A hostile environment

One of the most frustrating things about the Mark Kennedy case has been the stultifying failure of its media coverage to point out the obvious. That Met officers are being paid to spy on people exercising their democratic right to protest (however shaky that right has looked since November) is bad enough, but the fact that environmentalists are now considered so iniquitous they merit over a million pounds' worth of subterfuge is both disappointing and inconsistent. The government has ignored enough experts to know environmentalists are not reacting disproportionately. Are they starting to believe their own spin - that Copenhagen wasn't a failure? That we have time to fanny about with bills and revisions just to please the CEOs?

Terence Blacker, writing in The Independent on the the 17th of January, got it half right when he suggested that the Met had 'put excitement and self-interest before any genuine interest in law and order.

But not a moment later the piece takes a rather more sinister direction.

It is not difficult to see why this operation would appeal to a man like Kennedy [...] access to eco-babes willing to do their bit for the cause.

Is this man actually suggesting that Mark Kennedy's lovers somehow deserved what they got because, as activists, they had forfeited all fidelity and respect? Or is he suggesting that women only get into activism for the sex?

Blacker continues to dig without grounds:

Several of Kennedy's lovers are said to be 'deeply upset' to discover they had slept with a policeman. Another claims she feels violated. There is serious talk of a civil action against the police. It is absurd – men never lie more than when they are trying to get women into bed – but no sillier than the rest of the case.

To reiterate: men have no respect for women, but that's fine; women don't deserve their respect anyway; environmentalism is a fetish party, not a belief; now let's all skip down to the stock exchange and get a couple of prostitutes for after.

On a more surprising note, the Green Party commits a few fallacies of its own. Jenny Jones writes on the Green Party website that the worst part of all this is that

targeting peaceful protesters means less cash to pay for anti-terrorism, where murder and maiming is the aim, not blockading a power station or sitting in trees.

I'm downright surprised at the Greens buying into the rhetoric of the War on Terror, especially given how significantly the fight against such invisible enemies detracts from the real enemy - the environmental policy that the Green Party is supposed to be addressing, not marginalising. Perhaps the party has to be seen to toe the Parliamentary line these days - but this kind of lip service only serves to dilute something that needs all the support it can get.

Cultural paranoia

I'm reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. It's a depressing block of paper that details some of the incredible crimes perpetrated against communities and individuals in the name of economics, such as the actions of CIA-linked totalitarian governments in South America during the later half of the 20th century. In countries such as Chile and Argentina, Klein tells us, the left wing was systematically destroyed through torture and murder - 'shocked' - to allow the economic ideas of US capitalists to be implemented in place of the progressive politics that were developing in those places, and that constituted a 'threat' to the free market.

I won't attempt to summarise the book - it's essential reading in itself, but either way the Wikipedia entry does it better than I could - but it raises what seems to be a particularly crucial question on page 126:

Is neo-liberalism an inherently violent ideology, and is there something about its goals that demands this cycle of brutal political cleansing [...]?

Marx tells us that, for people to profit, there must be theft and inequality. As Klein points out, theft is usually violent - and, even where there is no physical violence, there is violation (of safety, of ownership, of trust, etc.). So does capitalism, the pursuit of stolen labour, itself necessitate violence and suffering?

To turn it into a thought experiment - could a community, of any size, operate a capitalist system without any of its members being subjected to violence, or being unhappy - say, not being able to afford adequate food, housing, clothing, education, healthcare, and so on?

If not, and I'm undecided about this, then I feel a lot of guilt.

Guilt, partly because I partake in a capitalist society, but primarily because I enjoy it - I earn and spend money, I compete with other people for jobs, I shop around, and I enjoy the things I buy - at every stage, I'm supporting the system that violates people and communities for profit. It's not just about buying ethical products - by buying any products, I'm supporting the system that puts those ethical products within a capitalist market.

This is, supposedly, how the proletariat is kept under control: the elite allows it to have the X-Factor and some new shoes, under the agreement that it won't make too much of a fuss about politics. Am I being pacified by shiny things - in this case, books, records, an MA?

This raises worrying questions about my core beliefs and values. If my values are capitalist - I like ownership and collection, say - then under a system that didn't exploit people I would have to redefine what 'I' meant. I could no longer think of myself in terms of competition and inequality.

So should the first step be to purge myself, or can I work toward the rejection of capitalism without burning all my possessions? There's no reason that books and records can't be socialist, but I don't think I can own them.

But I know that I would rather people no longer lived in horrible poverty than that I had any of my books and records. And yet I sit here right now listening to The Notwist and typing about a book I bought (well, technically, borrowed).

Have other people struggled with this? What have they come up with?