UPDATES
E-mail to hear about changes to the website

Your Say

We constantly receive messages from you, our readers in Britain and all over the world. Here are some of your latest comments on what lies behind the political events of the day.

Your points of view are essential. Keep them coming in and we'll post them on the site. The discussion is moderated so it may take a day or so before they are posted. E-mail your contribution to msf@socialistfuture.org.uk

The contradictions within Blairism have been fatally exposed over the recent Iraq war. Blairism is of course a hybrid. In essence an unrepentant economic liberalism, quasi Victorian in stricture and self-sanctimoniousness, combined with an upper class penchant for European high culture. It combines adoration of contemporary US economic values, selfishness and short-termism, in tandem with a pro-European sensibility on culture and the arts. In the former case, it is unashamedly populist, and in the latter, unashamedly elitist. It has all the structural coherence of a ‘white van man’ choosing Beethoven over the Spice Girls. It practices holidays in Tuscany for those fortunate and ‘literate’ enough to appreciate it, but preaches ‘labour market flexibility (read ’economic insecurity’) for the masses at home, to raise ‘productivity’ (read ‘profit’).

In delivery it combines an evangelical belief in the ability of the Government and media to spin (read ‘lie’) in order to carry forward contradictory and damaging policies. We live in an era when, thanks to Thatcherism/Blairism, the state has almost entirely disengaged from most areas of economic management (Fiscal and Monetary policy; Trade policy; Local Government). The economic problems of poverty, fiscal crisis; trade deficit and global demographic and environmental crises have not evaporated. In the US and UK, these problems are chronic. All that has happened is that the Bilderberg state has helped persuade people that they have no responsibility for society both domestically and externally, and that the concept of social justice is redundant. So all that is left is a utilitarian state that directly serves the interests of the rich and powerful and moreover proclaims the necessity of private greed for the promotion of social good.

Yet the spin machine has simply heightened the contradictions between reality and perception. As the problems further deteriorate, the state has to legitimize its role by staking claim to be doing something, but in reality there are so few powers, and so little real funding available, to make such claims redundant. Thus spin becomes 24-hour management, in deflecting public attention from one crisis to the next. Thus the media and state have developed a symbiotic relation in which the state continuously peddles lies to the media who lap them up avidly. The state needs the media and the media needs the state. In fact the two have fused together to produce a virtual world of blurred distinctions between lies and half-truth: the world of Blurism. Indeed the media must do all in its power to protect this virtual complacency, feeding a hysterical, decadent and voyeuristic populace with the detached violence it needs to displace its real anger and rage: the psychological violence of the social Darwinism of ‘reality TV’ shows, or the stylized portrayal of physical violence and destruction in real war. The shock threshold rises but the problems do not go away. Blurism is a historically self-negating tactic, but the crisis of disaffection and legitimacy that most parliamentary structures are undergoing is simply a foretaste of more radical disaffection to come.

Howard Blackhall

Check out www.globalembrace.org.uk

Other contributions

What future for Walaja? by SM

History repeating itself in Hebron by SM

Firefighters have been sold out by John Horscroft

"Palestine changed my life" by Max

The lesson of war by Peter McLaren