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 panics, pandemics, climate chaos, and the looming threat of nuclear war between nation states. A time of uncertainty.
We know something is very wrong with the world
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 abilities, 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 guarded buildings sit empty while people are needing housing – 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 profits for shareholders; 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. 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 (capitalist) 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, a form of legalised theft 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 – from the labour workforce: the actual wealth creators.
Still, those without this class consciousness, unwise to the injustices of this, are instead easily constantly 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 somehow ring-fence themselves off from the effects while the working classes continue to fight amongst themselves outside. They built this confidence from the effective utilisation of nation state border controls.
"When there's not enough to go around, that's when people share." - Margaret Killjoy
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 fenced off 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 or even embrace fascism and propaganda as a way to keep the same old system on track when society experiences unrest. The use of propaganda explains why so many people on earth can be so unaware of this injustice, and why so many who are more aware still feel so unable to change it.
"I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world." – Eugene V. Debs
We are ill-informed
Life on earth essentially relies on information; all our senses inform us of our desires, and dangers, and without information we cannot even survive, let alone thrive. "The media interpret events beyond our physical realm and help us make sense of them," explained Dr. Iram Rizvi. "With the improvement of technologies and the advancement of new media such as the internet, media plays an increasingly more prominent role in our daily communication." But are we truly receiving all of the information we need? Where are we receiving the information we do get? And who are we relying on for most of it?
“People not only don't know what's happening to them, they don't even know that they don't know.” – Noam Chomsky
The system replicates the hierarchies so that the information we receive suits that same system, and the authoritarian approach becomes accepted as we grow up: from the nuclear family with its paternal privatised care concentrated inside the house, to education settings with their teachers following a curriculum set by the institution it depends on to exist, to the workplace with its bosses and owners – and when we get home? Well, we consume mass media owned and controlled by corporations, or states . either way, run by powerful people who are hell-bent on retaining their power and influence.
"The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking." – Murray Bookchin
Why wouldn't we accept authority? After all, most of us have to deal with bosses, landlords, police and other authority figures, lest we lose our income, our home, or other essential resources. But it doesn't mean we can't wish for – and fight for – a better world. 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 mass media. That neoliberal icon herself, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, proclaimed that “There Is No Alternative” as she cleverly promoted the false equivalence of state spending with household finances, so that bailouts for banks were then used to justify austerity, and each successive pro-capitalist UK government since blames their predecessors for poor bookkeeping so that working class people have to endure a "credit crunch," or a "cost-of-living crisis," or as a "squeezed middle," or however it is re-branded next as billionaires' wealth continues to surge.
"Conservatism is the belief that only the children of the rich should get lots of free stuff." – David Graeber
Part of this is made possible by the aforementioned lack of class consciousness but also the strategic attacks on working class solidarity; Thatcher, of course, specifically targeted the coal mining industry for daring to be strongly unionised, and this ripped communities apart. The semi-detached house I grew up in was split down the middle — not ideologically, but literally split down the middle from our neighbours, due to the subsidence underneath from the now-closed coal mines deep underground, and those roots ran deep, with both of my grandfathers having relied upon that industry that provided income, and fuel, for our communities. With marginalised Black and queer folks all frequent visitors, our semi-detached house reflected an intersectional defiance in the face of the Conservative government that used bigotry and prejudice to create divisions. To do this, Thatcher worked closely with media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch, who was then courted by Tony Blair, backing the invasion of Iraq that sparked a massive anti-war movement, and in my early days as a media degree drop-out I marched on the historic demonstration in London on February 15th, 2003 and many more related protests.
Via Blair's welfare-to-work programme, I was soon working weekdays for social security payments while volunteering in youth centres some weeknights, before being hired by a multimedia centre in the young people's services in a local council. When funding for that was terminated, I attempted to continue much of the service delivery by setting up my own non-profit called SilenceBreaker Films, bringing in friends and fellow media degree drop-outs to work on it with me where possible, building local creative connections and engaging disadvantaged young people from the area’s post-industrial communities devastated by Thatcherism, and with Blair’s New Labour failing to reverse the country’s neoliberal trajectory.
Establishment media is not mainstream
I began to produce my own political documentaries, becoming known as a "media activist" and requested for speaking engagements around the world as a result. One such event was at the nearby University of Huddersfield, where Bruce Hanlin, lecturer in journalism and media, told me: “Your ‘alternative’ and varied way into the media might look more realistic at a time when the established media are in retreat and job opportunities at a virtual standstill.” In the talk, I touched on topics such as journalistic integrity in an era of elitism in journalism, and how the BBC’s cloak of “impartiality” protects it in suppressing voices of dissent – after all, as the late Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” But importantly, it was interesting to me that, for this talk, I was seen as part of the “alternative” media, but very telling that Hanlin also used the term “established” media. Because there is hardly anything “mainstream” about a media that is owned by, operated by, and propagandises for, the establishment comprised of the most powerful and influential in society. That isn't mainstream media, it is establishment media, and we should call it just that.
The establishment media lies in the hands of very exclusive interests indeed: for example, in the United Kingdom alone, just 3 companies dominate at least 80% of the British newspaper market – Reach, 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); we know where Murdoch stands, 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 the popular myth, the "impartial" BBC are actually 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. (Donald Trump has infamously exploited these inherent flaws in the system time and time again.)
"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.
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 some time ago – even if we failed several times since.
Jay Baker