Politics

The Men Who Killed the News

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

This book by Eric Beecher is long -or it seems long – and it may not tell us much that is new – but we should read it.  I may have missed it, but the subtitle could be the aphorism ‘Power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.’

We get all the moguls.  They are devoid or style and humanity.  They are in it for power – bought with money.  The main villain is of course Rupert Murdoch – and the book makes it clear that he could not give a bugger. 

It also makes it clear that things could get worse under the presently nominated successor, Lachlan Murdoch.  If his action against Crikey is any indication, Lachlan has no judgment at all.  In a lifetime in the law, much of it involving the press, I have never seen anything like it.

His sad case raises another point.  None of these moguls shows any sign of contentment.  If life involves the pursuit of happiness, each is a pathetic failure.  And that goes for those who kowtow to them.  I have no idea what it may have been like to work in an Ottoman harem, or Oriental knock shop under the Red Guards, but that is how the well-paid tributaries of Rupert and Sons look to me. 

Rupert is just frankly vicious.  He knows no other way.  And he doesn’t even look like leaving us soon.  He may have time to claim the record of Henry VIII as a retail terminator of his wives – although not even Harry – what an awful rock to build a church on – could do so by email.  When Rupert goes, there will be a massive funeral, but not one mourner.  The damage he has wrought to the governance of Australia and the U S is beyond assessment.

As is the damage he has done to the profession of journalism – that he has devoted his life to perverting.  People in a profession do so as a vocation that serves a public purpose.  The public need for the functions of journalists is as clear as that for doctors and lawyers.  All of them have to put food on the table, but when money becomes paramount, as it does in the Murdoch world, professionalism goes clean out the window, and you are left with tits, lies, and downright hit jobs.

One chapter is called ‘Give ‘em what they want.’  There is a remarkable resemblance between the moguls and people like Trump, Boris, Farage, and now Musk.  They know how to fish the gutter – the contents of which they regard with contempt.  And the people so hooked think it is Christmas – so that the working people of the U S thought they may be better off under a government of billionaire egomaniacs.

All this is so cold that Michael Corleone could have blushed when he replayed the primal sin of murdering a brother.  Rupert sacked the guy who published the Hitler diaries after he, Rupert, had personally ordered their publication – the sort of thing Hitler avoided – and as the truth came out, said ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained – after all, we are in the entertainment business.’  (The German victim at Stern said ‘I couldn’t believe that anyone would have gone to the trouble of forging something so banal.’  That brought to mind Hannah Arendt, and my reaction to scammers posing as bankers – they were so banal, they had to be real.)

And when Rupert said ‘this is the most humble day of my life’, he butchered the language, but he was humiliated because he was caught with his hands in the till.  As was everyone at Fox when they were caught despising Trump.

And in the course of my legal practice, I have seen with my own eyes people very high up in the Melbourne community quail at the prospect of Rupert coming after them.

Mr Beecher quotes a remark of Edmund Burke I could not recall- ‘the world is governed by go-betweens’.  That is so true – and so many wheedling ratbags.  And the press is forever in danger of joining the swill.  It is very sad, because public trust is evaporating in almost every aspect of our communal life. 

Possibly the most potent quote comes at the start – from Janet Malcolm, who is about as respectable as you can get on this subject.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows what he is doing is morally indefensible.  He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust, and betraying them without remorse. 

Mr Beecham says: Journalism is by nature an exercise in manipulation. 

Well, so in some ways are those who practise medicine or the law.  But the problem for journalists is that they have to spend so much time in dealing with people in politicsor business who are on the make.  And manipulators work on manipulators and whole industries evolve to murder the very idea of truth and to salute evasion.  And they do for lucre, the potential pollutant of every profession.

And then along came AI.  Can anyone trust anyone now?  Mr Beecher concludes by saying that ‘he never imagined that the intervention of machines, controlled by another group of human beings behaving badly, could usurp the moguls and make things worse.’

Perhaps I should insert a form of disclaimer.  In my time in the law I acted for and against the press and have a settled view on where the power lies, but in dealing with journalists on a daily basis about issues I was involved in, I had hardly ever any complaint about dealing with them in confidence.  Which is more than I could say for my lot.

Finally.  I have very much enjoyed many summer schools at Oxford and Cambridge, but those drongoes at Oxford who established the Rupert Murdoch Chair in Communications should be utterly ashamed of themselves.  Alan Bennett said: ‘If the University thinks it’s appropriate to take Rupert Murdoch’s money, perhaps they ought to approach Saddam Hussein to found a chair in peace studies.’ 

Or they could cross the channel to see the sluts in white boots at Pigalle.

Racism at home and abroad

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

In discussing the Voice, I said:

, , , ,

‘Racism’ or ‘racist’ are not terms that I use.  They are too broad in their reach, and they are too often applied as unfair and unwarranted labels of abuse.

But as I understand it, ‘racism’, at least in its pejorative sense,  involves more than a recognition that people can be in some way classified according to race.  It entails a belief that people of some racial backgrounds are in some way inferior to others, or may be discriminated against, on the ground of their race.  And history is replete with stories of the misery that this vice has led to.

Such beliefs are irrational on the part of those holding them  – such people are described as ‘prejudiced’ – and hurtful to the objects of such beliefs.  Those holding such beliefs are open to the accusation that they are not seeing the dignity of other  people that arises merely because they are human.

‘Prejudice’ is almost irrational by definition.  It is irrational to hold that all people of the same tribe or colour have the same character.

But it is equally irrational to hold that reasoned criticism of some in a group evidences a prejudice against members of that group generally.  Those expressing such a view are often trying make themselves out as victims and get sympathy or support that way.

And where two groups are in conflict, people on both sides will tend to be irrational  – prejudiced – in assessing the conduct of either  side.  Their side cannot do wrong.  The other side cannot do anything right.

You can see all this in the history of Ireland.

The English regarded the natives of Ireland with a contempt greater than that with which they greeted the natives of Australia five centuries later.  The Statutes of Kilkenny of 1366 put most of the natives ‘beyond the pale’.  It was apartheid that resembled the Spartan treatment of helots – to the discomfort of Oxbridge. 

You could still find this racist contempt in polite circles much later.  The sometime historian J H Round in 1899 in The Commune of London said:

We went to Ireland because her people were engaged in cutting one another’s throats; we are there now because if we left, they would all be breaking one another’ s heads….The leaders of the Irish people have not so greatly changed since the days when ‘King’ McDonnchadh blinded ‘King’ Dermot’s son, and when Dermot, in return, relieved his feelings by gnawing the nose of his butchered foe.  Claiming  to govern a people when they cannot even govern themselves, they clamor like the baboo of Bengal against that pax Britannica, by the presence of which alone they are preserved from mutual destruction.  No doubt… .they would rather be governed badly by themselves than well by anyone else.  But England also has a voice in the matter; and she cannot  allow the creation of a Pandemonium at her doors.

The white man’s burden – you could not beat that even by crossing Hitler with Kipling.

So, the Irish arrived in Australia with centuries of history of being victims of racism.  To which was now added discrimination against Catholics.  Those two factors led to raw prejudice on their part.  And that led to bitter division in Australia – right through to the end of my childhood.

Ned Kelly was taught ‘Death to any Judas Iscariot who betrays an Irishman to an English  policeman.’  Kelly was a cold-blooded murderer, but many in the Irish diaspora – including otherwise sane lawyers in my lifetime  – treated him as a champion of the dispossessed against the Protestant dominated Philistine society of Melbourne.  It went beyond the Irish.  Manning Clark said: ‘Yet Ned lived on as a hero, as a man through whom Australians were helped to discover our national identity.’   It was another sad instance of our saluting losers.

Daniel Mannix came from Ireland to be Archbishop of Melbourne.  Just as the conscription issue got going here in the First World War, he launched an appeal for victims of the Easter Rising.  He was righteously vehement in his  opposition to the government and conscription.  To whom did he and Irish Catholics owe allegiance – Ireland, Rome, or Australia?   Part of this quandary had plagued England since Becket ran into Henry II.  Australia was dangerously, and venomously, split by Mannix and his followers.  Manning Clark said:

He was the mystic who saw in the face of the Irish peasant the image of Christ.  He was the Irish patriot nursing a grudge against those guilty of that ancient wrong against the Irish people…. For him, any reflection on his people and their reputation was like the sin against the Holy Ghost – something which could never be forgiven.  In Catholic countries, legend had it that when a person committed mortal sin fell across the face of the Virgin.  For Daniel Mannix, any slur on his faith by or on his own people by the eternal enemies of the Irish caused a shadow to pass over his face.

All that proved a fierce cocktail of imported division in the brand-new Commonwealth.  You can see that the fear and loathing felt by Mannix for the English and Protestant establishments, more than matched that felt by the English against the Irish five or so centuries before.   And then you get to the phase where the ultimate insult is for the conduct of your team to be compared with that of the other.  The inarticulate premise is of course that the members of the other team are inferior.  Which takes us back to where we started.

Then, after the next war, Catholics were, fairly or otherwise, seen to be the drivers of the ‘Split’ – the breakdown of the Labor Party that effectively left Australian as a one-party state for a generation. 

It is a notorious fact of history that religious conflicts are the worst of the lot.  And that conflicts within one faith – say Sunni and Shiite, or Protestant and Catholic – are the worst of those.  The stakes are so high.  Which is worse – treason, or heresy?

Well, all this comes to you from a lapsed Prot who now looks askance at most religion (and who could not give a hoot about the schism in Christianity) .  I have no doubt those brought up as Catholics, whether Irish or not, may well see things very differently – and possibly say so; possibly, vehemently. 

It is both natural and inevitable that people will associate with others of the same tribe and faith.  It is equally natural and inevitable that such associations will affect the way we think, frequently with results that bespeak raw prejudice.    It is not a good idea in Melbourne to engage your cab driver in discussion about the governance of Kosovo, Lebanon, or India.

But the few instances mentioned here, which reflect wrongs wrought on people over centuries,  and which fed bad tensions here over generations, show that we must be wary of those whose interest in foreign conflicts leads them to seek to interfere with our own domestic politics here in Australia.  Such people are dangerous.

Racism – Logic – Diasporas – Ireland – Gaza – Kosovo – Balkans – India.

The fog of war

/ Geoffrey Gibson / 1 Comment

Correspondence about the conflict in Gaza prompts the following.

What is the legal basis of this war?  As I follow it, there is no nation or entity of Gaza.  In what sense is its government recognised, either as being authorised to speak for the people of Gaza, or otherwise recognised as an identifiable entity?  In other words, what people are identifiable as the respondents to the declaration of war and the invasion?  Who has what authority to speak for the government or people of Gaza?

The commentary on either side is partisan.  The main reproach of one side for the other is that it is partisan.  This is predictable and funny in discussing a football match.  It is neither in this tragic and lethal context.  The main complaint is that the other side does not concede enough about its fault, or the suffering it has caused.  This follows necessarily from partisanship, and failing to agree at what point in history you set the clock running for past events to be counted for or against either party.

One side says the other wants to annihilate it.  The other says its enemy has stopped it being born.

This is a form of guerrilla war.  The rules of war are hard to apply.  How do you tell ‘civilians’ from those who are not?  At what ratio of casualties does defence cease to be proportionate?

On both sides ‘freedom of speech’ becomes illusory.  It is at best odd to suggest that people should not be partisan – by talking about their case rather than that of their enemy.

If truth is the first casualty of war, sense and fairness are fast in line.

As it happens, while writing the above my eye fell on what Macaulay said about religious fanatics.  The English were not sorry to see the end of the Puritans.  Their mark on the U S is indelible.  Fortunately, they missed us.  Under Cromwell, they wanted to shut the pubs.

While the majority of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one direction, the position which they had originally occupied, the majority of the Puritan body departed, in a direction diametrically opposite, from the principles and practices of their fathers. The persecution which the separatists had undergone had been severe enough to irritate, but not severe enough to destroy. They had been, not tamed into submission, but baited into savageness and stubbornness. After the fashion of oppressed sects, they mistook their own vindictive feelings for emotions of piety, encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation, a disposition to brood over their wrongs, and, when they had worked themselves up into hating their enemies, imagined that they were only hating the enemies of heaven. In the New Testament there was little indeed which, even when perverted by the most disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenance the indulgence of malevolent passions. But the Old Testament contained the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity and ministers of his vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do many things which, if done without his special command, would have been atrocious crimes. In such a history it was not difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme Puritans therefore began to feel for the Old Testament a preference, which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow even to themselves; but which showed itself in all their sentiments and habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the epistles of Paul have come down to us. They baptized their children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. In defiance of the express and reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they turned the weekly festival by which the Church had, from the primitive times, commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish Sabbath. They sought for principles of jurisprudence in the Mosaic law, and for precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in the books of Judges and Kings. Their thoughts and discourse ran much on acts which were assuredly not recorded as examples for our imitation. The prophet who hewed in pieces a captive king, the rebel general who gave the blood of a queen to the dogs, the matron who, in defiance of plighted faith, and of the laws of eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the fugitive ally who had just fed at her board, and who was sleeping under the shadow of her tent, were proposed as models to Christians suffering under the tyranny of princes and prelates. Morals and manners were subjected to a code resembling that of the synagogue, when the synagogue was in its worst state. The dress, the deportment, the language, the studies, the amusements of the rigid sect were regulated on principles not unlike those of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands and broad phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-breaker and a winebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink a friend’s health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to wear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would have appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingli, threw over all life a more than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence by which the great Reformers had been eminently distinguished, and to which they had been, in no small measure, indebted for their success, were regarded by the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if not with aversion. Some precisians had scruples about teaching the Latin grammar, because the names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it. The fine arts were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ was superstitious. The light music of Ben Jonson’s masques was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in England were idolatrous, and the other half indecent. The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the upturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all, by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the imagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced into the English language, and metaphors borrowed from the boldest lyric poetry of a remote age and country, and applied to the common concerns of English life, were the most striking peculiarities of this cant, which moved, not without cause, the derision both of Prelatists and libertines.

Thus the political and religious schism which had originated in the sixteenth century was, during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish despotism were in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending to republicanism were in favour with a large portion of the House of Commons. The violent Prelatists who were, to a man, zealous for prerogative, and the violent Puritans who were, to a man, zealous for the privileges of Parliament, regarded each other with animosity more intense than that which, in the preceding generation, had existed between Catholics and Protestants.