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The New Third Way - Global Financial Crisis™ - Branding Disaster Capitalism
Author Blackwatch (of 12/10/2008 @ 20:26:08, in Current Affairs, viewed 313 times)
Make this crisis bigger
"Power can stage its own murder to rediscover a glimmer of existence and legitimacy. To seek new blood in its own death, to renew the cycle by the mirror of crisis, negativity and anti-power: this is the only alibi of every power, of every institution attempting to break the vicious circle of its irresponsibility and its fundamental nonexistence, of its deja-vu and its deja-mort." (Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster, Stanford University Press, 1988)
"Shock and awe are actions that create fears, dangers and destruction that are incomprehensible to the people at large, specific elements/sectors of the threat society, or the leadership. nature in the form of tornadoe, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, uncomtrolled fires, famine and disease can engender shock and awe" ('Thoughts on Rapid Dominance', Bud Edney)
'The Financial Tsunami and the Evolving Economic Crisis' (F. William Engdahl)
"The PM has enjoyed a small but significant bounce in the polls since the collapse of Lehman Brothers four weeks ago. On Wednesday, he felt relaxed enough to joke that a mobile phone ringing was another bank going under." (Is Gordon Brown cashing in on the markets crisis?, The Independent on Sunday, 12.10.08)
How to make no small amount of capital from disaster. In association with the BBC and Hugo Boss.
What’s it all about, eh? Brown’s Labour Government partially nationalizes the country’s banks under a £50 billion plan and Portugal’s ruling Socialist government follows suit with an estimated €20-billion package. Even the traditionally conservative US has been rocked by the Republican leader’s 'shamelessly' Marxist response. A ‘conservative president to nationalize American banks!’ screamed one US newspaper. Was this the beginning of a ‘Socialist America’? Or was this a temporary measure to give bankers enough confidence to start lending money again; a way of navigating us through a crisis?
As Simon Heffer of TheDaily Telegraph has already pointed out, the government decision to ‘take stakes in our leading banks in order to re-capitalise them is not quite the Sovietisation of Britain but it is a pretty good start.’
And it’s a sentiment that was no doubt shared by millions of Germans during the banking crisis of 1931, a parallel that’s already been drawn by Jochen Sanio – head of Germany’s current financial market watchdog agency BAFIN - when he argues that the state Kreditanstalt Bank's intervention to save the IKB Deutsche Industriebank in 2007 had prevented ‘the worst banking crisis in Germany since 1931’. And it’s a claim repeated more recently by German publication, Der Speigel.
Naturally, the comparison is by no means an idle one.
In October 1930 just after their stunning electoral triumph the newly crowned Nazi deputies introduced a bill to nationalize banks and control interest rates, which the Chancellor asked them to withdraw. But as the crisis continued it soon became clear that the ‘State Socialism’ envisaged by the Nazis would benefit from eliminating the disproportionate level of Jewish control over the banks. At this point in time the Nazis were desperately short of funds. As Goebbels lamented in his diary, the German Party was far from being in the ’pocket of big business’. A little time later - 70% of all corporate banks were controlled by the Reich. And as their grip took hold, the Nazis began to introduce a series of proposals that would include banning trading in stocks and bonds, limiting interest by law to five percent and confiscating all profits acquired by inflation (the fascist government led by former Socialist leader, Benito Mussolini also handled the crisis in this way, going so far as nationalising the holdings of large banks and demanding urgent economic policies to halt inflation: see Corporatism and Economic Fascism).
And so the Third Way1 was born - a much sought-after compromise between capitalism and communism, anti-capitalism, and totalitarianism (an economic solution favoured by the likes of the Fabian Society, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair but extending back to to the fascists and progressives of the late 19th century and to religious leaders like Pope Pope Pius XI †).
In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Nazi party blamed the country's economic breakdown on the comprehensive failure of extreme capitalism - the over-rewarded, arrogant, self-interested behavior of city 'fat cats'. In a way that would pre-figure the likes of Gordon Brown and the European Socialists some 75 years later, it was determined that Europe would benefit from an urgent reform of the international financial system.
Tony Blair and the former German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder had first tried to revive the Third Way in June 1999 with the publication of Europe: The Third Way - Die Neue Mitte - a manifesto attributed to Blair and Schröder but ghost-written by celebrated Third Way guru, Peter Mandelson. In an article written for the Guardian in 2002 Mandelson reiterated his belief that we were 'moving beyond the solutions of old left and new right' and placed a request for the 'wider distribution of opportunity and a stronger sense of community'.
This week Europes G8 leaders decided that the old post-war international financial institutions were out of date. It seems ironic then, that the Third Way solution favoured by our politicians recalls that of pre-war Nazi Germany.
Meanwhile, Schröder and Mandelson's vision - whilst delayed - is to be partially realised.
Downing Street Logo for the Progressive Governance Summit, April 2008 - the logo was later replaced
Although more amusing perhaps than sinister, the Government logo used for the 'Progressive Governance' Summit in London in April 2008 (and at which Mandelson and Miliband re-launched 'Third Way') bore an uncanny resemblance to the Nazi swastika. Downing Street apoligised for the 'hiccup' and instructed the designers to replace it 2. Full Story at The Independent
Of course, it isn't the first time New Labour have flirted with uncomfortably fascist and centrist politcal strands, however asymetrical their actual likeness.
Nazism, a continuation of German National Socialism, resembles New Labour (and the even Newer Economic Socialism3) in a series of informal ways. For instance, both parties stress the importance of the ‘collective’ and the role played by a strong community; the rights of the collective over and above the individual. For this we have Rousseau’s 'Social Contract' to thank, generally considered the precursor to modern collectivist politics and developed more recently by New Labour (how else can we explain Lord Goldsmith and Ruth Kelly’s unpopular 'allegiance oath' and their aggressive bid to strengthen the British Identity through schoolchildren?). And in addition to the pair’s ‘collectivist’ bids, we also have ‘anti-capitalism’, ‘totalitarianism’ and ‘expansionism’ - promoting economic growth by a combination of military aggression and economic reorganisation (albeit in a more discreet way than the Nazis). And even if Blair clearly didn't share the abstentionist position of true Communists, his centralist, anti-parliamentarian disregard for the traditional democratic process - or his Republican idealism, if you prefer - surfaced in an almost presidential approach to office.
The result? A 'European Socialist Republic' - shaped by the reformist hand of Mandelson and the 'iron discipline' of the New Labour regime.
In a way that recalls the fascism of Mussolini, New Labour offers the usual pretext of 'spiritual guidance' to its people, alleging to resolve group conflicts as part of Britain's broader organisational mission. Britain portrays itself as a an arbiter with a role in allocating resources and privileges to disadvantaged groups rather than an aggressive state enforcing rules of behaviour and conduct on others (the 'liberation' of Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance). The extreme fascism of Nazi Germany in the1930s saw a similar extension of state powers and moral pretexts as it morphed from National Socialism in the grotesque and rabid creature it became in the early 40s.
And then there are the shared pursuits of mass surveillance and fear mongering.
The German National Socialists were convinced it was the Jews who had undermined Germany's chances of winning World War 1. They believed that they had colluded with the opposition and betrayed the German people. In much the same way that New Britain sees our Muslim contingent, Germany saw the Jewish community as the 'enemy within'. Of course it was based on little more than paranoia; a blanket denial of its own failures and the economic returns on its own aggressive will. And this is exactly what is happening in 'New Britain'. Fascism never arises out of strength - it arises when an inexperienced new power feels challenged. Nazism arose not out of the evil of just one man - but out of the self-determination of the demoralised masses. It is a symptom not a cause, and if the exact conditions out of which Nazism arose originally were to be faithfully reproduced (either by accident or design) it can certainly all happen again.
All it requires is the right kind of crisis.
And as British Ministers prepare to place a statutory limit on the number of foreigners entering the country and the tabloids start rushing out stories about immigrants and even al-Qaeda suspects stealing our jobs and draining our welfare system 4 we are hearing the first birth cries of its revival.
That BBC News 24 and New Labour are branding the financial crisis in way that Hugo Boss, Albert Speer or even former US Senator Prescott Bush would be proud of, reveals the enthusiasm that both parties share for cashing in on the crisis. Roll your mouse of the BBC News desk’s ‘Global Financial Crisis’ logo and you’ll see exactly what I mean: ‘Global Financial Crisis Brand’ declares the text-tag.
It’s the very latest in 'disaster chic', and Brown and his ‘war cabinet’ have become the unlikely poster boys for it. Why make a disaster out of a crisis? Because it’s the fear factory’s best selling product to date, that’s why. It’s simple; disaster sells. One look at the newspapers will tell you that, their language fortified with all manner of disaster imagery, natural or otherwise: ‘meltdown’, ‘collapse’, ‘tsunami’, ‘destruction’, ‘shockwaves’, ‘the abyss’, ‘catastrophe’, ‘the economic equivalent of 9/11’, ‘government on a war footing’, ‘battle’, ‘fight’.
It’s those old shock and awe tactics again: manufacturing a crisis (that our leaders will spectacularly surmount) and destroying the will of an already punchdrunk public to fight at the next elections. The discourse of crisis, which transcends all linguistic boundaries, restores and reinforces the fascination of the status quo. When faced with chaos and uncertainty even the loyal and unswerving nature of your master's cruelty is likely to become the most favoured outcome. The first and last withdrawal made is always that of reality. Whether its the collapsing of towers, some radical shift in climate or some shiny red London Bus exploding in Central London, the shockwaves are felt more deeply at a symbolic level. The dark executive fictions of the crisis may have been conceived of elsewhere, but they have been lovingly perfected by the media and our leaders. In an era almost exclusively defined by artifice and simulation it is entirely irrelevant whether the current crisis can be traced to a real historical or economic source, or whether its the combined horror of fear and speculation. It exists in our hearts and in our minds - no more substantial and no more real that the precarious sense of well-being that immediately preceded it. And that's all that really matters.
The real disaster will be at the polls.
Notes:
Sure I've taken some liberties with the phrase 'disaster capitalism' - but the irony has not been lost on me, so I'm hoping it won't be lost on you.
Highly recommend reading Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine'.
1 Third Way/Third Position Politics Explained:
EU's 'big three' in crisis, says third way guru - Guardian, 2006
'Third Way' gets world hearing, BBC 2000
Third way is the only way - Peter Mandelson, Guardian 2002
Third Way Event Splits New Labourr, Independent 2002
Nazi Germany and the Third Way/Third Position, Francis R. Nicosia. Business and Industry in Nazi Germany, Berghan Books, p. 43,
Third Position, Public Eye
2 Peter Mandelson, at that time the European Trade Commissioner for the Barroso Commission, chaired a number of debates at the Progressive Governance Summit in April 2008 . The agenda was dominated by issues regarding economic globalisation and security threats and there those who who clearly anticpated the way in which it would be resolved, some several months before the crisis was announced:
"We are facing a global financial crisis which is probably the first truly global financial crisis of the modern world. "We have to reform our global financial institutions. It is absolutely clear that the national supervision that we have is inadequate and we need a global agreement." - Number10.gov.uk, April 2008
Anybody who considers the re-appointment of Peter Mandelson to the British Cabinet to be a surprise event must have been going around with their ears and eyes closed for the last 12 months.
As for the embarrassing Swastika logo? I think most people by now will be familar with the complex history of the symbol, widely used in many worldwide religions. It's relevance here is that of 'prosperity' (the tag message reads, 'Promoting Prosperity'). Jewish swastikas have been found in ancient synagogues side-by-side with the star of David. However, it seems unlikely that the irony would have been lost on the Summit organisers, nor on the party's generous Jewish backers.
3 Vincent Cable, the Liberal democrat Shadow Chancellor refers to the same thing as 'Economic Nationalism' in an article I have since read in New Statesman - The Rise of Economic Nationalism. Cable repeats my own fears that the crisis will lead to an increase in scapegoating politics and that immigrants will be the most likely targets (as they were in Nazi Germany).
4 Right on cue we get the headlines from The Daily Express - 'Exclusive: Immigrants Job Shock' - and from The Sun - 'Al-Qaeda suspect can stay ... you pay'
† In an article written in today's Independent, 'The Unholy legacy of Pope Pius XII', the newspaper describes how Pope Pius XI's immediate successor, Pope Pius XII stands accused of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust during the war. It is certainly interesting that the Vatican was one of the first senior world figures to endorse the social and ecomonic philosophy of the 'Third Way' - which was applied by the Nazi Party as part of their reform of the country's financial systems.
Symbol used by Third Position/Third Way (also incoroprated into
Third Reich Flag)
