An awful irony when you consider that for over fifty years, the
‘free world’ waged a war that almost destroyed us in order, we were
told, to defend us. But now, in order to justify this frontal assault
on ‘democracy’ an enemy like none ever seen before, had to be created.
“It’s possible that through a tyranny of small decisions, we could make a nightmare society”.[2]
This
new ‘enemy’ like the former vanquished one was not created overnight,
an entire edifice had to be constructed, one piece at a time with the
‘alien’ at its heart. ‘Un-British’ in appearance and allegedly also
possessing ‘un-British values’, that it to say, non-Christian and by
default non-white, the Muslim fits the role perfectly. Moreover, for
over a century, the Arab (read Muslim), cunning, devious and utterly
alien in culture and values, has formed the basis for a mythology that
found it echoed first in popular fiction and later in movies. Thus a
handy ‘hook’ already existed on which to hang the current scapegoat.
There
is no doubt that the corporate and state media played a pivotal role in
the creation of this ‘enemy within’ but without a physical expression
such as bomb plots and other increasingly outlandish acts, or more
precisely, threats of attacks, convincing a public which had lived
through three decades of REAL IRA bombings without feeling so
threatened, it required a new strategy based upon the existence of
seemingly irrational individuals, the ‘suicide bomber’, against which
the only defence is, we are told, an almost complete ‘lock-down’ of the
population through the use of arbitrary arrests and detentions and the
use of scare tactics including alleged gas attacks, alleged home-made
nuclear weapons, alleged biological agents, indeed an entire armoury of
the most outlandish devices against which the only defence is, we are
told, is the creation of the total surveillance state.
The
media’s role in this state-inspired conspiracy was to demonise a
convenient, that is to say, easily recognizable section of society, the
Muslim, the new ‘alien within’. Bearded and be-robed and already
ghettoised by an institutionally racist society, they became the focus
of a hate campaign that has ominous echoes of an earlier period in
European history. Over the past year, almost 23,000 people have been
stopped and searched under ‘anti-terror’ laws, specifically Section 44
of the infamous 2000 Terrorism Act. No reason is required, merely a
policeman’s whim is sufficient cause. Only 27 individuals have been
charged under anti-terror laws as a result but the impact on the Asian
community has been devastating, further alienating an already alienated
section of society. And, as even the police themselves admit, the
results have been totally counter-productive.[3]
Even assuming
that the country is crawling with terrorists bent on destroying
‘Western civilisation’ (although how setting off a few home-made bombs
achieves this end is never explained), the contradictions of the
state’s deliberately engineered hysterical response to this alleged
threat to ‘civilisation’ makes no sense unless there is a hidden agenda
about which we are not informed.
If a country like the former
Soviet Union, armed to the teeth and with the massive resources of the
state could not achieve the alleged objective of overthrowing
capitalism after seventy-five years, it is reasonable to ask the
question, why has the British state embarked on a policy of creating a
de facto police state replete with laws which have more than a passing
similarity to those passed by both Hitler and Mussolini? Enter
“fear-based security”.[4]
“Security’ is not something we can
have more or less of because it is not a thing at all…[it is] the name
we use for a temporally extended state of affairs characterized by the
calculability and predictability of the future… The impossibility of
guaranteeing security is rooted in the fact that like justice, and like
democracy, ‘security’ is not so much an empirical state of affairs but
an ideal—an ideal in the name of which a vast number of procedures,
gadgets, social relations, and political institutions are designed and
deployed”.[5]
To answer this question we have to look elsewhere than a cave in Afghanistan or a council flat in Birmingham or Bolton.
The
history of capitalism is full of examples of ‘conspiracies’ allegedly
hatched by fanatical groups bent on overthrowing the status quo, from
the early trade unionists through to the ‘anarchists’ of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries and beyond, all of which required that the
full wrath of the state be brought to bear on the unfortunate
individuals involved. Importantly, these ‘conspiracies’ were used as an
excuse to increase the power of the state’s control over its citizens
through the passing of various statutes that limited our democratic
‘rights’ to demonstrate and protest and now, it is even a crime to
think about overthrowing the state.
Just as importantly, these
‘conspiracies’ were used to justify various and sundry wars of
aggression, whether against Communism or under the cover of fighting
Communism, against just wars of national liberation. History is
littered with imperialist conspiracies invented to justify these wars
including the Tonkin Gulf Incident which led to the war in Vietnam, or
the mythical Soviet MiG jets allegedly supplied to the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua as well as the non-existent WMDs of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
‘Withdrawing
to the sidelines of international debate, as some advocate, or
isolating ourselves from the international scene as a way of avoiding
the effects of global change, would simply undermine the way we cope
and adapt to that change and undermine vital British interests.
Withdrawal and isolation is not the road to national liberation but to
national ruin.’ ‘PURSUING AN ACTIVE AND ENGAGED FOREIGN POLICY’. Speech
by Jack Straw to the House of Commons, (27/11/03)
Dig beneath
the propaganda and we come across a phrase which speaks reams about the
real reasons for the invention of a ‘terrorist threat’, ‘vital British
interests’. But what is meant by ‘vital British interests’? Add another
oft-repeated phrase, ‘energy security’, indeed once you start looking,
the media and state’s public pronouncements are littered with these
phrases, ‘Britain’s national security interests’, recently used to
quash the police’s investigation into bribes and kickbacks by BAE
Systems in Saudi Arabia.[6]
‘Conspiracy theories abound … Others
claim it [the invasion of Iraq] was inspired by oil … [This] theor[y
is] largely nonsense.” – The London Independent, April 16, 2003.[7]
Behind
the rhetoric lies the real reason for the creation of the ‘terrorist
threat’, the mundane world of economics, for ultimately it all comes
down to filthy lucre. For five hundred years Western capitalism has
ridden roughshod across the planet, plundering and enslaving entire
continents, exterminating entire cultures and peoples’ in the pursuit
of profit. It has done this, until the 20th century with virtual
impunity by virtue of overwhelming military power and control of
international trade, itself protected by overwhelming military force.
But
following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Western capitalism was
stripped of its justification for continuing its pillage of the planet.
It needed a new enemy behind which it could continue its operations and
one effectively impossible to defeat simply because it not only has no
centre, but also because ‘international terror’ simply doesn’t exist
except as a propaganda message.
Thus under the guise of fighting
the ‘war on terror’, new wars of acquisition were undertaken. However,
these wars had to be conducted in these new circumstances largely
without the support of the domestic populations.
A new climate
of fear had to be engineered to justify imperialist wars of conquest.
Above all therefore, what was needed were actual deeds with corpses and
culprits, and what better than six ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ who
conveniently perished in the carnage of 7 July 2005.
The
contradictions and unanswered questions concerning the events of 7
July, 2005 are addressed elsewhere, suffice to say, there are so many
holes in the official story that it’s no wonder the government has
resisted all demands for a public inquiry, although if the Hutton
Report is any measure of what an inquiry under the Blair government is
worth, we would learn little of consequence from one and indeed, it can
be argued that ‘public inquiries’ effectively quash further
investigations by creating the illusion of an ‘independent
investigation’.
But whether the six ‘suicide bombers’ were
patsies or not (my own take on the events of 7 July), they served their
purpose, namely the justification for the creation of a fear-based
security state, under which even more repressive laws would be enacted
and by extension the continuation of foreign wars of aggression.
It
should be obvious therefore, that the ‘war at home’ and the wars
conducted in foreign lands are intimately connected. In fact they are
the twin components of a vicious circle, this is why the Blair
government was so adamant in resisting the connection between the
invasion of Iraq and the rise of ‘Islamic radicalism’, though even here
it has never been established whether it’s Islam or nationalism that
has fueled the rise in activism within the Asian community in the UK.
And furthermore, the demonisation of Islam in and of itself is surely a
major source of anger and resentment especially amongst young Asians
who now suffer the multiple assaults of racism, poverty and a carefully
engineered xenophobia.
Ultimately, the capitalist system thrives
on the creation of crises, or what Naomi Klein mistakenly calls
‘disaster capitalism’, a new description of an old disease, for in an
age of global, electronic surveillance, the business of creating the
security state is itself really big business and as ever, so is war.
This is good ol’ imperialism just like it used to be back when
Brittania ruled the waves.
But even more important than what is
in reality the privatisation of state activities, is the fact that the
‘war on terror’ represents a desperate attempt to deal with the vast
over-accumulation of capital that has taken place since the fall of the
Soviet Union. So great is the volume generated since the fall of
‘communism’ that even wholesale privatisation of great swathes of the
‘global commons’ cannot absorb it all.
As always, war is the
‘solution’, no matter what form it takes, and in order to justify such
vast expenditures, just as Bush and Blair openly state, a war without
end is required. Figures of fifty years are bandied about lest we don’t
get the message.
It is within this crisis that we find the
source of the ‘war on terror’ and hence the need for 9/11 and 7/7, for
without such invisible ‘enemies’ how can one justify the slaughter let
alone the expenditure and the creation of a vast global, electronic,
corporate security state?
Notes
1. “Governing Security,
Governing Through Security”, in: R.J.Daniels, P. Macklem and Kent Roach
(2002), Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada’s Anti-terrorism Bill, ,
U of T Press, p. 85.
2. “Privacy in an Age of Terror”, by Mike France and Heather Green, Business Week, November 5, 2001.
3.
According to a Metropolitan Police Report in the year before last
September 2006, the Metropolitan Police performed 22,672
stop-and-searches under section 44. It led to just 27 terror arrests,
the Met’s report says. “Its effectiveness … is in serious doubt.” The
Ealing Times, 22 February, 2007.
4. ‘Fear-based Security: The
Political Economy of ‘Threat’’ By Margaret Beare, Nathanson Centre for
the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption
5. “Governing Security, Governing Through Security”
6. ‘Al Yamamah: Another Government Capitulation To Big Business’
7. ‘AHMED CHALABI – OIL MAN IN BAGHDAD’, William Bowles (18/04/03)
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Writings 
There is one thing we can be certain of; the capitalist state is in disarray and in crisis. With every passing day its legitimacy crumbles further. Much of its prior claim to any kind of legitimacy depended in large part on ‘defending’ its citizens against an evil foe which for almost three-quarters of a century had been Communism. And like the ‘Red Menace’ the current enemy, ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’, allegedly also possesses ruthless and cunning powers to subvert democracy and penetrate right into the heart of our ‘democracy’. But unlike the enemies of yore, so fiendish is the ‘international Islamic conspiracy’ that our civil and legal rights have to be all but abrogated in yet another ‘war’ to defend these very freedoms!
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