The comes after a week of praise for the police from many in the queer community. In the latest edition of Sydney Star Observer, the AFP ran a half-page advertisement declaring that they had been ‘supporting Mardi Gras for 15 years’ (see image on the right). As police officers marched in the parade in uniform, there was once again cheers about how, after such a sordid history, the police are now ‘supporting’ Mardi Gras.
If this video proves anything though, it is that the police have never, and will never really be supporters of Mardi Gras.
The police, just like with all social movements/events have a pretty awful history with Mardi Gras. Here is what I wrote about the history in a piece from a couple of years ago from FUSE Magazine:
The police at the first Mardi Gras
On the 24th of June, 1978, approximately 2000 people took to the streets of Sydney to commemorate the Stonewall riots of 1969. This march, or Mardi Gras, was the final event in a day of political action in the city. Its aim was to bring people onto the streets in a peaceful way, not only to commemorate Stonewall, but also to show that queers in Australia were starting to fight back against discrimination in the country.
Entering its final stages trouble began to brew. It began with police harassing a truck driver operating a PA system and chanting messages onto the street. When the driver refused to stay silent, he was pulled out his truck and it was confiscated. This was followed by a full scale assault on the march, with police pushing the crowd, closing off streets and blocking the way of marchers. Once the crowd had reached the end, the situation got worse. When some marchers tried to leave the route, being unsure as to what was about to happen, police began laying into them. What followed was a full scale physical assault. Soon paddy wagons appeared and 53 protestors were arrested for no apparent reason.
The attack on Mardi Gras lead to a rebellion by queer people around Australia. Fed up of being beaten and marginalised people took to the streets. In Sydney more protests were organised, with over 100 more people being arrested in the coming months. Marches were also held in other big cities, not only to protest what happened at Mardi Gras but to signal that the Australian queer community was starting to rebel against the oppression in society.
In the end, the 53 arrested on the original Mardi Gras were released with all the charges dropped. The following year, Mardi Gras was held again, continuing a tradition that has lasted until this day.
And whilst today Mardi Gras has taken a more commercial path, and the police force may not be as openly homophic as it was once before, this awful history continues. Mardi Gras is still at its heart a political event – the act of the parade itself is a challenge to the heteronormative system. And as enforcers of this system, the police can never be true friends of the very movement challenging it.
When I went to Mardi Gras last year, I saw this first hand. For those of you who have never been, after the parade finishes, many revellers head to the main party, ‘MardiGrasLand’. Last year (and I suspect this year too), the police stationed themselves outside MardiGrasLand with dogs and a ‘drug truck’. If a dog even stopped near someone they were quickly whisked away, on their own, into a truck, where I have no idea what happened next. The treatment of people was brutal – no questions asked, no opportunity to talk – just a quick and swift shift into a truck to be searched.
While this instance may have been specifically about drugs, nearly anyone who has interacted with the police at Mardi Gras will tell you that this sort of treatment is not isolated, and the stories coming up now show how bad it can get. Dealing with the police there is not a particularly pleasant experience – they are their to ‘keep order’, and they have little respect for those at the parade or the party. A group of queers acting out of the norm is still clearly a group that needs to be kept in lne.
And so, although this brutality does not exist in the form of mass beatings and arrests as it did in the 1970s, it it is a continued, institutionalised, form of oppression. And it is a form of oppression that goes well beyond just ‘keeping order’. If this video shows anything, it is that the modern police force are much more violent than that. Whilst it may not be written in the rules, violence like this is part of the modern police culture. The police are a physical, and violent, arm of the modern state – an arm with a culture of keeping order at all costs.
And that is the deal about the police marching in Mardi Gras. Whilst it might be a nice gesture, in the end that is all it is. Once those police get back on duty, they are police officers first, and Mardi Gras supporters second. And what that means is keeping queers in line – ensuring that there is order on the streets, and being physical about it.
That leaves me with one final thought about the march and its history. Think about this carefully – what would happen if the modern parade reverted back to a march, a march to protest the oppression of queer people? What side would the police be on then? I’m pretty sure I know what side of the barricades they would end up on.
“Today the Climate Commission released a report linking the extreme weather events experienced around Australia this summer to climate change. SHARE if you take action against climate change seriously.http://climatecommission.gov.au/report/the-angry-summer/“
The message is part of a simple narrative; as a party that supports a carbon price, the ALP is the true party of climate action. It is a message that is steeped in rank hypocrisy that needs to be called out.
The ALP’s hypocrisy comes in two forms; the history of the carbon pricing scheme, and their range of other climate policy disasters.
Let’s have a look at the history of the scheme to start off with. After the original Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was dumped, and with the rise of Julia Gillard to the Prime Ministership, the ALP looked to be heading nowhere on climate change. There was the Citizens Assembly on carbon pricing, which would have pushed any action to at least 2013, and the infamous “there will be no carbon tax under a Government I lead”. The current carbon pricing scheme only came about because of the minority government and the insistence from the Greens that the ALP support it. These facts are important to remember, as it shows a party that was kicking and screaming to the current system – not one that was as willing to embrace it at it seems to be now.
But even with this newfound embrace, the ALP still can’t hold its head up high. In a range of other policy areas, the ALP have been awful on climate change.
For example, beyond our own emissions, it’s clear that the biggest impact Australia has on carbon emissions is through coal mining. We mine huge amounts of coal; with Australia being the world’s largest coal exporter in the last decade. On this issue however, the ALP Government has been next to useless. Over the past few years, the Environment Minister Tony Burke has done basically nothing to halt to growth of coal mining in this country. He has approved significant coal infrastructure, including recently the Maules Creek Mine in NSW (even though there were allegations that it fudged elements of the approval process), a new $6.9billion coal terminal at Abbot Point, and Gina Rinehart’s Alpha Coal Mine in QLD.
And this doesn’t look like it is going to stop any time soon. The Government has declared itself a lover of coal mining. After a story was leaked in March last year that Greenpeace was setting up a fund to legally challenge coal mine development, the Government was quick to attack activists, and strongly defend Australia’s coal mining
Environment Minister, Tony Burke said:
“That’s (the carbon price) the way to make sure that as a nation and as a planet that we do the right thing by the atmosphere.”
“I’m not supportive for a minute of further actions on top of that that are simply designed to undermine people who are doing their jobs and doing them legally.”
Trade Minister Craig Emerson went much harder:
“We would have a global depression if we just said that’s it, we’re out of coal, we’re just going into complete renewable energy now.”
“Some of the people behind this believe that’s good for the world.
“It would mean mass starvation. It would be a global depression, and they ought to wake up to that instead of living in a fantasy land and organising these sorts of campaigns.”
And it’s not just coal mine development where the ALP have been awful on climate change. A report in 2011 from the Australian Conservation Foundation for example showed that the Australian Government spent 11 times more on fossil fuel subsidies than it did on climate change programs – a massive number. Despite numerous rumours that these subsidies have been planned to be cut at successive budgets, they still sit on our balance books.
Finally, despite what you may hear, the Labor Party’s approach at international negotiations has not been climate friendly. For example, in the climate negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, the Australian Government was slammed for bullying a number of Pacific nations to agree to a 2 degree limit on global warming. Following questions in the lead up to last years climate negotiations, it was revealed that the Government would only be taking a 0.5% on 1990 levels to the negotiatingtable, well below what nearly all other developed countries were bring to the fore.
The thing about supporting action on climate change is that you can’t just ‘do one thing’ and then suddenly be a climate hero. If you’re cutting emissions out at one point, but then putting many more into the atmosphere at another, you’re not actually doing anything to help the climate in the long-term. You have to do it all – work on our domestic emissions, as well as helping the international effort. Whilst the ALP has a carbon price, and it makes some nice noises on the importance of climate change, it pretty much fails everywhere else when it comes to the issue. And it’s about time this is called out.
Last week, Adam Creighton posted a piece in the Punch, titled It Doesn’t Actually Matter Who Wins the Election. In the piece, Creighton argues that the differences between the two major parties are so minute now that the election result will have little impact on most people’s lives. As he says:
“Political campaigns are about fostering the illusion of difference where sameness abounds. For instance, the two biggest policies standing between the Labor and Opposition parties are the mining tax and the carbon tax. Excising both may well be a good idea, yet their combined tax revenue is only a few billion dollars a year, barely 1 per cent of total federal government revenue each year.
The two parties would appear to agree on the vast bulk of existing regulations and taxation arrangements. The mere suggestion of a bolder (yet very modest in any absolute sense) reform to health or welfare – such as trimming family payments for instance – typically prompts silence from both major parties.
As far as business decisions are concerned, the issue would appear not to be sovereign risk but sovereign relevance. A senior Australian equities analyst, who understandably wants to remain nameless, tells The Australian foreigners don’t care less which of the major parties was in power federally.”
Creighton’s piece raises a really interesting point about modern Australian (and to be honest, global) democracy. It is clear, that in many areas, the two major political parties have merged.
Firstly, Creighton is right that in terms of business regulation, trade, and taxation have become very similar. Since the 1980s both major parties have adopted a neoliberal economic approach, meaning that over the past six years in particular we’ve seen a growing fight over who can produce the smallest Government. Despite the differences on the carbon and mining tax, that means that on the environment the two parties are becoming the same too. The ALP have now become a champion of ‘cutting Green tape’, and approvals for new coal mines are happening on what feels like a weekly basis. On social issues, both parties have moved far to the right on asylum seekers, are both cutting welfare to single parents, are both extending the intervention, and both have a leadership team doing whatever they can to stop same-sex marriage.
Yet, despite all of this, there are two major areas where I disagree with Creighton’s analysis.
Firstly, I think it’s too simple to say that there aren’t important differences. The mining and carbon tax are important ones (and in particular the lack of the Coalition’s policy on climate change at all), but there are many other issues. For example, we know there are major differences in the way the different parties treat our universities (the Labor Party got rid of HEWRs on the first day of Parliament sitting in 2008). The Coalition is still determined to stop building the National Broadband Network and public servants will also face a very different future if they are elected, with many more job cuts coming from an Abbott Government. There are many issues like this across a range of policy areas that will have an impact.
But, Creighton is still right. In reality, when compared to the similarities, these issues are now few and far between. They are somewhat technocratic differences in approaches – how can we manage neoliberalism differently. But this is where I have a major problem with Creighton’s piece. Further in the article, Creighton says:
“Federal government by contrast is remote from people’s lives, providing very few real services beyond defence and immigration controls.”
Creighton seems to draw a conclusion, that not only doesn’t it matter now, but it never really matters who wins the election. With the lack of real ideological debate between the two parties, I can see how someone comes to this conclusion. But that is the real problem – because whilst it may not actually be important who wins in September, it really SHOULD be important who wins in September. Despite what Creighton says, the Federal Government isn’t actually remote from people’s lives. It has a daily impact, and one that is worth noting.
For example, the Federal Government, in providing funding and regulation, has an impact on everybody’s access to healthcare, education and essential infrastructure. It plays a role in environmental regulation, potentially being the difference between you having a coal mine in your backyard or not. It provides everybody a welfare safety net. It plays an essential role in Indigenous affairs, at the moment through managing the Intervention. It funds much of our Universities, impacting the lives of every student, academic, and university staffer. It sets much of our industrial regulation, impacting everybody who has a job.
These are huge issues. What the Federal Government does impacts everybody, every day. And it’s not like when it comes to these issues, we’ve simply solved the problems we are facing and just need to tinker around the edges. Access to education and healthcare are always an issue, we continuously need to be upgrading our infrastructure, climate change continues hardly halted, there are many who still live in poverty, and the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people continues to stay very wide.
And that’s a problem with where our democracy sits at the moment. There are so many different potential ways to deal with these issues, so many different ideological framings we could use, yet we are only testing one. We have two potential Governments who only want to use neoliberal approaches – two parties with the same ideological framing. In a system such as ours, this presents a rather limited democratic choice. Whilst we may not think it matters who wins the next election therefore, it really should. There should be more options, a broader ideological discussion, and broader political choice, and instead of just thinking it doesn’t matter, we should be making that happen.
Time for another book review. Recently I finished Slavoj Žižek’s latest piece ‘The Year of Dreaming Dangerously’. Actually to be fair, when I say I recently finished it, I would have to say that was about a month or so ago. I have been putting off writing this review for a while as I just don’t know how to compress a Žižek piece into one review. But here goes.
For those of you who don’t know, Žižek is a contemporary Slovenian philosopher. His philosophy is influenced by Marx, Hegel, and Lacan, work which he brings into a modern context. He is also extremely fluent in modern pop culture, with a lot of his work reflecting on current television and film (as well as his political philosophy he is also known for his work in film theory). With all of this put together Žižek is one of my favourtite modern philosophers.
So, why do you ask, have I found it so difficult to review this piece?
Despite how much I enjoy Žižek, at the same time, he is an extremely difficult person to read. Žižek brings with him a lot of assumed knowledge, both in the areas of classical and modern philosophy, as we as a range a pop cultural references. I don’t think he’s great at explaining much of this background, meaning it can often take quite a while to really get your head around his thoughts. The Year of Dreaming Dangerously continues this trend.
The technique I have decided to adopt when reading him therefore is to assume that I will not understand everything he says in the first go. Sometimes a whole paragraph, or even a whole chapter will wash completely over your head – but the key is not to worry about it. The best you can do is keep going, because what you will get, you will enjoy. So, with that in mind, I’m going to focus on two ideas that I really took out of this piece.
The Year of Dreaming Dangerously reflects on the events of 2011, and tries to place a marxist analysis on a pretty eventful year. Žižek looks at the London Riots, the Arab Spring, the protests in Spain, Greece and Italy, the mass murder in Norway by Anders Breivik and Occupy Wall Street, aiming to connect these events into an overarching narrative.
I thought in reviewing this piece, I would look a bit at the beginning, and the end; what caused some of these events, and what’s happening now that 2011 is over.
Let’s start at the beginning – why was 2011 a year of ‘dreaming dangerously’? Obviously there are different reasons behind all of the different movements of 2011, but I think Žižek’s reflection on the London Riots is the most telling. In what he calls “The Desert of Post-Ideology” Žižek takes direct aim at our explanations for the London Riots, and the lack of “choice” people in the riots faced.
When looking at the riots, you can see two clear explanations/arguments about how they formed. From the right, there was the argument of a group of ‘hooligans’ acting out in society; hooligans who need to be punished. From the left, we saw a debate about welfare cuts in particular, and an explanation that cuts to services have lead to a revolt. Žižek argues that the unrest goes much deeper than that. Looking at the ‘lack of demands’ from the protesters, he argues that that represents the level of unrest, one in which there is no choice provided to those in disadvantaged situations:
“The fact that the protests had no program is thus itself a fact to be interpreted, one that tells us a great deal about our ideological political predicament: what kind of universe do we inhabit that can celebrate itself as a society of choice, but in which the only alternative to an enforced democratic consensus is a form of blind acting out?”
This is part of a sad fact of capitalism Žižek argues; we live in a world of choice, but for those who are disadvantaged by the system, there are no other options – you can play by the rules or engage in (self-)destructive violence. This is a social space progressively experienced as “worldless”; as space where meaningless violence is the only form protest can take. As he goes on:
“Perhaps it is here that we should locate one of the main dangers of capitalism. Although capitalism is global, encompassing the whole world, it sustains a stricto sensu “worldless” ideological constellation, depriving the vast majority of people any meaningful cognitive orientation. Capitalism is the first socio-economic order which de-totalises meaning: it is not global at the level of meaning. There is, after all, no global “capitalist worldview”, no “capitalists civilisation” proper. The fundamental lesson of globalisation is precisely that capitalism can accommodate itself to all civilisations, from Christian to Hindu to Buddhist, from West to East. Capitalism’s global dimension can only be formulated at the level of truth-without-meaning, as the real of the global market mechanism.”
This is an interesting thought about capitalism – a system, which in being able to be global, has had to remove meaning from itself; a system so lacking of meaning that violence is seen by many as the only way to revolt.
So, let’s jump along quite a bit, and ask ourselves the next question, with this sort of reaction to the crises of capitalism in 2011, what has been the left’s response, and what has happened after these initial revolts. Žižek notes that 2012 did not continue the level of revolt that we saw in 2011 – the Arab Spring started faced many troubles, Occupy Wall Street lost momentum etc etc. But, despite this, he says, the seeds of revolt are still there; “the rage is building up and a new wave of revolts will follow.” (p.127) As these waves of revolt come up again however, the left needs to get into gear:
“Now the economic down-turn and social disintegration the left was waiting for is here; protests and revolts are popping up all around the globe – but what is conspicuously absent is any consistent Leftist reply to these events, any project of how to transpose islands of chaotic resistance into a positive program of social change.”
And that is the challenge of the events of 2011. Not, “what should our demands be”, or that is still based on current power systems, an idea where we have to ask those in power for something that we want. The real debate has to be, how do we connect these huge pockets of revolt to change the power systems?
So there you have it, a very quick snapshot of some of Žižek’s ideas. Like any of his pieces, this work is an epic, and re-reading this, I have only covered such a tiny amount. But, I hope I have provided some idea of what he is on about – my only suggestion is to get into some of his work.
As an Abbott Government looks more certain, there are many who are desperate to do anything they can to stop him from getting the keys to the lodge. We are getting to a stage of ‘keeping Abbott out at all costs’; whether it be sacrificing important principles on key issues, or just ‘staying quiet’ about important progressive policy until after the election is done.
There probably two ways this discourse is playing out. Firstly, many are saying that any attack on the ALP is simply ‘helping Abbott’. As a way to keep him out, we need to minimise left-wing attacks on the Government, and focus solely on defeating the LNP. There are too many examples of this to point out – but basically look at anyone who criticises the ALP from the left and you will see this argument lobbed their way.
Building on this, there are many who are both excusing the ALP when they adopt right-wing policy, but more worryingly pushing others to sacrifice their left-wing principles until Abbott is defeated. A perfect example could be found on a comment on Greens Senator Larissa Waters’ Facebook Page the other day:
“I really don’t think it would hurt to drop some principles to keep abbott out… Start the fight again when Abbott has been defeated this is the last roll of the dice.”
These approaches however are ignoring what I can only call the ‘costs of keeping Abbott out all costs’.
It’s important that we consider why we want to keep Abbott out so desperately. Whilst many can’t stand him personally, and dread the thought of having to see him on our television screens for the next ten years, we can only summise that the major driving force behind this movement is his very right-wing nature. It is natural to try and do whatever you can when faced with a Conservative Government, but Abbott, and his particular brand of conservatism is definitely raising the stakes of the game.
Given this however we really need to ask is, isn’t a ‘keeping him out at all costs’ approach self-defeating? If, in trying to defeat Abbott, we become Abbott, then it seems like all we’ve done is saved ourselves from seeing his face on TV, and nothing more.
Now, I know many would say that that’s not what we’re doing – there are still major differences between the ALP and LNP and all we’re doing is trying to shut down controversial issues (like the budget and asylum seekers) so we can focus on the issues where we can win. Even with this caveat however, this movement is having a real impact on our ability to defeat Abbott.
By shifting to the right, we are allowing Abbott to frame the terms of the election debate. We are setting the election on right-wing terms; ceasing ground on major issues like tax redistribution, asylum seekers, the environment (see all the mining approvals recently), welfare etc. And in doing this we are giving Abbott significant authority. As the ALP adopts his ideas, or more importantly his ideological framing, they are letting him be an ideological leader. And once he becomes an ideological leader, it makes sense for many in the community to turn to him – if we’re going to have Abbott’s policies why not just have Abbott.
And whilst we may say that what we need to do then is focus on the areas of difference, and campaign against him in that manner, that story unfortunately doesn’t work. People vote based on emotions and values, not on specific policy details. As many in the left sacrifice their values therefore they are painting a picture of a valueless movement focused largely on power, and whether we like it or not, that pushes people in the other direction.
And this is where the problem goes well beyond this election. If, in the likely scenario that Abbott does win on September 14, a further shift to the right from the left in the meantime would make bringing back a progressive agenda extremely difficult.
If for example, we ceased to fight on progressive ideals such as redistributing mining wealth, or getting rid of mandatory detention for asylum seekers, we would be ceasing those ideas for decades. We would be giving them over to the right, and in turn making it far more difficult to bring them back in the future. Tony Abbott’s right would become the new norm for politics.
When engaging in political fights like these we need to think not only about the short-term election, but also the long-term game. I never want to see Tony Abbott as Prime Minister of Australia, but giving up on progressive principles now, will not only aid his march to the lodge, but it will also make it much more difficult to fight against his conservative Government if he is elected.
If we want to live in a left-wing world, and have a left-wing Government, we have to fight like that. I am certain that we can, and should win by being progressives – if we want a progressive world we really have no other choice.
Ps. a couple of other interesting articles on the subject:
Today I continue on looking at the essays I’ve been reading from the ‘Occupy Handbook’. A couple of weeks ago I looked at a piece called “A Nation of Business Junkies” and today I’m going to reflect on Pankaj Mishra’s piece “Globalization and the Perils of Democracy.”
Mishra’s essay looks at the links between the major protest movements of 2011 (and those preceding it) and the nature of modern capitalist democracy. There are many different issues that Mishra brings out in his (rather short) essay, including looking at the links between democracy and the major protests of 2011, the role of the middle class in developing modern democratic systems in the developing world (and the perils that brings), and the links between our economic system and modern democracy. There is one area I’d like to quickly look at though in this blog; the role democracy has played as part of our ideological debate.
If you look at the major (mainstream) ideological debate of the couple of decades you can see it largely as one of ‘democracy’ vs. ‘non-democracy’. For us in the west, with the ‘capitalism’ vs ‘communism’ debate ‘won’, we have spent the last decades looking to ‘promote democracy’ around the world. As part of this we have seen global struggles/protest movements solely under the lens of a desire from people to access democracy.
What Mishra seems to argue in his piece, is that this debate is largely inflated, and if you look at the protest movements that have swept across the globe, it does not reflect the views of those taking to the streets.
To understand this, Mishra takes a quick look at modernisation theory; or the theory developed in the 70s and 80s that countries can take a linear path to ‘development’, one that involves a shift to a democratic capitalist system. With the collapse of communism in the early nineties, and the ever-increasing adoption of ‘state-based-capitalism’ by so-called communist nations as China, this modernisation approach has continued to be seen as the answer – adopt a capitalist model, begin a process to democratisation, become a developed nation. In doing so, the great ideological debate, the one how our economic systems work, has been given up on.
Mishra contends however that the global protest movements show that this debate really isn’t over. The movements present a much more complex picture than that, one of much more disdain for the modernist approach to economic management. As he says:
“…public anger derives from a single source: a form of economic progress that, geared toward private wealth creation, is indifferent to, if not contemptuous of, ideas of collective welfare, social justice, and environmental protection.”
And this isn’t just in places like the United States – places where ‘democracy’ is apparently at its best. Those places ‘on the way to democracy’ are also seeing great revolt – but this revolt is not about the lack of democracy, but about the economic system our democracy is based on.
For example, looking at movements in Tibet, Mishra argues that instead of being about democratic or religious rights – these movements are more about the creep of capitalism. Tibetans see a system that has the capacity to enforce a new cultural system which they simply do not want.
Looking at Thailand, a ‘democratic country’, but one where democracy has been tough, Mishra argues that despite his attacks on democratic rights, the former President Thaksin Shinawatra continues to remain popular, in part because of the progressive economic reforms he implemented (developing a welfare state, instituting free public healthcare etc.):
“Successive elections, most recently in 2011, have proved that a majority of Thais still back Thaksin in spite of his contempt for civil liberties.”
The problem, Mishra argues, is that modernisation theory hasn’t take into account the complexity of modern capitalism and globalisation:
“Modernisation theorists, resident in a simple world defined by the ideological binaries of communism and capitalism, were hardly in a position to anticipate the vast, complex, and unpredictable forces of economic globalisation we live with today: how they would weaken national sovereignty, and turn electoral democracy itself into another source of the seemingly permanent political conflict and instability in large parts of the world.”
This presents a picture in which we can no longer think of a great ideological debate between democracy vs non-democracy. Despite what the many may say about the protest movements of the past years (that they are about a strive towards participation in a modern democratic system), the reality is much more complex than that. These movements are about our economic system, a revolt against the failing of modernisation, and a reopening of the great ideological debates of the past.
Recently I have noticed something around my relationship with climate change. As the years have gone by I have found it increasingly difficult to read about climate science. Instead of making me motivated it makes me depressed; often having a really negative impact on my mood, and my ability to work and campaign on the issue.
The affect of this has been rather interesting. I haven’t stopped campaigning on the issue. But I’ve stopped reading the science pretty much outright (unless I have to do so for some form of work). And I’ve started actively seeking out, and reading positive stories on the issue; mostly around climate movements, increases in renewable technology, and even sometimes positive science pieces. Finally, at times I’ve actively caught myself thinking about how nice it would be to be a climate denialist.
Now, before you all freak out, I am not becoming a denialist. But despite our demands that all denialists are stupid lunatics, I’m realising that in fact denial is a really natural reaction to climate change. It’s made me directly think about why people may be climate denialists, and how we treat the issue.
Let’s start by thinking about what denial is. Kollmuss and Agyeman provide me with a really simple meaning:
“Denial is the refusal to accept reality. The person lives believing in a ‘bright dream’ and filters incoming information to fit his or her version of reality.”
When you think about it in this way, it becomes really clear why denial is such a natural response to the huge threat of climate change. Climate change is terrifying. It means transitioning to a very different world than the one we currently live in – either a world with a very new climate, or one where our lifestyles and energy systems need to be dramatically changed. Denial, or escaping from this sort of reality is therefore a perfectly natural reaction.
And this sort of reaction happens across a broad spectrum of people. Whilst not quite denial, Kollmuss and Agyeman also describe another denial-like symptom called rational distancing:
“Rational distancing is another way of protecting oneself from painful emotions. The person who rationalises is perfectly aware of the problems but has stopped feeling any emotions about it. This defense mechanism is especially common among scientists and environmentalists who are frequently expose to ‘bad news’.”
Whilst not quite the same as denial, rational distancing (the kind of thing I think I am experiencing) shows that the emotional rationing that leads to denial can be felt in many ways – a natural response to the fear of climate change.
And if you think that emotional response is bad, it becomes much worse when we take the next level into account; that of guilt. As such a broad issue, and one that everyone plays a role in, guilt about climate change is rife – we all feel like we have a role to play. And as Markowitz and Shariff explain, this ‘guilty bias’, directly leads to people reacting in a different way to climate change:
“Although few people are blamed for intending to cause climate change, many are exposed to messages that hold them accountable for causing environmental damage as an unintended side effect of their behaviour and lifestyle.
“To allay negative recriminations, individuals often engage in biased cognitive processes to minimize perceptions of their own complicity. These biases are even more likely when individuals and communities feel incapable of meaningfully responding behaviourally. Such motivated moral reasoning occurs through a variety of processes, including derogating evidence of one’s role in causing the problem and challenging the significance of the issue.”
Think about it in this way; if you feel guilty about something but you can’t do anything about it, you have to do something with that guilt. For an issue such as climate change, this guilt can be huge, and retreating to denial is a natural response.
And, despite our campaigns against denialism, the unfortunate thing is that environment organisations have often played a role in building this denial mechanism. There are probably two key areas where we can see this. First, there are the campaigns that demand that people find out what their carbon footprint is, and then take necessary steps to address it. As, Wolf and Moser explain though, by building into feelings of guilt, the research shows that this can have negative effects:
“More knowledge of a problem does not necessarily, directly, and by itself lead to a change in behaviour, and sometimes can actually hinder behaviour change.”
Secondly, in discussing the use of ‘fear appeals’ to climate change, O’Niell and Nicholson-Cole says that the fear around the issue can have a real impact on people’s engagement with the issue:
“The continued use of fear messages can lead to one of two psychological functions. The first is to control the external danger, the second to control the internal fear. If the external danger – in this case, the impacts of climate change – cannot be controlled (or is not perceived to be controllable), the individuals will attempt to control the internal fear. These internal fear controls, such as issue denial and apathy, can represent barriers to meaningful engagement.”
That’s not to say that either of these approaches are inherently bad, but that we need to be careful about how, and with whom, we approach them, as they can have serious negative consequences.
So, when one of your friends comes to you and admits that they are a climate denialist it may be worth thinking about how you react to that. For many, we think about issues like climate change as if people make decisions on a rational basis; that people should just “read the science” and “get it”.
But the reality is that how we react to climate change is an entirely emotional activity. For many of us those emotions are fear, followed by action. For others though, it is fear, followed by retreat and denial. Both are natural responses, yet for some reason we only treat one response as people are idiots.
Yesterday I had a rather intriguing conversation about free speech on Twitter. It went something like this:
Jeremy Sear @jeremysear
Albanaese theorises that Greens object to ALP abandonment of the deal because of “internal disunity” within the Greens. Makes total sense.
Max Phillips @maxphillips
@jeremysear @AlboMP is fantasising
Preston Towers @prestontowers
@maxphillips @jeremysear And of course @AlboMP knows all about the internal operations of the Greens.
Simon Copland @SimonCopland
@prestontowers @maxphillips @jeremysear So frustrating when ppl comment about internal Grn politics when they clearly know nothing about it.
Matthew da Silva @mattdasilva
@SimonCopland Simon, do you object to free public debate of matters of public interest?
Simon Copland @SimonCopland
@mattdasilva No. How would my comment lead you to that conclusion?
Matthew da Silva @mattdasilva
@SimonCopland But you said ppl shouldn’t talk abt the Green Party unless they were well informed.
Simon Copland @SimonCopland
@mattdasilva No I didn’t. I said it’s frustrating when people who had no idea about how the party works comment on its internal politics.
Simon Copland @SimonCopland
@mattdasilva Effectively I’m saying I hate it when people make stuff up about the party’s internal workings.
Matthew da Silva @mattdasilva
@SimonCopland Same thing mate.
Matthew da Silva @mattdasilva
@SimonCopland then put the facts out there.
Simon Copland @SimonCopland
@mattdasilva I do. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get frustrated about people making stuff up.
Matthew da Silva @mattdasilva
@SimonCopland And I can say that free speech is the ultimate good.
Simon Copland @SimonCopland
@mattdasilva well, I’ll use my free speech to say it frustrates me when ppl make stuff up and I wish they didn’t do it.
Matthew da Silva @mattdasilva
@SimonCopland Thjs is very circular.
At the end the conversation did get very circular and we basically ended it there. But it raises a really interesting point about free-speech, and our ability to be critical of other people’s words. It’s the sort of debate that actually happens quite a lot. For example, there was the classic debate last year that the campaign against Alan Jones was ‘anti-free speech’. Or when Margaret Court complained that protests against her anti-gay comments were people trying to stop her from having her opinion.
I think I want to keep my comments about this rather short.
We value free-speech really highly. Yet, free speech does not equal the right to say whatever you want without being questioned. It is not the right to not be criticised for what you say. It’s also not the right to be able to make stuff up in public debate and not have someone call you about it.
And this distinction is really important. We value free speech because we value and open society that allows for open discussion and debate. Yet, when we start to shut down people in this way based on free-speech arguments, we are then actively shutting down this debate. And more importantly than that we are removing any responsibility that exists around free speech – the basic responsibility to be able to defend what you say.
My right to criticise your comments, to question your facts, and to ask you to think before you speak is just as important as your right to say those things in the first place. Let’s remember that.
In the middle of last year I travelled through Norway just before Anders Breivik was sentenced. At the time, the big question in the trial in the minds of Norwegians was whether Breivik was going to be committed to gaol, or to a psychiatric ward. Many Norwegians took the view that a commitment to a psych ward would have been the preferential result. That would have put him away for the rest of his life, whilst a gaol term could have seen him released in a few decades time (Breivik was eventually sentenced to gaol).
It seemed quite puzzling. Why would a medical determination result in a longer sentence, and why would we allow that? If we want people to be punished for serious crimes, shouldn’t we just punish them, rather than use the medical system as a way to do so?
The Breivik case was part of an interesting phenomenon that I’ve been thinking a lot about recently; one of the power of medicine. It seems to me that medicine has become a tool of many power systems, often being used as a worse form punishment than regular punitive justice.
“…lethal injection uses medical technology and medical expertise for the purpose of killing. Even without physician participation, the lethal injection process so closely mimics medical practice that the entire medical community is tied to the death chamber.”
We can also look at the area of sexuality, where medicine has often been treated as a way to punish those who acted out of the norm. A perfect example is that of chemical castration, or the use of chemicals to destroy people’s sex drive, which has regularly been discussed as a method for punishing sex-offenders.
In fact, as Michel Foucault explains, medical practices have have often been used to ‘treat’ a range of ‘sexual disorders’. In describing his ‘scientia sexualis’, or the scientification of sexuality, Foucault explains that a growing legal permissiveness around sexuality has been replaced with medical interventions:
“There was permissiveness, if one bears in mind that the severity of codes relating to sexual offences diminished considerably in the nineteenth century and that law itself often deferred to medicine.” (p. 40)
“sexuality was defined as being “by nature”: a domain susceptible to pathological processes, and hence one calling for therapeutic or normalising interventions…” (p. 68)
What this points to is a powerful use of medicine. On top of its place as a healer, medicine has also become a ‘punisher’. This has occurred through two fundamental means.
First, as described in the Breivik case, medicine has been used as a punitive measure in criminal cases. Whilst we often hear about those who ‘plead insanity’ as a way to avoid gaol sentences, the reality is, that it is used often also used as a method to punish.
As in the Breivik case, medicine can be used as a way to say that someone is ‘incurable’ – therefore committing them to a life in a psych ward, when a criminal sentence would allow for some release. Let’s think about it this way. You can argue that our justice system has two main goals; first to punish people for their crimes, and second to ‘rehabilitate someone’ so they can be members of our society again. Note that when we talk about rehabilitation in these terms, we are discussing a ‘social rehabilitation’ – effectively teaching someone the rules of society. Medical fixes however allow us to skip over the rehabilitation part of our system. It gives someone a disease that is often considered incurable, hence meaning eternal punishment.
The second area is in the way it creates medical reasons for those who act out of social standards. For example, it is common practice for people to assume that those who act out in public; people who walk through the streets nude, shout at the top of their lungs, or just act ‘socially weird’, have some form of mental health issue. They are medically unwell.
In creating this medical problem for people, rather than in looking at whether they are knowingly and purposefully breaking social norms, our society not only takes away their agency in their actions, but we also take away any potential rationality behind actions. We place people in a box where they are no longer mentally able to act in society, entrenching social standards through the use of medicine.
So how has science and medicine ended up doing this? Medicine is really thought of as something that is there to help people; not as a way to punish people. Foucault, once again provides an answer. Of course, here he is talking about sexuality, but we could add in any number of topics into this sentence and it would prove to be true:
“One must not suppose that there exists a certain sphere of sexuality that would be the legitimate concern of a free and disinterested scientific inquiry were it not the object of mechanisms of prohibition brought to bear by the economic or ideological requirements of power.”
Now, of course not all science, and certainly not all medicine, has been used to entrench modern power systems. But look around a lot of scientific and you can see that Foucault’s statement rings true. This points to a use of science that many wilfully ignore; its use to entrench societal power systems.
The problem is, that for most scientists in particular, this is extremely problematic. Again, looking at executions, Jonathan Groner explains that there are major ethical issues with the use of medicine in this way:
“This Author has previously called lethal injection “a stain on the face of medicine” because with its intravenous lines, electrocardiograph monitors, and anesthetic drugs, it creates an aura of medical respectability that has a “deeply corrupting influence on medicine as a whole.”
“Not only does lethal injection induce physicians to perform unethical activities, but lethal injection also “medicalizes” executions, meaning that its veneer of medical respectability allows the imagery of healing to be used to justify killing.(p.907)”
I’m not saying that there is some evil scientific cult out there looking at the best ways to punish people using medicine, but the economic and social realities of the discipline mean that we have to think about how scientific practice is often directed into those areas that entrench social power structures. Medicine is a great example of this, and one that’s worth thinking about. Do we really want to use medicine in this way, or should we go back to some more basic principles of our justice system?
Yesterday, I almost broke into tears. It was one simple text. A simple message that our “Environment Minister” had decided to approve the Whitehaven Maules Creek Coal Mine. That he’d expedited the process because of the political reasons. That the mine was being approved despite allegations that Whitehaven had fudged elements of the approval process. That we were digging up even more coal, even when we know climate change is getting worse.
You may think it’s an odd thing to want to cry about. But after the years we’ve had, for me it’s not.
Yesterday made me think back to 2007. It was such a great year. As long as I had been politically aware at that time, I had lived under John Howard. 11 years of a conservative Government, run by one of the people I couldn’t stand the most. But in 2007 we could sense the shift. We were all optimistic – the Government was going to go, as so with it the legacy of the Howard years. The Labor Party were finally providing something new. Something exciting. Reform to our workplace laws, action on climate change, a new approach to asylum seekers.
As each bit got chipped away I’ve tried to hold my nerve. I didn’t expect the Fair Work Act to be as good as I wanted it to be, so I could accept that. I would complain, but at least it was better than WorkChoices. I kind of guessed that the Apology would not be followed by much actual action, and I knew that the ALP supported the Intervention. So whilst I didn’t like it and was determined to fight it, I was at least prepared.
Then came the CPRS and it feels like it’s all been downhill from there. A 5% reduction I thought? You have to be kidding me. That wasn’t at all what we voted for. Since then, the hits have kept of coming.
Dumping climate action until 2013. A citizens assembly on climate change. Mandatory Internet filtering. Extending income quaranteening across the country. The East Timor Solution. The Malaysia Solution. The Pacific Solution. Cutting welfare for single parents. Mining the Tarkine. Turning the Barrier Reef into a coal highway. Approving coal mine after coal mine after coal mine.
And now, I am just feeling down, beaten to a pulp. The so called major “centre-left” party in this country has swung so far to the right, has swung so far away from the environment and any sense of social justice that it is hard to even look at them any more.
And what do we get? Excuse after an excuse, after an excuse. “Tony Abbott would be much worse”, we’re told. Yet, it feels like in “being better than Tony Abbott”, the ALP has now become in so many ways much worse than John Howard. That joy of 2007, the success of defeating him is gone – filled with a bunch of right policies that even he didn’t implement. Wilderness that he protected being mined, asylum seekers being treated even more poorly, welfare policies that are worse for pretty much everyone.
If being better than Tony Abbott is now what defines success in Australia’s major “centre-left” party then there’s something seriously wrong.
We can and should demand better. We can live in a world without income quaranteering, without new coal mines, without the destruction of the Tarkine, without treating asylum seekers awfully. We can live in that world, and today, instead of feeling miserable, I will strengthen my resolve to make it happen. It has to happen, because I, like so many others, am sick of feeling like this.
