The global political power system is rapidly re-organising amidst a storm of digital propaganda. So why are the poor protecting the interests of the class that are exploiting them?

(cred. Marco Oriolesi)

While scratching around for some Christmas cheer through the oft disgraced but equally celebrated ‘Poet Laureate of LA Low Life’, Charles Bukowksi, I wandered upon an old favourite.

Paraphrased, it, goes:

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves… I had no idea how I was going to escape... They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. — Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye (1982)

I’ve been thinking about this, a lot — with some specific focus on:

Why do the poor keep voting for political parties and corporate bodies that can only exist by exploiting their vulnerabilities and their trust? What are the social and psychological stressors that cause this?

Although we’ve seen brutal authoritarian nationalism rise and fall within the lifetimes of our own living relatives, why have Western democracies now made such a synchronised lurch to the right (with particular focus on the Trump and Johnson administrations)?

There’s always been lies in politics — but why, has Western political campaigning now entirely abandoned the truth as a necessary component of the election cycle?

Within public conversation, why are we reduced to two equally ridiculous, warring possibilities: corporate-powered, free-market capitalism or Soviet-bloc communism?

How do we reconcile capitalism’s enormous success in raising standards of living (with particular focus on absolute poverty) across the world, with what is now massive, disproportionate wealth consolidation at the top of the economic food chain? Is ‘less poverty’ a good enough result for people …living in slightly less poverty?

These are reality TV corporate lobbyists disguised as cartoon political strongmen

Look at what we’ve done.

I’ve been fascinated (and, terrified) by the Trumpian and Johnsonian playbook of political communication, for reasons that are too extensive to go into here. But one main observation, is this: this is a type of celebrity persona that can say and do anything they want — even if it’s inflammatory, divisive, nationalist race-baiting that would see other candidates removed from their post. Not only does this behaviour not affect their political credibility, it strengthens their core endorsement — and the more outlandish the behaviour, the better the result.

And I think that’s for a few reasons.

1. The poor have been losing for a long time — but not in the way they might think

Conservative communities across the UK and USA have taken heavy cultural damage in the last 25 years. While conservative sentiment operates around a very singular idea of ‘conserving’ tradition, status-quo and community, mass human movement and cultural networking (accelerated hard by business globalisation and the Internet) has made previously homogenous (read: white) communities more diverse, more complex and less ‘traditional’ than ever before. This new community of competing values, needs and traditions within formerly singular ones has quickly displaced the old world with an unstable new one — one which is still defining its own social guidelines.

(For a moment we should observe the very noble, but hyper-complicated pursuit of the luxury global multiculturalist idea — one mostly nurtured in by Silicon Valley and their highly socially mobile leaders, designers and engineers — many of who never asked ‘what are the implications of making the world more open and connected?’ — or they did, and didn’t much mind the answer, because they live near the beach in SF.)

So, social policy has had to adapt at pace to keep the wheels on a local vehicle that is constantly changing shape, because conservatism simply cannot support the needs of the newly diverse population. This is highly damaging in rural, middle communities that now have new competition for work, relationships and social reward where it was already scarce as hell in the first place. To adapt, this means that progressive (and by definition, anti-conservative) agenda in both UK/US frames has seen strides such as (in no particular order):

New social supports and presences for ethnic groups and minorities in low-income, low-education areas

Equal marriage rights

Trans and non-traditional sexuality rights

Human rights gains (often criticised as being designed to protect the ‘new other’)

Environmental policy and clean energy (often correctly seen to be removing jobs)

General cultural currency (wider worldview is incredibly globalist now, across music, film and media)

These complicated and quick adjustments have created a new social format that has left behind entire blocks of mostly poor, mostly white, sometimes Christian societies that were neither prepared for, consulted on, or invited to such a social change. This is exacerbated in four specific tranches of the electorate: white communities, low-income communities, low-education communities, and ageing communities. Entire groups that span all of these areas have worked tirelessly for global capitalism as it pulled out the rug of the entire model that powered their lives while they weren’t looking. Particularly problematic in men (18–55), this battle has effectively thrown fuel on the fire of their anxieties and even the frame of their own masculinity — where masculinity used to be important to status —because their power has been adjusted downwards in favour of much needed, emergency social equality gains.

Who’s to blame for this? It’s complicated. You can say them — and reduce these communities to their bigotry, fairly simply— or you can look upwards. The globalists they’re now voting in to restore their old worlds (now, impossible) are the same class of people that outsourced their jobs, cut government spending and granted enormous tax rewards to the wealthy, while putting little to no focus on the practical requirements of proper immigration programmes and the social state. When you have much more in common with the new, local poor than the old, international rich, fate is not without a devastating sense of irony when you then vote for them… to protect yourself further… from them. This is a blame-chain that focuses on the symptom of their exploitation, rather than the cause — which in general terms, is intentionally poorly regulated labour models and poorly managed population movement.

As one writer covers:

“The conclusion should be obvious: our society has created problems that the citizens don’t understand. As a result, citizens all over the developed world are revolting against the whole system. They really don’t know who to blame, so they blame everybody. …and the problem isn’t the structure, it’s the citizens. They simply cannot understand the problems facing society and they reject the complicated compromises that the experts hammer out. In order to function, a democracy requires an informed citizenry, but it is no longer possible to have an informed citizenry — there’s more information than any citizen can take in. Thus, democracy has reached its ceiling; it can no longer serve society’s needs.”

Make no mistake, for some communities this is an existential crisis — and it’s why they can’t be convinced otherwise — even with the truth — because the truth just doesn’t solve the problems that capitalism has caused them.

2. They’re voting for a dying military power (UK)

In Britain’s context, a generation of men and women are grasping backwards into the UK’s dark history and trying desperately to cling to its power. But the empire is dead — and good riddance. Gone are the days when the UK was considered a serious military superpower (although it’s still very much an economic one, and sometimes, that’s the same thing)— particularly given the meteoric military rise of extremely organised authoritarian states such as post-1990s Russia, China, India, North Korea and Iran.

This embarrassment of national reputation is an affront on the UK’s historically notable ability to treat the international community however it wants, through the dumb force of sheer might and consequence. But this feeling of national triumphalism hasn’t yet been forgotten by a generation who’s parents were witness to, and a part of, the incredible national unity needed to overthrow Axis powers in the 1940s. But they’re clutching at an idea of exceptionalism that only ever served the population in crisis and recovery.

So, the poor aren’t even championing a nationalist military power, anymore — they’re defending a globalist economic powerhouse that relies on them making £8.25 an hour for 50 hours a week in order for it to stay upright. The problem is that this childhood mainlining of British exceptionalism has been transferred from a sphere that used to protect them to one that now just exploits them — but they trust it to protect them from ‘the other’ in the same way they did Churchill’s wartime Britain.

3. Billionaire-owned, politically-motivated print and digital media has thrown fuel on the fire of their deepest emotional fears

Billionaire media and corporatist interests have identified quickly that their extractive globalist practices have dramatically destabilised underrepresented local communities, that are now coming undone violently and publicly. Some know this, and talk about it openly. (Watch that video, because it’s honestly excellent).

Through some very, very successful practice runs, this very small number of ultra wealthy politicians and business leaders have founded a propaganda distribution model that is incisive, reasonably cost-effective, and obscenely powerful. It looks something like this:

Understanding that digital is now the new battleground, politicians and corporate interests meet (on a yacht, I suppose) to throw into overdrive already existing propaganda narratives that keep their livelihoods out of the firing line — commissioning extraordinarily sophisticated digital analytics consultancies, made up of data scientists, human behaviour experts, psychologists, political strategists and social media experts to help them .

and to help them These consultancies are commissioned on the basis of delivering an outcome that the client wants. For example, to put an administration into power . Essentially, this is achieved by:

. Essentially, this is achieved by: Using social media targeting and psychological profiling to identify perceptive, influenceable slices of the low-socially mobile population, and demographics that are particularly vulnerable to digital psychological operations.

slices of the low-socially mobile population, and demographics that are to digital psychological operations. Creating campaigns that prop up and amplify the very same media hysteria that has been created through print mediums for the last 50 years — for example, creation of tradition-threatening, socially violent enemies such as Islam, immigrants, Mexicans, the Polish, ‘The Gay Agenda’, or abstract power platforms like the European Union — or even, creation and destruction of invasive alternative political systems that were never real in the first place — for example, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn’s implementations of ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’, which are neither. (Making an exploitative wealth system fairer is not communism and it pains me to have to say that, particularly to the people that it exploits).

— for example, creation of tradition-threatening, socially violent enemies such as Islam, immigrants, Mexicans, the Polish, ‘The Gay Agenda’, or abstract power platforms like the European Union — or even, creation and destruction of invasive alternative political systems that were never real in the first place — for example, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn’s implementations of ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’, which are neither. These highly emotive, extremely effective campaigns of fear are then bombarded at speed through their phones, tablets and desktops towards the exact economic types that already suspect these biases as true (thanks to 40 years of print and television propaganda) who then have their opinions validated, become further scared and then ‘share’ this into reality through their own social media networks. The effect is palpable.

through their own social media networks. The effect is palpable. This fractal effect then creates an incredibly thin, blurred line between the fake and the real as it gains its true, beastly momentum — with it, scooping up real world, iconic social atrocities such as the murder of Lee Rigby (as one example) — that are then used as proven cultural touchpoints to prop up the bias and anger of this new, false information.

And the work, then is mostly done. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, because it’s unbelievable, selfish, immoral and fantastical, but it isn’t one. This is also precisely the way that the regular digital marketing model works for online-first brands — and why advertising through Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest (among others) is so successful at returning sales results.

But political advertising laws have not yet been managed effectively enough to prevent the same tricks that make us buy plastic bullshit that nobody ever needs, from being used to scare us into installing exploitative capitalist political systems. The process, and result, is the same.

4. We’ve fetishised work, at the expense of everything — as the only way to build a better, safer life

This is quite simple. To make the massive economic gains that capitalism has reported, it needs three things:

To find out the bare minimum amount of cash and rights needed to pay low-income workers to keep them alive so that they can continue to return to work, and then pay them that, while adjusting things like rents to sit right at the precipice of achievable spend.

A public narrative based around the idea that ‘if you work hard enough for long enough, you will become a millionaire’ (read: free)

The absolute and whole-hearted rejection of political systems predicated on sharing any wealth — and mischaracterisation of them as invasive communist strategies trying to take away your hard earned money.

The poor (and middle) now believe socialist governments are trying to steal their money. Their tiny, paltry sums of money barely sufficient to break them out of the endless rat race. And if that happens, how will they become the next multi-billionaire?

This ridiculous and frankly disgusting narrative has effectively provided a single, completely false, widely discredited mainstream ‘alternative’ to capitalism — the idea that having anything close to a functional social state (let alone building or enhancing it) is marxism, or communism — despite the fact that none of those things are relevant to the cold fact that capitalist nations need luxuries like schools, roads and hospitals to keep their workers alive.

We cannot imagine a world where we are not defined precisely by our productivity and value within our labour chain. We cannot begin to imagine a world where there is so much wealth being hoarded by the wealthiest that it could be redistributed to stop people starving to death in the world’s richest countries. There is no social language or framework where this is even a credible idea. The poor condemn themselves to a life of poverty in case they ever inexplicably, and at random, wake up as millionaires.

The cruelty is further exacerbated through weak political devices like ‘balancing the budget’ and ‘magic money trees’ and various other bullshit manouevres employed to falsely explain that countries need to be run like businesses and everything needs to make a return. It’s an NHS hospital, dude. It’s designed to keep human beings alive. Tax a billionaire and spend some money on it.

5. The poor are working so hard that they just don’t observe the technocratic dystopia

For people who are forced to spend the majority of their time keeping themselves and their families alive, politics has always been too complicated, digital technology has always been too exclusive and social reform has always been too threatening.

Now, more than ever, these things are deeply, deeply connected — and this is a trifecta that is factors too difficult to navigate for even the engaged, enthusiastic voter. Their lives and interests simply cannot acknowledge an Internet-powered, globally connected world that is run by a small number of extremely highly-motivated corporate interests. The philosophies and discussions of digital privacy, globalist wealth priorities and technology battles are reserved for the privileged — for people with the space to think, move and operate a layer ‘above’.

This is not only an unsolvable problem, in this context — but barely even a legitimate problem. Because it practically sounds like the damn Matrix to anybody that isn’t a software engineer or a technology journalist. Who cares what Facebook is doing with my data when I’m poor?

6. So, summarily — they aren’t voting for any single politician — they’re voting for themselves, and that’s who they see on stage

Boris Johnson, Donald Trump — the personality is irrelevant. This is a slice of the electorate that have sustained such cultural damage at the hands of globalism and protecting the new rights of people who now share the same social space, they’re turning out in force to vote entirely for the thing that they’re desperate for most — rebellion. And the manifestation of that is through characters like Trump and Johnson — careerist, court jesters that say and do precisely whatever gets the populist vote — and if that ruffles progressive feathers, all the better for it.

It’s not really the agenda that’s winning at all — it’s the raw winning in its simplest sense — because even if the government could help, it’s never been made clear how. Neither building a wall, nor leaving the EU is ever going to make things familiar again. It’s gone — and critically, it isn’t coming back.

Do Donald Trump, or Boris Johnson have an ideological plan? Of course not. They’re babies of wealth that, for the most part, just want to be more famous than they are — because thats what power does, when it lives as an end rather than a means. And that’s also because they aren’t actually political or democratic leaders - they’re reality TV stars with a track-record for whipping up scared people much less fortunate than them into a frenzy both on and off television.

It takes a village

But central to this problem is the issue that is always the weak link in individualistic, win-at-all-costs, libertarian conservative politics. Most people just can’t afford it (it’s expensive in money, time and resources to even survive let alone thrive outside of a socially cooperative system), and society is now too close and too complicated to handle hundreds of local conventions — which become social truths — and then tribal agendas. Individualism in diverse, highly competitive communities does not create positive, stable groups, and cannot create a happy or relaxed populace. Capitalism since the 1980s has generally already proven that — and that’s why we’re so angry today — despite a known improvement in the rates of poverty. (But really — is that how we’re measuring the success of the greatest wealth generator of all time? A lack of poverty, rather than an abundance of happiness or stability?)

And what we’re finding now, really, is not that politics is broken — because that is neither a revolutionary idea (or in many regards, even true — given how stable mainland Europe has been since the end of the Second World War) but this:

This form of democracy, and this form of capitalism, are no longer compatible, because their operating models have been threaded together and then pulled and stretched to their outer bounds. In a world where the primary social rule is zero-sum capitalism — in that for you to win, someone else has to lose, we have stressed our underrepresented societies to the point where they are disintegrating and rebelling against the wider system. 1% of the world controls 50% of it’s wealth and owns the majority of its media and technology outlets. And that tiny group of controllers are working overtime in trying to preserve it.

So what do we do? Honestly, there is only one solution. Our political and social systems need to be radically decoupled from our economic ones, and we need to invest enormously into our newly diverse communities. How does that happen? It requires a massive, historic address of how wealth is accumulated in the West - and how we are allowed to own digital and print media. It also requires a bottom-up redesign of our digital privacy rights and wholesale education on how politics serves people and not the other way around. But most of all, it means we need to start actually paying attention. This is not a problem of left, right or centre. No politician has neither the power nor motivation to solve it. This is a made-up problem of money — a fake problem of scarcity and an absolutely staggering problem of historic greed.

Another world is possible. But first, we’re going to need to correctly identify our saboteurs.

@thomas_k_r

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