Empire Socialism Part 2

Wishing never made it so

One of the things that you constantly encounter when discussing these topics is what seems to be a wilful blindness to the consequences of policies and ideas in the world where the rest of us live. You also get the very strange phenomenon where a story is made up with a sleight of hand, the classic one being how certain MPs were attacked for their ethnicity (while ignoring the trauma black MPs went and are still going through). The members of their party were not the source of the abuse, but the story is told, without actually lying but missing bits of it out, like it was. The crowning irony is also that some of the attacks pointed to came way before the now beleaguered Corbyn was leader.

Empire socialists have a story that sounds nice and convincing. They are the heroes and every little tiny detail that can be used to construct their dishonest narrative and undermine the people they disagree with is fine. After a while they repeat the edited version of what actually happened so many times they can say it all very convincingly, and maybe even come to believe what they say.

It’s magical thinking, and doublethink writ large, the actual suffering of real human beings is ignored because it doesn’t fit their agenda. It’s actually very difficult to understand if you are a progressive person. Why would folks deliberately harm the chances of change actually happening if they’re sincere about making the world a better place? Why would they triangulate (see later) their principles for a temporary advantage that probably won’t work long?

One reason. Power. And, of course, preventing people they’re scared of from gaining power themselves and changing things. Later in this essay we will discuss the modern version of the labour aristocracy, who know better than we do and will do almost anything to prevent us having a voice. The drive to keep things as they are is a conservative approach, and the middle class terror in the face of working class people not needing to be told what to do in order to make real change for the better.

The other thing magical thinking gives is the illusion of control, the semblance of power. It’s embarrassingly obvious that often decades of arrogance and neglect of the people they claim to represent mean there is no basis for the…