What does information technology mean when journalists who spent the last two decades promoting wars of aggression on dark-brown- and black-skinned people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen take a knee?

The Observer commented:

'There is a dreadful familiarity well-nigh the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, by white police officers in Minneapolis concluding Mon….

'The fact that the US has been hither earlier, countless times, does non lessen the horror of this crime nor mitigate cruel law actions.'

At that place was a dreadful familiarity about the West's toppling of Gaddafi in 2011, simply the Observer didn't notice. Instead, the editors insisted that, 'The west tin't let Gaddafi destroy his people', 'this particular tyranny will not be allowed to stand'.

Not 'immune to stand', that is, by the destroyers of Iraq eight years before; by governments with zero brownie as moral agents. The fact that the US-UK alliance had been 'hither' before, countless times, did not lessen the horror of the crime nor mitigate barbarous military machine actions.

When the dirty deed was done and Libyan oil was safely dorsum in Western hands, an Observer editorial applauded, 'An honourable intervention. A hopeful time to come', as the state barbarous apart and black people were ethnically apple-pie from towns like Tawergha without any United kingdom journalists taking a knee joint or giving a damn.

When a white policeman crushes a blackness man's cervix with his articulatio genus for eight minutes and 46 seconds, journalists see structural racism. When the West places its boot on the throats of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen for decades and centuries, journalists come across 'rogue states', an 'centrality of evil', a 'clear and nowadays threat' to the Westward that can exist averted only past forcefulness.

Journalists see racism in the disproportionate violence habitually visited on US black people by law, but find nothing racist in the ultra-violence habitually inflicted by the United states of america-UK alliance blitzing famine-stricken Afghanistan in 2001, in sanctions that killed 500,000 children under 5 in Iraq, in war that killed 1 million people in Republic of iraq, in war that destroyed Libya, Syria, Yemen, and many others.

The links between domestic and international racism are hard to miss. Theodore Roosevelt (US president 1901-1909), noted that 'the most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages,' establishing the rule of 'the dominant world races'. (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, 'Yr 501 – The Conquest Continues,' Verso, 1993, p.23)

In 1919, Winston Churchill defended the employ of poison gas against 'uncivilised tribes' equally a means of spreading 'a lively terror'. Churchill wrote of the 'satisfied nations' whose power places them 'above the remainder,' the 'rich men home at peace within their habitations' to whom 'the regime of the earth must be entrusted'. (Ibid., p.33)

In 1932, at the World Disarmament Briefing, David Lloyd George (British prime minister, 1916-1922), insisted that the British government would continue to inflict violence for 'constabulary purposes in outlying places'. He afterwards recounted:

'We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers.'

In 1947, renowned British Field Marshall, Bernard Montgomery, noted the 'immense possibilities that be in British Africa for development' and 'the use to which such development could be put to enable Uk to maintain her standard of living, and to survive'. 'These lands contain everything we demand', said Montgomery, fresh from combatting the Nazis' efforts to achieve 'Lebensraum'. It was U.k.'s task to 'develop' the continent since the African 'is a complete vicious and is quite incapable of the developing the country [sic] himself'.

In his book, 'A Unlike Kind Of State of war – The UN Sanctions Authorities In Iraq', Hans von Sponeck, former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, wrote that during 'stage V' of the Oil-For-Food programme, from November 1998 to May 1999, each Iraqi citizen received a food allocation worth $49, or 27 cents per day. Von Sponeck noted that, 'the UN was more than humane with its dogs than with the Iraqi people': each UN domestic dog was allocated $160 for nutrient over the same period. (Hans von Sponeck, 'A Different Kind of War', Bergahn Books, 2006, p.38)

If the killing of George Floyd was racism, how shall we draw U.s.- and UK-led United nations policy that 'was more than humane with its dogs'? How to describe corporate media that rail against domestic racism while perennially cheerleading the infinitely more violent international version? Why are we not taking a knee for Iraqis and Libyans? Why are they not even mentioned in the context of institutionalised racism? Why is no-i toppling Orwellian monuments to a 'free printing' supporting global oppression, like the statue of George Orwell outside BBC Broadcasting House?

The Guardian opined:

'It is the United States' keen misfortune at such a time to be led by a president who sows segmentation as a thing of political strategy. Bunkered downward, now literally, in the White House, the president tweeted last week: "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."'

In 2011, afterward the shooting had started, the Guardian quietly celebrated the work of an earlier president who besides sowed sectionalization without the editors perceiving whatever great 'misfortune'. A Guardian leader commented on Libya:

'Merely it can now reasonably exist said that in narrow armed services terms it worked, and that politically at that place was some retrospective justification for its advocates every bit the crowds poured into the streets of Tripoli to welcome the rebel convoys earlier this week.'

The same paper insists information technology did not support the 2003 Bush-Blair state of war on Republic of iraq. The truth is that it promoted every last government ruse in pursuit of war: Saddam Hussein was a threat to the West, he was certainly hiding WMD, US-U.k. were focused on disarming him, were trying to notice diplomatic solutions, were fighting for freedom (non oil, a possibility so far-fetched and insulting it was dismissed out of hand), and then on.

The Guardian has never seen the U.s.-UK devastation of Libya, Iraq, Syria and Yemen as manifestations of the same structural racism it sees so plainly in US police violence:

'Racism is structural, and state fail can exist as deadly every bit state abuse. Information technology does non always have a articulatio genus on the cervix to impale someone. Poverty, overcrowding, and diff access to healthcare tin be fatal.'

True enough. So can corporate greed for profits, for control of oil. Any rational person can join the dots: corporate ability subordinates human welfare at dwelling house and abroad. Bombing, sanctions, invasion are symptoms of the same profit-driven brutality that forces people to suffer poverty, overcrowding and poor healthcare.

The Times wrote nobly:

'The challenge is to harness this moment and then that it leads to positive changes.'

And:

'Of class not all of the legitimate aspirations of those protesting can be accomplished overnight. Only progress can be fabricated with adamant action.'

This from the newspaper that supports every war going, aided by Perpetual War propagandists like David Aaronovitch, who wrote an commodity for The Times entitled: 'Go for a no-fly zone over Libya or regret it.' (See our volume, 'Propaganda Blitz', pp.129-131, for numerous other examples of Aaronovitch's warmongering.)

If, as John Dewey said, 'politics is the shadow cast on society by big business', so liberal media discussions of morality are a grim part of that darkness, shedding no light.

The Human Ego – 'I' Affair More

The corporate system gives the impression that anti-semites, white supremacists, sexists and the similar are victims of a primitive mind virus reducing them to the condition of moral Neanderthals. With sufficient social distancing, track-and-trace, isolation, the remnants of this historic pandemic tin finally be eradicated. The focus is always on establishment 'cancel civilisation': erasing, banning, firing, censorship and criminalisation.

The BBC, for example, prefers to erase the linguistic communication of racism. A contempo news report was titled:

'A gravestone honouring the Dambusters' dog – whose name is a racial slur – has been replaced.'

The study noted that the slur was i 'which the BBC is not naming'. The domestic dog'due south name, 'Nigger', appears instantly, of course, to the heed of anyone who has seen the film, or to anyone who has access to Google. Curiously, although the 'N-discussion' appears nowhere in the report, the racial slur, 'Redskin', appears 12 times in a BBC report that appeared but three days before and that was actually titled:

'Washington Redskins to drop controversial team name following review'

'Nigger' and 'Redskin' are both colour-related racial slurs with horrendous histories – both are used to imply racial inferiority. Why can i be mentioned and the other not? Censoring the Dambuster dog's name achieved little and is not attempted by broadcasters showing films like 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction', in which the slur is repeated numerous times.

Similar other media casting Dewey's corporate 'shadow', the BBC cannot make sense of racism and other forms of prejudice considering moral coherence would risk extending the debate to the structural prejudice of the deeply classist, racist, state of war-fighting, country-corporate establishment.

Racists and sexists start to look a little dissimilar when we make the following ascertainment:

Racism and sexism are manifestations of the ego'south attempt to brand itself 'higher' past making others 'lower'.

Viewing brown- and black-skinned people as 'junior' is obviously all nearly white and other racists asserting their 'superiority'. This is literally, of course, a microscopically superficial basis for 'superiority'. Differences establishing sexist 'superiority' at least involve whole organs rather than a layer of cells! But despite what the necessarily incoherent corporate shadow culture would take united states believe, racists and sexists who view other people as 'inferior' are not exotic anomalies.

The human ego does not view others as equal; it places itself and its loved ones at the centre of the universe – 'I' matter more, 'my' happiness and the happiness of those 'I' dearest come get-go. The happiness of anybody else is very much a peripheral concern. The ego latches on to almost whatever excuse to reinforce this prejudice – viewing itself as 'special', 'higher', and others equally 'ordinary', 'lower' – on the basis of about any superficial differences, many of them fifty-fifty more trivial and transient than racial and gender differences. (Meet hither for further discussion on the striving to be 'special'.)

This tendency is massively promoted past our culture from the earliest age and manifests in numerous forms other than racism and sexism. We are taught to compete with our peers, to rise to the 'upper stream', to come up first in exams, to be 'top of the grade', to go to the 'all-time' schools, the 'best' colleges, to get the 'all-time' jobs. We are taught to ascertain ourselves every bit more or less 'bright', 'academic', 'gifted' (selected for receipt of an actual 'God-given talent'!). Equally children, nosotros practice not all display the airs of young Winston Churchill visible in this photograph, but nosotros are all trained to exist 'winners' over 'losers'.

The Art Of Pronouncing 'Hegemony'

Racism and sexism accept caused immense harm, of course, but so has the classism visible in young Winston's face up. Humans feel 'higher up' others, 'special', when they come from wealthy, aloof families; when they attend a celebrated school, an elite university; when they gain a first grade caste (or whatsoever caste), or a Masters, or a PhD; when they buy a 'pinnacle of the range' car, or luxury belongings in a desirable postcode; when they work in loftier-prestige jobs; when they achieve fame and fortune; when Howard Jacobson writes in The Contained:

'When Russell Brand uses the word "hegemony" something dies in my soul.'

It is agony for people similar Jacobson – who was educated at Stand Grammar School and Downing College, Cambridge (before lecturing at the Academy of Sydney and Selwyn College, Cambridge) – to hear Brand – educated at Grays School Media Arts Higher, Essex, a coeducational secondary schoolhouse – chatting to Ricky Gervais, both of working class origin, without cringing at the way they glottal terminate the 't' in words similar 'civili'y', 'carnali'y', 'universi'y' and 'beau'iful'.

The reaction of center and upper class people to Brand preaching philosophy and 'poli'ics' is exactly that described by Samuel Johnson who made himself 'higher' by making women 'lower':

'Sir, a woman's preaching is like a canis familiaris's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; merely you are surprised to find it done at all.'

Because elite interests run the mass media, we have all been trained to perceive elite accents as cultured and authoritative, and working class accents as uncultured, uneducated. When nosotros at Media Lens grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, BBC newsreaders and continuity announcers sounded similar Etonian masters and Oxbridge dons. Even at present, journalists like Fiona Bruce and Nicholas Witchell deliver the royal pronunciation of the word 'years' every bit 'yers'.

The above may sound comical and absurd – it is! – just the fact is that, as Jacobson'due south comment suggests, millions of people accept been trained to perceive the accents of working grade people appearing on political programmes like Question Time, Newsnight and The Marr Show as 'lower'. When nosotros react this way to peel colour, rather than to accent and class, we call it racism.

In an article titled, 'Leather jackets, flat caps and tracksuits: how to apparel if y'all're a leftwing politician', Hadley Freeman wrote in the Guardian in 2016:

'Now, personally, some of us think that Corbyn could consider updating his ideas as much as his wardrobe… He must spend veritable hours cultivating that look, unless in that location'south a store on Holloway Road that I've missed called 1970s Polytechnic Lecturer iv U. Honestly, where can you even buy tracksuits similar the ones he sports?'

This wasn't racism, but it was classism. Much of the focus on Corbyn being comparatively 'prime ministerial' was institution prejudice targeting a working class threat. Corbyn didn't dress like the elite he was challenging – he wore 'embarrassing' sandals rather than 'statesmanlike' blackness leather shoes; an 'embarrassing' jacket rather than the traditional long, black 'presidential' overcoat – only as Brand didn't know the 'correct' way to say 'hegemony'. Corbyn was second-charge per unit, Polytechnic textile; not get-go-class, Oxford cloth, like Freeman. The BBC'due south Mark Mardell commented on Corbyn:

'One cynic told me expectations are so low, if Corbyn turns up and doesn't soil himself, information technology's a success.' (Mardell, BBC Radio four, 'The Earth This Weekend', 21 May 2017)

If this was not gross, classist prejudice, tin nosotros conceive of Mardell repeating a comparable slur nearly institution politicians like George Bush, Tony Blair, Theresa May and Sir Keir Starmer shitting themselves in public?

Racism and sexism have monstrous consequences, of course, just and so does classism and speciesism, and then does every kind of faux-pinnacle of the self.

Beyond Censorship

The banning and even criminalisation of words and opinions associated with ego aggrandizement come at a cost. The trouble is that powerful interests are constantly attempting to extend censorship to words and opinions they are cracking to suppress. For example, the banning of Holocaust denial prompted establishment propagandists pushing their own version of 'cancel culture' to damn u.s.a. at Media Lens for something called 'Srebrenica denial'. As political analyst Theodore Sayeed noted of the smearing of Noam Chomsky:

'In the art of controversy, slapping the label "denier" on someone is meant to evoke the Holocaust. Chomsky, the furtive accuse proceeds, is a kind of Nazi.'

Although we had never written about Srebrenica, repeated attempts were made to link us to Holocaust denial in this way, and so that we might likewise exist branded as virtual Nazis that no self-respecting media outlet would e'er quote or mention, much less interview or publish.

In both our example and Chomsky's, this was non the work of well-intentioned individuals, only of organised groups promoting the interests of the war-fighting country. It was really role of a much wider endeavor by state-corporate interests to 'abolish' opponents of US-UK wars of aggression. Terms like 'genocide denial' and 'apologist' are increasingly thrown at leftist critics of Western crimes in Rwanda, Syria, Libya and Venezuela. For example, critics of Western policy in Syrian arab republic are relentlessly accused of 'Assadist genocide deprival', which is declared 'identical' to Srebrenica denial and Holocaust denial.

The ongoing campaign to acquaintance criticism of Israel with anti-semitism is an effort to extend the ban on Holocaust denial to Labour Party politicians and other members promoting socialism and Palestinian rights. This establishment 'cancel culture' played a major role in the dismantling of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Again, the goal is to anchor the need for censorship in a fixed upstanding betoken on which everyone tin can agree. On the basis that Holocaust denial is prohibited, attempts are fabricated to extend that prohibition to other subjects that powerful interests dislike. The goal is the emptying and even criminalisation of dissident complimentary speech.

Promotions of violence, including state violence, bated, the focus of anyone who cares about freedom of spoken communication and democracy should not be on banning words and opinions relating to racism and sexism. Both are functions of the ego's wide-ranging efforts to drag itself, and these efforts cannot simply be banned. Instead, we need to empathize and dissolve the delusions of ego through self-awareness.

Noam Chomsky was absolutely correct to sign a letter in Harper's magazine opposing the growing momentum of 'swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought', even though many other signatories were hypocrites. As Chomsky has said:

'If you lot're in favour of liberty of speech, that means you're in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you lot despise. Otherwise y'all're not in favour of freedom of oral communication.'

The 8th Century mystic, Shantideva, asked:

'Since I and other beings both, in wanting happiness, are equal and alike, what divergence is at that place to distinguish us, that I should strive to have my bliss alone?' (Shantideva, 'The Way of the Bodhisattva', Shambhala, 1997, p. 123)

Are 'my' suffering and happiness more important than 'your' suffering and happiness merely because they're 'mine'? Evidently not – the idea is baseless, irrational and cruel. This awareness certainly provides the rational, intellectual foundation for treating the happiness of others as 'equal and alike' to our own, but not the motivation.

However, Shantideva examined, with meticulous attending, his own reactions on occasions when he did and did not care for the happiness of others as 'equal and alike', and he reached this startling conclusion:

'The intention, sea of great good, that seeks to place all beings in the state of bliss, and every action for the benefit of all: such is my delight and all my joy.' (Ibid., p. 49)

Shantideva's point is that, if we pay close attention to our feelings, we volition notice that caring for others – treating their suffering and happiness equally equal to our ain – is a source of tremendous and growing 'delight' and, in fact, 'all my joy'. It is also an 'ocean of great adept' for social club. This is a subtle awareness that is blocked by the kind of overthinking that predominates in our civilisation (it requires meditation, an acute focus on feeling), merely Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw the truth of the exclamation with great clarity:

'I could sometimes gladden some other heart, and I owe it to my ain honour to declare that whenever I could bask this pleasance, I found information technology sweeter than any other . This was a potent, pure and genuine instinct, and nothing in my middle of hearts has ever belied it.' (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 'Reveries of A Solitary Walker', Penguin Classics, 1979, p. 94, our accent)

The fact that a loving, inclusive eye is the basis of private and social happiness, and a hate-filled, prejudiced heart is the basis of individual and social unhappiness, is the most powerful rationale for dropping racism, sexism, classism and speciesism. It is a response rooted in the warm truth of beingness and lived experience, not in bloodless ideas of 'moral obligation' and 'political correctness', not in the vehement suppression of gratis speech.

It is not our 'duty' or 'moral obligation' to be respectful and tolerant of people and animals different from us; it is in our own best interests to intendance for them.

Enlightened cocky-interest, not banning and censorship, has always been the most effective antidote to prejudice. In fact, anger, penalty, blame and guilt-making may atomic number 82 us away from the truth that nosotros are not being 'selfish' by denigrating others, we are harming ourselves.

DE