Failure of Vision on the British Left:

Political Leadership and moral decline

 

THE success of the Conservative Party in last week's elections showed up the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the British left in general.  Since the death of the former leader of the British Labour Party Michael Foot, I have been arguing that the Labour Party has for many years been a party that has outlived its mission.  Last week's election result merely confirmed what has been evident for a long time. 

But the failure is not just that of the Labour Party but that of the British left in general, including the trade union movement in this country.  Since the strikes of the miners in the 1980s, the British trade union movement has been industrially a busted flush that has politically looked to the Labour Party to usher in social change.  The unions had no plan or serious strategy of their own other than capturing influence and power through the British Labour Party in government.  That involved them in the rather vulgar prospect of buying political influence through the sponsoring of Members of Parliament.  In the eyes of some of their members this has been a case of throwing good money after bad. 

Last November, at the building worker's Rank and File Conference, I watched closely as one such Scottish Labour MP, Ian Davidson, performed as a honoured guest of the building workers.  Mr. Davidson was then introduced as the M.P. for Glasgow West, and it was he who performed so well when he recently he chaired the Scottish Affairs Select Committee enquiry into blacklisting in the British building trade:  see the books 'Blacklisted: The Secret War Between Big Business & Union Activists' by Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain (price £9.99), and Tameside Trade Union Council's 'Boys on the Blacklist' by me and Derek Pattison (price £3).  In his speech to the building workers Mr. Davidson was careful not to offend the trade unions, some of whose paid officials disgracefully may well have been involved historically both in the enforcement, and supply of intelligence about blacklisting in the construction industry.  Last week after the elections, Ian Davidson was calling on Jim Murphy, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, to stand down, as he and almost all of the other Scottish Labour M.Ps had lost their seats to the Scottish Nationalists.  Unlike Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, Jim Murphy who performed worse than either is, at the time of writing this, determined to to stay in office. 

Surely it is more than a failure of leadership that has brought about the decline in the fortunes of the Labour Party, and in some respects the labour movement.  It is a systemic failure that is rooted in an underlying lack of imagination and political vision that is common, not just in the trade unions, but on the left in general.   The British left, including the anarchists, seem to fear of self criticism.  On the eve of the election Russell Brand called on his anti-establishment constituency to vote Labour but to no avail.   

Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times last Saturday wrote:

'Elections are decided by fundamentals that take shape years in advance.  The five-week flurry of campaigning at the end might actually be the least significant phase of a parliament.....  But the best campaigners understand that campaigns do not change very much:  they merely uncover what already lurks inchoately in the mind and breast of the electorate.  On that score Labour lost the election long ago.' 

I can remember at the Manchester Labour Party Conference in 2010, when Ed Miliband was anointed as leader of the Labour Party.   At that time it was seen by some, particularly in unions like Unite, as a victory for the left.  It now looks like another dose of what George Elliot in 'Felix Holt: Radical' called 'vain expectations' from which the British left periodically suffer.  As Labour faces another leadership election Janan Ganesh warns:

'Whoever they choose (as leader), there has to be the all-out argument that was dodged in 2010, when the party entered a stupor of mutual reassurance and wishful thinking.'

It is doubtful if either the the Labour Party members or their trade union paymasters understand what is required here.  Unfortunately, Mr. Ganesh doesn't help his case when he writes:

'The consolation is that it (the Labour Party) can choose a  new leader from a promising field.  Andy Burnham, from the left, will offer Milibandism without Miliband.  The more market friendly flank of the party might assemble behind Liz Kendall or Chucka Umunna, the man the Tories fear most.'

 

Not much sign of profound vision or any great social transformation for humanity here.

Russell Brand, Ed Miliband & Critical Thinking

From an e-mail from Trevor Hoyle

RUSSELL Brand urges voters to vote Labour.  This is what Brand said:

“One thing I agree very sincerely with Ed on is that politics doesn’t rain down on us, it comes from below… movements putting pressure on governments. We don’t know what the limitations of a Labour Administration are going to be but we have just heard the leader of the Labour Party saying that he welcomes and wants pressure from below… what I heard Ed Miliband say is ‘If we speak, he will listen’…. what’s important is this bloke will be in parliament and I think this bloke will listen to us.”

 

However, when it comes to Ed Miliband and the Labour Party, Brand throws any critical thinking out the window. With this in mind it is worth recalling Miliband’s actions on some issues that are of concern to millions of people across Britain, issues that campaigners have been pressing the Labour Party – trying to apply “pressure from below” in Miliband’s parlance – to act the right, humane way on.

 

• --- In January 2015 Miliband voted for the Government’s Charter for Budget Responsibility, which included plans to slash public spending by a further £30 billion.
• --- In November 2014 The Guardian reported “The Labour front bench has accepted over £600,000 of research help from the multinational accountancy company PricewaterhouseCoopers to help form policy on tax, business and welfare… The support to shadow ministers including Ed Balls, Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt comes after the Guardian revealed PwC’s role in establishing potentially favourable tax structures for hundreds of companies around the world – including many British businesses – in Luxembourg.”
• --- In March 2014 Miliband supported a national cap on benefit spending which limited each household to a maximum of £26,000 in benefits, a policy Save the Children said would push 345,000 children into poverty in four years.
• --- In March 2013 Miliband abstained from a parliamentary vote on a bill that would prevent 250,000 “exploited” jobseekers from receiving £130m in rebates.
• --- Miliband backed the 13-year war in Afghanistan, the disastrous 2011 intervention in Libya and the on-going bombing of ISIS in Iraq.
• --- Miliband supports the retention of Trident nuclear weapons, which the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament estimates will cost around £100 billion over its 40 year lifetime.

On these issues Miliband did not welcome, listen to or act on pressure from below. Rather he ignored the voices of protest and concern.

As Brand has been influenced by Noam Chomsky, let’s leave the American dissident thinker with the final word. Speaking about Obama in 2009 Chomsky reiterated Galeano’s truism, explaining“It is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric” because “deeds commonly tell a different story.”

This entry was posted in Protest/activism, UK Domestic Politics and tagged Ed Miliband, Eduardo Galeono, election, Green Party, Labour Party, Noam Chomsky, Russell Brand on May 6, 2015.

Russell Brand's 'Revolution' Part 2.

12 November 2014 Russell Brand's 'Revolution' - Part 2, The Backlash  From Messiah To Monty Python If Julian Assange was initially perceived by many as a controversial but respected, even heroic, figure challenging power, the corporate media worked hard to change that perception in the summer of 2012.  After Assange requested political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, the faux-feminists and corporate leftists of the 'quality' liberal press waged war on his reputation. This comment from the Guardian's Deborah Orr summed up the press zeitgeist:  'It's hard to believe that, until fairly recently, Julian Assange was hailed not just as a radical thinker, but as a radical achiever, too.' A sentiment echoed by Christina Patterson of the Independent:  'Quite a feat to move from Messiah to Monty Python, but good old Julian Assange seems to have managed it.' The Guardian's Suzanne Moore expressed what many implied:  'He really is the most massive turd.' The attacks did more than just criticise Assange; they presented him as a ridiculous, shameful figure.  Readers were to understand that he was now completely and permanently discredited. We are all, to some extent, herd animals. When we witness an individual being subjected to relentless mockery of this kind from just about everyone across the media 'spectrum', it becomes a real challenge to continue taking that person seriously, let alone to continue supporting them. We know that doing so risks attracting the same abuse. Below, we will see how many of the same corporate journalists are now directing a comparable campaign of abuse at Russell Brand in response to the publication of his book, 'Revolution'. The impact is perhaps indicated by the mild trepidation one of us experienced in tweeting this very reasonable comment from the book:  'Today humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet.' (p.345) Sure enough, we immediately received this tweet in response:  'As a big supporter of your newsletters and books, I'm embarrassed by your promotion of Brand as some sort of visionary.' Mark Steel explained in the Independent:  'This week, by law, I have to deride Russell Brand as a self-obsessed, annoying idiot. No article or comment on Twitter can legally be written now unless it does this...' Or as Boris Johnson noted, gleefully, in the Telegraph:  'Oh dear, what a fusillade of hatred against poor old Brandy Wandy. I have before me a slew of Sunday papers and in almost all there is a broadside against Russell Brand...' Once again, the Guardian gatekeepers have poured scorn. Suzanne Moore lampooned 'the winklepickered Jesus Clown who preaches revolution', repeating 'Jesus Clown' four times. Moore mocked:  'To see him being brought to heel by an ancient Sex Pistol definitely adds to the gaiety of the nation.' After all: 'A lot of what he says is sub-Chomskyian [sic] woo.' An earlier version of Moore's article was even more damning: 'A lot of what he says is ghostwritten sub-Chomskyian woo.' This was corrected by the Guardian after Moore received a letter from Brand's lawyers. The Guardian's Hadley Freeman imperiously dismissed Brand's highly rational analysis of corporate psychopathology:  'I'm not entirely sure where he thinks he's going to go with this revolution idea because [SPOILER!] revolution is not going to happen. But all credit to the man for making politics seem sexy to teenagers.  What he lacks, though - aside from specifics and an ability to listen to people other than               himself - is  judgment.' Tanya Gold commented in the Guardian:  'His narcissism is not strange: he is a comic by trade, and is used to drooling rooms of strangers.' In the Independent, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's patronising judgement was clear from the title:  'Russell Brand might seem like a sexy revolutionary worth getting behind, but he will only fail his fans - Politics needs to be cleaned up, not thrown into disarray by irresponsible populists' Alibhai-Brown commented:  'It is heartening to see him mobbed by teenagers and young people... Brand, I fear, will only fail them.' Grace Dent of the Independent perceived little point in throwing yet more mud:  'with the lack of a political colossus on the horizon like Tony Benn, we can make do with that guy from Get Him To The Greek who was once wed to Katy Perry. I shall resist pillorying Brand any further. He looks exhausted. I'm not entirely evil'. Sarah Ditum sneered from the New Statesman:  'Russell Brand, clown that he is, is taken seriously by an awful lot of young men who see any criticism of the cartoon messiah's misogyny as a derail from "the real issues" (whatever they are).' Brand fared little better among the male commentators of the liberal press. The title of David Runciman's Guardian review read:  'His manifesto is heavy going, light on politics and, in places, beyond parody. Has the leader of the rebellion missed his moment?' Runciman wrote:  'This book is an uncomfortable mashup of the cosmic and the prosaic. Brand seems to believe they bolster each other. But really they just get in each other's way. He borrows ideas from various radical or progressive thinkers like David Graeber and Thomas Piketty but undercuts them with talk about yogic meditation.' As we saw in the first part of this alert, there is a strong case for arguing that mindfulness – awareness of how we actually feel, as opposed to how corporate advertising tells us we should feel – can help deliver us from the shiny cage of  passive consumerism to progressive activism. Alas, 'too often he sounds like Gwyneth Paltrow without, er, the humour or the self-awareness. The worst of it is beyond parody... his revolution reads like soft-soap therapy where what's needed is something with a harder edge'. Also in the Guardian, Martin Kettle dismissed 'the juvenile culture of Russell Brand's narcissistic anti-politics'. Hard-right 'leftist' warmonger Nick Cohen of the 'left-of-centre' hard-right Observer was appalled. Having accumulated 28,000 followers on Twitter (we have 18,000) after decades in the national press spotlight, Cohen mocked the communication skills of a writer with 8 million followers:  'His writing is atrocious: long-winded, confused and smug; filled with references to books Brand alas half read and thinkers he has half understood.' This is completely false, as we saw; Brand has an extremely astute grasp of many of the key issues of our time. As ever – think Assange, Greenwald, Snowden – dissidents are exposed as egoists by corporate media altruists:  'Brand is a religious narcissist, and if the British left falls for him, it will show itself to be beyond saving.' Cohen strained so hard to cover Brand in ordure he splashed some on himself, commenting:  'Brand says that he is qualified to lead a global transformation...' Not quite. Brand writes in his book:  'We don't want to replace Cameron with another leader: the position of leader elevates a particular set of behaviours.' (p.216) And:  'There is no heroic revolutionary figure in whom we can invest hope, except for ourselves as individuals together.' (p.515) Similarly, Cohen took the cheap shot of casually lampooning Brand's 'cranky' focus on meditation:  'Comrades, I am sure I do not need to tell you that no figure in the history of the left has seen Buddhism as a force for human emancipation.' We tweeted in reply:  '@NickCohen4 "no figure in the history of the left has seen Buddhism as a force for human emancipation". Erich Fromm, for one.' Cohen was so unimpressed by this response that he immediately blocked us on Twitter.  Writing from that other powerhouse of corporate dissent, the oligarch-owned Independent, Steve Richards praised Brand's style and decried the right-wing conformity of journalism, before providing an example of his own. He lamented Brand's 'vague banalities' and 'witty banalities':  'He is part of a disturbing phenomenon - the worship of unaccountable comedians who are not especially funny and who are limited in their perceptions... We await a revolutionary who plots what should happen as well as what is wrong.' In the same newspaper, Howard Jacobson effortlessly won the prize for intellectual snobbery:  'When Russell Brand uses the word "hegemony" something dies in my soul.' Oh dear, does he drop the 'haitch'?  For Jacobson, who studied English at Cambridge under the renowned literary critic F.R. Leavis, it was 'a matter of regret' that Brand didn't 'stick to clowning'.  Why? Because it detracts from the enjoyment of a comedian's efforts 'to discover they are fools in earnest'. Brand, alas, has not 'the first idea what serious thought is'. To read the book is to know just how utterly self-damning that last comment is.  James Bloodworth of the hard-right Left Foot Forward blog, commented in the Independent:  'Russell Brand is one of those people who talks a lot without ever really saying much.' Bloodworth clumsily sought to mock Brand's clumsiness:  'Well-intentioned, he can often come across like the precocious student we all know who talks in the way they think an educated person ought to talk - all clever-sounding adjectives and look-at-me vocabulary.' Words like 'hegemony', perhaps. Or as Nick Cohen wrote in 2013: 'He writes as if he is a precocious prepubescent rather than an adolescent...' Bloodworth's damning conclusion:  'Millions of people may be fed up of the racket that is free market capitalism, but this really is Revolution as play, and in indulging it the left risks becoming a parody of itself.' The Tory Press – 'A Snort Of Derisive Laughter' If we dare turn to the more overtly right-wing press, in the Sunday Times, Camilla Long lamented:  'Brand's mincing tintinnabulations, his squawking convulsions, his constant garbling of  words such as "autodidact" and "hegemony".' That word again! Could the real problem be that a working class author has appropriated words reserved for his classically-educated betters? Wikipedia records of Long:  'Descended from the aristocratic Clinton family (Henry Pelham-Clinton, 4th Duke of Newcastle... is an ancestor through her paternal grandmother), she was educated at               Oxford High School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.' Again, any thought of discussion had to make way for mockery:  'And what a mediocre, hypocritical, dancing, prancing and arrogant perm on a stick he is... I would be more comfortable with the former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell as a public intellectual.' From the moral summit of Murdoch's media Mount Doom, Perpetual Warmonger David Aaronovitch of The Times of course declared Brand's book 'uniquely worthless both as an exercise in writing and as a manifesto for social change - I feel able to             dismiss Brand's new self-ascriptions, both as self-taught man and revolutionary'. (Aaronovitch, 'A unique Brand of dozy drivel,' The Times, November 1, 2014)  Again, as we saw in Part 1, this is just false. There may be much to debate, but in identifying the fundamental disaster of a corporate system subordinating people and planet to profit, Brand is exactly right. Aaronovitch heard only 'a wall of sound and words designed to drown out the possibility of thought'.  But the wall of sound was coming from Aaronovitch's own head, from the psychological investments that prevent him perceiving words that would make it impossible for him to continue the role he is playing. For Aaronovitch, like Cohen, it was all 'sub-Yoko mysticana that [has] been the "it's really all about me" staple of pop stars, actors and princesses since the days of the Maharishi'. So Brand just produces 'sub-Yoko mysticana', 'sub-Chomskyian woo' and, as Robert Colvile noted in his review for the Daily Telegraph, 'sub-undergraduate dross'.  Reviewing the book in the Sunday Times, Christopher Hart wrote:  'There's no doubt that Brand can sometimes articulate what a lot of people are feeling...' As if panicked by the possibility that this might be thought to signify approval, Hart erupted:  'But when the cry comes from someone who seems the epitome of a vapid, ill-informed, coke-frazzled, self-adoring and grossly hypocritical celeb, preaching to us from the back of his chauffeur-driven Merc, then the only response it deserves is a snort of derisive laughter.' Parklife! The bottom line: 'Some of this stuff does indeed need saying, but Russell Brand is not the man to say it.' Again, less a review, more a Soviet-style 'personality disorder' smear. The Daily Mail really loathes Brand. For the journalist who for some odd reason describes himself as 'The Hated Peter Hitchens', Brand is a 'Pied piper who peddles poison'. It seems clear that some of the hatred directed at Brand by both male and female critics is rooted in something other than politics.  In a telling passage that reads like an outtake from a Carry On film, Hitchens observed:  'But there's also no doubt he has a potent effect on women - I watched him, in less than a minute, charm two pretty young Olympic medal winners into taking off their medals and draping them over his scrawny, naked chest.  The sad thing was that they acted as if they were the ones being honoured by the encounter.' We can imagine that Hitchens would have been only too 'honoured' to meet the 'two pretty young' women and to admire the medals on their chests where they belonged.  In the same paper, Stephen Glover also snorted derisively:  'Why does anyone take this clown of a poseur seriously?... Russell Brand is a ludicrous charlatan.'  Glover, who had either not read, or not understood a word of the book, commented:  'Revolution is one of the worst books I have ever read. It is repetitive, structureless, poorly argued (if it can be said to be argued at all) and boring... [from] our narcissistic hero... Why should we listen to this             clown?' Another Daily Mail altruist, Max Hastings, also perceived gross egotism at play:  'Mr Brand is a strutting narcissist, who, despite having no idea what he is talking about...' For the now thoroughly corporatised Piers Morgan in the Mail, Brand was a 'bogus revolutionary... this whole "revolution" he's trying to wage is a load of old sanctimonious hog-wash'. Morgan was happy to sign-off with a lazy dismissal:  'Like most great revolutionaries, he's quite happy wallowing in his own hypocrisy.' The Mail quoted James Cleverly, Conservative London Assembly Member for Bexley and Bromley:  'Why do the BBC give so much airtime to the vacuous, narcissistic drivel of Russell Brand?' We tweeted Cleverly: 'Exactly how often do you see a Brand-style, anti-corporate perspective on the BBC? Every day?' Cleverly did not respond. The Mail also noted that Conservative MP Philip Davies, a member of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, had demanded that the corporation look again at its public service remit: 'Why on earth are BBC giving so much air time to such an idiot is beyond me. Especially on such               supposedly serious programmes.  I just don't think that's what the BBC is there for. It is not there to give idiots like Russell Brand time to promote his book.' Boris Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph:  'Of course his manifesto is nonsense - as I am sure he would be only too happy, in private, to admit... Yes, it is bilge; but that is not the point. Who cares what he really means or what he really thinks?' For this was 'semi-religious pseudoeconomic mumbo-jumbo'. Again, another busy individual who had surely not troubled to seriously read the book.  As with Assange, the intent and effect of all this is to portray Brand as so ridiculous, so pitiable, that the public will feel ashamed to be associated with him and his cause.  The corporate media system, with its fraudulent 'spectrum' of opinion, is a hammer that falls with a unified, resounding crash on anyone who dares to challenge elite interests. It works relentlessly to beat down human imagination, creativity and hope, to smash the awareness, love and compassion that might otherwise terminate the 'nightmare of history'. Is resistance futile? Will they always win? Well, for once, we will give the corporate press the last word. On November 7, the Daily Mail reported that Brand's new book 'has enjoyed monumental sales - earning the star and his publishers a staggering £230,000 in just 11 days'. The Mail, no doubt reluctantly, cited a publishing expert:  'It's an awful lot of money to turnaround in such a short period.' Unmentioned by the Mail, Brand has said that profits from the book will go towards a non-hierarchical, not-for-profit café and production company managed by the workforce 'where recovering addicts like me can run a business based on the ideas in this book'. (p.593) DE  This Alert is Archived here: Russell Brand's 'Revolution' - Part 2, The Backlash Contact Us: editor@medialens.org  Sent to Northern Voices by Trevor Hoyle.

Media Lens: 'Russell Brand's Revolution'

11 November 2014

Russell Brand's 'Revolution' - Part 1, 'The Fun Bus'

On October 23, 2013, Russell Brand appeared to crash through the filter system protecting the public from dissident opinion. 

His 10-minute interview with Jeremy Paxman on the BBC's Newsnight programme not only attracted millions of viewers - the YouTube hit-counter stands at 10.6 million - it won considerable praise and support from corporate journalists on Twitter. Brand was arguing for 'revolution' and yet was flavour of the month, cool to like. Something didn't add up. 

The hook for the interview was Brand's guest-editing of New Statesman magazine, promoted by him in a video that featured editor Jason Cowley giggling excitedly in the background among besuited corporate journalists. Again, this seemed curious: why would a drab, 'left of centre' (i.e., corporate party political) magazine support someone calling for a 'Revolution of consciousness'? 

The answer is perhaps easier to fathom now than it was then, for time has not been kind either to the Newsnight interview or the New Statesman guest issue. 

It is clear that an unprepared Brand was largely winging it with Paxman. In response to the predictable question of what political alternative he was proposing, Brand replied:  'Well, I've not invented it yet, Jeremy. I had to do a magazine last week. I had a lot on my plate. But here's the thing it shouldn't do. Shouldn't destroy the planet. Shouldn't create massive economic disparity.

Shouldn't ignore the needs of the people. The burden of proof is on the people with the power, not people doing a magazine.' 

In his new book, 'Revolution,' Brand recognises that the first part of this response 'ain't gonna butter no spuds on Newsnight or Fox News' (Brand, 'Revolution', Century, 2014, ebook, p.415) and he is clearly keen to move on from 'the policy-bare days of the Paxman interview' (p.417). On the other hand, the second part of Brand's answer helps explain the huge impact of the interview – he was speaking out with a level of passionate sincerity and conviction that are just not seen in today's manufactured, conformist, marketing-led media. Brand looked real, human. He was telling the truth! 

Similarly, the New Statesman guest edition was a curious hodgepodge, with good articles by Brand, Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky alongside offerings from BBC sports presenter Gary Lineker, rock squib Noel Gallagher, actors Alec Baldwin and Rupert Everett, multi-millionaire entrepreneur Martha Lane-Fox, and even Russian media oligarch, Evgeny Lebedev. This was revolution as some kind of unscripted celebrity panto mime. 

Brand's Newsnight performance, then, was an inspiring cri de coeur. But a 10-minute, impassioned, ill-formed demand for 'Change!' from a lone comedian is not a problem for the media's gatekeepers. It makes for great television, enhances the illusion that the media is open and inclusive, and can be quickly forgotten – no harm done. 

Killing Corporate Power – Humanity's Stark Choice

Brand's new book, 'Revolution,' is different – the focus is clear, specific and fiercely anti-corporate. As we will see in Part 2 of this alert, the media reaction is also different. 

Brand begins by describing the grotesque levels of modern inequality: 

'Oxfam say a bus with the eighty-five richest people in the world on it would contain more wealth than the collective assets of half the earth's population – that's three-and-a-half billion people.' (p.34) 

And: 

'The richest 1 per cent of British people have as much as the poorest 55 per cent.' (p.34) 

But even these facts do not begin to describe the full scale of the current crisis: 

'The same interests that benefit from this... need, in order to maintain it, to deplete the earth's resources so rapidly, violently and irresponsibly that our planet's ability to support human life is being threatened.' (p.36) 

For example: 

'Global warming is totally real, it has been empirically proven, and the only people who tell you it's not real are, yes, people who make money from creating the conditions that cause it. (pp.539-540)

We are therefore at a crossroads: 

'Today humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet.' 

'The reason the occupants of the [elite] fun bus are so draconian in their defence of the economy is that they have decided to ditch the planet.' (p.345)

And so 'we require radical action fast, and that radical action will not come from the very interests that created and benefit from things being the way they are. The one place we cannot look for change is to the occupants of the bejewelled bus.' (p.42) 

The problem, then, is that 'we live under a tyranny'. (p.550) The US, in particular, 'acts like an army that enforces the business interests of the corporations it is allied to'. (p.493) 

But this is more than just a crude, Big Brother totalitarian state: 

'A small minority cannot control an uncooperative majority, so they must be distracted, divided, tyrannised or anaesthetised into compliance...' which means 'the colonisation of consciousness by corporations'. (p.165) 

Brand notes that 70 per cent of the UK press is controlled by three companies, 90 per cent of the US press by six: 

'The people that own the means for conveying information, who decide what knowledge enters our minds, are on the fun bus.' (p.592) 

He even manages a swipe at the 'quality' liberal press: 

'Remember, the people who tell you this can't work, in government, on Fox News or MSNBC, or in op-eds in the Guardian or the Spectator, or wherever, are people with a vested interest in things staying the same.' (p.514) 

Thus, the 'political process' is a nonsense: 'voting is pointless, democracy a façade' (p.45): 'a bloke with a nice smile and an angle is swept into power after a more obviously despicable regime and then behaves more or less exactly like his predecessors'. (p.431) 

The highly debatable merit of voting aside, anyone with an ounce of awareness will accept pretty much everything Brand has to say above. Put simply, he's right – this is the current state of people, planet and politics. A catastrophic environmental collapse is very rapidly approaching with nothing substantive being done to make it better and everything being done to make it worse. 

Even if we disagree with everything else he has to say, every sane person has an interest in supporting Brand's call to action to stop this corporate genocide and biocide. A thought we might bear in mind when we subsequently turn to the corporate media reaction. 

'Wow, I'd Like To Be Him'

Even more astutely – and this is where he leaves most head-trapped leftists behind – Brand understands that progressive change is stifled by the shiny, silvery lures of corporate consumerism that hook into our desires and egos. He understands that focused awareness on the truth of our own personal experience is a key aspect of liberation from these iChains: 

'Get money. I got money, I got the stuff on the other side of the glass and it didn't work.' (p.56) 

And: 

'I have seen what fame and fortune have to offer and I know it's not the answer. That doesn't diminish these arguments, it enhances them.' (p.202) 

And: 

'We have been told that freedom is the ability to pursue petty, trivial desires when true freedom is freedom from these petty, trivial desires.' (p.66) 

In a wonderfully candid passage – unthinkable from most leftists, who write as though they were brains in jars rather than flesh-and-blood sexual beings – Brand describes seeing a paparazzi photo of himself emerging from an exclusive London nightclub at 2 a.m with a beautiful woman on each arm:  'I can still be deceived into thinking, 'Wow, I'd like to be him,' then I remember that I was him.' (p.314) 

Brand tells his millions of admirers and wannabe, girl-guzzling emulators: 

'That night with those two immaculate girls... did not feel like it looked.' (p.315) 

So how did it feel? 

'Kisses are exchanged and lips get derivatively bitten, and I am unsmitten and unforgiven, and when they leave I sit broken and longing on the chaise.' (p.316) 

The point, again: 

'This looks how it's supposed to look but it doesn't feel how it's supposed to feel.' (p.186) 

Exactly reversing the usual role of the 'celebrity' ('how I loathe the word' (p.191)) - Brand sets a demolition charge under one of the great delusions of our time: 'Fame after a while seems ordinary.' (p.189) 

Everything, after a while, seems ordinary – external, material pleasures do not deliver on their promises. 

So why are we destroying humanity and the planet for a vampiric corporate dream that enriches a tiny elite and brings alienation and dissatisfaction to all? The answer? Thought control: 

'We are living in a zoo, or more accurately a farm, our collective consciousness, our individual consciousness, has been hijacked by a power structure that needs us to remain atomised and disconnected.' (p.66) 

And:

'Incrementally indoctrinated, we have forgotten how to dream, we have forgotten who we are. We have abandoned our connection to wonder and placed our destiny in unclean hands.' (p.600)

Again leaving most 'mainstream' and leftist thought far behind, Brand urges us to liberate ourselves from the marketised dreams of future happiness 'out there' – the fame, the indulgence, the wealth – to focus on a bliss that is available here, now, inside ourselves. What is he talking about? Is this just 'mumbo-jumbo', as critics claim? Far from it, this is a truth that is subtle, elusive, but real:  'You never know when you will encounter magic. Some solitary moment in a park can suddenly burst open with a spray of pre-school children in high-vis vests, hand in hand; maybe the teacher will ask you for directions and the children will look at you curious and open, and you'll see that they are perfect.' (p.105)

Bliss is there in that tiny, fleeting instant when the mind, for once – for a moment! – stops its ceaseless chatter to make space for 'another awareness. A distinct awareness. An awareness beyond, behind and around these thoughts'. (p.82)

This is brave and truthful; in fact, it is the central message of all the world's spiritual traditions freed from their political, theistic and superstitious baggage. 

Yes, the hard-headed Chomskys and Pilgers are of course right, the world is shackled by economic and political chains. But these hook into our most personal dreams and desires. Activism often does, and perhaps more often should, arise from the ultimate inactivism of sitting silently, doing nothing, thinking nothing, realising deeply that the bliss we seek 'out there' is an imposed illusion that obstructs an authentic bliss only available, in fact, 'in here'. 

This is the crucial, perennially-ignored link between spirituality and politics, between meditation and the ability to relinquish our dependence on corporate trinkets and 'service', and it has been made by far too few people in the history of Western thought. 

If all of this wasn't enough to earn Brand support and applause, he even challenges the taboo that associates seriousness with virtue: 'people mistake solemnity for seriousness, [assuming] that by being all stern and joyless their ideas are somehow levitated'. (p.399)

And indeed leftist writers are almost universally angry, solemn and stern – seriousness is worn like a badge of sincerity by people who are supposed to abhor conformity and uniformity. Brand has the self-belief to joke and jape with childish abandon when discussing even the most serious subjects. Again, he is asserting the right to be whoever he chooses to be - an authentic, juicy human being, rather than a hard-boiled 'intellectual'. 

In the effort to escape from illusions, both political and personal, Brand throws all kinds of ideas for action at his readers. He argues for the rewriting of trade agreements to support the needs of people and planet through localised farming. He wants to cancel personal debt, for communities to use modern high tech communications to take control of politics. He wants to 'kill' particular corporations like General Motors, 'sell them off and use the money to compensate victims and former workers, or we could collectivise it and run it as a worker-based cooperative'. (p.409) He wants genuinely participatory democracy along the lines of Porto Alegre in Brazil. Energy companies need to be stopped from wrecking the climate through oil refining and fracking, and so on.

All of this is courageous for another reason. Brand writes:  'I know too with each word I type that I am building a bridge of words that leads me back to the poverty I've come from, that by decrying this inequality, I will have to relinquish the benefits that this system has given me. I'd be lying if I said that didn't frighten me.' (p.62)

If by this he means that, in writing of the need for revolution, he will lose the support of the corporate media that lifted him to a place of prominence, he certainly has a point, as we will see.

Part 2 will follow shortly...