The Great Austerity Con

Living in the UK in 2018 is not easy. Now that statement is of course loaded. Millions of people live in countries with situations far worse than my experience. I am not fool enough to consider myself in a worse position than a Syrian, an Iraqi or an Afghan, dealing with war and sectarianism. Nor am I claiming to have it worse than a starving African or a systematically disenfranchised and impoverished Latin American. I am grateful for the comforts and safety-net that growing up in what was the fifth richest country in the world have afforded me, but my frame of reference is obviously a UK one and as such I can only deal with what I know. The safety-net is evaporating, the comforts for many are simply gone, poverty and destitution are increasing rapidly, all in the name of austerity.

Austerity, the concept that the country has lived beyond its means for too long and has to tighten its belt, in essence seems almost a sensible premise. If you are spending too much and get into too much debt you start cutting back right? Individuals, families and businesses do this as a matter of course, don't they? However, if you need to cut back you start with luxuries, cut expensive purchases, choose less expensive brands don't you? Surely what you don't do is focus on cutting the core essentials that you need to survive. Food, fuel and shelter are the priorities, the essential bills, and you curtail anything non-essential to free up that cash to pay the debts. You take responsibility for the fact that you got into debt so you have to get out.

Austerity, the Conservative government would have us believe, is a drive to reduce the national debt by cutting spending. According to them, this debt was accrued purely by the last Labour governments reckless spending. As a result, we are told, spending has to be cut across all government departments, and public sector wages and benefits have to be frozen. Doesn't sound like a bad idea, I hear you cry. Sadly the premise that austerity is built on starts with a huge lie. The idea that the last Labour government is to blame for the debt problem is false. The national debt was incurred by the financial meltdown of 2008 and subsequent government bailout of banks. The reckless lending and profiteering of the finance and banking sector threatened to sink the economy, so the Labour government injected billions of pounds of tax payers money into saving the banks and propping up the economy. The Conservatives took over in 2010 and continued this, in fact they increased it.

It is important to note at this point that I am not a supporter of the Labour Party. Although ostensibly my political views tend to come from what most people refer to as the left, I have no allegiance to Labour. Indeed, the Labour government under Tony Blair was to my mind a Thatcherite-driven populist affair, its 'Tory-lite' policies simply a slightly more subtle continuation of the pervading neoliberal doctrine, led by a narcissistic neocon with little more than self-gratification in mind.

So the premise of austerity is built on falsehood. Let's turn to the nuts and bolts of debt reduction. Most people would assume you follow the same logic as an individual or family with a debt problem. Cut out luxuries, defer purchase of big-ticket items, chose cheaper brands. By that logic the obvious aims of austerity should be to defer or cancel big expensive plans, like not replacing the trident nuclear system and shelving the HS2 high speed rail project for example. Then how about going back to the drawing board with all contracts with private companies and renegotiating, and rethinking the outsourcing of public services? I am not privy to many of the possibilities for reducing spending by government, but there are surely many more - the wages and expense allowances of MP's would be a good start.

The startling truth is after eight years of austerity it is patently obvious to all but the ideologically blinded that the burden of spending cuts has not fallen upon the more prosperous. It is the poor (working and non-working), the sick and disabled, the underprivileged and the elderly who have felt the most pain. The welfare state and the NHS are being systematically dismantled. Whilst cuts to social security benefits have plunged thousands into poverty and the threat of destitution, the closure of support services and organisations there to support the poor have rendered them helpless. Waiting times in every part of the healthcare system have increased and staff are collapsing under the pressure, whilst creeping privatisation and deliberate underfunding lurk in the background. Crime is increasing whilst police numbers and resources are being drastically cut, access to legal help has dwindled to almost nothing while court staff are made redundant, prisons are less and less secure with cuts to prison officers, local governments have cut essential services due to budget cuts. The list goes on. Don't take my UK-centric view of all this as red, have a read of this recent article in the New York Times for an outside perspective - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/world/europe/uk-austerity-poverty.html

In the UK we have become accustomed to paying more and getting less. Council tax, rents, food, fuel and energy bills, pretty much everything goes up year on year. Simultaneously, provision of public services are reduced or cut completely in some way. Whilst this goes on, we see corporation tax reducing and tax cuts for big business. Tax avoidance by rich elites and big corporations goes unpunished whilst money and resources for petty benefit fraud cases increases. Wages have been stagnant for years, resulting in a real-terms decrease in income in the thousands of pounds for many. The country is run by a cabinet of millionaires. Whilst I do not have an issue with people being wealthy I fail to see how these people can possibly claim to be able to improve the lot of the less well-off, nor expect us to accept that we 'all have to tighten our belts', when they are unaffected by the austerity they impose on us. In reality, there is no justification for having to pay more and get less.

There is a bigger picture to all this, involving the very nature of capitalism and the neoliberal agenda, but that is for another post. The essence of the problem is that austerity directly increases and accentuates inequality. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Sadly, many people, particularly among the working class, have somehow fallen for the austerity con. They actually believe they have to go through all this hardship 'for the good of all' or 'because we're all in the same boat'. We are not all in the same boat. The politicians, business leaders, financiers and speculators who preach austerity are sailing around luxury resorts in their yachts while many of the rest of us are paddling up shit creak in a sinking dinghy. What the answer is I just don't know, but I do know that austerity is not just a con, it is ruining lives. It is actually killing people, but you won't see much of that in the news. There have been literally thousands of documented cases over the last eight years, but mainstream media is of course controlled by the very rich elite who have endorsed and imposed austerity, so these cases are drowned out and effectively censored. I would strongly advise giving Ken Loach's outstanding film, 'I, Daniel Blake' a watch for a true and realistic portrayal of a life destroyed by austerity.

It falls to the current Labour Party, the official opposition in the UK, to raise awareness of and campaign against austerity. There has been progress on some key fronts. There is much about the approach and policy ideas of Jeremy Corbyn and his allies to be positive about. There are also pitfalls within the socialist ideology he adopts, not least the public distaste for anything radical, lest we allow 'communist doctrine' to proliferate. Sadly I neither think there is enough support within his party nor among the public to elevate Labour into government, and there is no guarantee that what we let in would work. All I know is that any anti-austerity party is better than the current perverse ideology, even if their influence merely brings the austerity con into the light. One thing is certain however. If we are to combat inequality, surely the fundamental driver of so much that is wrong in the UK, we have to realise that we are being conned, and fight against this doctrine.

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.

Us And Them

There is little doubt that in the 21st century we are living in a more divided world than ever. I could write a book on the reasons why, but it would not be particularly insightful or contribute much to the zeitgeist. However, there are certain things which seem to me to stand out as the more insidious symptoms of our modern division.

It strikes me that for any given issue that becomes elevated in the public consciousness there is a prevailing mindset that you either have to be on one side or the other. Two sides to every story right? So for many people it seems perfectly normal to be either for or against, pro or anti. From the man/woman on the street to whole political and social movements, this polarisation of viewpoints is pervasive. Look at the Brexit debate in the UK, the pro-life/pro-choice debate in the US, the rise of far-right groups and antifa, the fact that almost all political debate is framed in terms of left-wing or right-wing, the list is practically endless. It is as if masses of people can only see the world in black and white.

The startling thing is that if you do not 'fit in' to either camp, if you dare to notice any of the myriad shades of grey and find your views therein, you are accused of 'sitting on the fence'. You are a misfit, and it seems that that is the only thing on which the two sides can agree. Often their unity in condemning the dissenting voice that doesn't take sides makes them forget all about their bitter division. To me this is an obvious indication that we are not meant to be in such conflict with each other, but to them, well I can only surmise that having a unifying enemy makes the conflict easier to justify. This 'take one side or the other' thing, it is at best a gross oversimplification of what are often complex issues, and at its worst a deliberate polarisation of the debate in order to satisfy an agenda. There are not just two sides to a story.

Labeling plays a large part in the isolation of people into one group or another. Beyond the obvious practical and essential need to have a name for certain groups in societies, from a sociological, political and philosophical viewpoint, in order to analyse and understand the world, labeling people is almost always detrimental to their status and identity. For example, understanding the 'haves and have nots' helps us get a grip on why inequality is such a factor in societal breakdown, but banding everyone into one or other of these camps just sows the seeds of division. A politician can make highly valid, salient, valuable points on pressing issues of the utmost importance to huge swathes of the population but be ignored or even reviled purely because of the party he represents. An 'expert in their field' can hold the balance of future policy direction during a debate or the fate of people's lives during a court case in their hands, only to be discredited later when it is too late to change the outcome and the damage has already been done.

It is easy to use the labels bestowed onto people to separate, segregate and divide them. It is easy to disregard someones views because we have fitted them into a neat little box and decided we find that box distasteful or to put them up on a pedestal because their views chime nicely with our own. It is an extension of our inbuilt human fallibility, and subsequent refusal to use the checks and balances of self-scrutiny, to review and revise our thinking and behaviour accordingly. It is not so easy to keep our minds and hearts open to other people's views, and the more uncomfortable or extreme we find these views the harder it becomes to extend ourselves to understanding. In its ultimate form it is cognitive dissonance that prevents us from being able to accept differences of view and prevent the divisions between us.

It is when we are faced with inhumanity in the world though that I feel our divisions are most sorely and harshly evident. When there is an atrocity at home, such as the Manchester attack in the UK just over a year ago, which killed dozens, I see outpourings of empathy and sorrow, coupled with a sense of defiance towards the perpetrators, encapsulated in an overall moment of national unity. A wave of empathy. These events show how humanity can be at its best when things are at there worst. When there is an atrocity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Gaza or any other foreign land, I see nothing. Tens of dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people die. I see no outpourings. There is no empathy. These events show how humanity can simply turn a blind eye and decide not to care when the atrocity is not in their back yard.

True empathy is not selective. You either care about humanity or you do not. If you feel empathy for the victims of the Manchester attacks, but not for the dead civilians of the multiple conflicts and atrocities that take place all the time in far-off lands, then I believe you need to ask yourself some very searching questions. Perhaps it is human nature to be this way, but I suggest that we fight that shit with every breath we can muster, if we want our children to have any real future in this world.

Benjamin Franklin once said, "Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are".

Copyright © Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.

A Revolution In Thinking?

It may seem odd and counter-intuitive to say, but I have come to the realisation that I am actually very fortunate to have been diagnosed with a major psychiatric condition. Let that sink in for a moment..

I have actually had several diagnoses throughout the years. In childhood I was misdiagnosed with 'hyperactivity causing behavioural issues'. In my late teens it was anxiety, then in my twenties it was seasonal affective disorder, anxiety and depression, before the bipolar diagnosis in my thirties. Most recently, I am in therapy for what can only be described as high-functioning anxiety. It would be easy to say that I've had a really rough ride, but it is dawning on me that what I thought were curses are actually blessings in disguise.

Allow me to explain.

When you suffer from mental health problems you are, in an ideal world, eventually given access to talking therapies. If you are lucky enough to find a good therapist and are able to engage in quality therapy it opens up your whole inner world, the world of your thinking. Further reading and study unveils a plethora of tried and tested methods, tools and techniques, both scientific and holistic, enabling a process of personal growth and discovery you had never thought possible. The concept of therapy becomes normalised into your life.

Of course, it is not all rainbows and butterflies. By the time most people have come to therapy their mental distress has reached such a level that every facet of their thinking, and their subsequent attitude and behaviour, is affected. Negativity has become ingrained and the process of cleansing oneself from it is painful and involves hard work. For some, this is as far as the healing gets.

Mental health isn't simply an absence of mental illness. It is 'thinking well', and that means keeping our minds open and challenging our preconceptions and presumptions, about everything, all of the time. We have to continually revise our 'maps' of the world around us, adjusting to the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the pitfalls and opportunities, and the pace of change in our busy modern lives. Regardless of how eventful or uneventful we consider our personal lives to be, this process is absolutely essential if we are to achieve anything close to a real state of wellbeing and contentment in life.

Many of us who honestly believe we are mentally well are actually suffering from some form of what psychologists call neurosis. Put simply, we get stuck in our way of thinking. We fail to revise our internal map of the world outside. Given that the world is constantly changing, our old ways of thinking and relating to the world become outdated, to the detriment of us and everyone we interact with. The result is any number of often physical symptoms, such as fatigue and general aches, pain and discomfort, which we just explain away as normal, seek physical relief for or ignore completely, coupled with a creeping negative undertone to our attitude and subtle changes to our behaviour, which we are usually the last to be aware of. These are the warning signs of mental distress.

Unfortunately, neurosis does not go away. It multiplies. We develop complexes - neuroses building on top of each other. Our thinking becomes disordered. If we remain unaware of what is going on we develop further neuroses which negatively reinforce our disordered thinking. When we are unable to ignore the problem any more our inbuilt human response is usually not to reach out for help, but to become defensive and even attack those who might be trying to help. A tangled web is spun. Ultimately, if we do not go against our nature and try to change our thinking, weeks, months and years go by and our mindstate ferments. Increasingly, people get to old age having never challenged their thinking, and sadly all too often the end result is senile dementia.

Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last twenty years will be only too aware that we live in an age of increasing fragility of mind. Instances of depression, anxiety and stress-related nervous disorders are skyrocketing. In tandem with this, people are increasingly turning to the self-medication route of drugs and alcohol, which only compounds and extends the problems of mental illness. It's understandable, after all, it is simply the natural human instinct to bury ones head in the sand, avoiding the pain and work it takes to truly look into oneself and change how we think.

It doesn't have to be this way though. If we consider ourselves to have any influence on others, especially our children, surely we should take the plunge and challenge ourselves to change, learn everything we can about helping others to change, and teach it? If we trained all educators to champion the tools and techniques of mental health awareness, and to teach therapy as an essential, core life skill, at every stage of the developmental cycle of our children, within a relatively short period of time we would eliminate what can only be described as a shit load of unnecessary pain and suffering. One thing is for sure, the status quo is incompatible with a positive outcome for too many people, and for society as a whole.

You don't have to experience unnecessary mental distress and illness.You don't have to end your days senile. You just need to challenge how you think. Now, and always. After all, it's far easier to prevent the rot than to treat the disease it creates.

Copyright © Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.

The Battle For Mental Health

Of all the issues in modern life that play on my mind, none occupies more space than mental health. This is not just because I have been plagued by depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, it is also because of the number of people I meet who suffer from mental illness, and the terrible state of mental healthcare in the UK.

I recently entered my latest bout of therapy for a kind of high-functioning anxiety that has been affecting me for some months now. The sessions take place at our local Community Mental Health Centre. They are conducted by a separate organisation which makes use of the rooms when the centre is closed. I used to attend regular sessions with the mental health team there eight years ago, when I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Back then it was open Monday to Friday. Now it is only open for two full days and one morning a week.

There is a poster in the waiting room that reminds us that one in four of us will suffer from mental illness in our lifetimes. A quarter of the population, even of our relatively small town, is a lot of people. When Theresa May took over as Prime Minister she made a speech about how mental health provision is an absolute priority for her government. I remember it pretty much word for word because at that point I decided to suspend judgement on her and give it time to see if she would actually stick to her word.

Fast-forward to now and not only has she failed to keep her promise, she actually lied through her teeth - and continues to do so. Mental health provision has reduced and been cut back even further, funding and resources have been slashed, healthcare professionals and trainees alike have been left in demoralised despair, and waiting lists for therapy and intensive treatment have lengthened significantly. In the worst cases, instances of suicidal patients in dire need of urgent care ending their own lives, directly because of all these factors, has increased.

Despite this, Theresa May and her inept health secretary Jeremy Hunt still state that 'funding and resources for mental health provision are increasing'. Meanwhile our local Community Mental Health Centre is a desolate windswept place that is barely able to stay open. All the reading I do supports the conclusion that this is certainly not a local phenomenon.

There have been good news stories in the UK though. Charities, NGO's and pressure groups are having some impact, raising awareness of conditions, highlighting stigma, lobbying government, campaigning online and supporting healthcare professionals and patients alike. The amazing work of Rethink Mental Illness (https://www.rethink.org/) and others is encouraging. I believe that the stigma mental illness carries is slowly reducing and people are gradually feeling more confident in being open about their mental health.

Sadly, however, for anyone with a serious underlying mental illness in the UK, getting the treatment they need to ensure the best outcome for them, and indeed society as a whole, remains a brutal uphill battle. Many people have already fought their own private battle, not just with the terribly debilitating effects of their condition but often with addiction issues from self-medicating, self-harm and suicide attempts. When they arrive at a point where they face their demons and decide to get help, most don't realise a new battle is about to commence. A battle they should never have to fight.

First you have to get past your GP. They are usually not trained in mental health and usually they will prescribe medication and send you away. Sometimes they will refer you for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy if appropriate. This is fine if you don't have a major underlying condition such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia etc. These conditions often go undiagnosed for years however, especially when the picture is complicated by alcohol or substance abuse which masks symptoms and alters the behaviour that you present with.

The major conditions are often only finally diagnosed at the point of crisis. Getting the help you need in these dire emergencies is a postcode lottery from the very first call. Many mental health crisis teams seem to operate barely a skeleton staff. Too often it is the police or paramedics who have to make the call. Then you face the fact that there will probably be no beds at the psychiatric unit and you may well have to go many miles away from your family and friends. All these worries to deal with, all this stress, when you are already in a state of complete stress overload and have broken down.

When you have a physical illness, you go to your GP and from there get referred to a specialist for treatment. There are waits and frustrations but generally if the condition is serious you can expect fairly swift action and be reassured that you will get the treatment you need in most cases. The NHS, despite the total mismanagement, dreadful funding and resource cuts and backdoor privatisation that the UK government is heaping upon it, is still an amazing, world class, free service staffed with incredible people who want to do their best for you.

There is no parity between physical and mental health treatment. Remember that poster I spoke of in the waiting room - one in four of us will have a mental health condition in our lifetimes - so, a quarter of the population will face the fight to get treatment. How much of our lives will ultimately be wasted trying to get treated? Imagine if you had diabetes or an appendicitis and you had to fight like this to get it treated.

There are no official figures on deaths of patients awaiting mental health treatment. The government doesn't want you to know how they're failing us. It's easy for Theresa May to lie about the state of mental health provision. She has no idea of the true impact her governments policies have had and continue to have on those who fight for help.

You could be forgiven for concluding that she doesn't really care.

Copyright © Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.

Patriot Games

I can understand why people feel the need for patriotism. A sense of belonging, a cause to fight for, something to be proud of, right? That's fine if it works for you personally, but some of the worst crimes in human history have been committed in the name of patriotism. I have no problem with your personal need to be a patriot. This piece merely explains where I am coming from.

Lets deal with the three things I outlined above in reverse order. Firstly, this need to have something to be proud of. I believe that for a lot of people this is tied up in identity. I'm British, working class, heterosexual, white, atheist and have some basic university education. What does this mean to me in terms of my identity? I'll tell you - absolutely nothing. I'm not ashamed of any of it, nor am I proud of it either.

Some people believe vehemently that I should be proud to be British, and will actually look down on me for my lack of pride! I find this astonishing, although sometimes understandable. I find this attitude prevalent almost exclusively among the older generations, the baby boomers. In order to understand their stance I find myself accepting that their pride is based largely on the promises of post-war Britain. They believe that Britain is great because of the defeat of Nazi Germany, the subsequent recovery and perceived prosperity of the nation, Britain's standing in the international community etc.

The certainties that one finds oneself clinging to as one gets older seem to these older generations to form a solid identity for them. Great Britain, with its Queen and royal family, successive neo-liberal governments with their hawkish foreign policy and 'special relationship' with the US, personal prosperity based on home ownership and rising house prices and the availability of cheap credit, jobs for life - all of these things and more contribute to their identity as proud British citizens. Add into the mix the toxic austerity dogma of the current Conservative government and a good number of them seem to feel they are the hard-working 'strivers' who have earned the right to be considered better than those younger 'snowflakes', with their complaints and work-shy, 'shirking' nature and 'sense of entitlement'. My certainties in life are death and taxes. That's it, and I accept it.

What does the royal family mean to me? Nothing, except when there is some wedding, or a baby is born, or whatever, and the mainstream and even social media is awash with intrusive 'royal news' and shows of blind patriotism from Joe public. I just switch off. The coverage overtakes all else, important news is harder to find, government uses the distraction to bury their bad news or push some dodgy piece of legislation through parliament. I have nothing against the royal family per se. One or two of them even make some contribution to the causes I hold dear, but then so do a hundred thousand unsung heroes in the general population who neither get nor desire public recognition of their amazing work. I just don't care about a family of entitled rich people or their 'news'.

As for being a proud supporter of a political party, well, it saddens me to have to say that that is just a bad joke. If you really pinned me down and nailed a label on me, my political compass identifies me as a left-libertarian. I take the test and check my position on the compass at regular intervals, and in the last few years there's been barely any movement from this position. (You can check yourself on the political compass at https://www.politicalcompass.org/). My views are such that I definitely identify most closely with this position, so I guess it forms some part of my identity to an extent, but I don't go around proudly stating it. Why would I? To me, that is pushing my viewpoint on others, something I try to stay clear of. There is no politician or party in the UK that represents me. I am automatically disenfranchised.

So, how about having a cause to fight for? Well, the way I see it I have many views on many things, mainly to do with the injustices and wrongs I see in the world. I guess I am a kind of 'armchair activist'. I post on social media about issues of concern, sign petitions, share links to groups that fight for certain causes, try to spread any truth I find on the most lied about matters, approach social media companies with complaints about hate speech on their sites etc. In some small way I like to think I am making a difference, but am I fighting for a cause? I guess the answer is yes and no, but there's no pride involved. And as for being a patriot, well, many 'patriots' would judge me to be a traitor to be honest. I rail against the lies, propaganda and crimes of the government, criticise their policies and their ideology and frankly despise their whole movement. I sow seeds.

War is often the chalice of blind patriotism. We are supposed to be proud of our fighting men and women and the armed forces as an institution. I have a lot of respect for the underpaid people who chose to fight the wars that our politicians in their ivory towers will never have to endure, but they are not conscripts. Serving is a choice. It gives people a cause and direction. Most are indoctrinated into the culture of killing. Sadly modern warfare is not about keeping our country safe, we are not the 'good guys' and you will return home to no real accolade or gratitude for your sacrifice. Look no further than the way veterans are treated by the government. I will never understand how a person can be proud to kill for a country that doesn't actually give a shit about them. I will never disrespect those who march, wave flags or salute in patriotism. It's their choice, but for me all that stuff is for the birds.

And what of this 'sense of belonging'? I believe that this is the most common reason why so many seem to fall into blind patriotism. Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel proud of your roots, your racial origins, your family ties. My nieces have an African father, my daughter an Asian mother. Some of my closest friends are from places as far apart as Zimbabwe and Hungary. My son is a duel Australian/British citizen. For many immigrants I understand that a sense of pride in their country of origin is important. For British citizens who have immigrant parents their racial mix is a part of their identity. No one can say they aren't right to feel proud of that.

The problem is that the world has historically been carved up by militant men (and women) of violence who place arbitrary lines on a map and divide people. The crimes of the British Empire are a powerful example of this. Of course there are many, many more 'empires', past and present, forcing their will on the world in a continuing cycle of division of humanity. I'm not proud of a country that has raped and pillaged two thirds of the globe. A country which tags onto the shirt-tails of America and all its empire-building and quest for hegemony. A country run by a government that systematically targets the poorest and most vulnerable whilst enriching the elite. I'm not proud at all.

Patriotism is at its very worse when it becomes a tool in the hands of extremists. From Islamists to the far-right, nationalism to fascism, and all the myriad shades of shit in between, these people band into groups and organise to spread their doctrines at an alarming rate, and people fall for their lies. They hijack people's beliefs and scaremonger to spread fear, purely to divide people. They kill, torture, rape and destroy humanity for their own ends without a second thought. The scary thing is that the response of most governments is to go to war - the 'war on terror'. In the end, as we see played out on our TV screens night after night, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

Ultimately, what I see when I look at the globe is one race of people - humanity. I don't see borders and flags. These are tools of division that have no place in the world if we are to survive as a species. I identify simply as a citizen of Earth. A member of a global family. I celebrate the diversity of life and am enriched by the differences between people. I accept my fellow humans in all their wonderful, flawed glory. We are all capable of love. We are all capable of hatred. We are all human.

“Patriotism is the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers" - Leo Tolstoy

Copyright © Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.

The Propaganda World War

It is perhaps hard to believe that there are actually masses of people out there in the world who don't realise, don't know or just don't care that what passes for 'mainstream media' these days is actually almost exclusively just the propaganda arm of governments and the rich elite.

Millions of people believe the falsehood, deception and outright lies written by pseudo-journalists, who are in reality either peddling their own agenda in the form of 'opinion pieces' or towing the establishment line. Just as insidious are the distraction pieces shown on TV news, be it regular showpiece bulletins on national networks or on the 24-hour rolling channels, and in national newspapers, designed to hide undesirable stories from gaining prominence - the 'burying of bad news'.

One of the most galling things I find about mainstream news is the fact that these outlets chose the news we see, or read, and how it is presented. In my opinion there is not a single one of them that can claim to be unbiased, objective or reliable. Much worse than that, by following the agendas of whatever malignant media boss, political party or special interest group, mainstream media deliberately misinforms the world.

To accept the narratives of the propaganda machine that is the mass media is to allow oneself to be used, and in the information age there is really no excuse for this mindless acceptance by anyone with internet access and more than a 10-year old child's level of research ability. However, make no mistake, we are all involved in a world war against propaganda, and it has been raging for decades.

Prior to the internet age, and really until the birth of social media, this war was being all but won by the propagandists. Apart from a tiny number of academics and researchers, a few ultra-savvy artists and comedians, and the occasional revolutionary thinker, the misinformation and deception was taken, to a varying degree of success, as trusted reality. Even those few speakers of truth found it incredibly hard to get their message out, of course, because the only outlet to the masses was the mainstream media.

Fast-forward to 2018 and the current epidemic of proponents of the mainstream media slinging mud at social media companies. This highlights the progress that has at last been made in the fight against the propagandists. The mainstream media bosses and their lackeys in political circles are running scared. Pubic opinion is slowly starting to turn. Newspaper sales are rapidly falling. Ratings for TV news networks are dropping off. Information is power, but we can never underestimate the awesome power of those shadowy figures, the puppet-masters, with their fingers in the pies of lobby groups and international business.

Nowhere is the propaganda war more dangerous than in the military-industrial complex. The situation in all the flashpoints of the world, not least the Middle-East, are administered by pure propaganda. It is worth watching this 26 minute interview with a real veteran journalist, John Pilger, to understand just how effective and dangerous the war has become - https://youtu.be/OIok3VKp17k

So what are us mere mortals to do about the situation? Well, I believe it's simple. Ask questions - always. Whenever you are being told some story, reading an opinion piece or 'analysis', or watching the news - ask yourself what are we not being told? What is the motivation of the individual(s) presenting the item? What is the source? Are both sides of the story being told in a fair way?

Finally, we should make use of any means at our disposal to converse, debate and discuss what we are being told. Talk to friends, family, anyone who'll listen and respond. Post on social media. Search the web for alternative viewpoints and sources, bookmark what you find. We have to make use of the powerful free tools we have been provided to fight this propaganda war.

Copyright © Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.

Introduction : My Motivation

The best way to describe why I have decided to start this blog is to share with you a post I wrote on my Facebook page a while ago. It's a bit of a long read but worth sticking with if you want to fully understand my motivation:


Why do I write political posts? Well it is not because politics fascinates me. It doesn't. Most of politics is negative rhetoric, but what other way is there of calling out the injustices and evils that are perpetrated by governments, groups and individuals in our name?

Why do I care so much about these injustices? I am 41. I didn't care about any of this for at least my first 30 years, until I encountered enlightened people in my life, who guided me towards the right culture, media and literature to enable me to grasp the magnitude of the narrow mindset we as westerners are born and raised into. I did realise early on, maybe in my mid-20's, that I did not feel like I belonged to this culture or way of thinking, but I was too immature to expand my horizons without guidance. Thanks to a handful of wonderful souls I found enlightenment, wisdom and truth. That was a high.

Then it dawned on me, what on earth was I to do with these realisations? That was a low. It took me several years of cogitating, wrestling with emotions stirred up in me, tackling my own cognitive dissonance and fighting the ingrained mindset and thinking that had all my life been installed in me by bitter personal experience, a western education, the influences of the mainstream media and the attitudes of my peers. Indeed it is a process that is ongoing, but I have now learned that, though terribly uncomfortable and gruelling at times, it is to be welcomed as a blessing.

I am not a finished sculpture, in fact I am only just beginning to be modelled, but now by the hands of a sculptor with compassion, empathy, social conscience and ultimately love of humanity as his tools.

Then along came social media..

Although I trod the quagmire of inane chatter, media intrusion, advertising and the ubiquitous trolls somewhat passively for a few years, gradually I began to find that items and articles were filtering through to my newsfeed that spoke to me and the issues in the world that really matter to me; government corruption, human suffering, inequality, poverty, climate change, the evils of the monetary system, the squandering of precious resources, racism, sexism, religious persecution and dogma, homophobia, the indoctrination of our children, extremism, slavery, the failing war on drugs, the lies of the mass media, and so on.

I began posting more and more of the meme's, articles and items that were filtering towards me, a practice I intend to continue to the end. I learned about cognitive bias and its pitfalls, discovered the power of activism, and learned of amazing people in all walks of life who seem to share this mission of shedding light on these issues. I also discovered the power and influence held by politicians, media barons and hacks, and the social media companies themselves, to distort and dilute information in order to confuse, complicate and ultimately deny us the information on what is really happening.

I continue to be alarmed, angered and distressed by much of what I read, research and study. At the same time I continue to be amazed, touched and fulfilled by the process of interacting with friends, groups and strangers on social media to address the injustices of the world. A social conscience is developing within me that cannot be quelled, gradually replacing the deep sense of being lost in an unfair cruel world that I have experienced all my life. Who knows where it will lead me, but for now I know that it is a very positive energy. It satisfies my intellect and enquiring mind. It guides me in my daily life, helps me be a better human being, and goes a long way towards dampening the terrible negativity we all see playing out in the world which can depress and destroy the human soul.

There are pitfalls of course. I sometimes get stuck in defending my way of thinking, and have to take time to re-evaulate my position and study more. Cognitive bias and dissonance plague me often, but knowing of their existence I am able to combat them to the best of my ability. I have heard people say that it's easy to post stuff on social media about the government or whatever, and that it's not worth getting into debates because of trolls and other human garbage. I hear all the time that people just don't want to engage with politics. I don't blame them. It is very hard to be conscientious and thoughtful and engaged in this world. There is so much that seeks to bring us down. Ultimately most people give up or turn their backs completely, but I cannot and will not throw the baby out with the bathwater like that.

So..

I hope as my friends, family and associates you can forgive me when I seem to post too much. I hope that you can see that it all comes from a place of intense need to act on my concerns for all of us. I hope you can understand that sometimes I get it wrong, but that I will always try to make amends and always through a process of internal examination of my thinking and motivation. I am not a person who finds it easy to talk face-to-face in the moment about these many issues which concern me, so facebook is my outlet and my mouthpiece. I am sure that you can make up your own mind as to whether you want to read my posts or not.

Lastly, please never feel unable to call me out if I step over a line or post something you do not like. All I ask is that you engage with me a little so I can learn your point of view and understand it. We are blessed with a platform that encourages and enables free speech and debate in a safe, secure environment. It would be wrong not to use it, surely?


At the time of writing that I didn't realise how much my desire to converse with others would grow. Sadly only one of my nearly 250 facebook friends actually took me up and engaged with me, but I know that was kind of inevitable really. Indeed, I don't have high hopes for this blog, but remain optimistic anyway. So, expect to see plenty of entries here over the weeks and months, and please go ahead and interact!