When the media declared Joe Biden the projected winner of the 2020 presidential election on Saturday, November 7th, millions of Americans celebrated with heart-felt relief, street rallies and a belief that a better tomorrow is possible. Unfortunately, that tomorrow is under serious threat.
After four years in office one thing about Donald Trump has become transparently clear – he is a petty, vindictive man. He never admits mistakes and makes false statements whenever they serve his purpose. In the face of an apparent electoral repudiation, he – and his team led by Rudi Giuliani and Bill Barr – is seeking to overturn the election results through dubious legal challenges. His strategy will likely fail, even with his successful packing of the Supreme Court with arch conservatives.
In all likelihood, Trump will turn over the presidency to Biden on Inauguration Day, January 20th. However, if he refuses to cede power, even if the Court rejects his claims regarding the legitimacy of the elections, a true national crisis could result.
In his acceptance speech, Biden outlined five key issues that he would address as president:
The battle to control the virus. The battle to build prosperity. The battle to secure your family’s health care. The battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country. The battle to save the climate. The battle to restore decency, defend democracy and give everybody in this country a fair shot.
The challenge facing Biden and the new Democratic administration when it takes control of the federal bureaucracy are considerable. Whether it can delivery on these – and other – issues is an open question. Given the likely make-up of the Senate, with Republicans maintaining numerical control, Biden political hands may well be tied much like Pres. Obama’s second term. More problematic, Biden is a traditional “liberal” or moderate and will likely resist efforts by more “progressive” Democrats to advance major legislation that could adequately address the deepening economic issues facing the nation.
A critical assessment of four of the five issues Biden identified outlines some of the likely challenges the new administration will face.
Covid-19Control – As of early November, over 10 million Americans were infected and nearly 240,000 have died of the coronavirus. One of Biden’s first actions after his projected electoral victory was to outline a “science” based plan to “beat Covid-19.” The cornerstone of the plan is to “Provide clear, consistent, evidence-based guidance for how communities should navigate the pandemic – and the resources for schools, small businesses, and families to make it through.” One of the defining aspects of the plan is to establish a “Pandemic Testing Board like Roosevelt’s War Production Board. It’s how we produced tanks, planes, uniforms, and supplies in record time, and it’s how we will produce and distribute tens of millions of tests.”
In addition, the plan calls for “the effective, equitable distribution of treatments and vaccines — because development isn’t enough if they aren’t effectively distributed.” It seeks to “ensure everyone — not just the wealthy and well-connected — in America receives the protection and care they deserve, and consumers are not price gouged as new drugs and therapies come to market.”
The most challenging part of the plan is its call to “implement mask mandates nationwide …” It declares that “President-elect Biden will continue to call on:
+ Every American to wear a mask when they are around people outside their household.
+ Every Governor to make that mandatory in their state.
+ Local authorities to also make it mandatory to buttress their state orders.”
Will “every American,” “governors” or “local authorities” go along with such a plan? It’s clear that such a mandate should have been implemented when the virus first appeared nine months ago and that failing to do so was Trump’s greatest failure of leadership. One can only wonder whether such a mandate will be adhered to now as people seem more resigned to their fate and many anti-virus militants (including Q-Anon supporters) will resist.
Build Prosperity – The U.S. is the throws of recession that could topple into a depression. The recession began in February 2020, just around the time the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Two Harvard economists, David Cutler and Lawrence Summers, paint a grim picture of total costs of the pandemic. “The total cost is estimated at more than $16 trillion, or approximately 90% of the annual gross domestic product of the US,” they wrote. “Approximately half of this amount is the lost income from the COVID-19–induced recession; the remainder is the economic effects of shorter and less healthy life.”
In May, House Democrats Leader Nancy Pelosi proposed a $3 trillion Covid recovery plan that — after months of wrangling with the White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel — died on the vine. If the Senate remains under Republican control, one can expect a similar standoff over a Biden plan for relief and recovery.
The word “inequality” is absent from Biden’s acceptance speech and one can only wonder why? The income gap between the rich and everyone else has been growing markedly, by every major statistical measure, for more than 30 years. The Covid pandemic and the recession have only made the situation worse – and one can expect it to deepen over the first year or two of Biden’s administration.
Racial Justice – The Biden campaign is notable for two critical cultural developments. One is selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate and her provisional election as the nation’s first woman and first woman-of-color as Vice President. Second, Biden’s acceptance speech was noteworthy for one critical sentence: “The battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country.”
Very few establishment politicians ever refer to the endemic nature of American racism as “systemic” and Biden can be applauded for it, especially in light of his questionable role in promoting the 1994 crime bill that paved the way to mass incarceration of Black Americans.
A real test of the Biden and Harris stand on racial justice will likely come at an unexpected moment in an unlikely city when a police officer shoots and kills an unarmed Black man. Biden called the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests a “wake up call for our nation.” However, if popular political action invoking the spirit of the BLM movement might lead to significant outrage, even “violent” demonstrations and looting, what would the new administration do?
Biden will likely not deploy federal marshals like the Trump administration did in an effort to show it was tough on “law and order.” Biden and Harris may turn the page on traditional forms of social control, but this is yet to be determined.
Save the Climate – In his acceptance speech and his candidate “plan,” Biden never refers to “climate change.” He does advocate a $2 trillion plan to further a “clean energy revolution and environmental justice.” Among the key features of this plan include: cut carbon emissions from power plants; cut greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector; cut particulate matter air pollution; and increase climate spending to rural and urban low-income areas, especially among “BIPOC” (i.e., Black, Indigenous, and people of color).
Greenpeace has raised some concerns about his climate plan. They include the fact the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions is for 2050 and carbon pollution-free electric power by 2035. It warns the following:
He’s pledged to eliminate coal, gas, and oil subsidies and hold polluters accountable, but has not pledged to reject permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure. He made strong commitments to coal and power plant workers, but has not promised to guarantee wages and benefits to all workers impacted by the energy transition.
At best, one should hold one’s breath to see if Biden fulfills his goals.
The two major political parties realigned over the last quarter-century into self-contained contradictions. The Republicans – once the party of the old bourgeoisie and country-club gentry – have become, especially under Trump, a White “populist” and racialist party. The Democrats seek to embrace the tech nouveau riche along with inner-city Blacks and other minorities.
Both parties may well explode. Republicans may face split a deepening split between pro-Trump reactionaries like Lindsey Graham, who could forge a Tea Party-type opposition, and more moderates Republicans like Susan Collins and Mitt Romney. In addition, the Never Trump Republicans will likely call for the good-old-days of the Bushes and return to a country club party. Trump’s supporters will harden the party’s ideological arteries and build a grassroots movement that could lead to an ever more reactionary.
This situation may well be further exasperated if there is a deepening split within the Republicans as pro-Trump reactionaries like Lindsey Graham forge a Tea Party-type opposition to more moderates Republicans like Susan Collins and Mitt Romney. This situation may well be further exasperated if there is a deepening split within the Republicans as pro-Trump reactionaries like Lindsey Graham forge a Tea Party-type opposition to more moderates Republicans like Susan Collins and Mitt Romney. A similar fracturing may split the Democrats, with moderate’s embracing Biden’s vision of social reconciliation without struggle or a fundamental change in social relations. In reaction, so-called “progressives” may well push for a viable “democratic socialist” alternative.
And the White working class: what will be its fate in an increasing fractured political environment?
1. Ruling classes are not monoliths. The major employers, finance capitalists, top politicians, senior military brass, military-industrial complex, and capitalist political parties are divided into factions. There are genuine differences among them as to how to best exploit people. Trump was never favored by the dominant faction of the U.S. ruling class to become the Republican candidate for president. In 2016 the big bourgeois money was behind Jeb Bush, and/or behind Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate. Either evoked sentimental family feelings and would have been acceptable to Wall Street.
2. Once in power Trump pleased Wall Street with his tax cuts and deregulation, but alarmed many by his apparently unstable personality, and unpredictable trade and foreign policies. Many bosses wanted to fire him. Ruling class opposition to him took the most traditional, uncreative, backward Cold War form: he was criticized for alleged ties to Russia. But the campaign to oust Trump as a Putin puppet failed, as did the effort to impeach him—for the high crime of delaying delivery of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. Having avoided removal from office in February 2020, as the Dow Jones reached new highs, Trump seemed poised for reelection.
3. Then COVID19 arrived. The main issue now became not the (discredited) Russia charges, but the president’s callous, irresponsible response to the virus, indeed his responsibility for tens of thousands of deaths. And in May there was a sudden surge in mass demonstrations—despite the virus—against systemic racism as reflected in the latest iPhone-captured police murders. The protests were extraordinarily diverse and peaceful, and depicted sympathetically by much of the press. Trump’s hostile response to the protests, catering to his racist base, was condemned as “divisive.” COVID, racism and the prospects for a police state became the new issues in the drive—backed by the majority of the ruling class—to oust Trump.
4. Just as schools were closing in the wake of the coronovirus outbreak, the DNC threw the Democratic nomination to Joe Biden. The election would now be about Trump (the virus-spreader and racist divider), versus Biden (the defender of medical science and racial unifier.) Universal health care as advocated by Bernie Sanders would not be an issue. The fight would be between indecency and decency, aberrancy and normalcy.
5. The contest was won by normalcy. Trump was convincingly defeated. But so was the mainstream of the Democratic Party, which gained no Senate seats and lost some in the House. The significant role of progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar in abetting Biden’s victory is hardly appreciated by figures like Rep Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) who blames the party’s poor showing on “socialism.” “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again,” she declares, as though support for socialism was a matter of pragmatism or mere rhetoric. “We lost good members because of that [word “socialism”]. If we are classifying Tuesday as a success . . . we will get fucking torn apart in 2022.” Quite possibly the party will tear itself apart, as the Democratic Socialists of America emerge as the progressive alternative to the Neanderthals like Spanberger.
6. The Trump era ends not with his removal as a Russian agent (the initial plan), nor with his imposition of a fascist police state (a prospect over-hyped by some) but with a conventional humiliating electoral defeat. The defeat was obtained at the cost of suppressing—while smugly exploiting—the progressive wing of the Democrats. The election did what it was supposed to do: restore normalcy, re-enforce the default militarism, suppress “socialism” and convey to the world an image of America reuniting confidently after a period of deep division.
It was as much an election to prevent “socialism” as “fascism.” The mainstream of the ruling class wants neither right now, and it continues to make the decisions. Biden is now the face of the ruling class, the bulk of which (Wall Street numbers suggest) is happy to see his victory. Far from being a puppet of the left, as the defeated Moron President warned might happen, he will say “thank you very much, AOC and Ilhan,” before combining with Spanberger to marginalize them. And to proceed with the ongoing bipartisan national patriotic cause of “pushing back” on Russian and Chinese “adversaries” in their near waters—where north Americans in accord with God’s plan should clearly prevail!
The immediate specifically fascist concern (in the real world) is with the center of European neo-fascism, Ukraine, where neo-fascists (in the Svoboda Party and Right Sektor) played key roles in the Feb. 2014 coup organized by Obama’s State Department (to get Ukraine into NATO).
Biden (with his warmongering history) has a very keen interest in Ukraine. Since “foreign policy issues” were generally excluded from discussion during the campaign most people are in fact clueless about this issue. NATO is never problematized by the ruling class parties and their media; people are taught as a matter of the national religious creed that NATO has protected peace and stability in Europe for 70 years. They are encouraged to imagine a Europe without tens of thousands of U.S. occupying military forces falling through its own devices into chaos or under the Soviet boot. Biden as his campaign literature stressed is an advocate of NATO expansion.
There is reason to breathe deep and enjoy the death of a disgusting presidency. Ding-dong the witch is dead! Okay, good. But the stale air of Clinton’s bombing of Serbia (Beau served proudly in Kosovo) and Obama’s bombing of Libya lingers. The contagion of imperialism (to paraphrase somebody) is breathed forth by hell itself unto the world. The sad-eyed, confused looking new president has never repudiated his support for criminal wars. Kamala Harris for her part, who could be president tomorrow, is an AIPAC lackey critical of the Iran Deal and friendly with India’s Modi and the fascist Hinduvatu movement.
One ugly face will fade from view, even if it has to be tugged out of the White House by the Secret Service. But the nightmare is not over. There is no revolutionary party with a strategy, enjoying credibility, to lead anything like a Bolshevik Revolution. There’s no immanent takeover of the Democratic Party by the Democratic Socialists. It will be Biden, then Harris, exuding the status quo. It’s back to normalcy and its own dreamed illusions.
Chen Yun’s pigs stopped eating, then developed a fever. Within a week, all 10,000 on his farm in Jiangxi, in southeast China, had died of African swine fever (ASF). In 2018-19 the virus affected every province and led to the slaughter of half the country’s pigs. The outbreak spread from China to Southeast Asia; the virus, already present in central Europe, reached Belgium in 2018. France and other European nations remain braced for its possible arrival. ASF, which was identified over a century ago, does not infect humans but mortality can be up to 100% among pigs.
To tackle the epidemic, China is favouring farms with at least 500 pigs, following the biosecurity precept that bigger is better. ‘Family farms will tend to disappear in favour of industrial production,’ said Jian Huang, an expert at China’s national pig institute. China is following health advice from international bodies for epizootic diseases (epidemics that affect animals), said Wantanee Kalpravidh, an animal health expert at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO); farms are classified according to their presumed risk of infection, from sector 1, deemed to have the highest level of biosecurity, to sector 4, with the lowest.
The underlying idea is that the spread of viruses is limited when animals are reared in closed buildings or behind fences that prevent contact with wild species that could transmit pathogens, and livestock eat commercially produced feed with sanitary certification rather than feed grown on the farm. Biosecurity regulations govern not only the farm’s hygiene regime (hand-washing, clothing changes before entering buildings, disinfection of vehicles) but the technical and business orientation of the operation. And that raises questions.
The biosecurity approach, which standardises and compartmentalises production methods, fails to take account of the risk created by industrial-scale livestock rearing in confined spaces. Large-scale units are presented as the solution to a problem they helped create. While the destruction of nature and wild habitats, often for industrial purposes, has led to the transmission of new viruses, many studies have shown the acceleration of epizootic diseases also owes much to the industrialisation of livestock farming.
In Thailand, data collected in 2004 indicated that ‘the odds of H5N1 [bird flu] outbreaks and infections were significantly higher in large-scale commercial poultry operations as compared with backyard flocks’. In industrial farming, poor genetic diversity and widespread use of preventative treatments depress immunity to disease, while the geographic concentration of livestock, dense stocking of animals and increased distances they are transported encourage the spread of pathogens.
The recent ASF outbreak is not unique. In the past 30 years, there has been a series of crises in pig breeding: diarrhoea epidemics (scours), dysgenesis (organ malformations) and respiratory syndrome, and H1N1 flu. Bovine TB has reappeared on cattle farms; poultry breeders have encountered new, highly infectious strains of H5N1 flu; and sheep farms have faced a resurgence of the bluetongue virus. According to the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (established in 1924 as the Office International des Épizooties and still referred to as the OIE), the number of livestock epidemics has almost tripled in the past 15 years. This is a danger not only to animals, but also to humans, as some diseases can cross species, notably H5N1 flu, though instances are rarer than once feared.
The FAO’s Kalpravidh said, ‘Producers have to ask themselves, “How many kilos of chicken can I produce? How many eggs?” They have to up production to make more profit and use the surplus revenue to invest in biosecurity.’ This presumption in favour of intensive agriculture worldwide is a form of industrialisation; ‘biosecurity’ is simply a more palatable term for it, making it the unchallengeable frame of reference for a particular social and economic model. And no farm on the planet is exempt.
The bulletin of the French Veterinary Academy, acknowledging the decree from the ministry of agriculture of 8 February 2016, noted, ‘Biosecurity measures became obligatory for poultry farmers with the avian flu of 2015-16. In future, all sectors, whether extensive or intensive, will have to incorporate biosecurity measures.’ It conceded that ways of integrating such measures with transhumance (the seasonal movement of livestock) ‘are yet to be devised’.
Farmers raising animals free-range or for local markets are struggling to survive. Their livestock are subject to the same biosecurity regulations, though they are less exposed to contamination because of less dense stocking and less contact with the outside world. Since 2020, rules in the pork sector have required a 1.3m fence around fields and a visit every two months from an outside contractor to control insects and rats. Anne-Marie Leborgne, a pig breeder in Haute-Garonne, realised that ‘to make a profit after meeting the biosecurity rules, I’d have to raise my prices.’ Just one pig in 20 in France is outdoor-reared. Leborgne, 39, was selling 2,000kg of organic pork a year and working part-time at the school in her village south of Toulouse. Two months after biosecurity training from the local chamber of agriculture, she decided to get out of pig-rearing: ‘I can’t see myself selling many pork chops at €18 a kilo.’
To support biosecurity measures, the regional council in southwest France and the EU offer grants that cover 30% of the cost of materials. But that’s not enough, according to Benoît and Isabelle Dubois, mountain farmers in their 60s rearing pigs on 90 hectares near Brie in the Ariège department. They estimate that, excluding their time and upkeep costs, they would have to spend €400,000 to meet biosecurity standards, more than they have made in 30 years of farming. ‘After we’ve paid our bills, we’re left with €500 each month for us both to live on. Putting up fences in such steep, rocky terrain would be tough.’ They continue to farm on this arid land, but suspect they will be the last to raise pigs here. They don’t offer student work placements as they think it would be unfair to encourage young people to go into a business that’s ‘impossible to make work’.
While free-range operations struggle to comply with biosecurity measures, the economy still works for big producers. During health crises, some producers are exempt from movement restrictions. Only sector 1 operations that comply with security measures and checks can obtain a permit that grants them ‘compartment’ status, defined by the OIE as ‘one or more establishments under a common biosecurity management system containing an animal sub-population with a distinct health status with respect to a specific disease for which required surveillance, control and biosecurity measures have been applied for the purpose of international trade’. All 182 OIE members approved the compartmentalisation principle in 2004, and it later became law in Chile, the US, UK, China, Australia and elsewhere. In February 2006 France issued a decree that favoured big producers.
One such company is France Poultry, a Brittany-based producer formerly known as Doux, which gained compartment status for its 120 affiliated farms in 2017. It slaughters 340,000 birds daily and ships 70-80 containers a week from the port of Brest, 93% for export. The poultry is reared in 35,000-bird units, each bird allotted less space than a sheet of A4 paper. The units belong to subcontractors who work exclusively for France Poultry, complying with strict biosecurity specifications, which, according to CEO François Le Fort, makes them ‘sanitary bubbles’.
But a 2018 study shows that frequent contact between farms in the same compartment creates significant opportunity for virus transmission in a bird flu outbreak. Even if compartmentalisation prevents contamination from wild animals, there are other vectors of disease, such as the staff, air, water and feed. Although all these transmission routes are covered by strict regulations, daily working practices often fall short. Manon Racicot of the University of Montreal’s department of epidemiology selected eight producers in consultation with Quebec’s poultry-breeding associations, and studied how they applied biosecurity protocols. She found 44 repeated mistakes that invalidated claims of biosecurity, including stocking density, confusion between clean and contaminated areas, failure to observe hygiene standards, and employees’ poor understanding of sanitary principles. Sanitary bubbles are a myth.
A biosecurity regime, and the ‘islands’ outside the common law that it creates, threatens the health of animals and humans by setting no upper size limits on big producers. It also represents a democratic deficit, with case-by-case reasoning trumping the common good. The process of recognising a compartment for export involves two stages that transform the authorities into a service provider for industry. A farm must first be approved by its own country’s veterinary authorities. Then, all exporting countries negotiate bilateral agreements with importing countries to have their applicant companies approved.
Diplomacy now flies the flag for private enterprise. The state is no longer supporting its agricultural community, a sector or a regional specialism: it’s becoming an ambassador for brands and their products. When France speaks up for France Poultry’s activities, is it championing public or private interests? The OIE and the ministry of agriculture declined to comment.
I’m one of those kibitzers who supported Joe Biden reluctantly from a distance, mainly because I felt that for both the U.S. and the world, he was the lesser evil. And like many, I breathed a sigh of relief when Biden crossed the 270 electoral vote marker.
Then the political sociologist in me took over as I looked at the electoral breakdown by race.
Whites make up around over 65 percent of the electorate of the US. Surveys show that 57 percent of white voters (56 percent women, 58 percent men) went for Trump, despite everything — his awful mismanagement of the pandemic, his lies, his anti-science attitude, his divisiveness, and his blatant pandering to white nationalist groups like the Nazis, Klan, and Proud Boys.
The electoral coalition that was behind Biden’s win was a minority of whites (42 percent, most likely the people with more years in school), the vast majority of Black voters (87 percent), and a big majority of Latinx voters (66 percent) and Asian American voters (63 percent).
Trump’s support among whites was essentially the same as in 2016, with support from women rising to make up for a slight decline in that of men. White solidarity continues to be disturbingly strong, and, more than opposition to taxes, opposition to abortion, and unqualified defense of the market, it is now the defining ideology of the Republican Party.
How did the party of Abraham Lincoln, author of the Emancipation Proclamation, become so completely opposite of what he stood for?
The Party of White Reaction
Over the last five decades, the key feature of U.S. politics has been the unfolding of a largely race-driven counterrevolution against progressive and liberal politics.
The year 1972, when Richard Nixon beat George McGovern for the presidency, was a watershed, since it marked the success of the Republicans’ “Southern Strategy.” It had been Nixon’s aim to detach the American South from the Democratic Party and place it securely in the Republican camp as a reaction to the Democrats’ moving to embrace — albeit haltingly — the civil rights of Black people.
From 1972, the racist colonization of the Republican Party steadily progressed, reaching a first peak with Ronald Reagan, president from 1981 to 1989, whose extremely effective “dog-whistle” was the “welfare queen,” which whites decoded into “Black woman with lots of children dependent on state support.”
His successor, George H.W. Bush, memorably owed his election to his playing up the charge that his opponent Michael Dukakis, owing to a prison furlough bill the latter had supported as governor of Massachusetts, was “responsible” for a Black man, Willie Horton, going on a weekend leave from which he did not return and went on instead to commit other crimes.
This does not mean, of course, that people flocking to the Republicans during this period did not have other reasons for doing so, like opposition to abortion and to tax increases. There were a variety of reasons, but the central driver of this political migration was racism.
That racist Republican base, the majority of whom still believed as late as December 2017 that former President Obama had been born in Kenya, was the key factor that catapulted Trump to the presidency in 2016 (though Obama’s pro-free trade policies also played a crucial role in costing Hillary Clinton white working class voters in the deindustrialized Midwest states).
Turning Away from Democracy
What Trump has managed over the last few years as president is not so much to transform an already racially polarized electoral arena but to mobilize his racist base extra-electorally, combining dog-whistle race-coded language with rhetorical attacks on “Big Tech” and “Wall Street” (and on the latter, it’s just a matter of time before his followers will start zeroing in on the immigrant Indian roots of some very visible members of Silicon Valley and Wall Street’s elites, like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former Citigroup chief Vikram Pandit.)
That is where the danger lies now: the fascist mobilization of a white population that is in relative decline numbers-wise.
History has shown that when large social groups no longer feel they can win by democratic elections, the temptation towards extra-parliamentary solutions becomes very tempting. As the aggregate minority population in the U.S. moves toward parity in numbers with the white population over the next few decades, white nationalism is likely to become more rather than less popular among whites of all ages and across gender lines.
Many people are wondering why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and most other Republican top dogs aren’t telling Trump to concede, though they most likely know his claims of fraud are bogus. The reason is that they know very well that if they do, Trump’s base would turn against them, endangering their current and future ambitions.
This just goes to show how much Trump and his base have converted the Republican Party into a pliable political instrument, with a leader-base relationship much like the Nazi Party in the Germany of the 1930s.
In fact, Trump is as much a creation of his base as he is creator of that base. What liberal commentators do not understand is that it is not not only a case of Trump whipping up his base for his personal political ends. It is that, but it is much more: that base wants Trump to lie for them and cheat for them and go to hell for them — and if Trump were to stick to the conventions of the transition process, he himself would run the risk of being disowned by them.
For Trump’s people, what is at stake is the maintenance of white supremacy, the enduring material and ideological legacy of the genocide of Native Americans and enslavement of African Americans that are among the key foundational elements of the United States of America. Just as the South was willing to stake everything on the roll of the dice of secession in 1861, a very large part — perhaps the majority of the Republican base — is probably now willing to resort to extra-parliamentary means to stop the tide of equal rights and equal justice for all.
In this connection, the armed pro-Trump convoys that paraded against Black Lives Matter supporters in Portland in September, and the armed band that showed up to intimidate electoral workers counting the votes in Maricopa County, Arizona, on election night, may not be aberrations but a taste of things to come.
It is now evident that the Republicans’ emerging strategy is to refuse any formal concession on Trump’s part and boycott the inaugural ceremonies, then mobilize against the Biden administration as “illegitimate,” paralyzing it over the next four years.
I hate to spell this out, but the current mood in the U.S. approximates that of civil war, and it may just be a matter of time before one side, the Trump forces, translates that mood into something more threatening, more ugly.
Can Biden’s victory be the equivalent of Lincoln’s in the elections of 1860, which led the white South to support the secession spearheaded by the slave-owning aristocracy? Lincoln’s words unfortunately ring true today as they did then: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
The atrocities faced by the Muslim community adversely affects their mental well-being
“It doesn’t matter if we have a stable job or not, if we’re economically independent; the fear of getting arrested purely due to our religion never stops.”
Khadijha from Mushidabad
“My past experiences with a mental health practitioner were unproductive and mentally tiring. If the people who are supposed to help us do not understand the oppression we face, how will we ever be able to share our uncertainties in a non-judgmental setting?”
Javed from Bhopal
Khadijha and Javed, and many more like them, craved a safe space to voice the daily and multiple injustices and discrimination they faced. They needed to communicate their anxieties freely.
The last few decades have witnessed a relentless assault on the rights of members of minority communities or oppressed castes in India. But there has been little or no attention given to the state of mental health in these communities. No studies have been conducted to analyze the correlation between State’s actions and its effect on the mental health of the Muslim community.
In an effort to reach out and create a safe space for members of the Muslim people to speak out, Bebaak Collective organized a discussion with people from eight states in India between 8th – 22nd September 2020. The discussion was an eye-opener. People from all over the country communicated their struggles in the current climate, and how much of an emotional impact it had on them. Several participants expressed how connected they felt in a space that didn’t seek to isolate them, and instead related to their problems they had to suffer through.
Despite living in a secular country, the discrimination and deprivation faced by members of the Muslim community, is well documented. The recent Shaheen Bagh protest verdict is a prime example of the manner in which the Muslim community suffered at the hands of the State through a wide number of policies and laws. The protest, which drew Muslim women from all over India, was historically monumental. Muslim women, who face both religious and gender oppression, came together to protect their rights and protest discriminatory laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act. Even after being relentlessly threatened, these women came out as protestors for the first time ever.
However, the State prohibited any public disturbance and blockage of the streets during a protest, completely overlooking the concerns of the minority and instead addressed the “inconvenience” faced by the unaffected public. Every time a marginalized body comes forward to speak for its community, they are repressed by the authorities and booked under draconian laws like UAPA. There have been many instances during NRC protests and Delhi riots where Muslim activists, academics and the youth have been discriminated and targeted by the police.
This systemic oppression simply due to their Muslim identity, has negatively impacted the mental well-being of the community.
Where are the voices of Muslim women? How long will we allow Islamophobic men to make our decisions for us? When will the State finally recognize our cognitive autonomy?
The continuous lack of justice and incarceration of community leaders have left us in a constant state of frustration and fear. We have no outlet to vent out our worries – the State has created a situation where our community feels completely isolated from the rest of the country. Something as little as forwarding a message which is critical of the government, is looked upon as anti-nationalist. All these incidents have immensely impacted the community’s mental health.
Given the harsh economic situation in India, accessing mental health services has become a privilege rather than a medical necessity for a majority. The situation is exacerbated for a significant proportion of Muslims who are not financially secure. Besides, other structural barriers hamper our ability to afford quality mental healthcare. In a report by National Statistical Office, it was revealed that literacy rate for Muslim women in India was lower than women of any other religion. Muslims also have the highest proportion of youth (age 3-35 years) who have never enrolled in formal education programs. These barriers limit the community’s opportunities to gain proper employment, and thus many end up getting stuck in the poverty cycle.
Even if Muslims are able to afford therapy, they end up facing more obstacles. The mental health industry often operates from a space of neutrality while trying to make a diagnosis and provide an intervention. However, it fails to recognize the mental stress that comes from institutionalized structures of oppression against minorities. By calling itself neutral, the industry ends up hiding it’s Islamophobic and anti-caste views. Often, mental health practitioners tend to only focus on the classification of our mental illnesses, and don’t explore the psychosocial causes behind the same.
As Javed mentioned before, many psychologists fail to recognize the struggles that derive form belonging to an oppressed community. They often undermine their issues and make it seem as if meds are the only solution to their problems. Javed had to repeatedly explain his frustration with the discriminatory policies, but instead he faced a wall when the psychologist refused to make the sessions political, and ended up removing his safe-space to communicate his worries.
It is essential that we start having these important political discussions in an attempt to provide marginalities with the much needed community care. Until mental health practitioners understand the vast struggles that the Muslim community faces, many from the community will refuse to seek help. If we want to break the stigma against mental health, and stop the myth of selfishness that comes with the concept of self-care, then we need to start observing, accepting and working towards the injustice that the minorities have been facing, in order to provide them with better mental healthcare.
“The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.” Edward Dowling
Of late we have been seeing many articles lamenting the role of the Press and Media in today’s society and complaining how it is no longer objective and principled but seems to be more a propaganda machine than anything else. I thought it therefore necessary to try to put things in perspective so that we can recognize what is really happening to our world. That way we will either take the trouble to change matters or at least see how entirely expected and appropriate the role of the media and press is, under the circumstances.
The play Mouse Trap is the longest running play in history. It has been going on since 1947. But strangely the ending is always the same. Now isn’t that very peculiar? Or is it really quite understandable because though the actors have changed since 1947, the script is the same and so no matter which actor comes, he or she is forced to speak the same lines and so the play begins in the same way and the ending is the same.
I would like you to remember this analogy while I recall a quick history lesson. Once upon a time there was a multi-national company, run from a warehouse in London where its Board sat. It sent out its managers at first to trade with Indian kings. They took permission to build trading posts, then permission to recruit a small force to secure their goods. Gradually these trading posts metamorphosed into forts, the security guards into a private army and the country managers into Governors. The enslavement of India was well on its way, before the Indian leadership such as there was, even woke up to the fact. That India was more a geography than a political reality at the time was no doubt helpful to those who had a more global view. Robert Clive, Country Manager, British East India Company, waged war, annexed independent states and assassinated their legitimate heads and installed his own Agents to administer what had been in effect independent countries in their own right.
Beautiful mausoleums
It was the so-called ‘Mutiny’ of 1857, which only the last of the Great Mughals, Bahadur Shah Zafar had the courage to call by its real name, ‘The Indian War of Independence’, that brought in the British Crown. The slavery of India did not end; however, we just changed our owners. Bahadur Shah Zafar was accused of treason and banished from the land of his forefathers. He defended his position and pointed out that it was he, who was the king of the land, not the British East India Company and so he could not possibly have committed treason against himself. It was the Company Sahib (note the address of respect, enforced on India) which was the intruder into a land where they came to trade and stayed to rule. Of course, the plea fell on the deaf ears of the British East India Company’s judge and Bahadur Shah Zafar was banished from the home of his forefathers forever.
Cut to 2020; a century and a half later and what do we see? The names have changed. The actors have changed but the script is the same and so the play continues. The objectives are the same and so are the methods; grabbing raw material, fuel, land, labor, power and markets in any way possible using any means at one’s disposal and treating any attempt by the rightful owners at self defense as rebellion, to be crushed mercilessly with overwhelming force. The foundation of this method is of course even more ancient. The industrial-military complex and its methodology for global domination is first recorded more than 2000 years ago in the annals of the history of the Roman Empire. The Empire is long gone, but ideology outlasts its proponents and so the lessons have been learned and are being practiced. The centurion replaced by the present-day soldier performing the same role; following orders from on high.
The world however has changed in some ways in that public opinion does have a bigger say in things, than used to be the case with the Romans or the British Empire. So, thought-steering evolved to a fine art. That and the art of influencing others by means of repeating a lie over and over. Lessons once again learnt from a master, the head of Hitler’s Propaganda Ministry, Goebbels. Only, we are not silly enough to call it Propaganda Ministry. Instead we call it the Free Press. The lie becomes the truth. The victim deserves to die, and the law is a handmaiden of the tyrant, designed to give his every action the veneer of legitimacy.
The New World Order is well on its way to achieving its aim of global domination, called by yet another harmless, even benevolent sounding name, Globalization.
Just reflect a bit on this: what differentiates a Corporation from a Democracy?
Seattle, Bezo’s …..
Corporation
1. Hereditary or nominated head
2. Absolute authority of leadership
3. If people don’t like the leader, they have to leave
4. Attempts at asserting equality, freedom or questioning decisions are seen as Opposition = Rebellion = Treason = Punishment = ‘Death’: Firing
5. Master plan for everyone. Others must align to it
6. Freedom is anathema except for the top leadership. Everyone else is free only to follow orders, couched in nice language.
7. Test of success = alignment to values.
8. Mark of a leader = Can break unions.
9. Mark of a trouble maker = represents the people = Union leader.
10. Inequality is accepted even expected
11. Corporations seek to influence consumers
12. Media/Press = the PR Agency. It sings the official tune, its success lies in its ability to influence minds by interpreting (not reporting) facts, it invents language to ensure that all official actions appear good and all opposition to them appears bad: Freedom fighter = insurgent/terrorist; dead civilians = collateral damage; genocide = ethnic cleansing; murder = encounter.
Its job is to ensure that the establishment always appears to be noble, good, pious and kind; no matter what it does. It can never be objective.
Democracy
1. Elected head
2. Participatory authority
3. If people don’t like the leader, the leader must leave
4. Collective bargaining & decision making is encouraged.
5. Citizens participate in leadership. Questioning & Opposition: Signs of a healthy democracy.
6. Participatory master planning open to change as necessary
7. Equality and freedom are sacred; supported and defended by the constitution
8. Constituents are citizens, equal participants in the future of the collective. Citizens are free, even encouraged to influence the government
9, Democracies seek to consult citizens. Media/Press is the agent of the people. It gives them a voice, it encourages debate, it provides space for dialogue, it encourages divergent ideas and ideologies, it reports facts and it questions authority and official decisions.
10. It is the interface between the government and citizens and by its role it tells the government what the people really want . It keeps authoritative tendencies in check by its ability to expose them and redresses the wrongs committed by those in power.
Corporations see people as consumers. Democracies have citizens
I can go on, but I won’t. I will leave you to add to this list as you wish. Those of you who have read Collins & Porras’, Built to Last will recall the reasons for greatness that they cite for what they call ‘Visionary Companies’. Among them, ‘Total Alignment to a Core Ideology and Cult-like Cultures’ are most critical. The single most critical need for a Cult-like Culture is a profusion of mindless followers, who will do what they are told, without question. That is what alignment is all about. And incidentally that is what the fascist state also needs. The success of the corporation is measured by how it can increase shareholder value. This is a direct result of high profits through good margins or high volumes or both. Everything else is subordinate to that goal.
That is the reason why in British India, the British rulers forced the farmers of North India to grow indigo instead of food and precipitated a famine that resulted more than two million deaths. But the commercial success of the venture justified the cost in human lives. Especially when they were not British lives but those of some nameless poor black people in ‘that colony of ours’. Similarly, to create a market for the produce of the cloth mills of Yorkshire, the vibrant textile industry of Northern and Central India was deliberately destroyed including the smashing of looms and the amputation of the thumbs of master weavers. Millions of small weavers were reduced to penury overnight. And the cloth from Yorkshire had a free entry into the huge Indian market. After one must wear clothes, no matter their origin. It is not an accident that Gandhiji took Swadeshi as his slogan, burnt his British clothes, and donned the dhoti. He used the spinning wheel as his symbol and spun thread and made khadi cotton cloth. Unlike many today, he knew his history very well and was a master at putting his finger on the nerve that hurt the most.
[Suggested reading: Anarchy, by William Dalrymple]
Corporatizing of Democracy: The Totalitarian State
The ideal situation for the corporation is when the state becomes a corporation. Then the head of state is proudly called a ‘CEO’. Productivity is at a peak, trains run on time, there is no disruption of work, students study, workers work, teachers teach their subject exclusively, parents condition the next generation properly and all government is left to those who walk the corridors of power. Indeed, this is as it should be and all is right with the ant colony. It is not accidental that countries like China, Israel and even Pakistan have long had most favored nation status with the US/Europe but India (when we were part of the Non-Aligned Movement: what an appropriate name it was!) did not. Those were the days when the trade union movement was vibrant though for those who worked for corporations this was something of a problem. Then came the criminalization (totalitarian control) of trade unions by political parties who floated their own unions and eventually trade union activity became a memory.
The Corporation is interested in one thing only as I mentioned: maximizing profit. Social, religious, or political ideologies are of no interest to it in any way except in terms of how they support its goal. In most recent times, Afghanistan was invaded because the Taliban were too dumb to play ball and insisted on giving the rights to build a gas pipeline to a South American company. Iraq was invaded because Saddam refused to play ball and insisted on selling his oil for Euros and not dollars. Consequently, he met a fate the purpose of which was to also put the fear of god into his brothers who are also sitting on oil reserves. Nobody can accuse them of being slow on the uptake, so they welcomed the killer of Saddam with open arms, dancing girls, falcon hunts, gifts of jewelry and what-have-you. In return they got promises of arms aid for which they pay first and then wait to see if the arms do come. Arms to do what, you may ask. Take 3 guesses, I will reply.
Of course, the PR (Free Press!!) was hard at work talking about the repressive regime of the Taliban and the well hidden Weapons of Mass Destruction of Iraq. The fact that among the ‘friends’ of the Corporate State are others who are even more repressive than the Taliban is immaterial and naturally goes unreported. That the Weapons of Mass Destruction were so well hidden that they were never found is brushed aside. The saddest part was to see how even the best and most noble prostitute themselves to be in the good books of the Corporate State, when none other than Colin Powell stood before the United Nations and lied through his teeth.
Above all the corporation needs order. It calls it by many names; peace, harmony, goodness for all mankind, but what it really needs is order. The fastest and surest way to create order is using overwhelming force. Zero tolerance. All protest, debate, demonstrations, criticism, and ‘confusion’ must be eliminated to get silence and order. Corporations and corporate language find immediate resonance in the military because many if not most of modern corporate thinking has roots in military command theory. That is the reason why if you read the history of the development of any fascist totalitarian rule, you will find that the first collaborators of fascist rulers are always industrialists, businessmen; in short those who run corporations. For it is they who understand and empathize with the fascist leader the best.
When Hitler took control of Germany it was the industrialists and businessmen who supported him. So also, Mussolini was supported in Italy and many others whose names you well know. Many examples are present in our time today and need not be mentioned as they are clearly visible and known to all of us. The question is what do we want to do?
Corporations are the most undemocratic structures in the world and stand for the exact opposite of all democratic values. However now we have a problem. And that is, what do we do with public opinion if we express the truth as I have done? The solution is language. Say the same thing but differently.
So the Voice of the Corporation (their Media/Press companies) talks of freedom (they mean freedom to obey), equality (you are exactly equal to the next man on the assembly line), meeting aspirations (provided you keep your head to the corporate grinding wheel for 30 years first), progress (corporate goals are being met) and welfare (good living conditions for the enforcers). Crime and patriotism are both redefined. Any action that seeks to slow down or change the corporate goal is a crime. Any opposition to official ideology is treason. Patriotism is not love of and loyalty to the country but loyalty to the government of the day. Criticism is defined as disloyalty. Curtailing of freedom and human rights are justified in the interest of security.
In order to get people to not just agree to their freedoms being curtailed and human rights being reduced and violated, terror is used by the state or its agencies so that fear crazed people will come running into the open arms of the police asking for protection and gladly ratify the most draconian laws which imprison their minds, tongues and actions. Security is inversely proportional to functionality. People are taught this valuable lesson so that they tamely accept hours of waiting for flights, strange security guards delving into their most personal belongings and their probing hands and eyes rampaging all over their bodies, ostensibly searching for hidden arms.
People who have learnt these lessons also learn to keep their mouths shut even if they do not actively support legislation legalizing torture, murder, detention without cause and disappearances in the night. And those who do not learn this lesson become examples whose fate enables others to learn.
Freedom of expression is a very well rehearsed charade. The Corporate State allows you to say whatever you want and to hold demonstrations of as many people as you want. This serves two important ends: it supports the illusion of freedom of speech and allows people a way of letting off steam so that there isn’t enough buildup to bring about fundamental change. This also allows the Corporate State the opportunity to identify potential threats to itself and to take care of them later once the noise has subsided and all the demonstrators have gone back to their TV screens and popcorn. Then the Corporate State does what it intended to do anyway. The Iraq war, Tiananmen Square massacre in China, and many others are all good examples.
There are many others, but I will leave you to think of them. The same is the case of Judicial Enquiries where compliant judges sign on dotted lines and the case is always closed in favor of the Corporate State. Ask, when was the last time that the State was indicted in a Judicial Enquiry and its agents went to jail?
Seattle night view
The last thing that a Corporate State needs is a thinking, questioning, middle class that has options. So, it seeks to remove them and to change their situation where the people are completely dependent on the state which then becomes the best way of controlling them. Financial meltdowns, whether they are deliberately engineered, or the result of excessive greed are a very useful tool to bring the middle class down to earth. It is the middle class which loses the shirt on its collective back and has its homes repossessed and suddenly higher goals like freedom, liberty and human rights have to be subordinated to the immediate goal of putting food on the table or ensuring a roof overhead. After the meltdown, the Corporate State steps in with its bail-out plans, all neatly packaged with a veritable spaghetti of strings attached. All sensible people fall in line. Those who protest or worse, seek to show others the reality are struck down, often by their own badly frightened compatriots. If they escape that fate, the Corporate State removes them from circulation for the common good, silently watched by the mute majority.
Ask, in the last meltdown who suffered the most? Corporate heads who were responsible for the meltdown or the middle class who were their faithful employees? Ask, how is it that heads of corporations which went bankrupt went home with multi-million dollar pay and bonus packages? What are these rewards for? Ask, who are the direct and immediate beneficiaries of the bailout packages? Ask, how many corporate heads lost their jobs or suffered pay cuts or lost their homes in the financial meltdown? Ask, where were the decisions that created the meltdown taken, in board rooms or on the assembly line? Ask, yet who is the one who lost the shirt on his back and the roof over his head?
The Corporate State is a great supporter of technology. It funds and supports without limit all research that enables it to control the people better and more powerfully. The official line of course is that this is in the interest of the people themselves to better be able to protect them from harm. Anyone thinking of raising his voice against more and more invasive surveillance is silenced by his own people. Some amazing technological developments are being mentioned. Bugs with solar powered cameras which will transmit real-time images and audio to a satellite which will beam it back to a central console monitoring the doings of the target group. The term ‘fly-on-the-wall’ suddenly has a quite different and sinister meaning. Satellite maps that pinpoint your home, car, and yourself exactly and can track your every move. Cell phones, credit cards, ID cards, retina scans all to identify you positively and to track your every move. Once again, I won’t go on.
The point is that the vast majority of research and development that is currently going on is not in the areas of health, food production, environmental protection, education or economic development but in the area of what is euphemistically called ‘security systems. In fact, these are not security systems but surveillance systems, control systems and more sinister systems which all dovetail to focus on the overarching goal of enhancing the hold of the Corporate State on the world.
What can we do?
What the Corporate State cannot stand is the light of day on its activities. And so accurate reporting of facts, shining the light of enquiry on shady deals, asking the unasked, speaking the unsaid and raising your voice against injustice right at its inception. Technology today gives us the ability to do all of this without depending on the Corporate Media to give us space. We know they will never do that, but we don’t need them today. Thanks to the internet, camera mobiles, and the ability to upload images and text from almost anywhere, it is possible today to ensure that at least those who are interested can see the side of the picture that mouthpieces of the establishment have been hiding.
Ultimately to act or to sit and watch is the decision of the individual. We cannot force anyone to act. What we can and must do however is to ensure that people have access to correct information so that they can make good decisions. What we can and must do is to ensure that critical questions are asked and brought into the debate so that people can demand more and better information from the agencies of the Corporate State.
Whether they get that information or not immediately is not the issue. When they start asking the questions this in itself will generate positive trends where citizens will stop acting like consumers and start to exercise some of their rights. The right to information is one. The right to justice is another. I believe that as citizens of democracies, no matter how flawed, if we can enforce accountability by sharing information and asking questions we will have achieved a great deal in ensuring that men and women can still walk free in the land, long after we are gone.
Organ donation is when a person allows an organ of theirs to be removed, legally, either by consent while the donor is alive or after the death of the donor with the approval of the near relative (Tamuli et al., 2019). Transplantations are the next that follow organ donations that include kidney, heart, liver, pancreas, intestines, lungs, bones, bone marrow, skin, and cornea (Tamuli et al., 2019). Globally, organ transplantation has saved thousands of lives (Ramadurg & Gupta, 2014). One may donate his/her organs like kidney and tissues like part of the liver, pancreas, lungs, and intestines during the life course. However, most of the organ donations occur only from a deceased donor (Tamuli et al., 2019).
The Transplantation of Human Organs Act was first established in India (1994) and was later amended in 2011, provides a legal and transparent system for organ donation in India (Shroff, 2009). In 2015, the health ministry of India announced a policy mechanism to facilitate the cadaver organ donation to address institutional roadblocks further. Nevertheless, almost 500,000 individuals die each year because of the lack of organ availability, primarily due to a limited number of organ donors in the country. Additionally, the World Health Organization (WHO) states that only about 0.01% Indian population donates their organs after death, whereas 70-80% of the Western country people pledge their organs (G et al., 2018). Globally, it has been identified that the attitudes of people towards organ donation are affected by factors such as awareness, education, and religion. This could be attributed to the fear and distrust among people about organ donation owing to religious attitudes, superstitions, and proper knowledge and understanding of organ donation (Jagadeesh et al., 2018).
The Crucial Role of Cultural and Religious Beliefs on Organ Donation
The religious and cultural perspective on organ donation among different communities is one of the challenges limiting the practice of organ donation. It is well-known that these beliefs play a crucial role in behaviour and decision-making regarding organ donation in religious countries, particularly in Asian regions. Religion is a significant influencing factor that governs the public’s attitude and practices towards organ donation. No religion officially bans organs from being donated or obtained or is against transplantation from living or deceased donors. The explanation for the lower score among Hindus may probably be because of their strong belief in a continuous cycle of birth and rebirth. However, some South Asian Muslim scholars (ulemas) and jurists (muftis) reject the concept and practice of organ donation from both living and deceased donors because they believe in the human body as an “Amanat” (trusteeship) from God and should therefore not be profaned after death (G et al., 2018 & Mostafazadeh-Bora et al., 2017).
Lack of information on legal and procedural details of organ donation
Another important barrier to organ donation is the lack of awareness among healthcare professionals on the legal and procedural details of organ donation. The lack of knowledge and awareness of organ donations, religious attitudes and superstitious beliefs has created fear and distrust in the minds of ordinary people and terminally ill patients. Health care practitioners should theoretically be the most trained group in the field of donation of live and cadaveric organs. In the organ procurement process, this community is the most decisive link since they are the first individuals to develop a relationship with the potential living or cadaveric donor family and should be able to activate the organ donation choice (Jagadeesh et al., 2018).
Distrust towards the health care system: The largest barrier to organ donation
Studies reveal that mistrust in the donation process is one of the main barriers stopping individuals from donating their organs after death. This mistrust could potentially stem from various causes, including perceptions that physicians are more concerned with their financial well-being than the health of patients, and negative media coverage of physicians and their practices. The same study suggested greater openness in the relationships between doctor and patient, and more time dedicated to informing the patient about the organ donation and organ transplantation process, as a strategy that reduces this mistrust. These findings illustrate the need for improved relationships between the donor-family and the donor-physician (Jagadeesh et al., 2018).
Role of family knowledge, perception, and support in organ donation
A cross-sectional study conducted in coastal South India among skilled drivers infers that the major hindrance for organ donation is the lack of family support and mistrust of the health care system, as shown by the concern that donated organs would be used for medical research and would not meet those who need it most. Families with favourable donation information and mindset criteria had a ten times greater probability of providing consent to donate their deceased next to kin’s organs (Melino, 2014).
What can be done?
To overcome the barriers to a successful organ donation request, effective communication along with education, awareness, and mass campaigns can prove to be useful. Communication includes engaging with families in a manner that offers ample information to make an informed- decision about the option of donating an organ. Families often need to be prepared for the order. It is essential to address critical subjects, such as brain deaths, how the body is treated, burial arrangements, patient desires for donation, donation costs, and providing comparative statistics on the benefits of donating an organ (Siminoff et al., 2015). Rising consent and conversion rates for transplantable organs is one promising strategy to reduce the difference between the need for organ donation and availability. The lack of awareness or expertise individuals have about organ donation is a significant obstacle frequently cited for the low consent rates. A popular approach to educate or enlighten a target audience is to communicate in mass the potential benefits of adherence to a healthy practice or to communicate the potential risks of non-compliance. In pro-social health areas, many advertising campaigns are also accompanied by grassroots or interpersonal messages of power. Registry cards are made available in the case of organ donation and brochures are disseminated that inform participants about donation. Campaigns that use interpersonal communication efforts to help media campaigns are projected to be more successful than the media alone. Hence, an effective communication strategy on organ donation can aid in eliminating negative attitudes and create a conducive atmosphere for organ donation among the driver population.
Australia has given the world two influential and disruptive exports in the field of media. One, currently in London’s Belmarsh Prison, is facing the prospect of extradition to the United States for charges that could see him serve a 175 year sentence in a brutal, soul destroying supermax. The other, so the argument goes, should also be facing the prospect of incarceration for what he has done to politics in numerous countries. But media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the gruesome presence behind Fox News and News Corp, is unlikely to spend time in a cell any time soon. The same cannot be said for Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.
Ingratiatingly, politicians have made the journey of pilgrimage to the not-so-holy Murdoch to keep in his good books. Disgracefully, though motivated by perceived necessity, British Labour’s Tony Blair wooed Murdoch prior to the 1997 UK general election he was to win. The victory for New Labour led to an association between Blair and Murdoch that was, according to former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil, “almost incestuous”.
Blair’s kowtowing did its magic. As former deputy editor of TheSun, Neil Wallis, recalls in the first instalment of the documentary series The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, he was flayed by Murdoch for initially running what he called a “fairly standard” front page on the election. This was the same paper that boastfully declared on April 11, 1992, that, “It’s The Sun Wot Won It.” Labour, then led by Neil Kinnock, was favoured in the polls to defeat John Major’s weary, dysfunctional Conservatives. Murdoch, and his paper, would have none of it. On election day, the paper’s headline bellowed: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”
By 1997, attitudes had changed. Wallis recalls entering his office after editing the first edition. Murdoch called: “Hated your paper this morning,” he raged. “Two or three minutes later my door opens, Rupert comes up and says ‘you’re getting this wrong. You’ve got this totally wrong. We are not just backing Tony Blair but we are going to back the Labour party and everything he does in this campaign 200%. You’ve got to get that right.”
The paper’s endorsement for Blair followed but came with its pound of tantalising flesh. Blair was required to write a puff piece for the paper promising a referendum should he wish Britain to embrace the Euro currency. Former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, forever associated with the Brexit campaign and Murdoch worship, saw this intervention as crucial. “The price of Rupert Murdoch’s support for Tony Blair was that Blair promised he would not take us into the European currency without a referendum, and if Rupert Murdoch had not done that we would have joined the Euro in 1999 and I doubt Brexit would have happened.”
In a 2016 study published in Social Science Research, the authors found that The Sun’s endorsement for Labour in 1997 led to a boost of support in the order of 7%. In 2010, the same paper’s return to backing the Conservatives increased support by 15%. Even if these figures were to be scaled back significantly, they would still suggest a degree of staggering influence.
It is precisely such power that has become something of an obsession for former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. Rudd has never resiled from the view that Murdoch was directly responsible for his demise. True, his own knife-wielding colleagues in the Australian Labor Party, addled by negative poll ratings, were happy to do the deed, but it was Murdoch who sang the tune of encouragement. At the launch of his second volume of autobiography in 2018, Rudd claimed that Murdoch “is ideologically, deeply conservative, deeply protective of his corporation’s commercial interests and, therefore, prosecutes a direct agenda through his newspapers which I’ve been on the receiving end [of].”
Another former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, albeit from the conservative side of politics, is also convinced, having become something of a crusader against Murdoch and his foot soldiers. On the ABC’s Insiders program, he warned of the costs accruing to Australia in permitting the dominance of Murdoch’s press imperium. “We have to work out what price we’re paying, as a society, for the hyper-partisanship of the media.” He cast his eye to the United States “and the terribly divided state of affairs that they’re in, exacerbated, as Kevin [Rudd] was saying, by Fox News and other right-wing media.”
This had led to an alliance of sorts between the two men on this point, despite Turnbull’s previous description of Rudd as one of those “miserable ghosts” that haunt politics after the fact. A wiser Turnbull understands Rudd that much better after his own party initiated a palace coup, leading to the ascent of Australia’s current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison.
While an online petition against the dominance of the Murdoch press imperium seems like peashooter stuff, Rudd’s initiative has gathered momentum. His petition, now tabled in Australia’s Parliament, specifically calls for a royal commission “to ensure the strength and diversity of Australian news media.” Having received 501,876 signatures, it notes concern “that Australia’s print media is overwhelmingly controlled by News Corporation, founded by Fox News billionaire Rupert Murdoch, with around two-thirds of daily newspaper readership.” Australians holding views contrary to the Murdoch line “have felt intimidated into silence.” Adding to this such matters as the “mass-sackings of news journalists,” the stripping influence of digital platforms on media diversity, News Corp’s closure of 200 smaller newspapers after their acquisition and “relentless attacks on the ABC’s independence and funding”, the picture is bleak.
The petition’s tabling caused a flutter of interest in Parliament. While Murdoch is unlikely to break out into sweat at efforts made by Australia’s politicians to investigate his reach of influence, any inquiry will be irritating. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young is certainly hoping to cause a stir, having pushed members of the Senate to establish an inquiry into media diversity in response to Rudd’s petition. “Australians have become increasingly concerned about the concentration of media ownership and the power and political influence of Murdoch.” The Senator is also keen to see the two former prime ministers “speak frankly and have the protection of parliamentary privilege, which is important when you’re talking about issues of power and influence”.
Murdoch’s hirelings are ready. Unfortunately for Hanson-Young, the News Corp imperium is skilled in camouflaging inertia against change with promises of activity. The inquiry’s terms of reference are also shallow, omitting any reference to News Corp Australia while calling for an examination of the “state of media diversity, independence and reliability in Australia and the impact that this has on public interest journalism and democracy.”
News Corp Australia’s executive chairman, Michael Miller, was cool in his statement, noting that the company had participated in at least nine previous media inquiries. “As always, we will continue to constructively engage in these important conversations.” Murdoch will be hoping that the conservative Morrison government, and a good number of Labor opposition figures, will not go wobbly in preventing change. History may well prove him right. Again.
