The author writes about Great Britain, but it might as well be the US.
Miriam
The Danger of Getting Sidetracked
June 28, 2019
What this story really shows is how the corporate media derails meaningful
debates and draws us all into a modern version of bread and circuses, writes
Jonathan Cook.
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
I really do not wish to write about Mark Field, the British government
minister who assaulted a climate change activist last week, grabbing her by
the neck and violently marching her out of a City of London dinner while all
the hundreds of other wealthy diners watched either impassively or
approvingly. But whatever my wishes, it seems I must.
I don’t wish to write about Mark Field, because the media have constructed
a debate that is limited to one matter only, even if there are apparently
innumerable variations of that one issue to be raised.
Did Field behave like a gentleman or a knave? Is it reasonable that he
believed the woman posed a danger? Is his apology enough? Were the climate
change activists trespassing and, if they were, did that justify Field’s
actions? Has he broken the ministerial code of conduct? Would we still be
outraged if the activist were a man? Should he resign? Is his outburst
evidence he is a wife beater? And so on.
When we engage in these debates, they seem important. As if we are fighting
for the health of our societies; or upholding key values, or at the very
least the rule of law. As if it shows we care. As if it can make things a
little better.
Which is exactly why I don’t want to write about Mark Field. Because the
reality is that things won’t get better while we allow ourselves to be
manipulated into these kind of ring-fenced debates.
There is a reason why the corporate media quickly escalate simple stories
like Mark Field’s into such apparently elaborate and polarizing public
discussions. And the reason is to stop other kinds of debates, much more
vital ones, from taking place that these stories would naturally provoke if
we had a truly free media. We are being offered the modern version of bread
and circuses.
Strip away the narrow, sectarian party politics in play here, and there is
nothing debatable about Mark Field’s actions. He is caught on camera - his
face full of rage, not fear - violently grabbing an activist who clearly
poses no threat to him and who is, in fact, simply walking behind his chair.
Field pushes her up against a wall, then seizes her by the back of the neck
and frog-marches her out of the dining hall. If you feel it necessary, you
can also factor in that the activist is a woman and the government minister
a man.
Simple Situation
Either way, what is shown in the video is an entirely unjustified attack on
a peaceful protester. Had the roles been reversed, the activist (whether a
man or woman) would have been immediately arrested for assaulting a
government minister. The activist would now be in jail with lawyers arguing
over whether bail should be allowed. So why isn’t Mark Field now in the
same predicament?
The point is that anyone who wishes to make the argument any more complex
than the one I just outlined is doing so either in bad faith or because they
have listened too credulously to others who have spoken in bad faith. Which
includes the entire spectrum of the state-corporate media, including its
supposedly liberal components like the BBC and the Guardian.
What the story about Mark Field really illustrates is how effective the
corporate media is in derailing meaningful debates about the state of our
societies. The media offer us a placebo - a public arena for largely empty
arguments that we are encouraged to become deeply invested in emotionally.
We are offered two easy options and must choose to rally to the cause of one
of those tribes - left or right. And through righteous anger, for or
against, we feel temporarily cured of a deeper dissatisfaction or sense of
foreboding.
The reality is that these public debates are simply gladiatorial contests
offering instant - and hollow - gratification. They have as much concrete
meaning in terms of changing the substance of our societies, of addressing
the injustice and unsustainability of our political and economic systems, as
does cheering a football team.
That is not to argue that denouncing an assault on a peaceful protester is
wasted energy, or that rationalizing it - as so many people on the right are
currently doing - is not deeply ugly. The treatment of protesters by the
state and its agents, or of women by men, are important matters for public
discussion. But that is not why the media are so willingly fueling the row
about Mark Field’s actions.
Deflecting Attention
The debate is not being used as an opportunity to clarify how our society
should view acceptable behavior; it is being actively promoted by a ruling
class to deflect our attention from the deeper contextual issues the Mark
Field episode highlights.
Allowing two sides in a debate about whether he behaved appropriately is
already to have conceded the progressive argument. It is to accept that
there is room for discussion, that the video evidence is not conclusive in
itself.
This is a contest where the stakes are so immaterial to the corporate media
that each outlet can afford to take either side of the debate and know it
will make no meaningful difference. They can berate Mark Field or sympathize
with him, and it will make no odds to anyone or anything but Field and
possibly the victim of his assault.
And the very cynical fueling of this debate by the state-corporate media,
one that may last days or even weeks, can then be cited as seemingly
persuasive evidence that the media truly is a pluralistic forum for public
discussion, where all sides are represented, where everyone is given a
voice. Contrived debates like this one will be used as ammunition to shunt
media critics like myself further into sidings, showing how vigorous,
relevant and on the side of the underdog the “mainstream” media really is.
This is the primary purpose of the state-corporate media. To draw our
energies away from real issues hiding in plain sight towards obvious ones of
only specific or marginal significance, and then persuade us that we are in
fact engaged with the most vital issues of the day.
Personalities, Not Power Structures
This is precisely why the media are obsessed with individuals and
personalities - celebs, sporting heroes, royal family members, actors,
politicians, world leaders - not the actual power structures that dictate
the patterns of our lives, that determine the chances of us gaining redress
or justice, that offer the key to extricating ourselves from the economic
and environmental ruin we are hurtling towards.
If necessary, Mark Field can be sacrificed by the power structures that
dominate our lives (though usually only temporarily - think of other
government ministers who have found themselves briefly ousted from power and
then quickly rehabilitated, such as Boris Johnson or Liam Fox) because the
mechanisms that protect these power structures are far more important than
the punishment or humiliation or any lone individual.
Consider two much deeper issues desperately struggling to gain any traction
as they are smothered by the media’s gleeful furor over the Mark Field
story.
One concerns the event Mark Field attended. It was an annual dinner at
Mansion House, the official residence of the mayor of the City of London.
The City of London is not the Mary Poppins’ way of saying “London.” It is
a tiny, secretive enclave within Britain, a state within a state located in
the heart of London. Seen another way, it is a kind of British Vatican,
though one that worships money alone.
Corrupt Fiefdom
Sculpture in Goswell Road marking boundary of City of London. (Mike Quinn,
CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
It abides by its own rules, financial and criminal, creating effectively a
tax-haven within the UK that cannot be policed by any of the usual
watchdogs. The City of London has managed to continue unreformed from its
medieval origins into the modern era for one reason alone: it is the perfect
way for a wealthy elite to maintain their power and privilege by bypassing
the imperfect democratic system operating outside its concrete shores, in
the rest of the U.K. The City of London is a deeply corrupt fiefdom inside a
slightly less corrupt Britain. If the mafia were given the chance to make
themselves look legit, they might create in Italy something very much like
the City of London.
Those attending the dinner are drawn from either Britain’s wealth elite, or
those who serve them and aspire to join them. Figures such as Field, a
minister in the Foreign Office, and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, who
addressed the dinner, oil some of the wheels of this exclusive club
partially out in the open, through U.K. politics. But they oil other wheels
in the shadows, through their activities in the City of London. What
precisely they get up to in the City is difficult to know given the secrecy,
and all the harder to now learn about after Field’s ruling party has worked
so assiduously to hobble Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks platform that was
established to help whistleblowers expose the more shadowy activities of our
rulers.
The City of London is the biggest weapon in the armory of the ruling elite’
s class war against the British - and global - public. It is a vacuum
sucking up public finances to further enrich the wealthy and leave the
masses reeling from austerity policies, while using the media to bolster the
impression that it is a hub of wealth creation.
That’s why you almost never hear anything about the City of London. Our
supposed representatives, politicians and corporate media alike, are happy
to keep the veil mostly drawn across this pocket of power. It is not just
that they do not want to take it on, they are already very much part of the
power structures it has designed both to preserve itself and shield itself
from meaningful criticism.
As long as we are talking about Mark Field’s attitude to women, we are not
talking about his and his government’s active collusion with the most
regressive, secretive, unaccountable rotten borough in the UK - a city-state
located geographically inside Britain, but operating outside its strictures.
Mark Field’s attack could have provided an opportunity to examine this
powerful relic of medieval Britain, to consider who the City of London
really serves, and to wonder why the political class are cozying up to it
rather than trying to eradicate it as a dangerous behemoth of Britain’s
surviving feudal order. The City of London is integral to a system of
ever-accelerating wealth hording by a global elite that is economically
unsustainable. But in response, the media willingly amplify a loud culture
war and simplistic identity politics precisely so no other kind of debate
stands a chance of being audible.
The other, even more obvious issue the activists were trying to draw
attention to was the threat posed to the environment, to other species and
to our own future by the preposterous, self-serving premise - espoused by
the City of London and its politician and media cronies - of endless
economic growth based on the exploitation of the planet’s finite resources.
Supermoon over City of London. (Colin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia
Commons.)
Late Waking to Emergency
We are now facing a climate emergency - or rather some of us are finally and
very belatedly waking up to a climate emergency that has been many decades
in the making. We have come to it so late because the wealth elite
represented at the City of London dinner have used the key power structures
at their disposal - the political and media establishments - to deceive us,
to keep us sleepwalking towards oblivion as they have carried on plundering
the planet, destroying the biosphere, and stashing away their inordinate
wealth.
The state-corporate media has not only downplayed climate change but is
still doing so, as credibly as it can manage given the relentless scientific
evidence that human society is hurtling towards an abyss.
In fact, many of the journalists responding to Mark Field’s attack have
lost no time in using it as a way to further alienate the public from
climate change activism. They have presented those prepared not simply to
wait quietly for us all to be driven over the cliff-edge as a nasty,
uncouth, potentially violent rabble. They have done this even as the video
footage shows the women who protested at the Mansion House dinner were
dressed in evening gowns and remained entirely peaceful as they sought to
gain attention for the most urgent and catastrophic issue of our time.
There should be no debate that they are right, that we live in a rotten and
rotting system of power that has blindly invested all its energies in
perpetuating a feudal system of wealth creation for a ruling class, even as
the futures of our children - all our children - hang in the balance.
Yes, Mark Field, his face red with indignation, looked like a man who had
lost the plot, who was filled with an overwhelming sense of his own
entitlement, and who was deeply threatened - not by violence from the
protesters but by arguments he simply has no way of addressing rationally.
The real debate we need urgently to engage with is not whether Mark Field is
a wife-beater or misogynist. It is how we deal with the power structure he
represents, the system he is a loyal servant of. For that psychopathic
system is ready to beat us all, men and women alike, into the dust, to keep
extracting the last ounce of wealth from a dying corpse, to obliterate our
futures.
Jonathan Cook is a freelance journalist based in Nazareth.
This article is from his blog, Jonathan Cook.net.
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