8 May 2019

Did the Young Create a New Socialism?


A Review of Liam Young's book "Rise" (2018)

In the political establishment and its media, there is a "baffled air of ignorance surrounding the political engagement and opinions of young people", wrote influential pro-Corbyn Labour Party activist Liam Young in a book last year titled Rise: How Jeremy Corbyn Inspired the Young to Create a New Socialism.

In the 2018 book, the author argues young people have been compelled to get involved in politics because of Conservative-led austerity measures. For such young political campaigners, the motive is personal experience, with each campaigner having their own interest in overcoming student debt, zero-hours contracts and other impacts of government policy on them.

It is tempting to believe the author of Rise, who writes that the vast majority of the young really support Corbyn unflinchingly, even if the statistics in the book seem quite limited. Unfortunately, political apathy (at least when it comes to actually rolling up our sleeves and doing anything) is still prevalent among young people. There is the possibility that many young activists represent little more than a fleeting bubble of students and social media users, whose interest in the Labour Party is chiefly experimental and will pass as quickly as it began.

On the relentless criticism of the Opposition Leader in the media, Young channels the young of the Labour Party when he writes "we were being sold lies by well-known liars". It is indeed a puzzle that the press, supposedly with their finger on the public pulse, are not able to notice their own threadbare credibility and won't try to repair it, even in our times so dominated by the scorns of social media. They seem to know nothing about how normal people think, or what it might take to convince us to agree with them. Lone individual politicians like Corbyn seem to actually have more influence on us than the entire media establishment yapping at his feet, perhaps ever since they shed the last drop of their credibility to support Tony Blair's Iraq War.

One might find a paradox in the author labelling UK mainstream media simultaneously "right-wing" (p. 28) and a "liberal commentariat" (p. 48). However, this choice can be justified if one redefines the reactionary simply as a Macron, the dull yes-man of the reigning liberal state ideology and the hammer of the populists. Whatever worm is picked by the establishment, whether Conservative or Labour, "right" or "left", to oppose the people. Perhaps such a definition helps us also understand why so many apparent supporters of human rights turn out to be NATO tankies and airstrike-supporters willing to brainlessly hurl themselves at the official enemy.

Much-needed points are made in the book regarding the relationship between young political activists and Brexit. The author stated at the time, "There should be no worry within the Labour Party concerning a conflict between its position on Brexit and its support for the young", although flip-flopping on a possible second referendum has occurred anyway since the author wrote those words. The television might want you to think otherwise, but the young were actually much more engaged in support of Corbyn in the 2017 snap general election than they were in the Brexit vote, at least Young's book argues.

Going back a few years, the author notes how young people were betrayed by Nick Clegg after he had successfully mobilised them with his promise to write off student debt. This destroyed his political career, Young claims. It cemented views among the young that politicians are all the same. Corbyn differs from this, and the difference he presents helped rekindle the interest of the young. The pragmatic approach of Miliband is gone, replaced by Corbyn's honest and consistent track record as a dissident.

More than the appeal of his underdog status, Young says Jeremy Corbyn's appeal to 18-24-year-olds rests in his desire to listen. He is receptive and caring, and will ensure the young can decide the policies affecting them rather than accepting the decrees of the "tired establishment". From Corbyn there is no condescension, preaching, or authority. In response one might argue that while such ways are indeed favoured by young people at present, they do not necessarily indicate capable political leadership. Unwillingness so assert authority in the face of numerous challenges and insults far beyond the norm could be considered a weakness, and it is possible that the onslaught of hostility against Corbyn from top individuals within the party is more than most leaders would ever tolerate. Nevertheless, the overwhelmingly gentle approach Corbyn takes clearly strengthens his appeal at least with the younger demographic, and through them he has a strong element ever rushing to his support within the party.

The participation of under-24s in the 2017 election was explained poorly by both the Conservatives and many within Labour, and the author of Rise does not forgive them for it. Explanations included the allegation Corbyn bribed students by offering to abolish their tuition fees and cancel debts, and the claim Corbyn only appealed to the liberal young intelligentsia. Such ideas are refuted by some solid statistics presented by the author. Of particular interest is the finding by Young that genuinely working-class young voters, not necessarily from liberal and student circles at all, are undeniably drawn to Corbyn. His appeal to this demographic has been authentic, or so say the book's figures. Contrastingly, Young describes how the interests of younger generations are only weakly and hastily addressed by the Conservatives and excluded from their policies.

The "tired establishment" Young describes in both the government and the opposition parties resent the youth of the country and the social media they so favour. Young believes we can see this in their attempts to forbid such influences in practice and downplay their significance in their rhetoric. Discussing Momentum, Young asserts the group's social media power intimidated the Conservative Party and prompted ill-advised copycats who have yet to demonstrate any similar reach. It is possible however that tech companies, aligned with the same liberal commentariat rejected by Young, will thwart groups like Momentum in an effort to stall the passions of "populism" in favour of fading authorities. Companies like Facebook have been pushed and shoved to become boring censors on behalf of the state and mainstream media to fulfil a highly reactionary role, muffling dissenting views and shadow-banning many. They are onboard with the same MPs and journalists whose own freedom of speech and immunity from prosecution are abused to demand censorship against other people, bemoaning the smallest squeaks of ordinary citizens at the mercy of their power.

One weakness of the book might lie in its unscientific assertions the Conservative Party's views are "dying out along with their voters". This reference to the old comes across as a poor choice. Where is the study showing a staggeringly greater proportion of 18-24 year olds hold radical or anti-mainstream views now than in any other historical period? It may be that the problem for Labour isn't a specific generation of older people who are still alive to vote, as Young seems to argue. Instead, the age issue may indicate many people turn to the political right after becoming homeowners, parents, high-rate taxpayers, pensioners or some other category the Conservatives invest quite a bit in getting votes from. There has probably always been a correlation between university education, radicalism and youth. There is also possibly a correlation between youth, unemployment and anti-Conservative views, although it is not the task of this book review to provide such a study.

The observations in Liam Young's book do not indicate some hypothetical future where people remain youthfully radical despite aging. It is hard to deny we will inevitably change, as political views do change with age. Saying old people who vote Tory will be "dying out" to be replaced with young Labour voters not only defies the simple fact people age but ignores statistics showing the population is aging. Many people of a highly conservative mindset were potentially quite radical in their youth. The Labour Party may have lost the support of such people to the Conservatives over many years, making it a valueless observation or even a weakness for Labour to be enjoying disproportionate loyalty from the young rather than the old.

Saying old people are a "dying breed" is unhelpful. We must assume we will all age and die. Just because elderly people may pass away sooner does not mean their interests and sensibilities can be dismissed in politics. The case for old people is just as strong and convincing as the case for the young. In fact, any claim of old people dying off entirely as a demographic and being unable to decisively influence future elections is an offensive absurdity, unless the author is professing to have invented some plague.

While one can sound wise by repeating the conventional wisdom that young people are the future and the old need to step aside, one can also sound wise by pointing out that the money to fund our future comes from the old. Old people would be right to feel irritated by young people trying to prematurely declare them dead and boldly assert how all the revenues collected from them may be better spent. We must remember that our country itself was inherited from older generations, including people who are literally dead, and this does not diminish it or our obligations to honour them in any way.

As painful as it is to admit it, there is a risk Labour's youth surge is not as decisive as it seems and could backfire. If we are trading in our support of older people in favour of the young, replacing seasoned supporters with a temporary wave of support from curious teens and early 20s, the surge will be transitory and ultimately fade away. If we fight out a battle between age groups, rather than focusing on common ground and compassion between as many varieties of people as possible, it will be pointlessly destructive.

Despite the subtitle of the book, "How Jeremy Corbyn Inspired the Young to Create a New Socialism", Young does not try to explain what "new socialism" is, beyond "opposition to neoliberalism" and "what the people want". Isn't it supposed to be a completed new ideology or doctrine? Since the first World Social Forum in 2001, the global left has tried and struggled to adopt a consensus-based post-Cold War socialist economic model as a strong and compelling alternative to the neoliberal capitalist monolith. Intellectual effort continues to be expended, but a contender has yet to arise from all of this conversation in utopistics. The Labour Party itself has settled more for a soft capitalist economics best described as the entrepreneurial state, with a focus on reinvigorated state-funded science, renationalisation and rejection of private sector "myths" and propaganda. This is hardly a "new socialism". Hope as we may, we are not yet in a position to pronounce the full return of socialism's name to the ideological and economic prominence it was given by so many during the previous century. It may simply never happen, although this admission should be taken as no praise for the political right.



In Rise, we are told the young were "innovating solutions to the problems we face" (p. 232). Like what? The book has argued convincingly that Labour is the best choice for young people, but it has not done anything to show young people came up with any actual political solutions, let alone a new socialism.

Young's case for reducing the voting age to 16 is sound, but it can be safely assumed that many parents will tell these young adults how to vote and are the main influence on younger voters already. This may seem bad so some, while others may argue that the amplifying effect it would have on the voices of poor families can only be a good thing for a state that has done too little for them.

The conclusion of Young's book is still convincing. Opposition to the supposed political consensus and the mainstream media are common to young people. They do want radically competing visions and parties when going to the ballot box rather than dull, risk-free compromises. Support of anti-establishment left movements by young activists has had a global impact, not because young people are somehow becoming a bigger sector of the population or more confident but because their social media skill has allowed them to punch far above their weight. There are parallels between Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US, with both of their campaigns alive with power and enthusiasm largely because of the internet.

It is worth finishing by pointing out a "new socialism" as some formal ideology is hardly even necessary in the long term. What we have now is unsustainable. Neoliberalism is a failure. This version of capitalism has unfortunately been a fountain of crisis, poverty and the tired Thatcherite refrain since the 1980s that we have no alternative. That is the only reason anyone needs to hear Corbyn out.

Harry Bentham


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6 February 2019

Wikipedia propaganda and disinformation habits exposed


While still soliciting funds for being a supposed neutral community-based encyclopedia edited by everyone across the world, Wikipedia's politics pages are prone to be stuffed with clownish North America First propaganda.


On the topic of alleged interference by Russian spies in the North American regime's disputed 2016 election, the paranoid claims of the regime and its media are treated as unquestionable and the matter is regarded as closed:
"The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goal of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political discord in the United States."

Read no further, it is a closed matter! According to the logic of its lackeys, the North American regime is the most neutral source - not just for talking about its own internal matters, but also Russia's.

With the regime-loving press being cited to back every point, North American loyalists and apologists have been sneaked into Wikipedia's editing circles and given carte blanche to edit the English language version of the site to only publish their opinions.

Doubt is not tolerated at Wikipedia, where there is an inquisitorial insistence on certainty and the sole kind of opinion it is permissible to have. To establish that absolute certainty, only the sources approved by the North American regime are deemed reliable in every case. Opinions from Neocons and bellicose propagandists rambling about the regime's democratic purity and the martyrdom of the regime-picked ruler Hillary Clinton are defended as factual statements conforming to impeccable standards of neutrality. All the supposedly neutral sources jokingly trace back to the North American regime's own newspapers and television networks, where the lies are faxed in directly from the regime to be adored by its sycophants and employees.

As for the scandalous possibility of any Russian contributing to a Wikipedia article about his or her own nation on this supposedly neutral international website, that cannot be contemplated by the editors, who refuse even to respond on the matter. No Russian version of the article is allowed, as that would require the cooperation of culprits who have not shown enough adoration of the North American regime like Wikipedia's editors.

Without receiving any direct answer from the editors, one user put the question to the article's authors in its talk section:
"The article presents assessments by various US bodies as factual because they said so, and no comparable effort is made to show responses and perspectives from Russia. The complete lack of a Russian language version is curious. Is there an active effort here to prevent any Russian-speakers or Russian IP addresses from being involved at the page, and why?"

A quick scan through the extensive talk archives at the contested Wikipedia page shows many North Americans have taken issue with the way the article presents its dodgy claims and tries to encourage adoration of the regime.

A common tactic in North American propaganda is to load any lead section of text or television broadcasting with the most overbearing and least credible claims of the regime, using fact-file-like media to portray these as verified facts told with great integrity.


The intention is to abruptly stop readers from reading further, encouraging sleepy acceptance of regime statements. As far as the Wikipedia editors are concerned, only the first sentence of their article should be read as it contains sufficient propaganda from the regime and closes the case, encouraging loyalty and discouraging questions.

This tactic occurs over and over again in North American propaganda on many websites, and now affects the supposedly neutral Wikipedia too. Wikipedia is especially useful to the regime because it allows its lackeys to obfuscate their circular reasoning, clouding criticism and wasting the time of potential critics wishing to look further. Such dissidents will be directed on a long chase through supposedly "neutral" sources that ultimately trace back to nowhere except the regime and its choir.

For the North Americans to have loaded their supposedly "neutral" Wikipedia with state propaganda and shallow nationalism is a loss to the internet and shows us something about the regime's ideology. Whatever it is really fighting for, it is not accuracy or accountability. This regime and its lackeys are guilty of treating everything - including encyclopedias and perhaps even maps and dictionaries - as Cold War geography. For them, all things can be used as cover and every critic is a Russian assassin. Things like neutrality and trust, as far as the North American regime is concerned, are worth destroying to win their war.

What the regime may not have considered is that its erosion of journalistic integrity and neutrality only fuels the ridicule and criticism of its policies. So far, no evidence shows the regime achieved any success in reversing the North American people's criticism of its violence, repression and bellicosity.

Wikipedia is already not taken seriously in any proper political discussion, although its Cold War hijacking may help the regime misinform less politically-aware members of the public. In discussions on propaganda, critics should be quick to point to Wikipedia's already discredited status on political matters and poor record in challenging lies. It is just a rag.

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31 January 2019

The "People's Vote" might have a people problem - here's why


Despite gaining support from visibly large crowds of people in the UK, the "People's Vote" campaign for a second Brexit referendum vote demonstrates serious problems engaging with the broader British public on social media.

Local chapter pages of the "People's Vote" movement based on Facebook have insignificant numbers of followers and unremarkable levels of engagement, with the only page with a significant following being a single page that makes heavy use of advertising, titled People's Vote UK. In the case of this page itself, more problems appear.

Looking to the page's posts and the responses is no useful way to assess how British people actually perceive its message, since these posts are likely to have been shared by pro-EU groups and individuals. However, the group does target ads to the general public, and here its claims of popular support begin to look dubious.

Negative comments are being left when the ads appear in people's news feeds


Most visitors to People's Vote UK social media pages are leaving positive comments, but the majority seems to shift to negative comments when the group tries to target the broader public with advertising through news feeds. The resulting barrage of negativity has an effect of drowning out the voices of exasperated EU supporters, who can't tell why they are suddenly faced with offensive comments.

This could be the work of trolls trying to demoralize the pro-EU movement in the UK. But, if so, why are such comments only flooding the page's content when the group tries to advertise to the public? One explanation is that the negative response to the People's Vote campaign actually originates with the campaign's own target audience - the British public.

What is described above hints that the poll data supposedly showing a shift in favor of the UK remaining in the European Union could be dodgy, and there are numerous ways such data could be seriously flawed.

"Leave" may simply have turned quiet and content in their victory, rather than actually losing supporters as the "Remain" camp is fond of claiming. When directly provoked by flooding their news feeds on Facebook they do appear to respond viciously as described above.

Data favoring "Remain" could be flawed because, as well as more eagerly taking part in polls, EU supporters never stopped campaigning. This creates the unrealistic sensation that they have more influence or power, or have now won the debate. Their desire to keep their cause alive through constant adverts, polls, petitions, columns, etc. is clear. The "Leave" campaign, in contrast, is undertaking no similar project to maintain public backing and isn't even watching the polls. Their sole position is that the debate is over and they already won.

So, even if polls and news stories supporting a people's vote do show an accurate cross-section of the population, these are a poor basis to predict a pro-EU victory in a second referendum. The anti-EU side has yet to counterattack or produce its own new slogans and talking points, as it is too busy in power. A decisive lead for pro-EU forces in the polls, while the other side is not campaigning, might become irrelevant as soon as the other side begins a counter-campaign if its plans are really contested.

Treat all this as speculation. Unfortunately, comments on Facebook ads are extremely difficult to capture or prove because Facebook withholds the data once ads go inactive and takes them out of the page's feed itself, allowing posts that receive negative responses to quickly be buried while the page only displays posts that received positive responses. However, you can easily view the comments for yourself if you catch the ads while they are running or see them in your news feed.

Don't take our word for it. Give it a go!


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20 January 2019

Utopistics: is it time for an alternative social system?

The Blog


Can and will there be an alternative world-system? In social science, this is what the emerging field of utopistics is for.


Use the video below to get a brief breakdown of what utopistics is about...




... or, continue reading


Utopistics is a necessary field, because of the crisis-ridden nature of our present economic system and the fact it is constructed of injustices and exploitation. Part of world-systems analysis or world-systems theory (a theory of International Relations from Immanuel Wallerstein), utopistics focuses on paradoxes and choices that will lead to the transformation of present world political and economic relations.

Current reigning economic and political theories focus overwhelmingly either on a nationalist-protectionist settlement of perceived faults and injustices in the global economy or - conversely - the neoliberal model of hyper-capitalist globalization and US political dominance. Anti-systemic movements are movements of minorities, anti-imperialists and the political left, aimed at securing a non-capitalist economic model. While their grievances against injustices and exploitation are clear, such movements are perceived to not offer a clearly defined alternative to the current neoliberal economic consensus. It is this alternative that utopistic study could produce.

It appears that parties of the political left give little heed to the works of sociologists at present and derive their ideas mainly from other prominent economists, such as Mariana Mazzucato in the case of the UK's Labour Party.


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