It is probably not a coincidence that social media has been experiencing such upheaval and disruption at a time when the planet itself is in crisis. What was once taken for granted by many of us – even in more privileged sections of the world – is suddenly being questioned.
More and more of us no longer approach our week in the comfortable assumption that our income opportunities will continue to exist, that our travel destination dreams almost anywhere around the globe will be realised, or that the rights of marginalised groups will inevitably improve as part of our “progress.”
Yes, we are living in the “Roaring Twenties”: a time of moral panic, pandemic, climate chaos, and the threat of nuclear war between nation states. A time of uncertainty.
It didn’t have to be this way. There are enough materials on our planet to provide housing, clothing, and food for all people, all around the world, so that everyone can live a dignified life. Many of us are questioning why this isn’t already a reality: why don’t we have a system where society functions fairly and sustainably – from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs?
"The restricted movement of bodies across borders is parodied by the free flow of cash around the world. The ideas of autonomy and mutual aid can help us rethink our places in the world as interlinked groups who can mutually support one another." Shuli Branson, Practical Anarchism.
The system almost all of us are subjected to in the world is one where a forest only has value if it’s cut down, where buildings sit empty while communities are in need – a system where profit has the utmost importance over all other things; a system that actually denies care and prevents progress if it doesn’t mean profit; a system of greed and growth; a system of supposedly endless extraction of natural resources…which is, of course, incompatible with our existence on this planet.
"We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost-effective." – Kurt Vonnegut, University of Oregon speech, 1990
But this system – capitalism – attempts to justify itself with the principle of hierarchy: placing the interests of one entity over another not only serves to attempt to excuse this hierarchy of profits over the natural world, but also conveniently divides our society that is also subjected to these hierarchies – rich over poor; famous over obscure; white people over Black, Indigenous, and people of colour; straight people over queer folks; men over women; cisgender over transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, genderfluid and gender non-conforming folks; non-disabled over disabled people; human over non-human animal, and so forth. This is why any successful anti-capitalist movement must grasp this intersectionality.
"The thing about hierarchy is, as a minority, or 'lesser,' you can never ascend to the peak but you can push others down beneath you." - unknown
Societies remain in turmoil, ripped apart by these differences, in-fighting, when the system has actually been quite clear in its division – hidden in plain sight before us all – for a few hundred years now: the distinction between those who own and control property and business, and those who do not; the owning class and the working class. The ultimate division – fuelled for years by white colonialism.
"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth." - from the preamble to the IWW constitution
We are told we must "earn" a "living." For many of us, the best part of the day is lost to work. While the labour of workers has long made money for businesses, despite that labour itself generating the value of the products and services being sold, the workers have usually only ever received a small cut of the profits – profits that are in fact, then, unpaid wages, used instead to increase wealth for the capitalist class: the greatest hierarchy of all that is inherent to the system; essentially hard-coded into it. Capitalists often boast about "earning" a million dollars, apparently all through their own hard work. But through the very principle of ownership, a capitalist cannot possibly make a million, only take a million. Still, those unwise to the injustices of this are instead easily distracted by other aforementioned hierarchies manufactured for society to fight over amongst themselves, while the rich get richer, and people suffer in various kinds of poverty – not just material poverty, but other kinds of poverty, too, such as poverty of education, and poverty of leisure, poverty of hope…which helps the system to continue.
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?” - Charles Bukowski
Of course, this system is completely unsustainable. Expansion of profits and narrow-minded never-ending extraction means destruction of the planet itself. The capitalist class seem confident they can close themselves off from the effects while the working classes continue to fight amongst themselves outside. But inherently, humans are social creatures and enjoy spending time with others they have shared experiences with, yet climate change, wars, famines, discrimination, financial uncertainty and other conditions lead to displacement; in turn, nation states open and close borders to control the flow of people as it suits them and their economic motives at the time – essentially also opening and closing access to everyday essential resources that, as mentioned, are plentiful enough to easily meet the needs of all human life on earth, yet are instead ring-fenced and hoarded by a greedy capitalist class, enabled by nation states that serve these immensely powerful interests. And this is why we are now seeing late-stage capitalism requiring greater, more ruthless authority, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s why capitalist interests always have a tendency to accept fascism, propaganda, and disinformation as a way to keep the same old system on track when society experiences unrest.
"I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world." - Eugene V. Debs
So often, so many of us resign to an apathetic view that the world is how it must be, our vision of an alternative future obscured by the current culture and its media. After all, that neoliberal icon herself, Margaret Thatcher, proclaimed that “There Is No Alternative” while working closely with media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch to perpetuate this narrative, manufacture consent, and develop distractions and divisions amongst the working classes.
"The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking." - Murray Bookchin
The media lies in the hands of very exclusive interests: for example, in the United Kingdom alone, just 3 companies dominate at least 80% of the British newspaper market – Reach, Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, and the Rothermeres’ Daily Mail Group, the latter two of which have, historically, been notoriously right-wing (though none are, by any stretch, even remotely left-wing in any way, shape, or form); Thatcher’s old friend Murdoch was an ardent supporter of Bush, Blair, and the invasion of Iraq, for example, while the Rothermere family had their newspapers back the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, and their editorial narrative hasn’t shifted much at all since. And it isn’t just the private companies in control of much of the media that have retained a right-wing stance: contrary to popular myth, the BBC are inherently anti-left – not, perhaps, despite being a state broadcaster but because they’re a state broadcaster. While Russia Today, or RT, are roundly (and rightly) criticised for being a state media group and therefore at the behest of the Russian government, the BBC, too, is controlled by the increasingly right-wing, authoritarian U.K. government – but repackaged as, instead, a “public” broadcaster. Ultimately, government-controlled media can no more reflect the views or interests of the public than professional politicians can.
"What this country needs is more unemployed politicians." - Angela Davis
There’s an old saying that politicians piss on us and the media tells us it’s raining. This is because the establishment media that lies behind most of our sources of information are comprised of massive hierarchical institutions of centralised power where even well-intentioned journalists are often reliant on retaining relationships with influential establishment contacts for access to inside information or halls of power, or simply target-driven in their jobs therefore reduced to copy-and-paste from corporate press releases, or even entire re-writes or rejections from editors and “higher-ups” who are close with – or even perhaps one of – the elites in charge.
"I entirely respect the radical leftists who refuse to speak to mainstream publications. Venues like CNN have institutional interests in presenting far-left protesters in their vile 'both sides' narratives, drawing false equivalences with the far right, and there’s every reason to refuse to participate in that." - Natasha Lennard
A media tutor once said, “If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true.” In this culture of the modern newsroom, even if there was any inclination to look out of that proverbial window, that’s too often too much effort, as pressures from bosses reduce journalists to, at worst, remaining totally disconnected from marginalised communities, and at best, “reporting” while giving equal say to both perpetrator and victim, apartheid regime and refugee, corporation and community, all in the name of “unbiased” reporting.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." - Desmond Tutu
It is unreasonable to attempt to give equal say to unequal parties when one of them already dominates cultural narratives. Media is actually supposed to be biased – in favour of the oppressed. It has to be about publishing content that the powerful do not want to be published. Otherwise, it simply exists to constantly reinforce power imbalances. To paraphrase Finley Peter Dunne, the job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Establishment media has completely failed to do this because of its hierarchical elitist institutions and class-exclusive professions. Its entire culture is at odds with the interests of our communities. And so, it’s up to us. It’s always been up to us. Many of us already realised that.