Perspectives 2002

No 1118 January 8th 2002

PART 2.

Fake-'left' helps press 'anti-racist' stunt conceal capitalism's responsibility. Need for socialist revolution.

To keep the working class divided so that it does not get together to raise a revolt against the degeneracy of the capitalist free-market system, it is the capitalist press, television and radio which will have the crucial role in initially playing on people's existing prejudices.

The riots have already kicked off in 2001 because of the worsening economic perspectives and feelings of frustration and insecurity which the slump damage so far has caused or threatened.

With ethnically segregated residential areas already (due to the persistent cultural shallowness of the capitalist system and its encouragement of clannishness for reasons of social and economic survival or getting-by), — it is inevitable that worsening conditions for jobs, housing, schooling, health service, etc, etc, will spread capitalism's rotten basic rivalry in all things (jobs, housing, well-being, living standards, education, etc) into blame and envy about the slump too.

As with scarce council resources already,- with endless complaints that services for one community are better than for another or are being improved at the expense of another, — — so will resentment escalate astronomically when jobs have to be lost, or closures made, and different ethnic groups all think that they are getting the unfair treatment.

Once living standards start falling, and people can no longer provide for their families as they used to be able to, then the latent prejudices which saw riots around the North in 2001 will begin to be whipped up into hardline fascist politics.

It is capitalist society AS A WHOLE which will be leading the way, no one part of it.

It is pointless just blaming the fascist parties, for example. They are the SYMPTOMS of growing divisions and conflicts in society, not the cause.

It is pointless blaming the capitalist media as such: They don't run capitalism. But the media, of course, keep everyone brainwashed so that the capitalist system remains protected.

And that is just what the press are doing now, pretending that they could never be seen as a key part of the causes of racism by putting on this huge show of vilifying Bowyer and Woodgate, thereby also conveniently adding simultaneously to the general brainwashed confusion about where race-riots come from by implying that overpaid thoughtless thugs are the cause, and that giving Bowyer and Woodgate a good public kicking will help wipe out the phenomenon.

A thousand punch-ups outside pubs and clubs every week all round Britain. Hundreds get injured, dozens get killed. But the fracas that gets people agitated is the one involving the 'celebrities', — as created and defined by the capitalist press.

And what about the thousands of other young men involved each week in the wretchedness of street fights and injuries??

They are not 'news' so the reasons for their negative behaviour seldom get investigated. The pressure that should be put on capitalist society as a whole to answer up for the paltry perspectives and ambitions it gives to most working-class youth, for example, gets frittered away by the fake-'left' getting pathetic self-righteous kicks out of fulminating against a couple of equally pathetic hooligan Aunt Sallies, pointlessly put in the stocks by the same capitalist system which gave them shallow and bogus 'notoriety' in the first place.

Beyond the trivia of the sick hoax witchhunt against Bowyer and Woodgate which licensed an avalanche of confusion and sad behaviour in all directions, — capitalist press, judiciary, Leeds FC, whipped-up hysteria, and black nationalist response, — really serious political issues about imperialist crisis go on piling up for resolution.

Racist-fascist diversions will continue to grow inexorably, increasingly clouding the perspective for the one burning question which so far just isn't being addressed at all, — how much reaction, death, and destruction is capitalist crisis going to be allowed to inflict before the immediate practical need for world socialist revolution starts being seriously discussed.

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