George Monbiot: As the political consensus collapses, now all dissenters face suppression
There is no place for dissenting views in mainstream politics. I was told recently by a Labour backbencher – a respected MP untainted by the expenses scandal – that “if the door was open just an inch to new ideas, I would stay on. But it has been slammed shut, so I’m resigning at the next election.” Our grossly unfair electoral system, which responds to the concerns of just a few thousand floating voters and shuts out the minor parties; the vicious crackdown on dissent within parliament by whips and spin doctors; the neoliberalism forced upon governments by corporate power and the Washington consensus; the terror of the tabloid press – all combine to create a political culture which cannot respond to altered realities without collapsing. What cannot be accommodated must be suppressed.
Posted on May 19th, 2009 at 9:41am under Affronts to democracy, Civil liberties, UK politics
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Reading this piece in today’s Guardian rang a bell.
There’s two pieces of work I came across about four years back which I printed out and never got round to studying.
1. “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency” (ISBN 1-58487-191-1) by a chap called Max C Manwaring
2. The strategic implications of the rise of populism in Europe and South America – Steve C Ropp – ISBN 1-58487-201-2
at this site:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi
Whist 1 limits itself to consideration of the “threat” of third generation street gangs in the US and their links to “insurgency” it struck me at the time that it would perhaps not be too long before the sort of creeping state criminalisation of dissent that Monbiot talks about here started to emerge.
After all, the last ten years has seen not only a raft of legislation criminalisaing all sorts of normal democratic behavior but also the construction of technological, social and political apparatus that aids the State to control its real enemies – the population inside its borders.
2. has an interesting, if chilling passage in the forward:
“The analysis contained herin should prove particularly useful to those within the security community who are concerned with the second and third order consequences of the successful spread of representative democracy in Europe and South America.”
Apparantly democracy is seen as a security threat/challenge to the Washington consensus.
What Monbiot has identified here seems a logical outcome of that approach found in both these documents.
Can I just throw the Criminal Justice Act into the mix as well?