Leaders of the Leaderless

George Orwell was a convinced communist until he saw how it’s ideals where being corrupted by the power hungry leaders of the Soviet Union. In 1984 he wrote of the dangers of thought policing in the service of doctrinal purity and in Animal Farm he addressed the suspicion with which we should approach those that claim to be our leaders. The animals, having become aware that they were being exploited by what they initial believed to be well meaning farmers, revolt and expel them, establishing an ideal and egalitarian society established on agreed and publicized principles. It does not take long for a certain group of animals, the pigs, to claim leadership in the best interest of the collective, quickly replacing the plutocracy of humans with a plutocracy of pigs.

I get the chills when I read updates on the English language facebook page of the “The Israeli Social Movement (NGO)” such as:

“Alon Lee-Green, Stav Shaffir, and Yonatan Levi, leaders of the Israeli Social Movement, in Time Out Israel” 

or

“In a highly divided society in Israel, it is a challenge to mobilize everyone for the cause of social justice. Social justice movement leader, Stav Shaffir, believes it is possible. Stav posted on the issue of representation in organizing protests”

I cannot help but think of Orwell’s pigs strutting about on two legs, not long after all the animals shouted “four legs good, two legs bad!”

What are these people thinking? Do they not see the irony in claiming leadership of a movement that has been driving the ruling elite crazy by refusing to appoint leaders they can negotiate with? How can they possibly claim to represent a movement that is so broad  it is impossible to reduce the protests to a simple list of demands, no matter how long?

The genius of the protest movements of the last year, be they in Tel Aviv, New York or Madrid is that they recognized that the entire system requires an overhaul in order for things to change. It’s not enough to pressure a party on the left or on the right because in the end they are part of the same corrupt political structure where capital and politics are merged at the hips. By understanding that if these movements imitate the same power structures of those institutions they are protesting, they are destined, like the animals on the farm to go from the tyranny of humans to the tyranny of pigs, to become that which they rail against. The most important outcome of the protests has been to cause us to look and think about our respective societies outside the narrative of the establishment and their media mouthpieces.

It’s disappointing to see how well intentioned individuals are unable to resist the temptation to take ownership of movements they are a part of. Is it so difficult to insist on being an activist and not a leader? Why cheapen yourself by giving in to the very same culture you are protesting, where everyone is just working to get ahead while elbowing their comrades to the pavement? Have you so little self awareness that you are reduced to a Ya’ir Lapid?

This is our protest movement. It belongs to all of us. We will join you but we will never follow you. 

Uncomfortable thoughts about being a hypocrite

For years now I’ve been giving my brother a hard time for never buying music, movies or ebooks. He pirates them all. My argument has always been that if you enjoy the music that someone has invested time and effort in making, if you spend a couple of days reading a book then the least you can do is give the musicians and authors their fair share. The standard response has always been to call me a hypocrite because, although I buy a lot CDs and books, I also pirate music and movies. This is not an entirely unfair criticism, I just don’t think it’s as black and white as that. It’s not either you pirate everything or you pirate nothing. It’s not about maintaining purity, about thinking that the choice is between living exactly by an ideal or assuming that you can change nothing. This mindset that allows us to on the one hand complain about the fact that TV, newspapers and popular culture is crap and at the same time not realize that we are all part of shaping our surroundings is at the crux of a lot of our problems.

I thought of this after I read this response to this blogpost, where an NPR intern details how she never bought more than 15 CDs, not seeing the irony that she is undermining the very industry she wants to work in. Reading this made me realize that we maintain a similar hypocrisy about many things we criticize.

Many bemoan the demise of the independent stores in town centers. The kind of stores where you actually establish a relationship with the people working there, they know your name and they know what you like. Yet, we cannot pin the blame for their disappearance on the big box retailers and the national chain stores alone. It is us, who prefer the convenience of 24/7 shopping and saving a couple of bucks that is driving these small retailers to close their doors. If are not willing to spend a little more or be OK with not being able to shop at 9 in the evening, then we have no right to complain that the stores we go to are impersonal and staffed by people that care nothing about us.

This doesn’t mean that we can never order from Amazon but rather that we should stop expecting to get Amazon prices for everything we want. If there’s a Starbucks and an independent coffee shop on your block then avoid Starbucks. When you need some paint go to a local hardware store instead of home depot. Understand that if you want your neighborhood to look different then you need to put your money where your mouth is.

This is true for many of the choices we make.  We can complain loudly about the quality of food but at the same are not willing to pay the premium for buying from small farmers. We are upset with our lousy politicians but how many of you have written or called your representative to share your opinion about something you care about? When was the last time you demonstrated or volunteered for something? We’re concerned about the environment but the majority of people can’t give up their addiction to their car or put up with the “inconvenience” of public transport.

In short, my brother is right. We are all hypocrites. But, if we now resign ourselves to our hypocrisies and as a result only double down on behavior we know to be self defeating then we waste an opportunity to learn something about ourselves. The uncomfortable feeling when you realize you may talk the talk, but you are not exactly walking the walk is best seen as invitation to examine your actions and motivations. Otherwise it only leaves us feeling embarrassed.

Many social justice protesters in the west espouse a fairer distribution of resources in their countries. They protest the unfair hoarding of money and influence by the 1% at the expense of the 99%. Were you to extend this demand to it’s logical and global conclusion, then those same people in rich western countries, the global 1%,  should also agree to a fairer distribution of global resources for everyone else. This would mean a lowering of living standards in the first world in order to improve living standards in the third world. I’m not sure how many of the people protesting in New York, Tel Aviv, Madrid and Athens would agree to this (yours truly included).

Does this hypocrisy of ours mean that we shouldn’t seek greater social justice in our respective communities? Certainly not. What’s more, it is realizations like these that allow us to think beyond our comfort zones, our ideological bubbles, our truisms and maybe, just maybe learn something new.

An Open Letter to Chris Hayes

Chris,

Following the controversy over your remarks about whether automatically calling all soldiers heroes doesn’t get in the way of us having an open and honest conversation of how and when we should use our armies; I was surprised at how upsetting I found many of the chauvinistic, knee-jerk reactions to what you said.

I thought that your remarks where intelligent, meaningful, respectful and necessary. I’m sorry that you felt the need to apologize for them. Let me explain.

I served as a platoon commander in the armored corps of the IDF during the second half of the 90’s. I was repeatedly deployed in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon. My soldiers and I often talked about the disparity we felt between serving in what was a war zone when at the same time civilians were leading normal lives, often only miles away. We felt this most strongly when coming home to Tel Aviv on weekend furloughs while stationed in southern Lebanon. Many of us asked how could people just go about their daily lives as if nothing is happening while we are getting injured and killed.

I always thought that that was the point of having an army. With universal conscription, everyone (in theory at least) spends three or four years of their lives in the army to protect civilian society so that when they get out of the army, they can live a normal civilian existence. By shouldering the burden of defense for a limited amount of time we where allowing the existence of a vibrant, liberal democracy where people could ask difficult questions about how we should treat our military. I risked my life so that your Israeli counterparts could question why my soldiers and I were being sent to Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. I most definitely did not risk my life so that I could get false respect from macho militarists, most of whom wouldn’t recognize the shooting end of a rifle if was staring them in the face.

On November 23, 1998, during a battle with Hezbollah, my tank was hit by multiple anti-tank rockets and I was injured. For 7 days straight I was in both major daily newspapers, being called every kind of hero. I was thoroughly embarrassed. I didn’t feel like a hero. I just didn’t get out of the way of the rockets in time.

You’re right, when you say that not everyone is made out to serve in the military and that goes double for combat units. It’s physically demanding but then so is working in agriculture or construction, so that doesn’t make us heroes. You need to be able to eat a lot of shit, which certainly doesn’t make you a hero. You spend most of your time bored out of your mind while waiting for something to happen, which doesn’t make you much except for a little twitchy. And you have to love your comrades enough so that you don’t think twice about endangering your life in order to keep them safe. It is that camaraderie that makes serving in a combat unit a privilege rather than a burden.

I’ve found that the people who called us heroes and went out of their way to celebrate our service, were for the most part the same people most enthusiastic to go to war and at the same time the least likely to serve in combat units. The way to honor our troops is by paying them a decent wage, taking care of their families, making sure they have the equipment and the training they need to do their jobs, paying for their college education, giving them citizenship, properly funding VA, healing their injuries (both physical and mental), understanding that our responsibility towards them does not end when they are discharged and continually asking ourselves if the wars we send them to are absolutely necessary.

That is respect. The rest is just so much hot air.

Thank you for your service, Chris. You honor us with the tough questions you ask.

 Bram Spiero

Profit Creators

                

Power resides in words. What we argue about is more important than how we argue. The vocabulary of our discourse is what often determines the outcome. In a rape case, when you say a woman was asking for it because of the cleavage she was showing, you turn the conversation into a discussion on how much cleavage constitutes a provocation rather than determining if the accused raped her or not. What she was wearing is irrelevant. No one has the right to have sex with another against their will; even if, theoretically, the victim was walking the streets nude.

This is where the “job creator” defense is so brilliant when used by plutocrats. They cannot be taxed, they cannot be criticized, they cannot be expected to contribute more to society beyond the virtue of creating jobs. Should it become too difficult to create jobs, they will simply be forced to move somewhere more accommodating to job creating.

We then fall into the trap of arguing the relative worth of those jobs, if the tax breaks accorded big business is resulting in the creation of enough jobs, who deserves these jobs and who these jobs would go to if they were created elsewhere. All the while, the powers that be, look on, smile and apply for another subsidy for all the job creating they are doing.

Jobs are in fact created by consumer demand. It is not in fact the entrepreneur that is creating the greatest value, he has ,at most, a brilliant idea, identified consumer demand and  has some money he would like to multiply. On his own he cannot multiply it. He needs workers to make products and services which he can then sell at a profit. It is the workers that have invested value into his capital. It is the employees that are profit creators.

If workers, profit creators, are expected to contribute to their own well being and protection by way of the taxes they pay and the public services they perform. If these same workers are also the job creators by way of the consumer demand they represent and are expected to contribute further by way of the VAT and other sales taxes they pay. Then show me the logic that explains why entrepreneurs, investors and corporations, using the resources that are the public goods of all of society, should not equally  contribute to the well being and protection of the profit & consumer demand creators.

When we argue about social justice and get hit with the job creator defense, retort by saying that without social justice we will be punishing the profit creators. Let them argue about why they are against social justice.

Damn Straight

Living with Capitalism

                Capitalism as a means of attaining social justice is failing. Like our religions, our monarchies, our peoples republics and our spokes councils, capitalism caries the promise of giving you a fair shake. And like them all it fails. The free market does not encourage competition but rather monopoly. The invisible hand will do little more than bitch slap you back into the mall.

                There will be those that will argue that what we see today is not capitalism but rather a perversion, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a moot point more akin to arguing that the soviet union was not about communism, that the crusades had nothing to do with Christianity, that pacifism does not appease fascism.

                Whatever the ideology, whatever the idea, purity can never be attained. It doesn’t exist. If we are willing to re-examine capitalism time and again in an effort to make it work, then why can’t we re-examine socialism, communism, anarchism? None of these hold all the answers. All of them hold some.

                Capitalism is not going to disappear but that does not mean that we should not challenge it’s orthodoxies, pry apart its paradoxes demand that it share the stage with other ideas. 

Explain That

When I spend time trying to understand how the economic crisis that came to a head in 2008 started, I come to realise that in fact nothing new has happened. When I see how successful the perpetrators are in escaping the consequences of their actions or even the insinuation of responsibility, I start to understand what is meant when you say that history is written by the victors, by those in power. When I realise that the current struggle between the 1% and the 99% is as old as time itself, when I begin to understand how thoroughly the instruments of state have been and are being used to serve the interests of the very few and to negatively impact the interests of the very many, then I start to realize that there is something very wrong with the system.

This is a very troublesome conclusion to come to, especially if you are an active and willing participant in the system, a “law-abiding” citizen, a productive member of society. To suddenly realize that you are aiding and abetting in negating those very things you believe by trusting the state.

But what does this make you, this realization? What is one to do with this understanding that the whole system is corrupt? When you start seeing the conspiracies, how do avoid becoming a conspiracy nut?

I see tweets like this one from @JAMyerson:

“The goal in capitalism is the endless accumulation of wealth. An excellent way to get wealth is cronyism. The tendency is reliable.”

and think to myself, if it is so obvious that this system is not working, that the people in power are bought and paid for, then why does it not bother more people? Why do we allow this to continue?

I think the answer lies in one of the common responses to the realization that the system is gamed, which is burying yourself in work, consumerism and reality television. Ignorance really is bliss. Most people, when they are fed and entertained will not bother to notice that they are being robbed blind. This is something that the powers that be have relied one for as long as there have been powers that be. There really isn’t much difference between free bread and gladiatorial games in ancient Rome and Big Macs & Big Brother nowadays, is there?

But what do you do when can’t or won’t ignore the reality of what is going on? When I realize that the way I believe the world works and the fact that I believe that I must actively participate in changing the way the world works is very much a minority opinion; when I realize that the more time I spend learning about how the economy works, how our politics work, how our societies work I am becoming increasingly radicalized; when I on the one hand dismiss the conspiracy nuts as just that, nuts and at the same time sometimes find myself quietly thinking that some might have a point, that is when I feel least comfortable with my thoughts and convictions.