Should we end violence in the media?

Media effects is the topic of this afternoon's class with the first-years. Thankfully, I have a fine exposition of the case for violent entertainment, from one of my favourite films. Go from about 28 seconds in:

Violence in the Media



Clueless

— MOVIECLIPS.com

A limit to peaceful protest?

If you saw yesterday's news, Egypt's President refused to step down, though he did vaguely suggest that he'd hand some powers to his new Vice-President, who has spent the past few decades overseeing the foulest torture chambers on the planet (hosting quite a few people handed over by the CIA and MI6 too). So that's all right.

Down in Tahrir Square, the people are angry. OK. What now? One of the most impressive features of their campaign has been the good-humoured liberalism of their approach. By and large, they seem like nice people making strong points in a persuasive way. It's noble, and admirable, especially from a comfortable office in the UK, where nothing seems that pressing. But is a noble failure enough? I don't think so: being right and being free are not the same thing.

Are there any other protest groups who've done that? The Tibetans perhaps. The Greenham Common anti-nuclear women. Native Americans. Tiananmen Square. Probably more. What links them? Failure. Niceness is all very well, but I'm no liberal pacifist. Force of arms is sometimes required. The Americans know this: they had 1776. Ireland's rebels tried many times, and finally succeeded in 1916 by forcing a crisis, after 80 years of constitutional nationalism had failed. The IRA in 1972 justified their campaign by pointing out that an apartheid state had not only failed to protect the lives or the rights of a significant proportion of the population but was actively killing and disenfranchising them with no prospect of reform, and they were right in the short term. The Poll Tax riots succeeded where merely being right failed.

So what are the conditions for armed struggle? In principle, self-defence, the use of armed force by the oppressive authorities (either actively or as a threat), and the certain knowledge that no other methods will succeed. In practical terms, only when success or at least a stalemate is possible. The IRA - despite drifting to the political right and losing most of the principles upon which it was founded, did fight the British state to a standstill and set the conditions for a negotiated peace (though not its objective of a united 32-county republic).

Should the Egyptians move to an armed resistance phase? In some ways, I wish they would: I don't want to watch the state mow down thousands of peaceful protestors. However, a symbolic violent action with no chance of success might only provoke massacres of peaceful civilians. There's still a chance of a 1989-style bloodless handover, especially if the international community continues to pressurise the Egyptian state. Moreover, I don't see how the rebels would arm themselves. Perhaps the Palestinians could lend them some light weaponry, or elements in the Egyptian Army might change sides, but it's a long shot, and the chances of victory are limited. The smaller the group, the more likely it is that symbolic atrocities become the tactic of choice, and (as the IRA learned when it started hitting civilians in the UK), this doesn't evoke fear but hatred in the enemy and horror amongst your potential supporters.

I'd love to see and Egyptian civilian militia overturn the Mubarak regime, but the conditions aren't right. Instead, I'd like to see a couple of things. Firstly, the Tahrir Square protestors should start a mass public constitution-writing debate, right there in the square, writing dictatorship out of existence in the glare of the international media. Meanwhile, the multitudes should start targeting the state's assets. It's been a dictatorship since 1952, and so the state controls massive sections of the economy. Everybody knows which companies, buildings and houses belong to the Army, the Secret Police or other state bodies. Start repossessing them: target the torture houses, the businesses and the storehouses. Empty the secret cells and the emergency supplies. Send a few thousand to stand outside each minister's private residence until he resigns. Turn every state news broadcast into a 'live studio audience' event in which each item receives an immediate critique from the people. Make it clear that the state owns nothing: the people own the state.

As one of my commentators advised us a while ago: 'run, but while running pick up a stick'.

"That would be an ecumenical matter"

Invoking the spirit of Father Jack, Theresa May (she probably wouldn't) has decided that every answer to questions about the student demonstration will consist of the same boring and slyly insinuating response:

May says Corbyn should condemn the violence committed by a significant number of people on the demonstration.

4.10pm: Labour's Dennis Skinner suggests that the "nasty, rightwing government" is to blame. May criticises him for not condemning the violence.

4.09pm: May says she was concerned to see one of the stewards for last week's demonstrations refusing to condemn the violence.

Clearly this is the spin-doctors' line of attack: don't deal with the issues, peddle out this tedious trope. She doesn't mean police violence, by the way. 


I don't condemn the violence. Some of it was over the top, but angry people subject to police violence respond unpredictably and sometimes irrationally. Swinging on the Cenotaph flag was a bit silly and bound to get the Daily Mail brigade whinging, but retaliating to horse charges seems perfectly acceptable to me. 


The Tories have released a 'plain English' guide to what their plans for local government finance means. Some Tories have taken this a little too seriously and are actually saying what they really think:

Labour's Michael Dugher asks Pickles to condemn David Shakespeare, the leader of the Conservative group on the Local Government Assocation, who said recently that people from the north should "replace the Romanians in the cherry orchards".  

Mr Cameron’s spokesman refused to comment on the row, saying only: “The Prime Minister believes in flexible labour markets.”

Poor people's violence is different…

David Cameron was overjoyed by the student violence: it meant he could spend the interview time condemning it, rather than deal with the issues. Violence, he says, is 'unacceptable'.

I agree. There's nothing more despicable than anonymous, disguised students running wild and going on orgies of pointless, selfish violence.

Let's remind ourselves of what Call Me Dave was up to when he was a student, shall we?

Each year, he paid around £10,000 for membership of the Bullingdon Club. He'd dress up in special silly clothes (another few thousand pounds) and go on sprees of drinking and smashing. Because the club had a reputation for destroying restaurants then buying the owners' silence with wads of cash, the club had to go under false names to book rooms.

David Cameron was among drunken posh yobs who vandalised a restaurant, it was claimed last night.

The Tory leader has always denied taking part in the attack by the Bullingdon Club, the elitist Oxford University student society.

Mayor of London and Cameron's fellow Old Etonian Boris Johnson, below, admits he was part of the mayhem.But a former club member says the idea Cameron was not there on the night in 1987 is "ludicrous", claiming he "sprinted off" when others ended up in the cells. The idea someone just went to bed early! I mean, come on... " the Financial Times blogs reports him as saying.

He adds: "Details have been kept a closely-guarded secret by the group of old friends. A policy of omerta has descended on the Cameron episode."

Clearly upper-class violence is a jolly jape, whereas political violence is despicable. Or am I missing something here?

Knee-jerk politics

Forget the pointless briefing and sniping which passes for political rivalry in the UK. We need Bolivian-style political retribution.

More specifically, the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, was playing a football match against a team of political rivals. When one lunged in with a late tackle and gashed his leg, Evo retaliated with a knee to the groin.

Morales, 50, a former Aymara llama herder and coca farmer, is not known for indulging critics, let alone people who foul him. He walked up to Cartagena, indicated his wound, then kneed him in the groin. The player collapsed, prompting audible whistles from spectators.The match swiftly deteriorated into a bad-tempered, foul-filled contest which arguably mirrored the Andean country's combative politics. By the end, the match drawn at 4-4, two players from each side had been sent off, including Cartagena and one of the president's bodyguards.

Makes me nostalgic for the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott Knock-out (which I thought was well deserved). Evo would thrive in the Stoke City or Arsenal teams.

Of cardboard and paper

I'm definitely moving house to a decent enough flat in the town centre, getting the keys a week on Friday. Now I'm overwhelmed with thoughts of the packing, the shelving required (70-80 metres for the books and records) and the cold hard cash… frightening. Next week will be spent alternately teaching and packing! Obviously I should cut down on things which need moving, but I called into the bookshop to order the poetry course textbook and ended up buying four more books: Andrew Brown's examination of Sweden, Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared, a new translation of Y Mabinogion (my fourth), Michel Faber's satirical The Fire Gospel, and some bracing polemic, Slavoj Zizek's Violence.

Neal, Emma and I went to the Hogs last night - watched Manchester United grind out a dull win and lost in the pool competition - me in the first game, Neal in the second.

I've had a couple of gin slings

Ben rightly points out the essential silliness of today's protests because he's a democrat. I accept this, but would like to suggest that it's a start: I posted this in his comments but cross-post for your delectation.

Tie-die and slogans don't equal effective protest. But the argument is usually: wear a suit, get elected, then we'll take you seriously. But the syndicalists made the point that engagement with the system of established values blunts the legitimate objection to the system. Sometimes, violence is legitimate. Not the kind of pathetic protest we saw today, but the kind of serious, sustained resistance which the Tolpuddle martyrs, the Diggers, the Fifth Monarchists, the Peasants Revolt, the Monmouth Revolt, the '45, the Rebecca Riots, the Luddites, the Victorians who made early Peelers wear leather collars, the suffragists (just to cite British examples because it would be too easy to mention Irish and other ones) indulged in. One of the things I really respect about the English, Welsh, Scots etc. is that the people used to know how to resist. You cut Charles II's head off and ran plenty of other despots out of town, then forgot about it. Stop accepting that protest has to be 'legitimate': what does that mean? Who defines legitimacy? The American revolutionaries saw themselves as British patriots resisting illegitimate state control, and the police force nothing more than the armed wing of the upper classes for a couple of centuries ( and again during the miners' strike).

Slogans, witty placards and a few smashed windows won't bring about the revolution: it will delay it because it lets off steam. Serious, organised and sustained violence will, as it did in Kenya, Ireland, the 13 colonies, Poland, France, Italy, Cuba and many other countries. The problem with Britain is that the people were trained to legitimise the state because its power was trained on others (marginal groups, foreigners) to the extent that the British (or English, Welsh and Scots) forgot that power resides with them. Goverments rule by assumed consent - time to withdraw it. Today's protests were schoolyard histrionics - the lessons from history are that serious weaponry and strategic plans are required if you want to achieve serious change. Unless, of course, people just want a softer version of the status quo.