Too busy to write a
post today, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to publicise my
forthcoming lecture and discussion on my book. Its at Kings College, Bush House,
44-46 Aldwych, London at 7pm on 23rd May. I’m lucky to have Rachel
Shabi, contributor at the Guardian and Professor Aeron Davis, Deputy
Head of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths
University of London to lead the discussion. The lecture is organised
by The Progressive Economy Forum, and further details are here.
In the lecture I
want to focus on three big lies told by politicians but also aided
and abetted by the media. By big I mean lies that led to profound changes in most peoples lives or how we are governed. The first was austerity, where most of the
media ignored mainstream economics and pushed the nonsensical idea
that we should reduce the deficit in the middle of a recession. The
second was the 2015 election, where the slowest recovery for
centuries and unprecedented falling real wages were sold as a strong
economy. The third was immigration, where scare stories in the right
wing press fueled fears in parts of the country that had seen very
little immigration. Together with similar disinformation about the
EU, this culminated in Brexit, where one part of the media acted as
propagandists and the other part balanced truth with lies.
These lies did not
come out of nowhere. They were part of what I call neoliberal
overreach, by which I mean using political deceit on a grand scale to
pursue neoliberal ideas. William Hague when leader of the opposition
talked about the UK becoming a ‘foreign land’. Neoliberals had no
interest in curbing immigration beyond its ability to capture votes.
Once in government you had austerity, which used deceit about the
imperative of reducing the deficit to shrink the state. I discuss the
extent to which even Brexit can be included as neoliberal overreach.
Deceit requires lying to the public in a major way, which was only
made possible by the support of the right wing press and the
broadcast media turning a blind eye.
It is free (of
course) but you do need to book your ticket here
Hope to see you there, .
.
I'm not so sure about the media ignoring mainstream economics on austerity. Lots of respectable economists prescribed austerity after 2008. Indeed, even the IMF prescribed austerity after the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and for Greece after 2008. Austerity for poor countries and deficit spending for rich countries hardly seems fair.
ReplyDeleteSo in an article on “The Lies We Were Told” there is an assertion based upon zero evidence that.
ReplyDelete“Neoliberals had no interest in curbing immigration beyond its ability to capture votes.”
The hypocrisy is breathtaking.