Humour, democracy and the successes of anonymous groups

I, like many of you, am extremely unhappy with the direction that our nation and perhaps the world is heading right now, and am frustrated by what feels like far too slowly growing people's movements. People are joining us all of the time, and movements like #occupy and #ukuncut are encouraging, but then they run out of steam and we start to feel helpless again, doomed even.

The uneven distribution of wealth and power is the cause of our greatest political problems in my opinion, and I'm sure it is a widely held view amongst ordinary people. Much of the power inequality is only possible through the lack of participation by the mass of ordinary people. The ruling class have done a great job of isolating the population into ever smaller groups to prevent unity through creating apathy, in a deliberate social engineering process often referred to as atomisation. However within these 'atoms' there are millions of people literally just waiting to connect with social movements and do something good for the world, whether they know it or not. We know this, because we have all been those people.

The advent of social networking has played a tremendous part in unifying and mobilising ordinary people in push backs against ruling class policies and propaganda, but I don't think we are exploiting those tools intelligently or effectively enough.

The volume of ordinary people using sites like Facebook and Twitter is enormous, albeit largely wallowing in the meaningless junk culture of celebrity, consumerism and so forth. This is the human resource that we need to be tapping into more effectively than we are, and we need to start thinking about and coming up with ideas for achieving that.

Grasping the reality of the world we live in is often an unappealing prospect. I recall many a day, getting ready for work, and flipping channels to get away from the 'news' because it seemed so depressing. I now subscribe to many Facebook networks, and find my time line flooded each day with deeply depressing and often horrendous stories and images, as fellow activists try to raise awareness of various issues. Nonetheless, I sign as many petitions as I can, and continue to participate in discussions on these issues, but I can see why so many simply ignore the posts I share from these various groups on my time line.

So the question is how do we engage people, or at least utilise them to reach others within their networks?

One thing I have noticed is that people like sharing amusing images and comments. When we share these things, the source group is generally shown in the time line with the image/comment. So I suspect one mechanism for recruiting people to our groups is to share more amusing images comments to our groups. When others share those items to their own time lines, the groups themselves are also propagated to their Facebook friends via their time line. Anonymous groups have been enormously successful for the simple fact that they propagate lots of humour. Whether this is conscious tactics on the part of anons I don't know, but it sure works. If the image above at all influenced your decision to click and read this article in anyway then you're probably already on board with the point.

This is just one way in which we can do better, and we need to try think about other ways and perhaps learn from movements of the past. I will be glad to hear your ideas, so please, as always comment away.

Russell Brand: Man of the People

I used to think that Russell Brand was a complete twonk. Another icon of establishment decadence swaggering across the screen at our expense with a typical celebrity class ignorance and indifference to the injustices lavished upon the majority for the power, prestige and riches of the sociopathic minority we call the elite, the establishment, the ruling class. Whether that sentiment was justified at the time I'm unsure, but it is one I no longer hold. I became aware that Russell had sympathy for us, the 'unwashed masses', when I came across an article he produced for The Guardian in which he scorned the extreme hypocrisy of the establishment in their treatment of rioters whilst continuing to lay a carpet of rose petals for our war criminals, terrorists and ultra-thieves we call investment bankers and traders [1]. However I nearly fell off my sofa the other evening when I saw him being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight [2]. Russell was on fire! He was fierce, filled with the pain of the people and the planet, a freight train of disgust plowing into Paxman's agenda riddled questions, carriage after carriage of articulate decimation of the political paradigm that prevails ubiquitously in the establishment media. I'm surprised that the interview was even aired. For that Mr. Paxman and Co. do deserve some credit, but it is Mr. Brand who should be appreciated here, not merely for his spirited lambasting of the vogons that rule over us and control the the wealth of the nation, but for the circumstantial fact that he can awaken and invigorate a lost generation of disenfranchised and disengaged young people like few others can. I can only hope that other celebrities of Brand's generation hear the groans of the people and pick up the torch, to help ordinary people, particularly the younger generation, fight back, not just for justice and equality but very likely for the survival of the species.

Russell brings to the fight some long over due humour. A kind of humour that us ordinary folks can relate to. It has the incredibly important characteristic of raising awareness of the seriousness of the situation we're in but without sending us into a coma. He is able to stitch back together our attention spans, that have been shattered by the mind and ethics disintegrating triviality and chaotic dross we call the mainstream or establishment media. It should be well noted also that this arrangement is far from undesigned as Chomsky and others prolifically reveal [3][4][5]. The establishment do not want ordinary people participating in politics. They never did. They never will. If ordinary people enter the arena en mass then the political system will no longer be heavily tipped in favour of the rich. Check out Russell's piercing but also funny recent article in the New Statesman [6].

Russell is absolutely right that voting is a waste of time. As I sometimes say "if this is democracy then giving a slave the day off once every few years should be called liberty". Picking between factions of the elite once every few years is not choice. It is not participation. It is very definitely not democracy. It is the scam we are told to believe is democracy, rather like being given the choice between a kick in the teeth or a punch in the mouth. Furthermore there are very good reasons why genuine prominent alternatives do not exist, or at least are not made known to us. They are numerous, but perhaps most significant is the fact that the establishment own and control the mainstream media. Are they likely to allow alternatives and views that challenge their exponentially disproportionate wealth and dominance over us? It's a no brainer. The only participation in politics ordinary people have is in the streets, demonstrating, protesting, striking, refusing to comply with the ideologies forced upon us. But we do have power. Enormous power. Our power lies in our numbers. The elite are terrified of us, which is why they go to such great lengths to divide us, disengage us and make us apathetic and hopeless. But hope is here, it's growing, and you need a piece of it. Growing and evolving movements around the world are linking up, sympathising, educating, sharing and galvanising. Occupy, the 99%, Anonymous, the Arab Spring, human rights groups, animal rights groups, unions, celebrities, academics, political dissidents, whistleblowers ad nauseam are all fighting back, not just for themselves, but also for each other and for you. You just need to pay attention. Visit their websites and their YouTube videos. Join the Facebook pages and Twitter discussions. Feel the power of the people. Connect with others who are as outraged as you. Join a protest and make new friends, real friends with a passion for humanity, for the planet, for our future, for you. You'll thank me I promise.

Russell is a good man doing a darned good thing, and good people deserve our appreciation and reciprocation. The only thing I can do to reciprocate here is to make you aware that it is very typical of the establishment to go after outspoken public figures and try to bring them down before their message really reaches the masses. Don't be surprised if Russell Brand becomes 'embroiled in scandal' of some sort in the not too distant future. He is certainly at best sacrificing career opportunities for our benefit. Stand by him as he stands by you!

As always please let me know what you think.

References

[1] Big Brother isn't watching you, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/aug/11/london-riots-davidcameron
[2] Newsnight: Jeremy Paxman and Russell Brand, 23/10.2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0R9wCZz-o
[3] Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AnB8MuQ6DU
[4] Orwell Rolls In His grave (including an extended interview with media expert Professor Robert McChesney, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80
[5] Psywar, the battle for your mind, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXX0vujix-o
[6] New Statesman article, Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition”, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/russell-brand-on-revolution

"Profits and tax cuts are not dirty words" according to David Cameron

This is the headline of a lead article from The Guardian today. It is in fact interesting to see such statements make it into headlines, as it suggests that there is a debate afoot as to the reality of the statement. If profits and tax cuts are not dirty words, why say anything? The very fact that the PM felt the need to say it is evidence of a fight back against public opinion by the ruling class. So I'd like to explore these words here for your consideration.

Let's be clear, when David Cameron states that 'tax cuts' are not dirty words in an act of defence against an opposing public position, we know he is not talking about tax cuts across the board but merely tax cuts for the rich. One of the Cameron government's first taxation acts was to cut the 50p rate on inheritance tax, which is a tax that only affects the rich. Why tax cuts for the rich? It's not as though they are facing any financial hardship is it? It is however the corporations of the rich that are lobbying our ministers and MPs on a daily basis, with campaign donations and offers of post-parliament 'consultancy' roles for MPs carefully tucked up their sleeves.

We should all take time to consider the meaning of the word profit. What is profit? What does it mean to profit? If I grow fruit on my land and exchange some for vegetables grown by my neighbour there is no profit. It is a mutually beneficial exchange for the purposes of our survival. It gets a little more complicated when we venture into the world of money, but the principle remains; in a fair and equitable exchange of goods or services there is no profit. Profit only arises when one party is exploiting one or more other parties, and on this 'principle' the ruling class has worked very hard to convince us all that it is fair and good, Cameron's own words being an explicit example. So who are the exploiters and the exploited? Well clearly ordinary folk are exploited by the rich, otherwise they wouldn't be rich! This isn't to say that the rich do no work. In fact they work very hard, exploiting us, because it is so profitable, but then should we really be calling this work? A con artist might have to go door to door for weeks before finding a suitably gullible enough victim with sufficient money to make his efforts worthwhile, but we don't call it 'work', nor should we of the activities of the rich. Furthermore the rewards to the rich are astonishingly disproportionate to their efforts.

The status quo is maintained of course by the fact that the wealth of rich gives them power, doorways into the process of government, and furthermore their domination of the media allows them to persuade the unsuspecting masses in their favour whilst keeping the truth as far from us as possible. If only folks had the time to look into the public record properly. The parliamentary record. The declassified record. Interestingly if we were all working to the principles of making a living rather than a profit, especially the rich, then there would be far greater financial equality. Perhaps more to the point though is that if we did away with the profit system and ditched all of the pointless junk produced in its name, we might all only have to work a 2 or 3 day week. Then there would be time on our hands to look into what the ruling class actually do. Catch 22. That's how they keep us intellectually and financially chained.

Thankfully ordinary folk exist in vastly greater numbers than their ruling classes, such that the mere act of talking about these things and propagating these ideas amongst ourselves leads to powerful people's movements that force the rich to act in our favour lest they risk revolution. Monsieur Guillotine's famous invention, used prolifically for shortening members of the French ruling class in the French revolution, really does play on their minds when we take to the streets.

The philosophy of peaceful protest

I just wanted to post up a small discussion regarding protesting that has great relelvance right now in light of the #Occupy movements including the #OccupyLsx movement currently active in the UK.

Non-violent action by ordinary people is vital to the success of the movement for very simple reasons. There are still a great many people in the country who are not yet persuaded that the government is merely a proxy for corporate UK and are ensnared by the propaganda of corporations that pervade their TV screens and newspapers. Violence by protesters legitimizes violence by the state in the eyes of these as yet unconvinced observers, thus violence by the state is sure to follow and the cycle leads ultimately to the destruction of the movement. However, if the movement remains non-violent then violence by the state will be viewed unsympathetically by our fellow citizens, notwithstanding deceitful editing and misrepresentative reporting.

Strategies for addressing the media deficit of representation of ordinary people and NGOs will have to be a topic for discussion in another post.