Olympics – The bourgeois Consensus
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“So as the openning ceremony celebrates miners strikes, the Jarrow March, the suffragettes, and Liberty’s Sami Chakrabarti carries the flag, outside the police are punching and arresting more than 100 people (is there any confirmed figure yet?) for daring to collectively ride bicycles. It seems like the performance of these ‘British’ values is at the expense of the reality on the streets outside. Solidarity with all those on the Critical Mass last night.”
The above words were posted by Kevin Smith on facebook. The “share” button was removed.Like the Royal crap and other large events, compulsory enjoyment is the order of the day. Criticism is not allowed, dissention is not allowed. You must conform, you must enjoy, you must wave the flag and toe the line.It’s been a nightmare at work trying to have conversations that don’t involve the bloody Olympics, although they have caused so much grief at my workplace (I work in transport) that most folk are sick of them already but not for the same reasons I am.What frightens me more than anything is the media’s ongoing and unchallenged ability to brainwash, sensor, mis-inform and lie on such an EPIC scale. Orwell’s vision of the Ministry of Truth is so close to reality nowadays despite the working class being able to use the tools of modern instant communication, the views of the capitalist class go by and large unchallenged and repeated and recalled by the average working person as truth.Our role as socialists to challenge and educate is getting harder everyday and until we, as a Party, pull our finger out from our holes and start adopting a more aggressive media campaign funded by our legacies. Big ads, newspaper ads, TV and radio ads / time. Whistling to the converted on the net will never convince even enough people to take over when all our old comrades drop off this mortal coil.The Olympics are merely an example of what we are up against…….and that is only a fraction of the power of the modern media at capitalism’s disposal.
stevead1966 wrote:“So as the openning ceremony celebrates miners strikes, the Jarrow March, the suffragettes, and Liberty’s Sami Chakrabarti carries the flag,…”I know members don’t watch this sort of thing, but I did on the recommendation of a comrade who said we should if only to be part of the real world. Party members were right: this was a festival of British nationalism, but not quite what you might have expected. In fact the queen looked pretty pissed off with it and one stupid Tory MP (the one who went to a stag party where the piss-heads gave Nazi salutes) has criticised it as more leftwing than the Beijing opening ceremony.You can see why. Not only were there references to miners strikes, the Jarrow March, etc but there were scenes of smug top-hatted capitalists smoking cigars while the workers toiled in dark satanic mills, the rehabilitation of the Sex Pistols and the queen openly becoming part of a fantasy world by talking to James Bond.I know that the leftwing slant that Danny Boyle (he must be a leftie surely?) gave to British nationalism is probably all the more insidious for that, but it wasn’t the spectacle that members who boycotted it might have expected. Not at all King and Country, Land of Dopes and Tories stuff.
… and from the Telegraph’s London Editor:’London 2012: how the Olympics suckered the Left'”The London Olympics are the most Right-wing major event in Britain’s modern history. Billions of pounds are taken from poor and middle-income taxpayers and service users to build temples to a corporate and sporting elite. Democratic, grassroots sport is stripped of money to fund the most rarefied sport imaginable. The police and the state are turned into the enforcement arm of Coca-Cola. How did this event suddenly become the toast of the Left?”Link here.
SussexSocialist wrote:Our role as socialists to challenge and educate is getting harder everyday and until we, as a Party, pull our finger out from our holes and start adopting a more aggressive media campaign funded by our legacies. Big ads, newspaper ads, TV and radio ads / time.Even without the huge benefit of our legacies there are party sub-committees who are severly under-performing. We have to face up to the fact that if the current personnel are unable to ‘cut the mustard’ then it is the responsibility of the Executive Committee to cease being a rubber stamp in continually appointing the same members every year and to call for others who will have more verve and initiative. You know, we’ve got a fight on our hands and it’s a ‘no holds barred’ situation.
I only saw some of the edited highlights on the news, but it looked like pretty risible stuff to me. Adam, “Lenin” has some chores for you to do:http://www.leninology.com/2012/07/puke-britannia.html
I only said that if you didn’t watch it you wouldn’t be able to discuss it with fellow-workers at work or in the pub or the supermarket queue (or even the golf club or the dinner party):http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spopen/message/15074
I watched the ceremony myself after a few discussions and am happy to say I was completely wrong about it. It was a fundamentally socialist vision, and the Tories and the Daily Mail had to pretend to like it. Brilliant. Should have known better than to take the word of a Leninist dalek on cultural matters.
Dunno, “Lenin” wasn’t that wide of the mark on this occasion.It’s not the job of socialists to refer to the more touching moments of the Olympics; we have liberals to do that. We currently have a city crawling with uniformed thugs, missile launchers and undercover agents of every persuasion, during a serious cyclical crisis of capitalism.And what is the response of the workers? When they (or relatively small sections) are not rioting, protesting or occupying ‘mindlessly’ against the system’s worst excesses, there are others (even some socialists it seems) gawping at a torch or won over by a little clever choreography. In fact anything except getting rid of the system which oppresses them.Too right, the party needs to be around to provide “The Answer”, in reply to a point made on another thread,http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/occupy-movement?page=28#comment-2005not for it “to be swallowed whole on delivery” but to be considered alongside all the erroneous ideas being peddled. Because if we don’t do that there aren’t too many others who will.
stuartw2112 wrote:Thanks Gnome for providing ample evidence to back up my points. CheerioNo sweat, Stuart. Glad I was able to cut through some of the mire for you.
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