"Bilderberg" is a really nice word to say
Try it. Bilderberg Bilderberg Bilderberg. Various researchers and profs make the sensible point that although Alex Jones is a tool, the entire point of the Bilderberg Group is that it meets in secret, it's made up of powerful people, and it's meant to discuss matters related to the running of the world. (ie, it's Davos without the pud-knockers, hangers on and self-publicists). But not our Aaro, from him it's chortle all the way.
A rather strange view of the world Dave has - he seems to think it's literally laughable and certainly childish to believe that politicians and businessmen control the things that they are paid and elected to control. Everything happens randomly, you see - everything important is just a cock-up on someone's part. Is this just psychological self-defence against the consequences of the Iraq War, or is this really Aaro's mature and considered view of the way the world works? It would make sense I suppose - would explain why, over the time we've covered him, his column has gone from comment and analysis of politics and world affairs, to basically just scolding his readers for not believing the right things. Bit of a depressing way to live your life though.
Gosh, this is almost like Aaronovitch Watching, isn't it? I feel all nostalgic.
A rather strange view of the world Dave has - he seems to think it's literally laughable and certainly childish to believe that politicians and businessmen control the things that they are paid and elected to control. Everything happens randomly, you see - everything important is just a cock-up on someone's part. Is this just psychological self-defence against the consequences of the Iraq War, or is this really Aaro's mature and considered view of the way the world works? It would make sense I suppose - would explain why, over the time we've covered him, his column has gone from comment and analysis of politics and world affairs, to basically just scolding his readers for not believing the right things. Bit of a depressing way to live your life though.
Gosh, this is almost like Aaronovitch Watching, isn't it? I feel all nostalgic.
posted by The Rioja Kid at 6/09/2011 05:47:00 PM
14 Comments:
Davros had hangers-on? That's not how I remember it.
More thoughtfully - isn't it reasonably to suggest that if things like Bilderberg don't seem like secret cabals to chaps like Dave, it's because chaps like Dave get invited to things like Bilderberg?
It's a bit like New Labourm which to an Old Labour party member may have felt very much like an impenetrable Westminster Village-based cabal, but if you were a Westminster Village journalist, possibly less so.
Davros did have hangers-on. Leslie Grantham (EastEnders' Dirty Den) was one. He got zapped. But that tends to happen if you hang-on and around Daleks.
But BB is right about Dave's trajectory. Conspiracy theories are all about power and control, and Dave seems to have taken against these.
I'm reading Andrew Rawnsley's splendid "The end of the party". It's incredible how little power Blair had re Bush and Brown.
Captha: symnless, which really ought to be a word.
Dave Weeden
DA was on C4 five minutes ago urbanely explaining that the only reason anyone might possibly want the David Kelly inquest to be completed -- it was put on hold and never re-started -- is because they believe it wasn't suicide. So that the process by which suicide is ordinarily officially established is in this case to be dispensed with, and the official position established, well, how? By the great and the good quietly deciding that -- in this solitary case -- presentation of evidence and cross-examination of witnesses and so on need detain no one sane.
Following up what ejh said - I think Aaro's exhibiting a couple of related professional deformations, both brought on by proximity to the inner circle (any inner circle). There's the anti-conspiracist argument, that when you see an elite group close up you realise that they aren't a group at all - A and B are deadly rivals and they both hate C's guts, and that's what politics is really about... This view makes it very difficult to think about what A, B and C are trying to do with their positions apart from shafting one another; in particular, it obscures the fact that they're as one in their contempt for most people outside the elite, and will work together to perpetuate most people's exclusion from elite politics without a second thought.
Then there's the anti-radical argument, that when you see the elite close up you can see that they're decent blokes doing their best in difficult circumstances, so any questioning of their motives is unworthy and inappropriate. This is brought on by being much too close to people with power; it makes it quite hard to think about politics at all, except in the courtier's vein of "why don't the people understand the emperor's benevolence?" Or in Aaro's typical scolding variant, why don't those people stop complaining?
A worldview which holds that (a) the powerful have no real control and (b) they can successfully invade nations, remove leaders and institute political reform is, er - eccentric...
ben,
Sure, but it is certainly consistent with the view that
c) the powerful should not be held responsible for the adverse consequences of b)
The bit about "change" is very interesting. Look at what he says about McCarthyism in the USA of the 1950's; things were "improving", and so people scared of "change" concoted theories that helped make sense of a chaotic world. You can easily see here his Whiggish tendecies at work, running the line to what he says today about anti-war protesters, the old left, anybody not "decent". You must accept change, whatever that may be *coughThatcherismcough*, otherwise you might as well be David Icke's gimp. It's also interesting to read that in the light of the BBC podcast David made about McCarthy a year or so ago.
The last paragraph descends into full bollocks territory. Accepting that the world is not completely chaotic is not irrational as David seems to think; it is actually the foundation of science, since without regularities and ongoing determinism (i.e. causation) we could not make sense of the world. David is up stupid creek without a paddle, all because of his psychological denial at the existence of true, inequal power in the world. "Supper club for the rich and powerful indeed".
"To have a strong belief in the Bilderberg Group means believing in a fantasy" is really creaking under the strain, now that conspiracy theorists have unpeeled much of the secrecy/obscurity
And "Why did McCarthyism happen at the time when US economy was growing faster than at any time in history?" - yes, and why was UBL killed just before (after? can't remember) the Royal Wedding, etc.
Also there's a sizeable chunk on antisemitism, diluted with a splash of freemasonry, plonked into the middle of the article. Introduced by way of DA's burblings: "They tend to believe that everything true, local and national is under threat from cosmopolitan, international forces often linked to financial capitalism and therefore, also often, to Jewish interests."
AND
2 hardy perennials:
1. "Believing in cabals [i.e. 'conspiracty theories'] leads to certain groups being victimised" - DA's thesis in VH, which carries on the standard conflation of a. xenophobic 'paranoid' stylings, as often directed by the powerful against the powerless, b. allegations of 'conspiracy' carried on by the (undoubtedly) powerful.
2. Conventional critiques of alienated people seeking order [or self-aggrandisement, excitement, God delusions, narrative, complexity, simplicity, etc - TW] in a chaotic world may well be true. But there's more to it than that, McConnachie argues.
"The other explanation is more dangerous. That they are precisely right - they just over-egg the way they articulate it."
The Bilderberg Group matches up to how a global conspiracy would work - a secretive body attempting to shape the direction of the world, he suggests.
"The only difference is the degree of nefariousness," he says. "They tend to see this cabal as outright evil. When things are more nuanced than that."
Which is the 'mood music' point. As far as the participants are concerned, there's nothing dodgy going on, though there's obviously an understanding that - pace DA - all this stuff is best kept secret, the public don't need to know, leaders (inc business 'leaders') have to lead etc., which might occasion if not bad conscience at least some defensiveness, e.g. Healey getting overly snappy when Jon Ronson asked him about Bilderberg.
See also DA's C4 interview alongside Powers MD QC about the Kelly case (archive copy here). He's retrenched to basing his objections purely on accusations of incidental conspiracy theorising: 'Yes, that sounds very reasonable, but it is motivated by conspiracism and therefore is to be rejected'.(Well, he also draws on received wisdom that the 'Kelly family' don't want any investigation, will be traumatised, should be a decisive factor etc.)
"I'm reading Andrew Rawnsley's splendid "The end of the party". It's incredible how little power Blair had re Bush and Brown."
TBH I found it very one-sided and pro-blair. A lot of the claims he makes almost certainly came from hostile briefings and Rawnsley's desire to create a narrative portraying Blair as the powerless victim against Brown.
Planeshift
He did http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011tyrg/What_the_Papers_Say_Episode_56/ this week too.
Some stuff on CTs about 1/2 way through: inflation into overconfident specific CT for Kelly, deflation (more reasonably) to business as usual, nothiong to see here for Brown/Balls plotting (answering Dave W's Tweeted question.)
Don't know what he might have been reading recently, but he seems to have picked up on the idea of a distinction between secrecy and privacy, which he mentions in passing in conn with Brown/Balls. It's not clear why he thinks it's relevant though.
Also - Aaro scores a bit of an own goal, re: Bilderberg, nothing to see here.
http://twitter.com/#!/SwankieSister/status/78537685236580352
http://twitter.com/#!/SwankieSister/status/78608893042892800
Planeshift, fair enough. Though I used to be a Brown supporter (certainly contra Blair, though strangely I always thought Ken Clark a better chancellor), I think that reality has an anti-Brown bias.
But there is something instructive about the Blair-Brown relationship in a sort of scissors-paper-stone kind of way. If you know that scissors cut paper, and stone blunt scissors, you might wonder why everyone doesn't play stone all the time. John Major tried to run a collegiate cabinet, and fell foul of plotters in his own ranks. Blair (may have) learned from this, and ran his sofa government, which more or less cut out the cabinet, the Parliamentary Labour Party and the rest of the country and shared power between himself, Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown, and the editor of the Daily Mail. But the problem with this strategy (and why cabinet government evolved in the first place) is that one person can easily block just about everything. Brown would never have got on in a proper democratic cabinet. The man couldn't persuade a chicken to cross a road, FFS. But he could block Blair because Blair didn't do persuasion as in argument; he only did persuasion as in selling. Brown didn't do argument either; he just did contradiction.
I like Rawnsley a lot. He's not pro-Blair; he calls Blair right wing (which he was), shows him as weak (which he was). He doesn't call Blair a total fucking cunt and a waste of oxygen, but you can only expect so much truth in journalism.
Now that Bilderberg is out in open sight, how long will it be before Bohemian Grove gets a mention?
If Bilderberg is "really an occasional supper club for the rich and powerful" as Aaro maintains, then BG is posh camping for the great and good.
And, as a conspiracy theory, it's a rich vein; a secret powerful guest list, hidden masonic symbolism , and wildly improbable ritual worship of a dark ancient god. Throw in the implicit anti-Semitism and the theory provides almost an ideal straw-man for an anti-CT advocate.
Wonder why it doesn't get a denigration in Voodoo Histories? As an expert in the field, surely Aaro is aware of it?
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