Thursday 9 December 2021

Dead Cats and Politics

It's the most overused phrase in British politics, and is becoming even more annoying than managerial staples like going forward and the perennially awful across the piece (don't get me started on those who say "piste"). I am talking about dead cats. Not the trail of unfortunates left in the wake of the lately debunked Croydon cat killer, but of the political variety. Apparently originating with right wing dark artist Lynton Crosby, it's a stratagem used to attract the media spotlight away from something politicians would rather not talk about. I.e. Whatever the dinner party is discussing, throw a dead cat on the table and its sudden appearance will dominate the conversation. Crosby might have coined the term, but it's long been a favoured tool of elected officials and spinners.

However, we're now living in the age of peak dead cat. Politics is oversaturated with the remains of the feline deceased. Snided out, as my dad might say. Everywhere on social media you find people pointing at piles of of moggy corpses, slaughtered by the dozen by Boris Johnson. And recent days, if these declarations are to be believed, are a witness to a massacre like no other. The welcome political pain afflicting the Tories as reports of last year's festivities in Downing Street and CCHQ have finally come to light are actually a dead cat designed to distract the media from Priti Patel's Nationality and Borders bill, which was voted on on Wednesday. Apparently, this dead cat has proven so successful it needs a dead cat of its own. And so Johnson reached for Tiddles and the meat cleaver and, hey presto, the rolling out of Covid plan B. It didn't work. So Felix was dispatched to the angels and we got the rumour parliament will go into recess two days early. It's a wonder Carrie Johnson giving birth to her daughter, conveniently six weeks early, hasn't been identified as a terminated tabby too.

Unfortunately, the prevalence of dead cattery underlines the poor understanding of politics we find, even among those who see themselves on the left. Far from politics being events dear boy, events, they are carefully contrived set pieces fashioned by master manipulators behind the scenes. If we are to believe the dominant framing of Johnson, he is simultaneously an incompetent, disastrous oaf and a Blofeldian illuminatus pulling off master strokes on an 11-dimensional chessboard. And this is because a low-level conspiracism - its framing and assumptions - dominate the spontaneous political frames of too many leftists, and not a few liberals too. Politics is an expression of the machinations of elites, and nothing happens by accident. It's a species of naive cynicism, albeit with a superficial veneer of radicalism.

Consider the two main ways of thinking about politics. On the one hand we have Westminster-centrism, which privileges the personal relationships between politicians and sees it as a tussle between disagreeable but well-meaning "tribes". The biography is the education manual of choice, and structural inequalities, institutional power, and social conflict are either entirely erased or acknowledged, distorted to suit self-serving arguments and otherwise treated as if they don't matter. And then on the other is the more political-sociological, the militant political science centring exploitation, class relations, capital accumulation, and circuits of social reproduction. This does not dissolve the personhood of individual politicians, but embeds them in their context and leaves nothing to the silence of bourgeois propriety.

Dead catism as low level conspiracy politics is a move away from the establishment outlook on politics, but mangles the insights of political sociology. The result is a hybrid of the two. It can be a moment, an expression of people in movement. But if it stalls it is not necessarily an advance on the showbiz-for-ugly-people conception of politics. This is because bourgeois politics has to have a certain openness. The personal, decontextualised relationships it privileges have a dynamism. It's the stuff of politics gossip and tittle-tattle. It also has to be open because, no matter how hard Prime Ministers, oligarchs, the police and the press try, class struggle is an inescapable characteristic of capitalist societies. Politics has to be open to a degree because managing the antagonisms underpinning the whole thing demands elements of fluidity.

Conspiratorial politics, however, are fundamentally closed. Nothing can change, nothing will change. It's all rigged. And when an exceptional figure emerges, they're crushed too and we have to wait until another great leader emerges. It's fundamentally disempowering, a paralysing fatalism whose consequences fetishise class rule and class power. An outcome any Tory would be pleased with.

There's no point complaining about what masses of people think, instead it's a challenge. Disseminating the tools for understanding and analysing politics is just as important for the left as building new institutions and winning skirmishes with the boss class. Dead cat discourse is a warning - there's a lot we have to do. But the spontaneous antipathy to establishment politics it expresses, that's also something we can build on.

5 comments:

Blissex said...

«the dominant framing of Johnson, he is simultaneously an incompetent, disastrous oaf and a Blofeldian illuminatus pulling off master strokes on an 11-dimensional chessboard.»

It is just character assassination, like that used against Trump and Corbyn: they too were described as incompetent comical dunces and at the same time evil tyrannical masterminds. In character assassination campaigns every possible negative point is made, even if they are apparently in conflict. In these campaigns the ability to "doublethink" is quite important.

BTW as to "doublethink" the techniques of 1984 are happening around us: for example Starmer never changed his position on the EU to arch-brexitism on becoming leader, because "We have always been at war with EUrasia" :-).

Blissex said...

«Conspiratorial politics, however, are fundamentally closed. Nothing can change, nothing will change. It's all rigged.»

Quite (un)funnily this is pretty much the New Labour point of view: “There Is No Alternative”, we can't beat them, so let's join them as the thatcherite "reserves team", which is indeed “fundamentally disempowering, a paralysing fatalism

«instead it's a challenge. Disseminating the tools for understanding and analysing politics is just as important for the left»

That is very much the point: it is indeed important to both understand that “it's all rigged” and that it is possible to fight against that, because the upper class is not all-powerful, and relies to some extent on the passivity if not the consent of the lower classes.

That gives some margins of negotiation beyond merely begging "Sir, please can I have some more?", it requires both understanding and struggle, that is a movement behind the party. Exactly as described by Gordon Brown in 1999:

the usual quote from Lance Price in 1999: ““Gordon wants us to be a radical progressive, movement, but wants us to keep our heads down on Europe. Peter [Mandelson] thinks that we are a quasi-Conservative Party but that we should stick our necks out on Europe.

Replace "Gordown" with "Jeremy" and "Peter [Mandelson]" with "Keir" (or just leave it "Peter [Mandelson]") and it could have described 2015-2019 too. :-(

Dialectician1 said...

Good evening. Here is the News for parrots. No parrots were involved in an accident on the M1 today, when a lorry carrying high octane fuel was in collision with a hollard ... that is a bollard and not a parrot. A spokesman for parrots said he was glad no parrots were involved. The Minister of Technology (photo of minister with parrot on his shoulder) today met the three Russian leaders (cut to photograph of Brahnev, Podgomy and Kosygin all in a group and each with a parrot on his shoulder) to discuss a £4 million airliner deal ... (cut back to narrator) None of them went in the cage, or swung on the little wooden trapeze, or ate any of the nice millet seed yam, yam. That's the end of the news.
(Monty Python)

Anonymous said...

"It is just character assassination, like that used against Trump and Corbyn"

The slight difference is that the 'character assassination' of Trump is mostly true, whereas that of Corbyn is mostly lies. Trump definitely is politically a reactionary and personally an arsehole; Corbyn is not a terrorist, an anti-Semite, a spy, a Stalinist, etc, etc...

Blissex said...

«The slight difference is that the 'character assassination' of Trump is mostly true, whereas that of Corbyn is mostly lies.»

That is not a difference that is that much politically relevant, politics is not a contest for "nice guy of the year" :-).

«Trump definitely is politically a reactionary»

Indeed “politically“ and indeed not a character point. A quote to reinforce this point, from reactionary warmonger McCain:

https://www.politico.com/story/2008/10/mccain-obama-not-an-arab-crowd-boos-014479
«October 10, 2008

Supporter: I can't trust Obama. I have read about him and he's not, he's not, uh.... He's an Arab. He's not...
McCain: No, ma'am. He's a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign's all about. He's not...
Supporter: Come on, John!
Supporter: Liar!
Supporter: Terrorist!
Supporter: Obama will lead the country to socialism! The time has come and the Bible tells us: "You speak the truth and that the truth sets you free..."
McCain: I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States...
Supporter: The people here in Minnesota want to see a real fight!
McCain: We want to fight, and I will fight. But I will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments, and I will respect him.
Supporters: Boo
McCain: I don't mean that has to reduce your ferocity. I just mean to say you have to be respectful.»

«and personally an arsehole»

That is his right, but he seems to be quite a bit worse than that; still here is my usual quote on the political aspect of that:

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/dec/11/simon-hoggarts-week
«An old mining MP called Bill Stone, who used to sit in the corner of the Strangers' Bar drinking pints of Federation ale to dull the pain of his pneumoconiosis.
He was eavesdropping on a conversation at the bar, where someone said exasperatedly about the Commons: "The trouble with this place is, it's full of c*nts!"
Bill put down his pint, wiped the foam from his lip and said: "They's plenty of c*nts in the country, and they deserve some representation." (To get the full effect, say it aloud in a broad northern accent.)
As a description of parliamentary democracy, that strikes me as unbeatable.»