Robodebt proves fascism is alive and well in Australia

 

Peter Strempel, 23 February 2023 

Not since the banking royal commission has there been such a parade of shameless liars than the politicians and public servants trying to persuade the adults in the room that they didn’t know the Robodebt scam was illegal, and pursued entirely as an ideological punishment of the poor, for the crime of poverty.

Worse than the risible denials at the Robodebt hearings, though, is the underlying zeal with which public servants pursued an ideologically conceived, state imposed persecution of the very people they are paid to serve.

We have long become inured to state-imposed idolization of profit as an end in itself, and state sponsored coercion to subject ourselves to lives governed by wage slavery and consumption addiction whose benefits flow principally to corporations and already wealthy individuals.

An example of the subordination of all social and individual striving to state sponsored ideology so entrenched we think of it as normal.  As if there were no alternatives.  But we need only look to indigenous ambitions to recognize that alternatives do exist, and we rush to frustrate them.

Robodebt, accompanied by the cashless welfare card, however, makes it clear that it isn’t just politicians who drive ideological agenda.  It turns out that public servants at all levels were willing to turn the very rubric ‘public servant’ into a menacing tautology: more like ideological police.  Becoming arrogantly indifferent to the notion of serving a public rather than merely enforcing ‘compliance’ and perversely enjoying exercising what power they have to the detriment of people with no power at all.

You have to wonder whether bureaucrats would have shied away from a political instruction to force people to assemble at central points, where they would be forced onto cattle cars and railed off to remote locations … to labour as fruit and vegetable pickers, or for some other purpose.  Too far-fetched?  We didn’t flinch at outsourced agencies forcing hundreds of thousands into the treadmill labour of work for the dole, justified by ideological rhetoric that boiled down to nothing much more sophisticated than Arbeit Macht Frei with zero positive employment outcomes.

It isn’t just Robodebt or social security.  Try renewing your driver license, lodging a passport application, dealing with state or federal consumer affairs bureaucracies, or disputing a tax ruling.  In all of those endeavours, you will encounter an intransigence now that illustrates a distrust of the public, a hostility to it, and an unhealthy obsession with the savage abuse of power.

What was the bourgeois response?  You know, the people often called latte drinking left urban elites by Murdoch media finger puppets.  Nothing is what they did.  Because it didn’t happen to them.  And because no one really believed the victims about the extent of the abuses.

The ALP was conspicuously silent too, acting only if and when there was political capital to be made.

Back to Robodebt.  Can you imagine if there had been some wildly successful policy, and an inquiry into this success had spawned a single politician or public servant not rushing to declare their pivotal rôle in that success?  With Robodebt we have the complete opposite. 

So much so that the denials about the illegality and rejection of responsibility are so uniform you have to suppose we are witnessing a deliberate, calculated strategy of dishonesty.  Based on the guilty knowledge of culpability in inhuman crimes.  ‘I was only following orders’ all around.

Worst of all, enough people voted for this disgraceful abrogation of democratic values … more than once.

Robodebt is proof positive that fascism exists at all layers of government, including the public service, and the longevity of the programme proves it exists among a substantial proportion of the electorate.

Will anyone be prosecuted and gaoled for their crimes?  Was anyone prosecuted and gaoled after the banking royal commission found evidence of systematic criminal fraud and malfeasance?  And that proves fascism is also alive and well in our legal system, from the judiciary through to police, any and all of whom should have sworn out complaints and/or brought charges immediately upon becoming aware of criminal misconduct.

Let’s see how the ALP will respond to the Robodebt inquiry.  My bet is that nothing will come of it, and no consequences will accrue to anyone involved.  Because, it seems, even the ALP is comfortable with our contemporary bourgeois fascism.

In the meantime, the bourgeoisie reserves its confected outrage and impotent anger for inflationary pressure on its mortgages and credit-fuelled lifestyles.  Never once questioning why the state is able to enforce profit as a national priority outweighing all others, and turning a blind eye to corporate price gouging and obscene profiteering. 

Never once admitting to itself that Australia’s real ‘leaders’ are never elected, but tell our MPs what the limits are to their powers to make laws and govern the country, and seem to have the power to make that stick.

Revisionism is always authoritarian!

 

Peter Strempel, 22 February 2023 

Just reading about the Dahl revisionism and trying to fathom the principles underlying the revisionism that’s already fact rather than a discussion.

There’s a Time article that succinctly lays out the ‘concerns’ about Dahl.  Megan McCluskey’s journalism here ought to be a lesson for Australia’s media workers, who seem barely capable of repeating public relations rhetoric, let alone understanding the issues or, heavens forbid, investigating the story to explain its details.

Three things become apparent very quickly when you look into the controversy–

1. There is no rational, principled basis for revisionism that is not based on ideological a priori authoritarianism.  That is, someone says it must be so and imposes a rationale based solely on the power to enforce it.
2. The ‘concerns’ raised are largely a matter of bourgeois pretensions, with little relevance to the vast majority of humankind, the latter being concerned more with the existential priorities of subsistence than any moral preening in first world salons.
3.  The sole basis for revising Dahl appears to be profit.  Specifically the profit the new rights owner, Netflix, hopes to generate.

Principles?

Looking for principles according to which Dahl was both right enough to be published and successful, and wrong enough to require revision today, is a fool’s errand.

Ethically, we can’t go much further than Kant’s categorical imperative about acting in a fashion you would be willing to see as universal law.  Often simplified as do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  But how could this possibly apply in a socially and politically splintered world in which there cannot be any honest recognition of a single set of consensus opinions about language in literature? 

Bourgeois authoritarianism

You’d have to make an assertion that such a consensus view exists.  The assertion itself reveals the authors of the Dahl controversy, its disseminators in the media, and its consumers, to be a bourgeoisie with time and taste for the concerns of first world salons.  Perhaps also people aspiring to those things.

However, this still means imposition of a priori commandments: ‘We say it is so, and we say this must be done because of it.’  No matter how much any member of the bourgeoisie thus described might wiggle and squirm, it comes down to an authoritarian edict.

There is no ground for sanitizing language or public perceptions about prejudices that is not ideological.  Meaning that there can be no proof that supposedly prejudiced language is materially harmful in specific ways any more than there can be proofs that sanitized language prevents such harms.

No one but the bourgeoisie cares one way or the other: most others are focused on existential subsistence priorities, and plutocrats care only about matters that affect profit.

Political economy … again

No one cares to admit it, but the confluence of belated Dahl estate apologies for the man’s less than saintly character, the acquisition of the rights to his work by Netflix, and the revisionism of Dhal’s works in print, all point to only one underlying principle: profit

The recognition of Roald Dahl’s prejudices has nothing to do with ethical contrition or righteousness.  It is based solely on anticipated further profit squeezed from the late author’s intellectual property.

The estate acted on the anticipation of royalties.  The publishers might have acted on pressure from Netflix to remove potential sources for confected and hysterical outrage from all the usual suspects.  And Netflix acted the way any American corporation does: smooth the way for relatively uncontroversial profit by removing potential causes for confected outrage and boycotts.

Profit aided and abetted by ideology is always fascism, even if it is a genteel, bourgeois fascism in this case.

It says much more about the kind of people who fancy themselves arbiters of public ethics than it says about Dahl, whose sins may be the lesser in the long run.

Deliciously good writing ...

 

Peter Strempel, 20 February 2023 

The West Wing, S02E10, Noël

When Aaron Sorkin as good, he was very good. Here’s some patter from that episode, delivered superbly by Allison Janney as CJ, and Paxton Whitehead as Bernard Thatch. Just deliciously well written.

 

Assistant: C.J.

 

C.J.: Yeah?

 

Assistant: Bernard Thatch from the White House Visitor’s office is waiting for you inside.

 

C.J.: Yeah, I asked him to come see me.

 

[Assistant walks off, C.J. enters the Roosevelt Room, where Bernard Thatch is waiting, tall man with English toff accent.]

 

Bernard Thatch: Claudia Jean.

 

C.J.: How you doing, Bernard? [They shake hands.]

 

Bernard: I’m not at all well.

 

C.J.: That’s not unusual, is it?

 

Bernard: No.

 

C.J.: I understand there was an incident on a tour.

 

Bernard: There’s always an incident on a tour. People touch things.

 

C.J.: Well, you should punish them for that, Bernard.

 

Bernard: I’ve begged my supervisors to allow me.

 

C.J.: This had to do with a painting.

 

Bernard: Oh, yes. It’s all in the report. It wasn’t a problem.

 

C.J.: Yeah, but it made it to the Press Room, so I just wanted to check in.

 

Bernard: The guide was pointing out the Gustave Callioux hanging outside the Blue Room.

 

A woman began screaming completely incoherently.

 

C.J.: In English?

 

Bernard: If it was a language at all, its origin was unknown to me. I sent for the agent on duty, who attempted to take a statement, but not speaking whatever the language was, simply escorted her out of the building.

 

C.J.: Well, okay. Thanks for stopping by.

 

[Bernard turns to C.J.]

 

Bernard: C.J., your necklace is a monument to bourgeois taste.

 

C.J.: Thank you. [Smiles indulgently, fingers necklace.]

 

Bernard: You’re welcome.

 

[Exit room, walk and talk in corridor.]

 

C.J.: Listen, who is Gustave Callioux, and how long has this painting been hanging outside the Blue Room?

 

Bernard: Callioux was a contemporary of Courbet, who was considerably more gifted. This is a painting of the cliffs of Etretat, cleverly titled “The Cliffs of Etretat”. It is a minor work.

 

C.J.: What’s it doing here?

 

Bernard: It was on loan from the Musee d'Orsay to the National Gallery. The President, on a visit to the gallery, and possessing even less taste in fine art than you have in accessories, announced that he liked the painting. The French government offered it as a gift to the White House. [Both stop walking.] I suppose in retribution for EuroDisney. So here it hangs, like a gym sock on a shower rod.

 

C.J. [smiling broadly.] You’re a snob.

 

Bernard: Yes.

 

[Bernard leaves, C.J. still smiling broadly walks the other way.]

 

I have wondered more than once whether all of Aaron Sorkin's work since West Wing fades by comparison, and whether writers should be given special legal exemptions for suicidal cocaine habits.