G20 Protests: The Problem...

I was commenting on a thread on Pickled Politics about the G20 protests, and something suddenly crystallised inside my head. I knew right then and there that I had to write this post.

The problem with the G20 protests, I realised, is that they fit into a common, polarised narrative. The reason this scares me so much is because all the protestors are doing is expressing an anger that most people have about the irresponsible way in which our financial institutions have behaved.

Note the italics. Did you note my italics? I hope so. The reason I did that is because I want to emphasise - perhaps rather pointlessly - that many of us share common ground with the protestors. Even some readers of the Daily Fail.

That's just the problem though. The mainstream media (MSM) - and let me say that in this description, I include the free daily London papers as well - has pursued a dangerously successful agenda of 'divide and conquer.' Sunny pointed out, I think in the comments, how many journalists were busy highlighting the minority of protestors who were violent, rather than focussing on the entirely peaceful Climate Camp protestors.

Going on to any site - PP, Comment is Free, whatever - I am struck how there are a range of 'stock positions' which people fall into. When I went on to Liberal Conspiracy, the commenter 'Letters From A Tory' said the following:

Honestly, Sunny - I have no idea how you can be so naive. You join a mass protest that was always going to attract a violent element, then complain that the police were keen to contain the protest.

I wrote you a letter on my blog this morning explaining why your account of yesterday’s events is at best laughable and at worst idiotic.

This made me angry. The whole thing makes me angry. Why in the fuck was it 'always going to attract a violent element'? Why do we have these expectations of events?

Prior to the events actually happening, there was more of this sort of attitude. I read a frankly infuriating column in thelondonpaper, which I will reproduce when I get back to my flat. I notice this attitude appearing more and more frequently - it was apparent in quite a few of the letters as well. It was the stupid daily column where they get members of the public to write in about something they care about - I think it has to be 500 words or something.

The author of the piece argued that the protests were putting '1 million people at risk' and that '95% of the protestors don't know why they are protesting' (um, how do you know?). He also used the age-old assumption of many a knobhead that the protestors were simply people who didn't have a job to go to (again - how do you know?), and thereby trying to ruin things for those who did.

Behind this blithe shower of bollocks (which I found all the more astonishing given that in that very issue of the paper, there were comments on how many local businesses were actually being closed and people advised not to leave their homes in order to keep them safe - hardly 'at risk') was a common belief that I see on the Internet and in newspapers (often on the Internet versions of newspapers, haha). It was the deformation of those that one does not agree with, the lionising of those that one does agree with - in short, the breakdown of a highly complex event into a battle between two opposing factions.

The MSM has been subtly priming us to think this way in the run-up to this event, and so before, during and after, people fall back into their 'stock positions.' You have the 'amused/contemptuous cynic' (as shown by LFaT above), the 'earnest and frustrated protestor/supportive journalist/victim', the 'misunderstood third party' (i.e. in this case, people claiming to be members of the police sticking up for themselves) and then a whole load of people trying to intercede somewhere between all this.

That column exemplified this 'divide and conquer' strategy that is so often. Most often, it's apparent when right-wing papers talk about non-whites and immigrants. The 'us' and the 'them.' I hadn't realised it was being practised in this instance. I was naive; I never realised that the papers could use such an ingenious method of turning apathy lucrative. People no longer interested in traditional political parties? The Labour/Conservative divide just not working any more, because they seem to be merging into each other? Great! Give the people what they're crying for! Give them division!

It's deeply insidious - I read an interview with the editor of thelondonpaper when I was doing a project on the British and French daily papers last year. He had this to say:

"Free papers acknowledge the realities of young people's lives and, pretty much everywhere in the world, they are politically neutral. All the research shows that young people dislike political bias in newspapers and they are sick of being preached at by journalists. That's why they don't want to read columnists either."

and this

"Our appeal is that we're the antithesis of their 'Little Englander' mentality."

Riiiight - that's why you regularly publish the kind of thing that was in that daily column, and letters like the slew of ones slagging off the protestors. The star letter was from somebody advising people to 'hold up a bar of soap' to the protestors because it would have the same effect as garlic on a vampire, or something along those lines. Bullshit are the free papers neutral. London Lite and Metro belong to Associated Newspapers which publishes - *gasp* - The Daily Mail. Thelondonpaper is published by News International - which publishes The Sun, The Times and The News of the World. Gee, is anyone seeing a theme here? Lord Rothermere, Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch - yeah, that's absolutely synonymous with being 'politically neutral' in my book... [/sarcasm]

It's very clever. These freesheets may claim to be neutral by not publishing anything overtly inflammatory - but by ensuring that you highlight the content sent in by your most bigoted readers and laying out your coverage of issues just so - that doesn't sound politically neutral to me, that sounds like you're surreptitiously favouring an agenda...

So yeah, as I already commented, now we have 'ordinary, peaceful, hard-working Britons/Londoners' vs 'jobless/time-wasting, violent protestors,' 'helpless scapegoat working-class City employees' vs 'middle-class protestors who are probably all in charge anyway', 'the faceless and brutal police' vs 'well-meaning but radicalised protestors', 'the trouble-making protestors' vs 'the poor police just doing their jobs'... On and on it goes. Of course, many of these battles are bundled up together, i.e. the first two. It's almost impressive - you can have many binaries operating at once - but somehow, we're not advanced enough to realise that real life isn't a black-and-white binary.

Shades of grey exist, bitches. Maybe it's about time we started taking the joke that all journalists are just failed novelists seriously?

Seriously though, we all need to be alert and wary, for dehumanising is a tactic common to - what? Think about it. War, yes, that's right! Consider that recent story about Israeli soldiers' awful T-shirts which make light of things like murdering pregnant Palestinian women. Think of the war on terror as well, and how the MSM (the right-wing papers in particular) have worked overtime to dehumanise not only extremists, but Muslims in general, as a way to avoid engaging with the fact that the 7/7 bombers were 'homegrown.' Sure, they reported it. However, as any fule kno, reporting an issue and engaging critically and analytically with it are not the same thing. If they were, we wouldn't have comment sections in papers, and there'd be no need for blogs.

Whether we like it or not, whether we'd take to the streets over how we felt about an issue or not - these protestors are 'us.' Bigots, unfortunately, are 'us.' Is there really a 'them'? There will, for the purposes of political manouevre, always be a 'them' but we are the ones who read the papers. We are the ones who feed off these divisions. The scores of annoying, smug pricks who were predicting how the protests would end were smug precisely because they are making the narrative. They know that life is perfectly capable of imitating art, so to speak. We can only try to keep some hope about the whole affair - and remember that everybody is human. Even Josef Fritzl, a perfect example of what happens when we fail to take adequate responsibility for each other. We lock ourselves into destructive cycles and never progress.

This bit:

his mother Maria, who herself had been fostered as a child, had had him "solely in order to prove to the world that she was not infertile" following a marriage which broke up because it produced no children.

"Herr Fritzl was a 'proof child', an 'alibi child'," she said, adding that this "was his only function as a child". "As a consequence he was a burden to her, something she was forced to look after". She said that Fritzl, now 73, struggled throughout his childhood to form a relationship with his mother but that "it was impossible to build up any sort of bond of trust with her".

The fear he felt by her constant absences was never more intense than during the second world war bombing raids on their home town of Amstetten. She refused to take refuge in the air raid shelter near to the family home, insisting on staying in the house and sending her son into the underground shelter instead. "As a result he suffered from an overwhelming sense of anxiety, not knowing when the air raid was over whether or not the only person in the world to whom he had any relationship, would still be alive," she said. "It's the type of fear that over time has a huge impact on a person".

... made me want to cry. I can see clearly how the leap from an unloved little boy to an incestuous rapist was made - and it is essential that we see that, and not tidy this all away as if it has been resolved. It hasn't. Humanity, if it really thinks it's superior to the animals, needs to learn to take full responsibility for itself. Just because we've invented the Internet, it DOESN'T mean we've got any less thick! Sigh...

A music video for cheer-up's sake. YEAH THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA!

An article, which I've just inadvertently realised, plugs neatly into what I've just said.

Headscarves and Turbans

Quite some time ago, I said that I would reveal what I thought about girls who wear headscarves (at my university). I'm not going to focus just on the laydeez though - the menz will also be getting a bit of a rollicking.

It must be said that I am not targeting all girls in headscarves either. Just a lot of them.

It has struck me recently that there is so much fundamental dishonesty in the world. That sounds really naive, but I don't mean it in some 'child-opening-eyes-to-harsh-reality' way. I mean it in the sense that it is stunning how much of human existence can essentially be boiled down to power struggles - people trying to claim authority over each other. Yet a lot of the time the subject of the power struggles is often misunderstood or misrepresented, and hence those arguing over it are, if you will, arguing over something that does not actually exist. They are trying to generate authenticity out of inauthenticity, and in the process basing themselves and what they stand for - their identities - around a lie.

Let us invoke a 'trendy' example here: Islam and the arguments between Sunnis and Shias, or between Wahabbis and pretty much every other type of Muslim (:-D). It's not just Islam though that has this problem - pretty much every religion based around a text of some sort has this problem to some extent.

If you haven't already, look at my blog header. It is a quote from that wonderfully disturbed man, Franz Kafka. I am not, and did not, choose that in order to come across as intellectual (ffs, I read the book for a university course... I'm not the sort of person who reads 'classics' for fun unless they're relatively humorous. Yes, yes, I know. Sacrilege!). I chose it because it struck me as so very true. Thanks to ol' man Nietzsche and others of his ilk, I've come to rethink what that means. Now, when I think something is 'true,' what I really mean, I suppose is that for me, it is very applicable.

'The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.' I would gladly renounce all hope of ever being a real writer if I could produce such a phrase. Staggeringly obvious, but like the most accurate observations, it needs to be pointed out to us. I can't help thinking that if only more people kept this in mind, the world could well become a more sensible place. I'm not a fucking 'punk rocker with flowers in my hair' nor am I wishing for 'world peace' like a beauty pageant contestant, I just wish for a little more pensiveness, please.

Once something has been printed/published - that is IT. It takes on a life of its own. To borrow a Freudian term, it becomes 'uncanny.' I was thinking about it and I surmised at first that perhaps at the heart of our power struggles lies the desire to 'be or beat' the author. Maybe the power struggles are nothing but an expression of collective frustration at the fact that the author has 'got one' over us and an unconscious acknowledgement that we would like to be in their position. I mean, look at the way educational progress works. We do not learn and learn - the aim of accumulating knowledge is to reach the position of knowledge-provider ourselves in most instances. Think of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and how much it applies to all of humanity; all our learning is but an attempt to take a swipe at God.

However, the printed text will survive after its author's death. It will outlive them, and even in their own lifetime, it will defy them. All their manicured intent will not be able to forge a 'pure' work that has only one understanding to it. Some critics and reviewers will see what they were aiming to do in their work; others will draw entirely new strains of meaning from it. It is their legacy; much as other people have children.

People like to think that their children, sharing their genetic matter as they do, will turn out to be, if not carbon copies, at least startling likenesses of the originals. Not so! as anyone with half a brain knows. Works of art are no less wayward. They must be as receptive to the egos of others as they are to the ego of their creator; otherwise they will not survive over time.

Therein lies an irony: you work and work and create yourself a monument, yet after all your efforts it defies you. It refuses to behave as told, to conform exactly. It is 'uncanny,' because as soon as it leaves your mind and becomes apparent, it takes on an authority of its own and perhaps even robs you of your authorial authority. You can't tell it what to do. Nobody can tell it what to do - and then the problems start because it tells others what to do.

People are base, lowly creatures fashioned out of clay who fail to do justice to that glorious organ in their heads that rules them. If ever there was a 'God,' it ought to be the human brain. Look at what the human brain can do! However, if we can't even respect the capacities of our own brains, then we haven't got much chance of remembering that texts are living things. They don't belong to the author any more than they belong to the reader; they live in the middle ground between intent and interpretation and we would do well to remember this and get the hell over ourselves.

So. Intro over.

What with this insecurity that surrounds texts, religious and otherwise, people need SOMETHING to cling to. Enter ritual and symbolism. What yuman beans really like, is habit and routine. I think it is hardwired into our biology, but I'm not certain. Even those who seek variety need this to some extent in order to be less aware of the passage of time and our mortality.

I don't really approve of the laziness that induces us to cling to things out of sentimentality in such a way, but I understand why people do and I understand how terrifying it can be to suddenly let slip a whole set of beliefs, no matter how half-baked, and have to start again with a blank canvas on the world. I'd venture to say here that while liberation is generally good, it definitely ain't easy yo.

All this is why, when I see girls at my uni wafting about in their hijabs, I feel... ambiguous. Depending on what they look like, my thoughts tend to run thus: either 'Oh' or 'How fuckin' stupid. What a fuckin' stupid shame.' Quite often the former runs into the latter. If the girl in question looks like a fully-paid up devout Muslim: baggily covered, has a hint of a moustache (sorry ladies, but if you do, you do) and is bare-faced (and quite often looks dead-eyed, although I'm sure I do too), I think to myself that I don't really know how much of a believer she is. Maybe she wants to do her eyebrows and wear lipgloss, but maybe she can't. Maybe she really DOES believe that she is the Satan-sin of Temptation personified and/or see the gaze of others as a threat - if so, that's a damn shame.

However, when I see what my friend Ala (and others) have described as 'muhajababes' (oh go on, read Ala's post, it's short, concisely-written and well-explained!), I just think: 'How fuckin' stupid. What a fuckin' stupid shame' because it is a stupid shame. They are a visual lie to me. Here are girls who want to be regular girls, wearing make-up and tight clothes and accessorising fit to outshine even the scantiest-clad girl - and suddenly a hijab obscures their hair and neck. The pointlessness of it is what always astounds me. Human sexuality cannot be regulated. People always try and do so; in some respects (i.e. paedophilia, incest, etc.) this is laudable. In many ways, it's also quite a hopeless exercise, like trying to rid the world of all its rats. Purge in one place, and there will be an upsurge elsewhere.

When I see these girls, or boys with turbans which hide their cut hair - or they have carefully shaved and groomed beards - I find it stupid and dishonest. Some of them will perhaps want to continue as they are, no doubt. However, I want to shake a lot of these people and ask them to think and sleep on it a bit. What kind of ludicrousness is that? Evidently they are doing it so that their parents and relatives can look upon them and see the symbol, see the visual affirmation of faith.

(I once saw a woman on the Tube who had short hair - neck-length, tons of make-up on and I don't know whether her eyebrows were partially drawn on or what, but I noticed she had a very fucking big tattoo of a khanda on her forearm. I have no idea whether she was wearing a kara or not, but I don't remember seeing one...)

Yet, like texts, the person may well be trapped in the middle - caught between the symbol and those that demand it. They may think the symbol is a concession to their parents/relatives; in fact, the parents/relatives tend to see it as a promise and a testimony. It tells them that you have faith and locks you in to their system of belief, and if you don't, it's a lie - once again - that everything is hinging on. Take a stand! Don't let yourself be suffocated by something that you thought you were in control of!

Then again, some people are so unable to handle the abstract as the abstract that they will literalise everything. They are people with no imagination and no inquisitivity, and they will not accept the view of sexuality I have just mentioned. They will cry vermin and keep stamping until there is blood. Their failure to accept the fact of sexuality's omnipresence will result in them turning, like so many desperately unimaginative bastards, to murdering their children in that most well-known of rituals, the 'honour' killing. The term 'control killing' as has been proposed, is much better. See, 'control killing' makes me think of Rentokil, which makes me think of vermin, which leads me back to my metaphor. Such bastards - being as they are, probably consumed with personal guilt and shame for whatever reasons - will seize upon the separate existence and snuff out its life in a pathetic and futile attempt to protect their lie.

Lo, we have returned to the power struggles of which I spoke at the beginning, and so it is that books are burned and women are killed for the sake of people's authority. Shame on you. Grow the fuck up. If you were truly people of religion and honour, you would accept that all things belong to God, and that ultimately it is only God's decision to exercise judgement. Monica Ali - an author who faced the threat of book-burning in this day and age - helped in the production of this post, pointing out as she did via Brick Lane that it really is not just fear, but also laziness, that drives people to stay with a certain ideology. I mean, ferChrissakes, the main character is not afraid to have an affair, even though she hasn't guts enough to stop praying despite not really seeming to believe in religion! A special mention must also go to Marcel Proust, upon whom I had to write a 2, 500 word essay, which I did 2, 000 words of in one day. Thank you.Thank you very fucking much.

The moral of the rant may be that art of all kinds and children are much more alike than you ever wanted to realise, and that you don't own nuttin'. Don't let this capitalist, property-appropriating world fool you, y'hear? ;-D As if the recent recession and allegations of fraud didn't make that clear enough already. As an absolute genius of a man once said: 'Money ain't got no owners; only spenders.'

To finish in an Omar-ian vein: MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR, YO!

PP Meet-Up LE DEUXIÈME!

So. I dressed up in the most offensive outfit I could muster (which is, curiously enough, a big, baggy hooded sweatshirt and a miniskirt!). Might I add that this is A TRIED-AND-TESTED disapproval garnerer (yes, I know that's a neologism) - I got hassled, each time differently, three times along the same road while wearing it in France.

Offensive but practical - the rain was pouring down and the sky miserably overcast as par for the course these days. I legged it to the National Theatre, feeling a bit nervous and shtoopid for having forgotten my book. This was to be a book-disseminating meet-up, and there I was contravening the whole point of it already. Great. I had visions of an outdoor table surrounded by barely-conversing people, a book or two languishing on top as the parasol fluttered dangerously in the 'breeze.'

However, it was then time to put away the imaginary violins because everyone turned out to be on the ground floor huddled cosily around a couple of tables. Saying the atmosphere was 'cheery' is shittily generic... but it kind of was, since there were lots of colourful chairs and stools, quizzical-eyebrowed white-haired men and women peering at things and eventually live music.

I encountered Nesrine Malik first off, and she remembered my name! Score (good God, I sound like a cross between an American frat-boy and your average Heat reader). She, like I, had turned up 'on time'-in-accordance-with-Sunny, which means an hour late. Hah.

Despite already feeling the odd mix of drowsiness and hunger that the NT seems to inculculate in me now, I spotted the PP table as we were about to walk past (yay!). Immediately we started chatting with Shariq, and I kept trying to find out who was actually in attendance since I only recognised a few people. Nobody seemed completely aware of the guest-list, so I gave up and decided I'd work it out for myself eventually...

As a fellow Wire fanatic, Shariq and I had a bit of a fan-moment over season 5 (which as I remember it, seemed to involve us going on about how much we liked it in a strangely camp way), and we preached its gospel to Nesrine. Despite fasting and really not enjoying it, she was a JOKER, as my brother might say. Or perhaps trooper is the right word. I spotted her getting a pasta salad down her at speed later on, haha. Respect! (She kept asking us to excuse her hunger and fatigue-induced dullness. There was no such dullness!)

There were, however, lots of books, and I cursed my Chagall for being at home on my desk, then consoled myself with the fact that probably, no-one would've wanted it anyway. (I didn't even want the damn thing when I bought it!). These were political bloggers! Reading political books! True to form, the table was already full of lofty-looking tomes...

... and then along came Sunny and his shopping bags, to much cheers and amusement. He effortlessly slotted himself in and began to work his way around the table, slowly but surely (*coughcoughHUNDALFORPRIMEMINISTERcough*). Taking inspiration from Our Great Leader, I started working my way around.

Now, so as not to harp on:

- The Westminster Wisdom folks were quite delightful. I got a whiff of hardcore political geekery from them, and might I say - GOOD ON YOU! Haha. I definitely hope to see them at the next meet-up, especially Gracchii who I shared a fun few minutes discussing Private Eye with.
- The wimminz rocked. I met Laurie Penny and Cath Elliott (might I just say - and I hope this doesn't sound weird although it invariably will - CE has quite possibly the friendliest face there has ever been). Laurie was lovely and exactly as I thought she would be, judging by her posts. I found her refreshingly open (as I did all the laydeez - maybe because there were less of us?) and we geeked out about comics (sorry Cath!). Laurie had to go early to feed her hungry lesbians (how did that go?) which gave me a very odd image of baby birds in a nest with human heads. Damn my overly-visual brain. Nesrine then came over and she, Cath and I chatted (although I listened a lot more this time). Despite having brought fruit-based provisions (i.e. an apple), I was starting to get catatonic with hunger (just like last time!).

- This led to me bugging Sunny about what to do, until I just decided to go the hell on with my original suggestion of 'whoever's starving, come get a sandwich and bring it back to the NT!!!' (Three exclamation marks - I get She-Hulk when hungry). Like some sort of political 'dream team', Sunny suggested the place - and I led the charge. I was so hungry that I almost flew towards the sandwiches and snatched up my prize, having decided what to have already. Leon laughed at me, approving of my decisiveness, but in my head my brain was screaming 'IF SHIT DON'T GO DOWN FAST, SOMEONE GON' DIE!'. I waited with Shariq for the others to get their food, and we compared our impersonations of Clay Davis (yes, I know... The Wire again...)' trademark 'Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit.' Hahaha. Rumbold showed typical libertarian indecision in taking what seemed like aeons to decide upon a yoghurt with 'Grape Nuts' in *snickers*. He didn't take too much to them, in the end.

We got back to the NT (I forgot to mention that Sonia had joined us, with a couple of her colleagues, who were very nice too). My sandwich was speedily consumed with an indecent haste and marked lack of ladylike-ness. I almost wanted to swear loudly in order to complete my conversion to Renegade Pirate Revolutionary, but was sidetracked by Bircher muesli.

After that, hands began to be rubbed anew over the future of PP since Sunny will be heading off to India... Sonia and I barraged Leon (despite there being a whole group of people 'involved' in the conversation) with suggestions, and in my case, ideas as to why some people (including myself) have withdrawn from it a little. I had to put my hand up at times to speak, and got laughed at again by Rumbold (but I would have the last laugh, because practically no-one knew who he was! Hur hur hur). After that, Sonia, her female colleague, Leon and I fell into a lengthy discussion about female misogyny in Asian cultures, especially the 'cult of the auntie-jis' which is making lives miserable left, right and centre. I managed to get the last word by suggesting that SOMEBODY make a reality TV show - 'Behind The Scenes of an Indian Shaadi.' THAT'D blast away a lot of delusions, and not just for non-Indians either!


Things I appreciated (for whatever reason): Leon remarking, upon my pointing out of Rumbold to him, 'I thought he was in his forties!' Hahaha. Haven't we all?

The food (of course).

Arriving, high off a wave of criminality because I managed to get from home to Waterloo for free, purely by accident.

Email swapping with some of the other ladies. I really would like to meet up with people again, in the (pinched) words of Nesrine, without Sunny as our 'Jewish grandmother.' She then did the accompanying accent! CLASS.

Cath Elliott's story about the big scary man with the crucifix who tracked her down one day over her abortion views (nothing happened to her, which is why she lived to tell the tale - thankfully!).

Fangirling over Charlie Brooker with Nesrine and Cath. Hahaha. Also, the Oxbridge and Ruth Fowler chat!

Being told 'You're lovely! I like you!' by Laurie. Why, thank you ma'am.

Making off with a trashy novel ('Ring' by Koji Suzuki - I bet it'll be so close to the Japanese adaptation that it'll leave little impression on me), an autobiography (If You Don't Know Me By Now, by Sathnam Sanghera) and a book on bhangra which Sunny received 5 copies on. The cover is made to look like floorboards and bears a little blue sticker reading 'CHAKK DE PHATTEY!' then in smaller type underneath 'Lift the floorboards.' Sadly my brother then left it in his friend's gym bag the next day (wtf?).


Things I didn't appreciate that much:

Ben being unable to give me a better reason for preferring The Sopranos to The Wire other than 'it's more entertaining'. We'll have to agree to disagree, my man. At least until you have the BASIC KNOWLEDGE (i.e. watching at least half of the first season) to argue your point! I remain not-particularly-inclined to watch The Sopranos, though I'm sure it is good.

The Anti-Boris coalition. They didn't mingle like the rest of us were. Look dudes, I know taking down Boris is a full-time job, but y'know, the books were kind of an opportunity for everyone to meet each other and talk unpolitical for once. Have a break. Have a hardback.

Being drowsy while experiencing a kind of faux keen-alertness as a result of hunger. I felt like a guard-dog that someone was waving a steak at from a safe distance.

Breaking a chopstick while on my way to the NT, thus making it not really possible to put my mad just-washed hair up. I ended up having to use my spare socks.


Thoughts, anyone?


Necessary Music Video - you don't even have to watch it, just listen to the song!