Britain: Towards a “Post-Modern” Dictatorship
Ylli Përmeti
...a government [conservatives] that just two years ago pledged to reverse the rise of the surveillance state feels able to propose real-time monitoring of all email and social media communications. The information stored would include the sender and resipient of an email, the time it was sent, and details of the computer it was sent from [Facebook, Twitter, online gaming forums and the video-chat service Skype]. This would built a profile of who contacts whom, with what frequency, and from where. The government says such measures are essential to counter-organised crime and terrorism, citing that 95% of organised crime investigations and “every” major counter-terrorism investigation use communications data...the Terrorism Act was introduced by Tony Blair with the promise that it would be used only in the gravest of cases. Less that five years later it was used to bar an elderly man from the Labour party conference for heckling...first it was simply a matter of allowing legislation so that email and social media information could be collected with a warrant. Then power were added to make sure such information is stored on everyone, in case it is needed later. Now the case is made that: given the information is collected anyway, why not use it in real time?[1]
This action in law, of course, has been backed by Liberal Democrats. Google and BT (British Telecommunications, which is a multinational company with 18 million customers in 170 countries, which was privatised in 1984, upon the neoliberal phase), not surprisingly, being in private hands and not in public, declined to comment on the issue! And this is the final step towards a total dictatorship, which is almost the same as the one imposed in Albania during the years of the communist era, where all posts and telephone calls from foreign countries and between people inside the country were checked out by the government apparatus, in the name, of course, of the cold war and sabotage. And, if at the time, the surveillance was justified under the ideology of communism and of protecting people’s power and also the elite’s status quo; now, the case is slightly different. Indeed, there was established a protection on the population and of the whole regime. But, Britain, the first country which plays out neoliberal strategies, together with its sister, America, since 1980- or so, is in decline, economically, and, in order to keep its oligarchy on top of its society, and of course the neoliberal regime, all over the world, it controls its people on every detail, in order to compensate its domestic failed state.
No wonder, other countries of the West are keeping abreast of times: they do what the others are doing. Where could one find the ‘cause’ of the present worldwide terrorism? Why the British underclass took the roads last year (2011)? Why snooping on innocent people is allowed in justification of terrorism? Who is a ‘terrorist’ after all: the one who wants to occupy others or the one who is occupied? And how has been displayed the doctrine of neoliberalism in the world today? Aren’t there multinational companies that want to govern and exploit the world? Why this global power is not called terrorism?
It is clear therefore that Britain, as all western countries, which have been integrated into the internationalised market economy and its political compliment, the so called parliamentarian ‘democracy’, will turn the ‘cause’ of terrorism on its people and not on its global power, i.e. TNC’s and their owners! Thus, either we like or not, parties, all over the world, are in pawn of the economic power which is produced during the statist (or social-democratic) phase (1945-70) and re-produced during the neoliberal phase or under social liberals (1970-now).
Once the economic power is established, ‘secret civil court hearings’ both in America and in Britain would seem normal. Not only puts such a procedure a government above the law, as the report stresses [2] , i.e. it would permit the extension of closed procedures, in which claimants and their lawyers are excluded from court and refused sight of government evidence, to any civil claim, whenever a minister considers that openness is against the public interest, which violates the two basic principles of English common law system: the right of every party to know the case against them, so that they can answer it; and the principle that there must be equality of arms between parties in court...by permitting secret hearings, and the giving of secret judgments by courts, accessible only to the government, but, it would determine who over all threatens the status quo of the established power.
In fact, as another report finds [3], even among British and American intelligent services, regarding terrorist plots in UK and/or vice versa has not been established a clear corporation, in tackling this phenomenon, caused of course, by the elites. The CIA for example, warned MI6, in Britain, that al-Qaeda was planning an attack 18 months ago, but [it] withheld detailed information because of concerns it would be released by British courts. And, if an agency detains the wrong person, as in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who took legal action over his incarceration, and the British Government was subsequently forced to pay millions in compensation to him and other detainees [4], from the tax-payers money of course, the cause of this vicious circle, will never be disclosed by the “experts” of the established system; nor by community courts!
Courts, after all, are by products of the established power. As such, they will rule out the public from such a procedure and, because judges of courts are subject of the established power, they would ostensibly speak up the interest of the public, but in reality, they are there for the re-production of the established (economic) power. And, if a court serves the interest of a government, then, the latter serves the interest of the economic power. All these people are by product of the established power and, in such circumstances, they can never serve the interest of the public; nor of justice. They might tattle on public interest but they can never speak their mind. What is the interest of the public would never be determined by the public. Public’s interest would be translated to votes, taxes and finally, in ‘dumbing down’ phenomenon. The end of this story would result in a total dictatorship!
In fact, although the economic power may determine the future of Britain, and of the rest of the world, at the expense of course of the public power/knowledge/sweat, the political power, which is far from the public power and control, determines the politics of Britain. What therefore may wish a country when it pursues ‘hegemonic’ objectives? Of course, its re-production! But, in an internationalised market economy, where hegemony and take over is the dynamic of the system, both Britain and America, will, as they are, confront the rise of social movements inside their countries (transforming their nations, as one commentator called it, a ‘gulag’ nation [3]) and outside (most of them have been induced by intelligent agencies of the west), and simultaneously of other world powers, such as the Chinese one. As this is the objective of the American foreign policy, according to one architect of the American hegemony, Brzezinski [4], it will fail, precisely because, it will further the gap between the power of people and of the existing elites. Therefore, global structures will become more fragile. The end will result in a global intensive war beyond the present. And all this, as Fotopoulos concludes, because of the dynamic of the market economy and its principles i.e. ‘competitiveness’, the ‘growth’ ideology and the ‘separation’ of the political ‘power’ from the polity.[5]
Being therefore under a global economic (and political) power, politicians will do what the ‘owners’ of the world have planned i.e. keeping the same regime, by scarifying social freedoms (political, economic etc.). And, if there is a Revolution which has to be carried out by the oppressed people of the present world, it has to start from Britain and America: the first two countries which promote neoliberalism and their deep rooted interests i.e. “The New World Order” with its “Global Governance” through a Global Company and G7, 20 etc.!
To avoid this global fascism, there must be put in place an organised political movement in each country with its own antisystemic project, its own vision of the future society and a transitional strategy for moving from here to there.[6]
1. The surveillance state: growing under a coalition that pledged to reverse it, The Guardian, By James Ball, 2 Apr 2012.
2. Secret civil court hearings ‘would put government above the law’, By Owen Bowcott, The Guardian, Tue 6 Mar 2012.
3. CIA spooked by British courts, Apr 5, 2012, By Robert Winnett, Daily Telegraph.
4. Ibid.
5. Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You, Apr 2, 2012, By Chris Hedges.
6. The global political awakening, By Zbigniew Brzezinski, December 16, 2008, New York Times.
7. See, Takis Fotopoulos, Towards an Inclusive Democracy.
8. You can download a Political and Philosophical Project, here: http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/
