First it’s that gob of neoconnery-infected phlegm they call a journalist Nick Cohen coming down on the side of torture in the Observer, now it’s Polly Toynbee in the Guardian on ID cards:
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Big Brother is the malevolent use of surveillance by a wicked state. But for as long as the state remains democratic we can decide what use is made of it and how we are protected from possible abuses. To refuse to use technology for fear of some monstrous future government is paranoid. Those opposed to the assembling of data are mainly from the anti-state, individualistic right. There is a sad lack of voices to praise the benign state these days. Politicians are too mistrusted and civil-service unions too self-interested, so who else speaks up for the collective good of government?
Conspiracy-theory, bad-state rhetoric has become the received opinion. The press fulminating against ID cards has less scruple about its own monstrous intrusions on privacy. The same Sunday Times that ran Rod Liddle’s rant against surveillance also carried a shocking gossip-column item – a journalist had rummaged through David Miliband’s rubbish bin looking at his papers. Press intrusion does a great deal more damage than our much scrutinised state.
Surveillance conspiracy mania is a symptom of something else – the wish for the middle classes to be victims too. This is a middle-class obsession by those who are least likely to be surveyed. There is some decadence in paranoid speculation about imaginary abuses when real social injustice is all around.
I’ve been stewing about that one all morning. In my meanderings through the broad left of British politics I’ve met many women like Toynbee, often very worthy and well-meaning, occasionally very talented, who kid themselves they’re radical and left wing because of their empathy for the poor.
As they’ve never actually had to suffer that particular indignity themselves empathy is all it can ever be – they dispense policy advice to the unfortunate like miniature Lady Bountifuls but they never have to live with consequences themselves, and most of all they never, ever question their basic assumption that the great British democratic system is all for the best in the best of all possible worlds, a true democratic meritocracy. After all, they’re doing well aren’t they? The system must be benign. With the ascendancy of New Labour these women are now all over the public sphere like a rash of po-faced Antita Ruddocks, convinced that their great feeling for the unfortunate means their every utterance on any political subject whatever is policy gold.
It drives me insane the way that the likes of Toynbee, with the blithe assurance and security of the fortunately-born, assure us that the state always means the best for us, especially now its run by nice bourgeois careerists with good connections just like them.
I fumed all morning but couldn’t really come up with a cogent response, so I went back to read the piece again. That’s when I came across this comment which neatly saves me the trouble.
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‘There is a sad lack of voices to praise the benign state these days’
A lack of trust eh? What is wrong with these ungrateful proles? Nothing to do with false evidence taking us to war, lying ministers, eroding legal rights etc etc I suppose.
‘Why aren’t people as angry about the galloping inequality in living standards between the 30% who will never own homes and the overpaid at the top who are fuelling property prices?’Well I am angry about this AND about the surveillance state….and so are many other people…of course that doesn’t fit into your left/right mental model I suppose. Polly you SAY you are angry, but I am betting you could feed and house many, many of the scruffy lower orders if you gave away a fraction of the gold mountain you sit on as a result of your birth.
Disgusting, hypocritical, pontificating, self-righteous, parasite….these are some of the words that could be invoked here.
The surveillance state is a blody menace…it is born out of the minds of ‘we know best’ authoritarians who don’t trust anyone to act without their express permission, and seem hell-bent on eroding personal responsibility, social cohesion and a sense of community. The resulting criminality is then used to justify a ghoulish eye in the sky ‘with our best interests at heart’. We are sleep walking into trouble.
Perhaps a little more intemperate than the words I’d’ve used, but then these’re intemperate times.
It’s time that Guardian newspapers took a long look at their current editorial-writing staff with a view to retirement and brought people on board who are emphatically not an integral part of the current political establishment. It’s either an editorial putsch or risk becoming permanently regarded as the house organ of a discredited, criminal regime.
Read more: UK Media, Guardian Toynbee Surveillance