Consens us? - Village Magazine

July 2017 4 7

ALKING UP the driveway on my

ﬁrst day of secondary school I felt

an added sense of trepidation on

account of the dandyish slip-on

shoes I was wearing. As I entered

the school buildings I ran the gauntlet of a rowdy

phalanx of students, giddy with ﬁrst-day nerves.

They smelt fear.

A piercing cry rang out: “check out the shoes

on your man”. A chorus of guffaws followed leav-

ing me red-faced and mute. On returning home

that afternoon I dolefully slipped off the offend

ing shoes for the last time, recovering an old,

innocuous, pair that would do service for another

year. The following day no one noticed my

change in footwear as I blended with the crowd,

no doubt dispensing my own barbs still suffered

silently decades on by others.

I suggest another damaging conformity ema

nates from a superﬁcially progressive elite that

holds back radical change in the UK and Ireland,

mostly by controlling media pronouncements,

that can ultimately be traced to the educational

system

The alt-right which now whispers into US Pres-

ident Trump’s ear comprises a collection of

misﬁts who hark back to a halcyon 1950s land-

scape of milk bars, jukeboxes, white picket

fences and horn-rimmed glasses. The Fourth

Turning they imagine is a ﬁction that invents an

enemy in extreme Islamism that appeals to a

similar myopic nostalgia among their equally

deluded adherents.

Nonetheless, I am drawn to a term ‘the Cathe

dral’ coined by an otherwise abhorrent alt-right

ideologue Curtis Yarvin, a.k.a. Mencius Mold-

bug. According to Paul Eliot’s superb account

that recently appeared in May’s Village: “The

Cathedral describes a media-academic-cultural

consensus with conditions for belonging: mem

bers must ascribe to the progressivist religion

and must accept dogmas from feminism, multi-

culturalism and trans-rights activism”.

The alt-right are correct nonetheless that what

used to be called political correctness excludes

certain positions from expression in the liberal

fraternity. Witness the former leader of the Lib-

Dems Tim Farron being hounded from ofﬁce for

his Christian beliefs, and in Ireland the treatment

of John Waters by his former colleagues in the

Irish Times, as well as the ‘group-think’ that

impelled RTE ‘Prime Time’ journalists to jump to

conclusions about a missionary priest.

I agree with the Cathedral on social issues,

although I ﬁnd the shutting down of debate dis-

tinctly undemocratic. My difﬁculty with this

broad liberal consensus is that its dogmas

extend well beyond issues of personal con

science such as gay sex or reproductive rights. I

suggest the Cathedral now occupies a position

on the centre right that stymies meaningful dis

tribution of wealth, and environmental shifts. In

so doing it has ceded space that allows an ata

vistic right to thrive.

The Cathedral’s candidate in the last US Presi-

dential election was Hillary Clinton whose

victory in the Democratic primaries was stage-

managed by party elites, against the surging

appeal of Bernie Sanders, the ﬁrst candidate in

decades to declare himself a socialist. The

Cathedral is backed by large corporations in the

US who devoted billions to Clinton’s electoral

campaign. A sufﬁcient number of a traditional

white working class recognised this, and fell

prey to Trump’s scoundrel patriotism.

The global income gap between richest and

poor has never been greater, and the social con-

science which the Cathedral exhibits is rather

like George Orwell’s description of the million-

aire, “who suffers from a vague sense of guilt,

like a dog eating a stolen leg of mutton”. Stark

inequalities in the UK have been laid bare by the

penny-pinching that appears to have led to the

Grenfell Tower ﬁre.

The members of this amorphous Cathedral are

not all millionaires. But they are drawn from

ﬁelds such as law, medicine, education and

media, and have reached, or feel themselves

capable of reaching, a comfortable level of

wealth. They have vested interests in maintain-

ing the status quo, including the price of

property.

In the UK, Blair and Cameron apparently

brought their parties into the centre ground, but

actually afﬁrmed Thatcher’s social revolution.

Both New Labour and Compassionate Conserva-

tism fell in line with the broad thrust of the UK’s

distinctive Cathedral. In the process, each “de-

toxiﬁed” its brand: from union-jack-under-panted

jingoism and unabashed capitalism in the case

of the Conservatives; and from old-fashioned

trade unionism and socialism in the case of

Labour. But through the Blair-Brown years, and

less surprisingly under ‘Compassionate’ Con-

servatism, inequality (magnified by rising

property prices) actually increased.

The ﬁngerprints of the UK’s Cathedral was

glaringly evident in the UK (and Irish) media’s

treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, an unashamed

socialist, anti-imperialist and vegetarian in the

months after he won the leadership of the Labour

Party in 2015. A Media@LSE report: ‘Represen-

tations of Jeremy Corbyn in the British Press’

reviewed what was the very opposite of a hon-

eymoon period.

Bias emanating from the Murdoch and other

right-wing press that includes The Sun, The Mail,

The Express, The Telegraph and The Times were

Corbyn offended the liberal Cathedral and his

socialist ideas need a fair hearing perhaps

promoted by the young and media-savvy, and

the intelligentsia

by Frank Armstrong

Radicals should

remain embedded in

party organisations

and work via constitutional

means, relying on the clued-in

and digital-savvy youth to bring

about a political revolution

Consens

us?

4 8 July 2017

predictable, but the approach of apparently cen-

tre-left publications is more surprising. The

authors state at the outset:

“The results of this study show that Jeremy

Corbyn was represented unfairly by the British

press through a process of viliﬁcation that went

well beyond the normal limits of fair debate and

disagreement in a democracy. Corbyn was often

denied his own voice in the reporting on him and

sources that were anti-Corbyn tended to out-

weigh those that support him and his positions.

He was also systematically treated with scorn

and ridicule in both the broadsheet and tabloid

press in a way that no other political leader is or

has been. Even more problematic, the British

press has repeatedly associated Corbyn with ter-

rorism and positioned him as a friend of the

enemies of the UK. The result has been a failure

to give the newspaper reading public a fair

opportunity to form their own judgements about

the leader of the country’s main opposition”.

This would appear to vindicate Ralph Milli-

band’s view that “the press may well claim to be

independent and to fulﬁl an important watchdog

function. What the claim overlooks, however, is

the very large fact that it is the Left at which the

watchdogs generally bark with most ferocity,

and what they are above all protecting is the

status quo”.

It is remarkable too that in the three apparently

left or centrist newspapers, the Guardian, the

Independent and the Daily Mirror a clear majority

of articles was either critical or antagonistic

towards him. Perhaps more concerning is the

extent to which Corbyn’s own voice was absent:

only 40% of articles in the Guardian and The Inde-

pendent actually quote him. The authors reckon

that up to one in ﬁve supposedly neutral news

reports in the Guardian (as opposed to opinion

articles) actually displayed bias against him.

The LSE authors conclude that superﬁcially

left-leaning and liberal newspapers provided an

“extensive and enthusiastic platform to those

forces in the Labour Party that aggressively con-

tested Corbyn and what he stands for”.

It should be born in mind that censure in the

apparently left-of-centre media was occurring at

a time when the so-called ‘bearded socialist’

was being subject to an unprecedented level of

attack by the right-wing press. The authors

found that several commentaries moralised

about Corbyn’s personal and romantic life. The

‘broadsheet’ Daily Telegraph heaped scorn on

his former relationship with Diane Abbotl folding

a political critique in with a questioning of what

attracted the pair to one another: “Lover’s of

what? Bolshevism? A warm vest to keep out the

chill winds of the political wilderness?”.

On the eve of the election a Guardian editorial

on Friday 2 June reluctantly put its support

behind Labour, but continued to question Cor-

byn’s ﬁtness for ofﬁce: “Many see him as a ﬂuke,

a fringe candidate who stole the Labour

leadership while the rest of his party was asleep.

In parliament he failed to reach beyond his fac-

tion. He is not ﬂuent on the issues raised by a

modern, sophisticated digital economy”. He is

thus portrayed as illegitimate, stealing the

Labour leadership from a candidate who would

presumably have adopted a more centrist posi

tion that preserved the status quo.

He is dismissed as a ‘has been’ who doesn’t

understand a sophisticated digital economy,

including a Neoliberal arrangement in which

transnational corporations successfully avoid

taxation. Most damningly: “his record of protest

explains why some struggle to see him as prime

minister”; the Guardian appeared to be more

comfortable with a Blairite willing perhaps to

support a Neoconservative administration in the

US. Of course since the election and Corbyn’s

ﬂowering as a cult ﬁgure, “Oh Jeremy Corbyn!”,

much of the media has run for cover and trans

muted its disdain.

Fortunately the public was given an opportu

nity to form its own opinion in the general

election itself when broadcasting rules allowed

the Labour leader to connect directly with the

electorate. Policies appealing to the idealism of

the young set off a social-media storm that

almost overcame a massive Tory advantage at

the start of the campaign, and which actually

displayed a very keen appreciation among his

ranks of the power of the new digital media.

To some extent the public service broadcaster

was the saviour of democracy in the UK, but the

BBC was not immune to the characterisation of

Corbyn as a Prime Minister who would give suc

cour to the enemies of the United Kingdom.

During the election campaign David Dimbleby

publicly asserted that the press had treated

Corbyn unfairly, but his intervention during the

Leaders’ Question Time would have pleased Con-

servative head ofﬁce. Soon after coming to power

Theresa May said that she would use nuclear

weapons as a ﬁrst strike, which presumably was

designed to contrast her steely determination

with the protest movement led by Corbyn.

After repeated questions from the ﬂoor on

whether Corbyn would be prepared to use a

nuclear weapon, Dimbleby as mediator twice

pressed Corbyn on the issue. For the BBC’s most

eminent journalist to place such emphasis on

this issue is troubling. Dimbleby seems to have

felt his professional duties required him to deni-

grate a Prime Minister prepared to incinerate

millions of people at the touch of a button.

I am inclined to believe that the effort was a

reﬂexive rather than a conscious effort to under

mine Corbyn’s credibility on this representative

issue. Nuclear war has not been a concern in Brit-

ain since the 1980s, and the Labour manifesto

actually commits it to maintaining Trident, con-

trary to Corbyn’s own personal views. Theresa

May was not questioned on this issue, for exam-

ple about whether she could reconcile nuclear

annihilation with her apparent Christianity.

It allowed the Cathedral to portray Corbyn as

unsafe, and foolhardy, as it became clear that

the population was increasingly attracted to his

economic policies.

The ‘steel’ required to unleash nuclear weap

ons, was also a major concern for another

veteran reporter Andrew Marr when he inter

viewed Corbyn before the election. But, in an

intriguing interview from 1996 that is available

on YouTube Noam Chomsky pre-emptively lays

bare Marr’s bias. The MIT Professor quoted the

passage from George Orwell’s essay ‘Literary

Censorship in England’ to him: “unpopular ideas

can be silenced without any force”. He also

referred to how the educational system makes

you understand there are certain things you

simply don’t say, just as you know that devia-

tions from fashionable norms will be greeted

with derision.

Chomsky outlines to Marr how there is “a ﬁl

tering system” that starts in kindergarten which

“selects for obedience and subordination”;

removing the ones “who are mad to live”, as Jack

Kerouac put it in ‘On the Road’. Thus the trou-

bled, and often artistic, student ﬁnds little

encouragement from dominant educational

models; and viewpoints that deviate from estab-

lished norms are held in check.

Chomsky referred to journalists he knew who

regarded the media as a sham and played it like

a violin: “If they see a little opening they will try

and squeeze something in”. Marr protests, “how

can you know I am self-censoring”, to which

Chomsky laconically replies: “I am sure you

believe everything you are saying”.

In the wake of the seismic shift in popular

opinion over the course of the UK General Elec-

tion it has been interesting to read the apologies

These troubling

times demand that

the intelligentsia,

who often wear odd-looking

clothes, re-engage with

politics and proudly assert the

radical position over that of the

Cathedral

OPINION

July 2017 4 9

from leading radical journalists who abandoned

Corbyn, writing him off as ‘unelectable’. A previ-

ously ardent supporter Owen Jones wrote after

the election:

“I thought people had made their minds up

about Corbyn, however unfairly, and their opin-

ion just wouldn’t shift. I wasn’t a bit wrong, or

slightly wrong, or mostly wrong, but totally

wrong. Having one foot in the Labour movement

and one in the mainstream media undoubtedly

left me more susceptible to their groupthink”.

Another who deviated from his early enthusi

asm was George Monbiot who wrote an article

entitled: “The election’s biggest losers? Not the

Tories but the media who missed the biggest

story”. He acknowledged: “the media has cre-

ated a hall of mirrors, in which like-minded

people reﬂect and reproduce each other’s opin-

ions”. So:

“The broadcasters echo what the papers say,

the papers pick up what the broadcasters say. A

narrow group of favoured pundits appear on the

news programmes again and again. Press prizes

are awarded to those who reﬂect the consensus,

and denied to those who think differently. People

won’t step outside the circle for fear of ridicule

and exclusion”.

It is interesting that our own Fintan O’Toole

recently scooped a George Orwell press award

for his coverage of English nationalism during

Brexit. The Cathedral, in its favour, is hostile to

racism; although a bullish secularism often

leads to Islamophobia. Most, however, despair

at Theresa May’s lapses which shows how the

Cathedral is fracturing in the wake of the Brexit

referendum.

Some weeks before the election, O’Toole

wrote an article entitled: ‘Corbyn’s nostalgia less

of a fantasy than May’s’; note how Corbyn was

being portrayed – by the subeditor - as a nostal

gic fantasist just as the Cathedral would wish.

O’Toole underpinned the headline: “Corbyn’s

Labour has been characterised by the over

whelmingly Tory press as a throwback to the

early 1970s and there is some truth in the accu-

sation”. But what is this throwback to: Less

inequality? Job security? Public ownership of

vital infrastructure? These all appear to be objec-

tives to which O’Toole subscribes in Ireland, and

he goes on to commend Labour’s manifesto

while still insisting that Corbyn is “nostalgic”.

O’Toole concludes: “Corbyn is a highly prob

lematic leader, not least in his inability to think

about how to create a majority in England for this

radical social democratic vision”. The problem

with Corbyn appeared perhaps to be his effec-

tiveness in putting his point of view across; the

old ‘unelectable’ jibe in other words, the has-

been beardy-socialist of the wolf-whistling

right’s portrayal. Or perhaps Corbyn is simply

unfashionably not a social democrat, as O’Toole

is, but something more radical.

The other slur levelled against Corbyn by the

Cathedral is to blame him for Brexit because he

didn’t campaign with sufﬁcient vigour; this

despite the fact the British media hardly report

what he says, considering him in effect ‘toxic’.

Corbyn was being asked to give his idealist’s

support for an institution with many ﬂaws for a

socialist, an institution which failed to imple-

ment the promised ‘Social’ Europe, and which

was imposing a cruel Austerity over Greece, and

Ireland. He supported Remain but refused to pre-

tend that everything was rosy about it, giving it

a grade of 7/10.

In the UK the Cathedral comprises almost all

graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. Whenever

I watch programmes devoted to politics on the

BBC I try to do an Internet search on the partici

pants. Invariably the politician, journalist, writer

or economist is a product of these limiting

places. In such circles attendance at a ‘redbrick

university’ is a euphemism for intellectual infe

riority. Corbyn bungled his A Levels and did not

attend any university. He’s an outsider with

‘cranky’ socialist and anti-imperialist views that

the Cathedral doesn’t tolerate.

The furore over Donald Trump’s withdrawal of

the US from the Paris Climate Change deal is

instructive. That deal was supposed to have

‘taken care’ of the problem, allowing us to return

to giddy consumption. But the uncomfortable

reality of the accord is expressed by the Indian

writer Amitav Ghosh: “the Agreement’s rhetoric

serves to clarify much that it leaves unsaid:

namely, that its intention, and the essence of

what it has achieved, is to create yet another

neo-liberal frontier where corporations, entre-

preneurs, and public ofﬁcials will be able to join

forces in enriching one another”. The agreement

hardly addresses poverty or inequality and the

principle of human superiority over nonhuman

remains intact. Both drive Climate Change, along

with the idea of economic growth-without-end.

The Irish Cathedral has similar constituents

and outlooks, and inﬂuence across the false

centre of the political spectrum. We don’t have

elite universities so the social and professional

networks tend to emerge in private schools. It is

most obvious in the Irish Times, and to a lesser

extent RTÉ.

In Ireland the Cathedral prefers to wage cul-

ture wars over issues such as gay marriage, and

to an extent the right to abortion, that become

overriding concerns which distract from struc-

tural and environmental questions. Both Enda

Kenny and Bertie Ahern before him proved

highly adept at managing the Cathedral’s con-

cerns. The Irish Times now keeps Fintan O’Toole

as a mascot for a social conscience. In Ireland, it

is only when a serious crisis is apparent – such

as homelessness – that the Cathedral agrees to

drop a morsel. Otherwise its focus is easy life

style issues not issues of structural

inequalities.

One wonders how long the broad consensus

will last among the main Irish political parties

which play pass-the-parcel with political power.

At least Leo Varadkar’s Neoliberalism offers a

degree of ideological clarity. Genuine radicalism

may emerge within parties such as Labour and

the Greens. In this respect the lesson of Corbyn’s

success is clear: radicals should remain embed-

ded in party organisations and work via

constitutional means, relying on the clued-in and

digital-savvy youth to bring about a political

revolution.

The Cathedral despairs at the extremism that

is evident in the disruptive era of the Internet,

but the disenchantment reﬂects grotesque ine-

qualities, particularly in the Anglosphere of

which Ireland remains a part. Jeremy Corbyn

seriously challenged these; he was hammered

as a result but ultimately he found a way to get

through to the electorate. The Left might take

issue with details of his policies but surely not

the thrust, which seeks to give a decent stand

ard of living to all, and to curb the excesses of

the super-rich. He also chimes with an environ

mental movement seeking to curb

consumerism.

Orwell wrote: “in countries where there is

already a strong liberal tradition, bureaucratic

tyranny can perhaps never be complete. The

striped-trousered ones will rule, but so long as

they are forced to maintain an intelligentsia, the

intelligentsia will have a certain autonomy”. The

disruptive power of the Internet is generating

new politics that the Cathedral cannot control,

and the intelligentsia have an opportunity to

challenge “the striped-trousered ones”.

The Cathedral’s superﬁcial centre cannot

hold. Let us hope more beasts such as Trump do

not slope towards Bethlehem to be born. These

troubling times demand that the intelligentsia,

who often wear odd-looking clothes, re-engage

with politics and proudly assert the radical posi-

tion.

An LSE report said:

Corbyn was often

denied his own voice

by the media. He was scorned in

both the broadsheet and tabloid

press in a way that no other

political leader has been