 2010
The Revolution Will Be Tweeted
Until very recently I was deeply sceptical about the role of “social media” in real-world activism. If anything, I thought the option of typing self-indulgently into Twitter, Facebook or WordPress was likely to be harmful to activist causes. Because by shouting into the web, people experienced the sensation of involvement and action without achieving anything of substance.
The past week has changed my mind completely, as I’ve watched social media play an enormous part in organising, sustaining and strengthening student protest against Government cuts and education fee rises.
Last Thursday, a thousand-strong march took place in Cambridge alone, organised mostly via Facebook. With relatively little effort and expenditure on behalf of those spreading the word, lecturers, graduates, undergraduates, sixth-formers and sympathetic members of the public converged to voice collective discontent.
On Friday, a small group of Cambridge students occupied the 500-year old Senate House building, the nerve-centre of the University administration. Although the original occupation was begun by around just 20 people, within hours dozens more arrived after being contacted or alerted via Facebook, Twitter, text and email. Over the past three nights, at least 60-80 students have self-organised to occupy Senate House continuously, whilst numbers in the daytime are steady between 150-200.
Blogging platforms have allowed students in the occupation to set-up instant bases of information and communication. Email petitions and mailing lists were up and running within hours. Facebook is an easy-access source of information, communication and encouragement, as everybody participating logs-on to spread the word.
Indeed encouragement is key. Rather than feeling isolated, the Cambridge occupation has been able to communicate easily with demonstrations taking place in universities all across the country. As well as messages of solidarity, information is exchanged on how to co-ordinate occupations and keep them going, as well as to offering advice, experience and legal tips. The sense of being connected to a national – even global – movement is a huge boost to everybody involved. Indeed, the ease of modern communication enables occupiers to even bring in performing artists and bands, turning occupations into a protest-cum-parties, with spirits kept high and positive.
Via Twitter, email and Facebook, the Cambridge Occupation was rapidly endorsed by over 150 academics at the University, adding their support in a co-ordinated letter in a matter of hours. The letter is today being presented to the Vice Chancellor of the University. Similarly, an international petition was quickly set-up which attracted over 350 signatures. The morale-boost of hearing that Noam Chomsky had pledged his support was (unsurprisingly) considerable.
Email and Facebook have enabled occupiers to bring-in visiting lecturers and speakers. Use of Skype meant the occupation could host a discussion with Dr. Priyamvada Gopal (who has organised the academic support) even though she is currently away from Cambridge. Twitter kept people around the country updated on what was happening, whilst YouTube enabled recordings of lectures to be shared instantly.
Of course, social media will never replace feet on the ground; it can only be a means to an end. But this past week has shown that it can be a very effective means indeed. Whilst earlier predictions of “Twitter revolutions” in non-democratic states have patently failed to materialise (mostly because repressive state authorities quickly exploit the mine of information freely supplied by dissenters), the story is very different in western countries. For my generation and the next, the use of the internet is second nature. As the Coalition’s cuts politicise ever more young people, the role of social media in organising their resistance will become ever more prominent.
November 26, 2010
Netroots UK
Netroots UK: A one day event to network and inspire progressive activists working on the web. Saturday 8 January, Congress House, Central London, WC1B 3LS.
Bloggers, tweeters and online campaigners from around the UK will be coming together face to face in London on Saturday 8 January for Netroots UK, a day of strategy, training and networking for grassroots activists.
The event comes as leading left wing bloggers look to be winning the popularity war with the more established right wing blogs, and as pressure grows across the progressive movement in response to the government’s programme of harsh spending cuts.
Five hundred online activists will attend a day of workshops and presentations, ranging from hands-on training in digital communications, to sharing good practice from other campaigns, as well as wider debates on the best strategies for progressive digital activism.
Sessions will cover topics such as building campaigns against local spending cuts, engaging effectively online with MPs, producing videos for the web, and using satire to spread campaign messages.
Linking together activists from the worlds of progressive politics, economic justice, international development, trade unions, community groups and more, the event is a first step towards a more connected and effective progressive movement online, echoing the groundbreaking work of the annual Netroots Nation conference in the US.
Start Date: Jan 08, 2011
Start Time: 09:00 AM
End Time: 17:00 AM
Price: £5.00 — Tickets to the event will include refreshments during the day, and a brown bag lunch.
October 15, 2010
Slamming the Beeb?
Sunny at Pickled Politics draws attention to the latest risible claims of right-wing loon tank Migration Watch.
Apparently, the UK loses £4.6bn educating the children of migrants. Except that figure looks rather shaky when you learn it includes as immigrants anybody who happened to have a foreign-born parent. (So despite having British citizenship, because my mum is French MW count my vast and on-going British education as a pay-out to immigrant families!) As if that method wasn’t bad enough, the Office of National Statistics claims not to know how MW obtained any figures on parent birth place to begin with. Further demolition can be found here.
I admit: different day, same risible nonsense from MW. What actually animates me this morning is Sunny’s gunning for the BBC over its failures to report the MW nonsense as such. Certainly, the BBC’s reporting in this instance is lamentable. And Sunny has long been drawing attention to its failures over climate change denial and its tendency to give equal space to “sceptics” when the evidence is all one way traffic in the other direction.
But I feel Sunny is too one-dimensional in his condemnation of the BBC, and picks poor strategy in response.
I’m not denying that the BBC should do better when reporting on nonsense from MW and their ilk. But let’s think about why the Beeb might fail to properly scrutinize right-wing immigration gibberish in particular. Namely, that it is currently having the squeeze put on it by the Tory party, and the threat of that squeeze has been on-going for several years. Indeed it arguably started under Labour, when accusations that Blair and Alistair Campbell had “sexed up” the Iraq War dossier landed the Beeb in serious hot water with Number 10, with the temperature turned up by the Mail and News International.
With a ferocious Murdoch clamouring for privatisation, and a Tory party whose MPs and grass-roots broadly believe the BBC is a base-camp of socialist revolution, you can see why the news wing of the BBC might be predisposed to attempt to appease its opponents by sometimes channelling their political agendas, even if only by laziness.
Now, I think this is a bad idea. The agenda against the BBC is so deep-running that nothing will ever be good enough to halt it except full-scale demolition. My point is that the real blame lies not only, or simply, with poor journalism and poor editorial oversight, but with the entire situation in which the BBC finds itself.
Correspondingly, I find Sunny’s outraged condemnations – “The BBC’s reporting has become a joke”; “you wouldn’t get the BBC report pointing that out either, because they can’t actually be bothered to ask some basic questions.” – frustrating. All the blame is laid at the BBC’s door, and they are correspondingly slammed from the left as well as the right. (I won’t even get into Sunny’s long-running claim that the BBC is a “right wing” media institution, a claim I find to be based on the mirror-image cognitive bias which motivates right-wing criticism that the Beeb is a communist bastion).
I just can’t see this strategy of slamming the Beeb as incompetent being helpful. When institutions – like people – come under attack, they tend to hunker down, take cover and put up the defences. Reform often does not follow, because self-protection takes priority.
Whatever its failings, the BBC is still a far better news and broadcast institution than anything that will replace it should the free-market Murdochites get their way. It would be much better if leftists put their energy into exposing the hypocrisies of other far more scurrilous media outlets, and of the risible “think” tanks like MW (and puppet campaign groups like The Tax Payers’ Alliance) than slamming the BBC, without thinking about why the BBC ends up making the bad calls it sometimes does.
September 28, 2010
Listen In
If all goes to plan I’ll be on BBC Radio 4′s You and Yours this lunchtime, discussing the topic of whether “Oxbridge” has too much influence in society.
Tune in from 12 noon, as I try talking at a normal pace whilst also not making an idiot of myself. Given that the room is currently spinning and I feel decidedly iffy, this is going to be even more of a challenge than usual.
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.
