Race, TV, Israel

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sun Jun 23 05:10:18 PDT 2002


The WEEK ending 23 June 2002

NEW LABOUR'S 'MORE IN SORROW' RACISM

On election, the 'New' Labour government was personally and emotionally hostile to racial prejudice. They despised the previous Tory regime for its willingness to play the 'race card'. Some of their best MPs are black. They used the charge of 'institutional racism' - popularised by the Macpherson report - as a new broom to sweep out the old guard from the established professions in the police, the law and the BMA. But somehow, they just could not resist the temptation to point the finger at 'bogus' asylum seekers, non-assimilating Muslims and East European cigarette-smugglers.

As these instincts put them at odds with their purported views, New Labour thinkers have tried to make sense of the contradiction, to state a clear policy on border controls. Columnist Polly Toynbee writes that Europe's closed-door to immigration is superior to the United States' more open one, because it represents a positive desire to defend the society we have. Jack Straw says that it is important to undercut the ground from the British National Party - actually giving more credence to the BNP's arguments. Pollster Philip Gould tells the party that focus groups show a demand for tougher action - but everyone knows that focus groups just repeat the question back in the form of an answer.

The end result is an embarrassed attempt to reinvent the Tory 'race card' while all the time insisting that 'we're just following the voters'. Actually the voters would support decisive action on most issues that you could put to them. They are not especially racist, but they do want a government that takes decisive action. Why would that be, we wonder?

'THE HUNT FOR BRITAIN'S PAEDOPHILES'

For some years now, critics have been commenting that the trend in 'reality TV' will end in killing someone for public entertainment. Strangely, when it did happen, last Thursday night, nobody commented. The three-part, BBC2 series 'the hunt for Britain's paedophiles' is so ghoulish that even champions of the child-protection industry have avoided comment. Already the series has regaled the public with barely disguised child pornography with such relish that it is difficult to see the difference between the emotional charge of outrage or titillation the film-makers are trying to provoke. But they saved the best till last.

Joining a police raid on a sex-offender, the BBC were thrilled that ferret-keeper Mark allowed them to film him in situ while his overstuffed council flat was turned upside down. To the film-makers' evident delight Mark spoke with disarming frankness about his perverse compulsion and his life of prison terms punctuated by police surveillance. All parties concerned adopted the cod-psychology of sex-offender treatment, with its central proposition that offenders are not in control of their drives. Mark openly admitted what he did was wrong, but he couldn't help it. The police reduced the proposition to cliché: 'the leopard doesn't change his spots'. Only later did one Inspector complain that if the offender can't help himself, are they supposed to provide a paedophile support group?

But there was something wrong about Mark's openness. The follow up to the interview came the next day, when it was reported that he had killed himself that night, rather than face another prison-term, and, presumably, the shame attached to the broadcast of the interview. The BBC took his suicide note as consent to broadcast, while the Inspector said that 'the streets are safer'. In the end it was not the game shows that offered the public humiliation and suicide of a participant as public entertainment, but a 'serious' documentary.

MIDDLE EAST DANGER POINT

The conflict in the Middle East has reached another danger point. The latest round of invasions and killings came in anticipation of the publication of the new Bush blueprint. Expectations of the plan are unrealistic, since it cannot both provide a Palestinian state and a secure Israel. Israel's own fantasy initiative, to build a wall between themselves and the Palestinians mirrors the problem: no sooner had the first stretch of wall gone up than the Israeli tanks crossed over into the Palestinian side. The Israeli military is particularly aggressive because it fears that the Western nations will abandon their local ally against Arab nationalism. From the Israeli perspective, since the first peace initiative, they have giving ground, retreating from the Lebanon and the West Bank. The truth is that the West no longer needs Israel to police a compliant Arab world, but America still sponsors Israel as the institutional expression of Europe's moral depravity. Over the years, America has sponsored campaigns to extort funds from German, Swiss and Austrian governments and banks in the name of 'reparations' for the holocaust.

Anti-American sentiment in Europe is also sublimated through the struggle over Israel. With no realistic outlet for unabashed anti-Americanism - apart from José Bové's campaign against MacDonalds - the European intelligentsia is channelling its hatred of the US into a hatred of Israelis. Characteristic is barrister Cherie Blair who, not known for her sympathy for Al Qaeda or the Real IRA, nonetheless found herself looking at the world from the point of view of the Palestinian suicide bomber. From being an arena for the proxy war between East and West in the Seventies, the Middle East is in danger of becoming a proxy war between the US and its European critics.

-- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'



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