Write your own news

This week has once again demonstrated how much of an agenda there is in the media. Only a matter of days in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party and the press has stepped up the misinformation that it was forking out during the leadership campaign. This was identified by another article on this blog on 16^th September.

We need to make a change in how we consume the news and current affairs and we need to write our own news.

Another Angry Voice - click image for link to article

What’s good about this week’s spin?

In some ways I think the spin this week has been useful because normally the slant of the right wing media is hard to identify. Thomas G Clark has dedicated a whole section of his phenomenal blog ‘Another Angry Voice’ to Political Myth Busting. AAV digs directly at the myths that are pedalled out by the right wing media. There are lies in there that many of us just take for granted as true which are skillfully dissected, for example;

·         The “maxed out national credit card” fallacy; through which we have all been made to think, incorrectly, of the national economy like a household budget

·         The spending cuts vs tax increases false dichotomy; in which we are told that the only two options available are to either have cuts in spending or rises in taxes

·         The unpatriotic left fallacy; as it says, it is something we have seen directed at Corbyn and his new Shadow Chancellor this week

So this week it has been refreshing if only in the sense that the spin and propaganda has been so obvious. Even Tory supporters, maybe even Mr Cameron himself, must have cringed at the anti-Corbyn video that the Tory press office put out at the beginning of the week. This video, if you didn’t catch it before it was taken down for copyright infringement, heavily edited to be made grainy, black and white with eerie music, stated that the new Labour leader was a threat to national security and had referred to Osama Bin Laden’s death as a tragedy.

Only it is not quite what he said.

I agree completely with Corbyn, and I think most people would ; that Bin Laden’s death actually was a tragedy. I remember TV footage of Americans celebrating in the street because Bin Laden had been assassinated and felt very uneasy. Cheering in the street about anyone’s death can’t be right. Although we might feel that revenge is sweet and certainly many of us wanted Bin Laden to pay for what he had done; should you have a death sentence without a trial? Dispense with public accountability? This is why we have established the systems we have in society; it is part of why we are proud to be British. You can’t just kill people; you can’t do to someone the act that you have condemned them for.

It is glaringly obvious that the media is swamped by right-wing bias. We have begun to ask “hang on a minute, whilst I look at this grainy horror spin-off rubbish, what am I missing?”

Well whilst we were listening to the various reports about how Corbyn had “snubbed the Queen” by not singing the national anthem, we were not paying attention as the government voted through £4.4bn in cuts to tax credits; a loss of around £1,300 to the poorest, working families even after any other measures like an increase in minimum wage.

What a kick to working people in Britain. Hang on! Didn’t the Tories say that Labour were now a threat to working people? That’s weird.

Write your own news!

It has been clear for some time that we need to find alternative sources of news, or at the very least, multiple sources of the news. But also, we need to create and participate in our own news.

This blog is not about supporting Jeremy Corbyn, but I wanted to use his treatment this week, which is the same that Green Party suffers often when it is thrown in to the media’s eye, to highlight the point. Also, Corbyn’s success highlights the importance of social media which Corbyn’s campaign team used to their enormous advantage creating an alternative narrative to the one put out by the mainstream press of the “radical left wing rebel”. For Corbyn’s team, social media and online campaigns got out the message that they wanted to get out. This is much like the success we saw with the #GreenSurge .

So take to facebook, litter your friends newsfeeds with things you care about, ‘hashtag’ the crap out of everything you hold dear on twitter, comment on and challenge ridiculous propaganda posts, write a blog, step out on a protest march, attend a Calais refugee coffee morning, change someone’s mind over the water cooler at work, read different newspapers.

What follows is not non-bias news or blog; it is simply what I would call an alternative to the mainstream narrative. But given that none of the following are bankrolled by billionaires who also happen to be mates with the Tory Prime Minister, they certainly feel more authentic. Try some of these and please suggest your own in the comments section;

Stroud Against the Cuts http://stroudagainstcuts.co.uk/

Another Angry Voice http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/

Molly Scott Cato MEP http://mollymep.org.uk/

Vox Political https://mikesivier.wordpress.com/

Community R4C (alternative to the incinerator at Javelin Park, Gloucestershire) http://communityr4c.com/

The Void https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/

The Green Benches http://www.greenbenchesuk.com/

Power and inequality

All situations of inequality come down to issues of power. Those who have less access to resources – be that money, food or shelter. Those who are denied a political voice. Those whose rights are restricted because of sexual orientation, religion, race, mental health and the like. Those who are not able to participate in the decisions that shape their lives. Those who are not taken as seriously. We often see inequality manifest in a lack of opportunities, in silencing and in loss of money, but this is all about power, or the absence of it.

Every time someone suffers from inequality, someone else benefits. It may be that they get a bigger share of the resources and the money. It may be that their voice in the decision making goes unchallenged, and their vote makes more difference. It may be that they are not obliged to change.

If we want to tackle inequality, we have to look at that power dynamic. We have to ask the awkward questions about where we might be complicit. How do my shopping choices, as a white western woman, impact on inequalities in the global market? How can men in positions of power deal with the limits on their scope to represent the other half of the population? Those of us whose biology and identity corresponds neatly have advantages over those whose situations are more complicated.

To be normal confers a certain kind of power. If you fit comfortably into your culture, you look right, talk like everyone else, share the same values and beliefs... you have a power advantage over anyone who doesn’t conform. Some societies use that power to force conformity and drive out difference. Even going so far as to kill and imprison people who are different.

If you are a wealthy, well educated white man in a suit walking into a place of power – a court, parliament, a board room, even the local council... the chances are that you will see plenty of other white male faces and suits, and hear them talk your language. Even if you don’t agree, you start from a place of similarity. Walk into that space as a person who does not match the norm and you are already on the back foot.

Power over is a key part of how our culture works. Through laws, social systems and money, we have a whole way of life that gives a set of people power over others. The people with power have the money, always. The people with no power have no money, the two go together. We have a history of giving men power over women, Christians power over other faith groups, white people power over people of other ethnicities, the abled have been given power over the disabled. For much of history, the rights of some to make life altering choices for others has been widespread. Our laws may have changed in the last century or so, but many of the cultural habits remain. Most especially, we still have the collective idea that status means having power over someone else.

If we want to end inequality, what we have to end is the culture of power over. We need to give people the power to do, not the power to control other people. We need to recognise that when people are empowered to act, that doesn’t diminish anyone, whereas in a system of power-over, someone, always, ends up being reduced and disempowered, silenced and kept away from opportunities.

This post is part of the http://blogactionday.org/ discussion of inequality.