(George Monbiot saying what is said in the above video) - The land has been thrown into disorder by powerful and nefarious forces of neoliberalism and the oligarchs and the corporations that support them, which have torn apart the social order. They've torn apart our public services, they've torn apart our regulations, they've torn apart our tax base, they've torn apart society itself, but the hero or heroes. In fact, the heroes, the working classes, the middle classes, we will come together around new ideas, new ideas based on a far more equitable distribution, both of economic resources and of power. We will fight those powerful and nefarious forces of neoliberalism and oligarchy. We will overthrow them and restore harmony to the land.
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I am JP and this is Disorder… A show where we try to look behind the curtain and uncover the structural forces that shape our mad mad mad mad world.
There is no doubt that since the Reagan-Thatcher neo-liberal reforms that reshaped the global economy, income inequality has ballooned and private individuals and multinational corporations have developed capacities that previously only major governments possessed. Simultaneously, the regulatory, tax extraction capacity, and mega project capacity of major Western states has cratered. Western democratic states have been hollowed out. In the 1960s only the US government could get to the moon and only the US government could make a market for the nascent computer chip while today, only the private sector can invent AI and only the private sector can build the cutting edge drones needed to defend Ukraine.
Forget Christianity, Judaism, New Age Spirituality, and Buddhism, a new type of religion drives 21st century Western thought. It goes by the shadowy name of Neoliberalism: the commodification of everything; Markets and the private sector ascendent; The deliberate attempt to reduce – especially through privatisation and austerity – state power, regulatory capacity, and government’s ability to influence the economy. Over the past few decades, from Thatcher and Reagan, to Blair and Clinton, the whole world was incentivized to embrace neoliberal reforms. The result? Our public services are crumbling. Governments have lost the ability to build roads and hospitals. Governments are no longer driving cutting edge innovation. And a new class of super rich neoliberal oligarchs – Musk, the Koch brothers, Bezos, Zuckerburg, and the cryptobros – are spreading Disorder.
To help us find governmental Order amidst all this privatized Disorder, I am joined by George Monbiot -- Guardian columnist and co-author of ‘The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life)’.
In their conversation, the duo chart the evolution of neoliberalism and how it has shifted core governance functions (like transport, health care, and security) from the public sector to private enterprises, leading to a new form of oligarchy. Plus: they look at the failures of centrist politicians to come up with compelling alternatives and they hypothesize about the psychological motivations of the wealthy elite.
Finally, as they Order the Disorder, they put forward the need for a new political narrative that emphasises community and solidarity - especially on a local level.
There's a fundamental paradox here, which is that the, the, the right endlessly talks about individualism going your own way, but they act as a body. They're like a shoal of fish. They all swim in the same direction doing exactly the same thing. The left is constantly talking about collectivism and about common purpose, but we fight like rats in a sack. We're all trying to do our own individualistic thing. We, we, we are just really, really bad at demonstrating solidarity. getting together behind some big ideas, putting the resources in, not tearing each other's throats out and combining around them. Now, I think we can do better. Uh, there've been many times in history when we have been better, but bizarrely the left has succumbed to atomization and individualism far more than the right has done. And we have to fight that tendency within ourselves.
[This is a quote from the above video] Some of these people do see themselves as deities of a kind. And I'm thinking of Musk, I'm thinking of Bezos, I'm thinking of Zuckerberg, to give just, just three examples, who can transcend human survival, and can transcend the collapse of everything that lies around them. And in Musk's case, and Bezos's case, bugger off into space and start again. And, and it's, that seems to be, at least in part of their minds, a desirable.
Now for my favourite video of the recording and the last tickets for tonight’s event at RUSI and March 21’s event with Sir Bill Browder at the Frontline Club pls join the PAID for substack and read on below (excitingly both events have had over a hundred RSVPS and are nearly sold out… thank you superfans):
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