The ‘intringulis’ of Britain’s plutonomy

In Part III of Big Society, Big Oil and Muzzled Universities, I noted that the plutonomic order that now dominates the UK should not be regarded as a monolithic, homogeneous conspiracy on the part of the richest 1%. I suggested that significant divisions, and resistance to the plutocrats (or the ‘plutonocrats’) needed to be taken into account by any critical analysis. Today we read news that provide the best illustration of why I included that caveat in my article. But the news also provide evidence that the order in question is very much in place.

The news in question involve Mark Thompson, the BBC’s furore–prone director general. Thompson has reportedly given a speech in New York, in which he warned that the Murdochs’ bid to acquire the totality of BskyB has the potential to produce a significant ‘loss of plurality’ in the British media market, and indeed, may even lead to an ‘abuse of power’.

Thompson was stating the obvious. This week I referred to an article in the New York Times by Paul Krugman, in which Krugman, a relatively conservative economist, penned an article that reads like a real-world version of Tomorrow Never Dies. Krugman warned about the way in which the Murdochs are funding Tea Party activists: ‘every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to [Rupert Murdoch’s] Fox News.’

You might have thought that a culture of corruption is only found in the United States. But Krugman also pointed out that ‘in Britain, a reporter at one of Mr. Murdoch’s papers, News of the World, was caught hacking into the voice mail of prominent citizens, including members of the royal family. But Scotland Yard showed little interest in getting to the bottom of the story. Now the editor who ran the paper when the hacking was taking place is chief of communications for the Conservative government — and that government is talking about slashing the budget of the BBC, which competes with the News Corporation.’

Which brings us back to Thompson. Thompson might be thought of as the ‘good guy’ who is battling for public services—well, at least for the BBC. In some respects he may well be. But this is the man who tolerates Shaun Ley-style reporting, and indeed this is the same man that was caught by the press going to 10 Downing Street in an alleged effort to placate Cameron, whom many now believe  to be in Murdoch’s pocket to have done a deal with Murdoch.

Thompson is also the man who was alleged to have engaged in analogous manoeuvres with the most reactionary of Israeli politicians, almost certainly compromising the BBC’s much vaunted objectivity with respect to the coverage of events in the highly volatile Middle East. Remember the furore surrounding the Gaza Appeal? Those reactionary politicians were, of course, both supported by, and a key pillar of, the Bush administration, which was itself in bed, so to speak, with the Fox.

That someone politically in bed with other people who are themselves in bed with the people that the first person seems to be having a go at reveals what the Spanish might describe as the ‘intríngulis’ of British politics—and indeed the intríngulis of what I have referred to as the plutonomic order. Anyone who forgets the vicissitudes of such an ‘intríngulis’—read puzzle, mystery, secret, ulterior motives—is bound to distort the workings of plutonomy.

For more on that intríngulis, you may wish to read John Pilger’s piece in the New Statesman, The BBC is on Murdoch’s Side.

The BBC, New Labour, and the BNP

Amid the growing controversy surrounding the possible, indeed likely appearance of the neo-fascist BNP on the BBC’s Question Time this Thursday, two different, but inter-related issues have scarcely been raised by the Westminster commentariat.

The first is New Labour’s role in aiding and abetting the rise in the popularity of the BNP. New Labour, along with media press barons such as the Murdochs and the Rothmeres, are arguably much to blame for this phenomenon. First, New Labour has arguably so deceived its former political base—British working men and women—that it may well have generated a disillusion and frustration with mainstream politics that is finding an outlet in the hateful BNP. The ‘intense relaxation’ of figures such as Peter Mandelson about the ‘filthy rich’ appears to be in direct proportion to the anger that is being expressed by former Labour voters. Some have responded by going to the BNP; next spring many of the rest may vote for David Cameron’s PPP, this blogger’s sardonic reference to the new Tory ‘People’s Progressive Party’.

While this aspect is key, it is not enough, in of itself; the second factor has been the xenophobia which New Labour politicians like Hazel Blears, David Blunkett, Jack Straw and other figures on New Labour’s further–and–further–to–the–right leadership may have promoted. This by talking up the ‘Islamist threat’ and by promoting anti-immigrant legislation. New Labour appears, in this sense, to have joined the ranks of tabloid papers such as The Sun and the Daily Mail in scapegoating foreigners for Britain’s own social malaise. Even Gordon Brown has dipped his political spoon into this poisonous broth, claiming as he did in 2007 that ‘British jobs are for British workers’.

In this context, for New Labour to be suggesting that the BNP should be excluded from national television is extraordinary. The calls dissimulate the party’s own stance on immigration, and make a mockery of its allegedly progressive social credentials.

The BBC is playing no less problematic a role in the entire process. Let’s be very clear: the corporation has never been unbiased. Talk of impartiality is no more—and no less—than a convenient fiction which has served to maintain a degree aperture in the corporation’s coverage of a variety of events—a whisker of pluralism that, as this blogger has suggested before, is certainly better than the kind of Fox News Society achieved in the United States by the Murdoch family and their associates. But let us not believe for a moment that this is tantamount to the impartiality that the BBC claims to adhere to. Anyone who thinks otherwise might want to investigate the role of Mark Thompson, the BBC’s Director General, vis-a-vis the corporation’s coverage of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In this case we find a useful example of the limits of the liberal model of journalism. (For a more detailed critique, EcoLogics includes below an excerpt of an analysis published in 2007, in the post on the British judge, Stephen Sedley, who tried to support the New Labour government’s plans to introduce a universal DNA database.)

No, what we have to fear is not so much the appearance of the BNP on television, as the fact that it will do so in a broadcasting system which has already shown a predisposition to tolerate both manifest and subtle forms of racism. If you missed the controversy surrounding an earlier appearance of the BNP on Radio 1, then read up on it to find out what is likely to happen, if not now, then in the medium term in a broadcasting system that has become subservient to the forces of neoliberalism—the same ones that may have contributed, and are arguably quite possibly still contributing to the renewal of fascism in the UK, and beyond.

Here is, from an earlier post, a critique of the BBC’s claims of impartiality:

‘The BBC’s editorial guidelines suggest that the BBC is committed to impartiality. According to the BBC, this means that, amongst other things, the corporation seeks to provide ‘a properly balanced service consisting of a wide range of subject matter and views broadcast over an appropriate time scale across all our output’; to ‘reflect a wide range of opinion and explore a range and conflict of views so that no significant strand of thought is knowingly unreflected or under represented’; to ‘produce content about any subject, at any point on the spectrum of debate as long as there are good editorial reasons for doing so’; to ‘explore or report on a specific aspect of an issue or provide an opportunity for a single view to be expressed, but in doing so we do not misrepresent opposing views. They may also require a right of reply’. The Corporation aims to ‘ensure [that] we avoid bias or an imbalance of views on controversial subjects’. Indeed, the BBC goes so far as to say that its ‘journalists and presenters, including those in news and current affairs, may provide professional judgments but may not express personal opinions on matters of public policy or political or industrial controversy’ and ‘[o]ur audiences should not be able to tell from BBC programmes or other BBC output the personal views of our journalists and presenters on such matters’(8).

These guidelines reflect the BBC’s commitment to what might be described as a traditional discourse on the nature of journalism. A good journalist, or rather the news that s/he produces, is accurate, balanced, includes where appropriate a diversity of views, and does so in a manner that is not prejudiced by any bias, or by the personal views of the journalist.

While this discourse has been comprehensively critiqued by a number of scholars (see for example, Stuart Allan’s News Culture), there is still much to be said for it; we have only to consider the alternative posed by Fox News (9) to realise how vitally important it is to try to produce impartial, or something like impartial accounts, in news reporting.

The problem is that editorial guidelines such as the BBC’s are of course no guarantee of impartiality—for the BBC, or for any other news organisation. On the one hand, and staying within the logic of the guidelines, journalism is always susceptible to external manipulation, to mistakes or bias incurred thanks to the pressures of time or the limitations of space, and indeed to ‘internal’ manipulation by ‘biased’ journalists. From a more critical perspective, the guidelines are based on relatively naïve understandings of the nature of the production, dissemination, and social reception of knowledge by way of the media of mass communication. Modern societies and the issues that emerge in them tend to be so complex that there may well be far more perspectives than a journalist can ever know, understand, or report in any given case or subject. To be sure, the finite nature of a journalist’s, or indeed of a team of journalists’ knowledge means that s/he/they will necessarily bring to bear a certain perspective to whatever aspects they do manage to cover. Practical constraints to do with generic formulae, the amount of space or time available to produce a piece, the political and economic interests of the news organisations and their bureaucracies are not a matter of exception. On the contrary, they are the structural conditions under which, and with which journalists must work to produce news.

This post is not the place to engage in a detailed critique of journalistic conventions. It must suffice to suggest that, in practice, the aforementioned constraints force journalists to be selective, and thereby reductive with respect to the range and number of points of view that they represent. Those that they do choose will reflect, however indirectly, the ‘biases’ of their own knowledge and/or experience. Put differently, journalists’ representations will always exclude or misrepresent at least some views or perspectives.”

The end of the dollar? When the Israel Lobby’s chickens came home to roost

The Independent’s Robert Fisk, long a thorn in the side of U.S.-Israeli policies in the Middle East, has published a piece with news that may very well have devastating, if long-term consequences for the continued U.S.-Israeli domination of politics in the Middle East and beyond. In his article, Fisk suggested that

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. [...] Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.[...] The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

World markets responded immediately to what may well be an epoch-making shift in economic and political policy. As reported by the New York Times and other media, a long slide in the value of the dollar gained force as investors migrated and ‘fretted over a report that crude oil could one day be priced in other currencies, hobbling the dollar’s role as a vehicle for global trade’.

Part of the slide has to do with continuing uncertainty over the evolution of the U.S. economy. But as Fisk himself notes in a follow-up article today, the proposed shift has an unmistakably political motivation. For decades now, the U.S. has been seen by many in the Middle East and beyond as the proverbial tiger wagged by its Israeli tail. The direct or indirect consequences of this dynamic have been felt the world over: from terrorist reprisals in New York, London and Madrid to the export of the Israeli model of security to seemingly unconnected countries like Colombia, the U.S.’s failure to stand up to the Israeli bullying of Palestinians has cost the world dearly. Now it seems that the countries looking to dump the dollar have found a way of hitting the U.S. where it hurts most.

Of course, one of the factors in this whole process is that there is a new superpower in the making, one whose inexorable rise makes more credible an economic sea-change that the U.S. might otherwise have ignored, or even sabotaged. At least part of the reason why the plan revealed by Fisk may actually work is that China is as keen to get its hands on more Arab oil as the U.S. is. We all have much to fear from the politics of the country that will one day replace the U.S. as the world superpower. The tragedy is that, with most of the Democrats playing essentially the same game as the authoritarian party that they so comprehensively defeated last November, more and more people around the world see no reason for kowtowing to a country whose leader has expressed his willingness to continue the policy of extraordinary renditions, and of course the war in Afghanistan.

Throughout it all, the infamous Israel Lobby continues to flex its political muscles in the United States, and also in Great Britain. This blogger has not forgotten one of the untold stories behind New Labour’s 12 years in power. From the shadowy support provided to the current government by the Labour Friends of Israel to the scandal surrounding Mark Thompson’s biasing of BBC reporting in favour of Israel, Israel has played a significant role in the UK’s internal politics. This means that those of us living in the UK have not only paid the price of increased terrorism, but also of the kind of lobbying that has been denounced in the U.S.

By way of a postscript, can it be a surprise that, aside from taking lucrative jobs as an adviser to U.S. and Swiss banks, Tony Blair has ended up having an office in Jerusalem, where he has claimed for the past two years to be an impartial envoy of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations?