There has been a ‘War on terror’ for the last decade and a half. It’s used as an excuse for surveillance, ever diminishing limits to freedom, and increasing intrusion on privacy. None of which have any discernible effect in curtailing terrorist movements.
‘It’s the foreigners’ fault’ has been the oldest trick in the political power-holder’s hand since well before Alexander the Great. The Crusades, inasmuch as the Dark Ages hot-shots bothered to excuse themselves to the populace, without doubt distracted from a shit economy at home. Jews have been the convenient archetypal ‘foreigner’ for millennia: an easy scapegoat for economic failure – particularly as the Jewish cultural value placed on education, hard work and thrift inevitably results in disproportionate accumulation of wealth in Jewish hands, envy for which is easily turned into suspicion and blame, even by the most flat-footed and inept politician. Other examples are endless.
Surely we all know this? Surely we are aware that the rise in xenophobia across the globe directly correlates to a sinking global economy and collapse of financial institutions? Surely we all know that the last round of such a global phenomenon, the Great Depression, led to an identical rise in extremist militant far right politics in the general populace, and xenophobia to an extent where home-grown nationals were viewed as ‘foreigners’ purely on basis of ethnicity, and from there in rapid steps to atrocities we are still in global PTSD over? Don’t we remember this? The comparisons between Trump and Hitler have been thick and fast from the start of his rise to power. Don’t forget, Hitler was ‘Time’ magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’ in 1939.
We’re distracted beyond all plausibility. A violent moron guns down a roomful of homosexuals and claims inspiration from the call from Daesh to murder infidels over Ramadan. Is it the fault of guns? Of Islam? Of Daesh? Of homophobia? Of homosexuals? Of males? Of the Internet? Of Christianity? Of immigrants? No. Ultimately the act of gunning down these innocents is the fault of the global ECONOMY. Don’t forget, it’s not just the West that’s being subjected to endless rants on the ‘Terror From Abroad’. The mess and chaos that fuels Daesh itself is poor economic management heading up an explosive mix of under-education and a tribal mentality of corruption and nepotism. Sounds familiar? Exactly the same as the economic disaster that paved the way to Trump. That opened the curtains for Nigel Farage. That fuelled the far-right Swedish Democrats and the Danish DPP. The Iraqis and the British, the Americans and the Afghans, the Syrians and the Swedes, are not on the different sides they think they are. They are all in the same boat, and it’s sinking fast. And the only ones hustling away the insufficient lifeboats at the back are the people in power, promulgating a global climate of hate and suspicion. Anything, anything but think about why people are really so dissatisfied.
What made ‘Great’ Britain ‘great’? Many Britons seems to equate the notion with Imperialism, with slavery and living off the sweat of others, with military power, and with the arrogance that comes with being a leading global economy. Some are ashamed of this, some are proud of it. But the fact is that though slavery, Imperialism and all sorts of things we label as Victorian nastiness may have contributed in their own way to increased wealth of the nation (and without wealth, remember, you can’t have military power either), the real power raising the little bunch of islands was productivity and trade. The Industrial Revolution. Mechanisation and advances in technology. And above all trade, trade trade, until wealth flooded into the country at a rate never witnessed before.
What do we produce now? Bureaucrats. Britain, and a huge percentage of the ‘developed’ world, is now a massive army of desk-bound shufflers of paper. Perhaps from the exalted view we have of professions like lawyers and bankers (ahem) we think this sort of activity brings in money. It doesn’t. It simply shuffles it endlessly, like the paper on the desk – and each time a bit gets chipped off with nothing being added to replace it.
We can’t have another Industrial Revolution. In fact we watch in alarm at countries like China who are having to go through the accompanying horrors of industrialisation at the same time as the backlash and aftermath. But we must, as a world, produce. And trade. Or there is no economy, no contentment, and endless opportunities for anything from Daesh to the Cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to catch the attention of a zombified populace wondering what the hell is wrong with the world. I’m not talking about endless plastic nonsense to fuel a degenerate and demented capitalism that continues chewing up the world and shitting it out as garbage. We need to provide food, clothing, adequate housing, healthcare, education, superannuation. None of these criteria are adequately met in any ‘developed’ country. Let alone others. At the moment, no-one has a Plan B for an Industrial Revolution. We need one urgently.
This phenomenon traces back in short steps to the devaluing of tradespeople as ‘blue collar’ and to the utterly artificial bloating of universities forced into churning out an endless supply of people with no vocation, real education or ability for rational thought. Into this world of pointless mouse-clickers and the jobless disenfranchised comes a call to arms. Any call. Religion, food additives, discrimination, vocabulary disputes. It latches onto the discontent like Velcro. The economy? Why, it’s the fault of the foreigners. That’ll take care of itself. Less sugar in your diet and you’ll feel better. Or maybe it was more sugar. It’s certainly not the lack of an adequate healthcare system, the embezzlement of your retirement funds by the Government, the lack of a plumber when your toilet overflows that’s making you blue. Besides, look at the foreigners. Better build a wall or something. They’re terrifying.
The language of terror has so seeped into our tongues and our consciousness that even those who acknowledge this very tactic of misdirection, still use the language of fear. https://medium.com/@ChrisBrosnahan/im-fucking-terrified-7057458c704#.bzccjlpvq. Last time the global economy failed to recover from the Great Depression until WWII knocked people and production on the head. Please, please could we not go through the same process again this time? Could we just remember FDR’s injunction at the time, that ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ Rarely has this statement been as true as it is right now.