Jonathan Lethem — in ‘freak-out’ mode about Trump — bemoans ignored warnings and fears the worst
The Jonathan Lethem diary piece in the latest LRB (full article available only to subscribers) makes a point of highlighting warnings about the likelihood of fascism rising in the States. (The warnings apply equally to Europe — and the UK, of course — but we’ve seen fascism here before, so we have no possible excuse for it happening again.) He quotes Jung from 1938, Rorty from 1998, and, most pleasing of all because he is someone I am keen on quoting and referring to, Sheldon Wolin from 2003.
Here is the Wolin quotation:
The elements are in place . . . a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent on reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favour a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers. That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors.
What Wolin is describing is the nightmare of neoliberalism taken to its logical end point. Democracy has been fatally subverted by the domination of corporations and our legislators no longer serve the people but transnational companies. Everything from schools to housing to food to media to health is controlled by the profit motive. The most blatant result of this — one that stands out even above all the personal and individual misery heaped on us by such a demonic state of affairs — is the deliberate and wanton destruction of our planet.
Clinton’s electoral platform — like pre-Corbyn Labour — promised more of the same. Perhaps Sanders would have won, perhaps he wouldn’t. He wasn’t given the chance precisely because he threatened the status quo of the Democratic Party and its corporate backers. Clinton was their candidate, for good or ill. And we know how that turned out.
Wolin’s point about concentrated media is particularly pertinent here in the UK at the moment as Murdoch attempts finally to take fully control of Sky TV. The reasons for keeping another communications channel out of the deathly right-wing grip of a man with such inbuilt antipathy to democracy must surely be obvious. If our current equally right wing government see no reason to stop this acquisition, it would hardly be a surprise.
If you haven’t read Wolin, I recommend his Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Not the most winning title but the book does what it says on the cover: it lays bare the ways in which democracy is, to all intents and purposes, a sham run for the benefits of transnational corporations.
