In this blog I intend to comment from a socialist perspective on current political events and stories particularly as they appear in the Guardian newspaper.
I have been a critical lifelong reader of the Guardian even though my political views have been consistently to the left of what the Guardian would consider “moderate”. The way that Guardian correspondents use the words “moderate” and “extremist” tells us a great deal about where the Guardian considers the limits of acceptable politics to be (its Overton window). These changed slightly over time in line with changes in the country’s general political climate, but until relatively recently not by much. Its commentators in the main would regard themselves to be on the centre-left of the political spectrum. The Guardian has always felt comfortable with capitalism, but would like to help it become a bit more caring and egalitarian.
However, the world-wide phenomenon it describes as “populism” has completely shattered the Guardian’s sense of equilibrium and purpose. It has put an end to politics as “business as usual” with which the paper has always identified. In the UK, the “populist” phenomena that most upset the Guardian were the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party and the vote for Brexit in the referendum. Corbyn had always been regarded by the Guardian as a bit of an extremist. Until this totally unexpected phenomenon occurred, the Labour Party had been considered as a “moderate” party potentially worthy of the Guardian’s support.
“Populism” has now become the Guardian’s greatest enemy and its main mission appears to have become to denounce the phenomenon as a threat to democracy and to help politics return to “business as normal”. The Guardian sees what it calls left and right populism as two sides of the same evil. Corbyn(ism), Maduro and Morales have recently been tarred by the paper with a similar brush to Trump, Orban, Savini, LePen et al. This represents a complete misunderstanding of the dangerous moment that we are living through. It is what has prompted to start this blog as an extension of email conversations I have been conducting with friends ever since the Brexit referendum.
Through commenting on political events and on the manner of their reporting by the Guardian, I hope to show that what we are witnessing is the result of a profound crisis of the global capitalist system which has led to a generalised political crisis of representative democracy. This has the potential to generate the serious threat of neofascism. What has happened recently in Brazil is a warning of what can happen when social democracy fails. People everywhere do not feel themselves represented by the system of politics as “business as usual” from which they have become detached. To develop appropriate political strategies it is necessary to recognise that there is good justification for this feeling rooted in the way the capitalist system operates. The phenomenon usually described as “populism” constitutes an opportunity as well as a threat.
Through this blog I hope to demonstrate that the struggle for democracy cannot be separated from the struggle against a system whose purpose is to generate profit rather than to fulfil human need.