The art of politics in liberal democracies seems to be one of the lowest points in the dignity of human relations to which a so-called public servant is able to stoop. Liberal democracies being societies wherein at the least nominally an electorate has influence, for good or ill, to bring to bear on those who govern that same electorate.
To put this relationship between electorate and governors into the terms of the political economy under which the liberal democracies ubiquitously subsist might be to say that the political parties vying with one another for the seat of government are suppliers of government who are in competition for their business and with each another to win power in a free marketplace of customer voters.
There is little surprise then, since this it their relation to one another and the electorate, that since the 1970s in Britain; and before that time in America, that more and more the election campaigns on both side of the Atlantic have been looking like, and in fact replicating, advertising and marketing campaigns of the big branded product Companies. These Campaigns have been getting evermore lowest common denominator basic so as for them to have attempted wining over voter customers by using slogans not much more sophisticated than say one like: ‘A is for Apple -C is for Corp’.
In Britain during the 1970s Margaret Thatcher deliberately and by way of an ideologically-driven energy and focus, took Britain into a trade and cultural relationship which was allied to and which aimed to imitate to a tee the business culture and trading approaches of The United States. Since the 1970s no Prime Minister of any political colour has drawn Britain back from this trajectory; but instead every one of them has endorsed it and hurled Britain headlong further into the US cauldron of burning fires.
Milton Friedman’s Monetarist Economics was thought at the time an appropriate sauce for the US goose and so it became also the economic sauce for the British gander. Reagan and Thatcher were ‘joined at the waist’ ideologically and also policy-wise, including monetary and foreign policy. The landslide Labour Party Leader victor of 1997 Tony Blair was in many respects a son of Thatcher; a son whose supposed left-wing credentials actually took us even closer to the USA and to the USA’s laisses faire, high capitalism. In those days, the 1990s and the 2000s it was bandied about by economists, by scholars and by politicians that Capital had Triumphed; not merely over Soviet Collective Totalitarianism, but that it had ‘beaten the boom-bust cycles’ which had dogged its ascendancies. These ascendancies had ever been ended by great economic slumps throughout Capital’s long chequered history going right back to the late 1700s.
And so it was when the crash of 2008 struck us overnight; so that in one night wealth in huge amounts was lost, vanished away, by way of the miraculous power latent in any sudden and deep loss of trading confidence, everyone, or most of us, were taken aback and caught off guard. We had been schooled by those who were, or ought to have been, ‘in the know’, that our high tide of Capital, its booming affluence had potential to run until Doomsday.
We were wowed by the hype and ebullience, oozing from every word uttered by these high prophets. They themselves were convicted by their own presumption and self-assurance, riding the crest of a wave which hit us as a Tsunami.
The main point being that commercial marketing and sales techniques having been paralleled by, inducted into, and in actuality transforming, politics; have turned politics into a form of capitalist endeavour; and it had sold itself wholly and successfully even to its own political advocates and backers, Via an autobiographical marketing and sales campaign, their own propagandas swayed them so well that very few persons in the Western World had foreseen 2008 crash coming.
One hears today of a post truth society and of post truth politics. This is jargon; a euphemism; for Capital having overtaken and so manipulating almost autocratically the practice of politics, and the politicians and their populaces. I do not mean a conspiracy led, say , by Apple or by Google which acts to puppet glove Western governments; I mean something far worse, which is a loss of our own discretions and of our ability to evaluate and to weigh and consider justly – particularly before we act or else before we put in place policy.
Here above what I believe are examples of some the billboard posters whose blunt and I dare say deliberately misguided messages, enabled the UK to cut its own throat and so vote to leave the European Union. Each billboard poster example is one displaying post-truth propaganda, a study taught its trade by craven and vicious marketing department personnel from every corner of the branded Corporation. See what you think:
The appeal in these posters is to money, to xenophobias; to grasping back power and control from another; and so on; all and each poster appeals to plain human carnal instinct – to fear, avarice, resentment, to tribal insularity, and anger. As for argumentative content (perhaps one does not expect such from a poster, yet the whole Brexit referendum campaigns on both sides of the issue were run as if by slogans and by use of such poster pique) – there was and to this day there remains no substantive argumentative content concerning the EU in or out question available in the public domain here in UK.
(As soon as the LEAVE vote was seen to have prevailed in the referendum, the Leavers jumped in and took the ground away from the Remainers swiftly and quite deliberately. They did this so as to end, curtail, nip in the bud, any hope of real actual debate, they closed down the situation and sealed it up as a done and dusted issue, so that no possibility of any reprieve might be had for those people of Britain who foresaw and who yet foresee the disaster which is here and is ever growing out of the Brexit fiasco)
The approaches and the psychologies of the large commercial marketing departments have been in evidence and were seen being used all the time in every place that the non-debate on Brexit was deployed. The campaigns were seen to be summarily dismissive of the contrary position, and they attempted to evoke gut hatreds and anger etc, to appal people; and at the same time on the other side of the coin they used coaxing and wheedling pledges and promises to persons to win support for their position; and the Leavers’ side made hay with a use of pretty low patriotism bordering racism, and with brazen appeals to close self-interest as this being a life-entitlement.
Thus the electorates in the British Liberal Democracy were handled as if they were kindergarten children; the level of exchange of views being about the same as that of a fairy story or a clap hands song. The British electorate had been prepared for this kind of campaign and did not see its emptiness nor take it to be an insult to their dignities or intelligences. Everything here has been, and continues ever to be, in the all-American style, hijacked by commercialism and by hype. Just as soon as anything arises on the popular horizon, a habit, a sport, or an event, a food or a dietary regime, a band, a pub or club, a beer, anything, whether saleable formerly or not; quickly becomes a going commercial proposition, a means to make money, and its business-people are drawn into the lure where they are taught to believe that how much money their talents or gifts make them is the yardstick measure of their own success and of their talent’s magnitude.
To be continued...
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