I attempt to inform social work college students that they want concentrate on the connection between the massive image of politics and energy (the coverage settings that affect the best way that opportunites and assets are distributed) and the small image of particular person circumstances. We’re sluggish to study from our historical past; patterns repeat in barely altered kind and in Aotearoa New Zealand we’re on a regressive course politically, with tax cuts and profit sanctions designed to redistribute wealth upwards to the already rich and privileged. On this put up I want to discover some wider questions concerning the socio-political development of ‘fact’.
The evolution of post-truth politics is commonly related to the ascent of populist sound-bite pushed politicians such because the narcissistic, deeply flawed and harmful Donald J Trump, who, bizarrely, could properly regain the U.S. presidency in January 2025. Nonetheless, the notion of distorted realities has a for much longer pedigree. When he acquired the Nobel prize for literature in 2005, Harold Pinter delivered a strong speech reflecting on the function of artwork in society, the perform of phrases and the connection between fact, energy and political ideology. This discuss is twenty years previous now and is, maybe, a 15 minute learn, however it’s nonetheless a profound and disturbing textual content. It’s a searing critique of post-war U.S international coverage.
Pinter’s handle reminds us of the lies which fueled public consent to the catastrophic invasion of Iraq:
As each single individual right here is aware of, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a extremely harmful physique of weapons of mass destruction, a few of which might be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We have been assured that was true. It was not true. We have been instructed that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared accountability for the atrocity in New York of September eleventh 2001. We have been assured that this was true. It was not true. We have been instructed that Iraq threatened the safety of the world. We have been assured it was true. It was not true.
These phrases are particulary cogent at this time, when the united statesis donkey deep within the genocidal destruction of Gaza. Anybody with eyes and ears can recognize the bitter irony of shuttle diplomacy urging some type of humanitarian moderation amidst the indiscriminate demise and destruction, air-dropping meals parcels or constructing a wharf for support that Israel is systematically withholding, whereas on a regular basis arming the Israeli state with cash, bombs and shells. The killing could be stopped and a simply solution-finding course of might be facilitated if America had a thoughts to make it occur. The uschooses not too.
Many have argued that the horror of Gaza has irreparably damaged the reputation and status of the USA as a bastion of liberal human rights and freedom. Pinter factors out that this fame has at all times been a fastidiously curated phantasm. Freedom is commonly one other phrase for capitalism on this context. Because the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1958) noticed in his poem ‘Autobiography’:
I’ve learn the Reader’s Digest
from cowl to cowl
and famous the shut identification of the USA with
the Promised Land
the place each coin is marked
In God We Belief …
And, in fact, oppression, destruction and the slaughter of innocents is justifiable when God is on your side. Pinter considers the international coverage file by way of and for the reason that time of the Chilly Warfare:
Everybody is aware of what occurred within the Soviet Union and all through Japanese Europe throughout the post-war interval: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of unbiased thought. All this has been absolutely documented and verified. However my competition right here is that the US crimes in the identical interval have solely been superficially recorded, not to mention documented, not to mention acknowledged, not to mention recognised as crimes in any respect.
He focuses on the tragedy of American coverage in Nicaragua, noting that the coverage of undermining left wing liberation actions has had a world attain:
The USA supported and in lots of instances engendered each proper wing navy dictatorship on the planet after the top of the Second World Warfare. I consult with Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, in fact, Chile. The horror the USA inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can by no means be purged and may by no means be forgiven.
A whole bunch of hundreds of deaths happened all through these international locations. Did they happen? And are they in all instances attributable to US international coverage? The reply is sure they did happen and they’re attributable to American international coverage. However you wouldn’t comprehend it. It by no means occurred. Nothing ever occurred. Even whereas it was occurring it wasn’t occurring. It didn’t matter. It was of no curiosity. The crimes of the USA have been systematic, fixed, vicious, remorseless, however only a few individuals have really talked about them.
I’m not suggesting right here that the united statesis the one supply of oppression the world, simply that it has been, and continues to be, a strong ideology manufacturing facility for a selected set of financial pursuits that favour a selected type of social relations. And sure, Pinter is correct, that these pursuits – the pursuits of personal / company capital – have been brutally upheld over time. The world of politics and energy will not be a easy place and definitely not a reasonably one, however fact does matter and it ought to matter to social staff. We stroll within the small image of others’ lives, however in circumstances decided by bigger narratives that I imagine should be mercilessly questioned.
Picture credit score: Roger Sayles
Reference:
Ferlinghetti, L. (1958). A Coney Island of the Thoughts. New Instructions Publishing.
