Flash Theory

This article, from the Guardian, is rather aptly named "The Culture of Chaos", because this must be what is going on inside its author Brian McNair's head. His premise is that chaos theory/science, a legitimate and scientific area of study, can be extended to world society in general. Now I hope he doesn't mean this literally, because this would be complete stupidity, but even as a metaphor it is pretty limp. He then writes:

The quantity of news and other information available has increased exponentially; the scale of today's online media is truly mind-boggling. This has been felt by all the world's populations, whether they live in an advanced capitalist society, an emerging economic superpower such as India or China, an authoritarian middle eastern state, or a developing country in Africa. And information, like knowledge, is power.

Given that, as Noam Chomsky says, "most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call," this "digital revolution" has not been felt by much of the world's population, just a rich elite. His second deduction is correct but slightly backwards; wealth, and therefore power, leads to information, which *then* leads to more power - the "developing" countries don't have much of a chance. His next point is rich indeed:

Consequently, as Rupert Murdoch put it in his March speech on the knowledge revolution, "power is moving away from the old elite", towards the consumers of media, who are demanding content delivered "when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it". These consumers are better educated than ever before and "unwilling to be led". Last week's lecture by Mark Thompson on the future of the BBC hit similar notes, with its recognition that emerging digital technologies will create "seismic shifts in public expectations, lifestyle and behaviours". From the offices of News Corp to the boardrooms of the BBC, the age of top-down, elite-controlled media is passing, replaced by a decentralised global infosphere of unprecedented accessibility and diversity.

If Rupert Murdoch was really losing his power, do you think he would say it? Or would he cynically stroke his customers' egos when it wasn't? The consumers may be better educated, but as Chomsky has said, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to stay within the comfortable consensus range of thought. Oh, how the media do like phrases like "decentralised global infosphere", casting themselves as some kind of renegade hacker journalists in a lawless land of information chaos. Have we seen any of this decentralisation in any major form? Or have we instead already seen threats to the freedom of the internet itself?

To the impact of technology we can add that of increased competition in the media industries, and the emergence of a counter-cultural marketplace where the books and films of commentators such as Michael Moore, Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky can bestride the global best-seller lists alongside Dan Brown and JK Rowling. As long as there is someone willing to pay for it, just about anything can be said about any government or leader, no matter how critical, and find its place in mainstream media.

Oh really? Truly dissident voices, like Noam Chomsky, are still held at arm's length by most of the mainstream media, occasionally portrayed as supporters of massacres, or invited on mainstream talk shows that allow them no time to explain their ideas. The best way for these voices to be heard would be in documentaries or opinion pieces for television or newspaper, which are allowed all too infrequently.

Another factor in this emerging climate is the ideological vacuum created by the end of the cold war. In these pages last week Jeff Jarvis argued that the internet "makes obsolete old orthodoxies and old definitions of left and right."

Does it ever strike you that the only people who ever talk about an
"ideological vacuum" are die-hard capitalists? There is no ideological
vacuum to anyone who isnt trapped in a neoliberal consensus, and all those
"obsolete old orthodoxies" are still there for the taking. And the effect of
the internet on political ideology? Virtually none.

The categories of left and right cannot make sense of the complexities of environmental or identity politics, or the savage logics of ethnic and sectarian strife. No longer is the world dominated by the competition between capitalism and socialism. Instead we have what Samuel Huntington in 1996 presciently called "the clash of civilisations", meaning the clash between modernity and medievalism, authoritarianism and democracy, secularism and religious totalitarianism.

What postmodern neoliberal nonsense. The first sentence begs the question, "why on earth not?" and the second is true in so far as it *hasn't been for ages*. The "clash of civilisations" thesis ("we are the noble knights, and they are the evil dragons", as I like to think of it) has been taken apart by Lenin of Lenin's Tomb here: he calls it "the ridiculous Clash of Civilizations thesis, developed by the extremely unpleasant Samuel P. Huntington as a riposte to Francis Fukuyama's 'End of History' bilge. Huntington's idea is incoherent - he infers a fundamental cultural sympathy between Islam and Confucianism - Iran and China, united at last. The very notion of 'civilization' as deployed by Huntington is so nebulous as to be useless. The Islamic-Confucian connection that he posits is somewhat undone by the ongoing tensions between, for instance, Vietnam and China...I'm being far too generous in treating Huntington's ideas seriously, of course - they're bilge, intellectual detritus emanating from one of the most obnoxious apologists for US power (and, once upon a time, apartheid) to soil a page with his thoughts."

On another front, the erosion of traditional liberties in Britain and the US has been widely condemned, as have the excesses of the war on terror overseas.

This implies that no one has the condemned the *very principle* of a "War on Terror", as I and many other have. McNair continues with a nice but uncontextualised bit about human rights progress in Iran, then finishes with this gem:

Climate change, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, conflict with Chinese nationalists over Taiwan - all are scenarios which threaten global progress, and over which no one has much control. All we can do is to stand firm against authoritarianisms of every hue, and in defence of the freedoms we value, without apology or qualification. In doing so we recognise that the defining struggle of our time is not a war on terror, but a culture war, in which the globalised media are more powerful weapons than bombs and bullets. Its outcome will determine the shape of the 21st century.

So *no one* has control over climate change? What a nice cop-out. Looks like we don't have to do anything then - oh wait! "All we have to do" is "stand firm" in "defence" of our freedoms and we'll be fine! I'm guessing (correct me if I'm wrong) that this guy's version of "standing firm" in "defence" included an illegal invasion of Iraq, and includes supporting US imperialism in just about every form. And I'm also guessing that his version of "without apology or qualification" excludes good old "us" from the equation. This man seems to be a typical "new left" kind of person; full of liberal pieties but lacking any sense of class consciousness, criticism of capitalism or western imperalism.