Prior to the banking crisis, there was a capitalist neoliberal conspiracy to de-regulate the financial and banking sector, thus rendering almost inevitable the total crash of the house of cards, based as it was upon fictitious capital underwritten by ludicrous ...loans that ran to billions. Gordon Brown was deeply implicated in this process, which began with Thatcher and the "Big Bang Day" of 1986 and which continued unabated through 10 years of "new Labour" government.
Banks were allowed and encouraged - nay, rewarded - to be irresponsible idiots by 20 years of state-sponsored casino capitalism. Exactly half of that period was under a Labour government.
Plenty of people foresaw the bursting of the bubble, but very few knew when it would happen. Instead of repairing the damage and doing something useful, like...er, how about, NATIONALISING THE BANKS...? ...instead, Brown took the option of giving them shitloads of billions without exerting any control over them WHATSOEVER. Good work, Gordon.
Not.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Friday, 8 October 2010
libertarians myths about "left-wing fascism"
You'll find that a lot of so-called "libertarians" (especially in the US) find it comforting to their ideology to believe that socialism and fascism are much the same because they are both.... *authoritarian*... gasp... in ...the Fibbertarian mind this is the worst thing imaginable; the state is demonised; they emerge as heroic rebels against the "authoritarian" demons on the left (including, conveniently, environmentalists - this labelling of greens conveniently enables them to ignore the actual facts about global warming and carbon dioxide, for instance, because it's really a cover for fascism/statism/socialism).
This ideological belief is of course entirely self-serving - libertarians are generally wealthy, occupying positions in the class structure which means they are reliant on capitalism for their propsperity. Therefore the demonising of the state suits them as it means, ideally, that companies can function unfettered by pesky "regulations" (such as workers' rights, child labour laws, and - worst of all - the minimum wage).
By seeing the enemy as "authoritarianism", without differentiating between different ideologies that seek to do entirely different things with state authority (race war on the far right, sustainability on the green left, for instance), libertarians convince themselves that they're the only ones who are good people, the ones who have worked out how evil everyone else is....
They are Fibbertarians. Interestingly, those on the racist far right also like to describe socialists as Nazis, which really helps to muddy the waters and enables them to deny the nature of their esoteric beliefs. This is especially popular in the US. I remember in the 1990s (when I was studying US nationalism on the internet for a phD, Clinton was routinely denigrated as both a socialist and a Nazi).
Go here to be shocked by what right-wing Americans are saying about Obama today...
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/obama/index?tab=articles
(And this describes itself as a "conservative" forum.)
This ideological belief is of course entirely self-serving - libertarians are generally wealthy, occupying positions in the class structure which means they are reliant on capitalism for their propsperity. Therefore the demonising of the state suits them as it means, ideally, that companies can function unfettered by pesky "regulations" (such as workers' rights, child labour laws, and - worst of all - the minimum wage).
By seeing the enemy as "authoritarianism", without differentiating between different ideologies that seek to do entirely different things with state authority (race war on the far right, sustainability on the green left, for instance), libertarians convince themselves that they're the only ones who are good people, the ones who have worked out how evil everyone else is....
They are Fibbertarians. Interestingly, those on the racist far right also like to describe socialists as Nazis, which really helps to muddy the waters and enables them to deny the nature of their esoteric beliefs. This is especially popular in the US. I remember in the 1990s (when I was studying US nationalism on the internet for a phD, Clinton was routinely denigrated as both a socialist and a Nazi).
Go here to be shocked by what right-wing Americans are saying about Obama today...
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/obama/index?tab=articles
(And this describes itself as a "conservative" forum.)
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