Pathfinders: Abolish the trough (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Summer droughts, record temperatures and infernal wildfires are fast becoming the new UK normal, as are tabloid splashes during the peak sailing season when overloaded migrant dinghies manage to make it to UK shores. Cue a shrill crescendo of right-wing rhetoric about how immigrants (they mean Muslims) are ruining the country, destroying British culture, raping children and stealing jobs. The ultimate right-wing paranoia is ‘the Great Replacement Theory’, the modern incarnation of 20th century panics about the Jews or Chinese, in which sharia law comes to dominate the West, and democracy and free speech are annihilated.

Socialists have a different frame of reference, which is the urgent need to abolish global capitalism. To us, right-wing fears are misdirected emotional responses to the pressures and stresses of living in capitalism. When the world establishes post-capitalist common ownership, with no markets or rich elites, no states or governments, these worries will evaporate. When everything in the future is free, everywhere in the world, it’s the same as everyone being rich, and then who cares who is a foreigner and who isn’t? Maybe we’ll all choose to migrate, maybe not. It won’t matter.

But when you’re impoverished today with no hope of a decent life, it’s easy to fetishise what little you do have, like your ‘culture’. British culture, as everyone knows, is the mongrel product of scores of migrations and invasions over millennia. We are built from a mongrel mix of genes and we speak a mongrel Indo-European dialect. We enjoy Indian, Japanese, Italian, Malaysian and Caribbean cooking. We like Swiss cheese, Ethiopian coffee, German beer, American fast food with French fries, Swedish saunas and nowadays, Chinese smart gadgets. Most of our classical music heroes are Russian or Polish or German. We hang out in Spanish resorts or the Austrian Alps or Thai beach bars. If anything’s ruining British culture, it’s capitalist McDonaldisation, not our boundless appetite for diversity.

Can Britain do without immigrants? With a declining home-grown population and skill set, there is an ever-increasing list of essential jobs that are in short supply. Do we not need electricians or engineers? How about plumbers, builders, bookkeepers, IT trainers or lab technicians? There’s a shortage of all these. The understaffed NHS has 27 percent of nurses and 35 percent of doctors from overseas. Does the right want a functioning NHS or not? Foreign-born dentists now outnumber native ones. Would the right prefer bad teeth?

Alright, but what about all the Asian grooming gangs and the supposed increase in migrant-related crimes and sex attacks? Certainly there have been some well-publicised cases. Migrant crimes make headlines, equivalent ‘white’ crimes don’t. Migrants are mostly young men, and young men proportionately commit more crimes. The problem is age rather than nationality. If migration causes crime, the two should rise in lockstep. Instead, when migration was rising, overall crime rates were going down. Now both rates are falling. The right can’t support their argument with reliable government data, because there isn’t any. Crimes are not recorded against immigration status, data collection is not consistent across police forces, and age demographics are not factored in. The overall picture is confused, anecdotal and ‘a bit of a bodge’, allowing some to claim that the migrant crime problem is worse than it is. Conversely, ‘if you are a victim of a violent or sexual crime in the UK, the available evidence suggests that the ethnic makeup of the country means that the perpetrator is most likely to be a white man’.

Legal migrants are statistically less likely to commit crimes, because ‘they don’t want to get kicked out of the country’, while second-generation migrants tend to assimilate, and crime rates come into line with that of the general population. According to the Office for National Statistics, (downloadable PDF), ‘MoJ data shows that proportionately fewer foreign nationals end up in prison for sexual offences than British nationals’, despite the fact that ‘Time and time again audits have found that the police in the UK falsely charge foreign nationals at a higher rate’.

What about the Great Replacement Theory? Currently Muslims constitute around 8 percent of UK and European populations. It’s true that rates are rising slightly against a backdrop of declining European birthrates. At current trends and on a reasonable estimate, Muslims would be a UK majority by 2180, in 150 years’ time.

A lot can happen in 15 years, never mind 150. Does anyone remember the hot-button social issues of 1876? Mass Polish immigration, recently a right-wing concern, reversed spectacularly when the Polish economy started outperforming the UK’s. Any number of other reversals could occur. In any case, how do speculations about future demographics help today’s poor, whom the right supposedly cares about?

People who voted for Brexit to stop immigration must be gutted that immigration then went up. They voted for ‘sovereignty’ and to ‘take our country’ back. But if England really is our country, how come we’re only allowed to walk on 8 percent of it? Why isn’t the right angry about that? The rich own all the land because they stole it from our ancestors during the Enclosures and the Highland Clearances, and then passed laws to legalise their own robbery. People complain that foreigners are stealing their jobs. Why aren’t they angry that the rich stole the entire world, forcing the rest of us into centuries of landless wage-slavery? Why does the right despise socialists, the very people who call out this crime against humanity and demand that we take our entire world back?

Could it be that prominent right-wing leaders aren’t interested in challenging the guilty rich, who cause all our working-class misery? Could it be that they hope to join the guilty rich, by whipping up popular unthinking frenzy against hapless scapegoats in order to get their own snouts in the trough? Well, socialists have a simple answer for that. Abolish the trough. Capitalism, not immigration, is humanity’s real enemy.

Paddy Shannon

SPGB Snippets: Who is in control? (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website 

September 16, 2026

Balaclavaed men attended anti-migrant protests in Dover and Portsmouth claiming to be “patriots” taking back control from a “globalist, Marxist-communist, anti-Christian group that has ruled us for too long”.

Marxist-communists advocating global socialism and opposed to religious superstition would be an accurate description of our party, but to think we have somehow been in control shows confused thinking. Those in control of society are the capitalists, and governments are compelled to prioritise the needs of this asset-owning, profit-taking minority.

Our members are part of the working class majority. The only ‘power’ we have is to express our views and opinions. We condemn global capitalism (the cause of homelessness, poverty etc) while those on the far-right condemn those merely trying to escape from some of its consequences.

Halo Halo (2026)

The Halo Halo Column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Ecclesiastes 1:9: ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun’. A sentiment that we can find ourselves in agreement with. We are returning to a topic that appeared in Halo Halo eleven years ago, because the speculation engendered then has raised its alien head yet again.

Rumours regarding the involvement of the gods, read aliens, in human affairs and development have been swirling for many years but should convincing evidence ever surface then the fallout might prove too much to bear for many. Reluctant as we are to use nuclear devastation as a metaphor, the outcome from the consequences of the newest revelations might prove to be la désolation for those to whom ‘faith’ matters more than rationality.

The 2015 Halo had some interesting responses to the possibility of there being other sentient beings. ‘If there was intelligent life (on another planet) I don’t see that as a contradiction with the Christian faith… If God created aliens somewhere out there, then the Vatican is in no position to say Jesus wasn’t for them too’… ‘aliens who seek baptism should receive it from the church, because any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul’. ‘Alien life would be part of God’s creation’ and aliens would be ‘our brothers’.

Back in the 1960s a Swiss author published Chariots of the Gods. It has sold over thirty million copies. The book purported to show evidence that extraterrestrial beings once visited Earth and guided some embryonic civilisations. The thesis was, over time, carefully examined and the ‘evidence’ shown to have meanings different to the proposed hypothesis. Case not proven.

On 8 and 22 May 2026, the American military Pentagon gave out two lots of declassified files regarding UFOs (now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP). Quelle surprise mon blancmange, the released files do not provide any definitive or conclusive evidence of life on Mars, of Alien Ubers, or of a Men in Black establishment.  Such non-evidence from these files will not necessarily disappoint conspiracy theorists who will maintain that the ‘real’ evidence is still being withheld for a number of reasons and the government is doing what the government always does, hiding information for the benefit of a minority.

The solar system resides in the Milky Way which has an estimated total of possibly up to four hundred billion stars and planets. So about the same odds as winning the national lottery. Who wants to bet that there isn’t other evolved life out there? As has been noted in the past, if evolved life is at a higher level of consciousness than humankind then it would assiduously avoid this neighbourhood rather than moving into it.

Conclusion, the expected ‘nuclear devastation’ is no such thing and doesn’t even qualify as a damp squib. Guess we’ll have to wait until the visitors actually do jet in to see the level of the welcome.

DC

Proper Gander: Theroux the keyhole (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Louis Theroux has built up his career as a documentary-maker since the 1990s, with his trademark approach being to patiently spend time among society’s stranger subcultures to learn about what motivates the people within. The subjects of his latest film are prominent figures in the ‘manosphere’, a loose online network which upholds hard-line versions of masculinity. Netflix’s Inside The Manosphere follows Theroux as he meets influencers who have amassed millions of young male fans through their social media platforms, livestreams and podcasts. Their content extols their values of conspicuous wealth, sexism and conspiracy theories, with the influencers all living extravagant lifestyles and exuding confidence, giving their views plausibility among their impressionable followers.

In Marbella, Theroux visits Harrison Sullivan (aka HSTikkyTokky) and Ed Matthews, whose online content includes videos of macho fitness tips and ‘predator stings’ confronting alleged paedophiles. Sullivan becomes suspicious that Theroux is trying to catch him out and cuts short the time he agreed to spend being interviewed, although he later backtracks after his videos about their first meeting attract more clicks. While Sullivan and Matthews represent the ‘laddish’ style of influencer, Justin Waller from Louisiana is more measured, wearing tailored suits as he drives Theroux around in his Lamborghini. Waller’s material combines business advice with a disdain for feminism, saying women tend to prefer traditional family roles. He and his wife are in a ‘one-sided monogamous’ relationship, and it’s not him who’s monogamous. This arrangement is also a preference of the Miami-based influencer known as Myron Gaines, who claims women ‘want a guy that can lead them and dominate them’. Theroux sits in during Gaines’ Fresh & Fit podcast in which his female guests get objectified, belittled and embarrassed. As Theroux later comments, many of the influencers ‘advocate for traditional values while at the same time wanting to be seen with scantily-clad models’.

The confidence which influencers have in their derisory beliefs about women’s roles comes from their ‘red pill’ ideology. This is a reference to the 1999 film The Matrix, which we’re told in this context means seeing through the mainstream media’s discrimination against men, although ‘redpilling’ is usually shorthand for adopting a far-right viewpoint. New Yorker Sneako is among the more politicised of the influencers Theroux meets. Alongside being a Muslim Trump-supporter, he claims satanists run the world, leaving clues in pictures of celebrities using ‘one eye’ symbolism and telling people such as singer Sam Smith to become transgender. Predictably, he adds that the aim of this satanic cabal is to establish a single global government. While Sneako denies this is Jewish, other influencers share the conviction that a small group of Jews are behind a plan to promote degeneracy through manipulating culture, especially gender politics.

The outlook spun by the influencers is really a convoluted way of enticing people to buy the financial products they have a stake in. Theroux tests one of Sullivan’s investment opportunities and loses most of the £500 he paid in. Sullivan is at least honest in admitting that what drives his material is what makes money for him rather than what is considered right or wrong. An example is when he says he was ‘clip-farming’ by including antisemitic content while not believing it, as he knew this would generate attention. Getting exposure in order to gain more supporters and therefore customers is the priority. The notion that ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ would apparently be confirmed after Inside The Manosphere was released, with Sullivan accruing more followers because of the coverage it has given him, according to an article in the Metro (7 April), which itself represents more promotion.

As the focus of the show is Theroux meeting people, not much time is spent analysing the manosphere’s place in society. This approach either admirably allows the viewer to reach their own conclusions or disappointingly makes the programme feel shallow. Theroux posits how the upbringing of the influencers may have contributed to their mindset in that many of them lacked a supportive father figure, perhaps affecting their attitudes to relationships, such as ‘one-sided monogamy’. More widely, he says they are ‘products of a culture – growing up online in a world that’s changing at dizzying speed’ with long-established male roles challenged. He adds that they now project their trauma by ‘spewing hate’ to an audience of young men looking for something to feel they belong to, preferably with money to buy financial products. The fans of the influencers we see in the documentary clearly feel empowered by what their heroes advocate. Theroux recognises that while the influencers offer hope to troubled men, it comes with a belief that they are living in ‘a matrix purposely designed to make men fail’. He suggests ‘the matrix they rail against more accurately describes the algorithmic prison they’ve created for their followers, an illusion of endless wealth and power that actually only enriches a few at the top’.

The personal traumas which shaped the mindsets of each influencer and follower happened in a world which is ‘designed to make men fail’ (and women too, often in different ways). This is the divisive world of capitalism, driven by aspirations of wealth amid poverty and power amid powerlessness. They have misinterpreted this, though, and don’t identify the economic system itself as structurally creating (nearly all) people’s disadvantaged position, but instead blame the ‘matrix’ of feminism and a supposed Jewish cabal. This poisonous stance has proved lucrative for the influencers because it attracts attention online among vulnerable men, reinforcing a worrying association between wealth and bigotry. The confidence with which this mentality is promoted disguises its errors and contradictions, such as its ridiculous ‘evidence’ for a Jewish / satanic conspiracy and the hypocrisy of its attitudes to women. For an ideology apparently based on dogged independence it relies heavily on fan worship of the influencers. The ‘manosphere’ is both an expression of the alienation which comes with living in capitalist society and a dangerously misguided attempt at compensating for that alienation.

Mike Foster

Cooking The Books: What Epstein reveals (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Epstein was not just a pimp for the more dissolute members of the global elite. As Gerard Baker wrote in his column in the Times (6 February), headed ‘Epstein saga is a fable of modern capitalism’, ‘sexual scandal aside, the attraction of the financier was that he ran a global network of the rich and powerful’.

Epstein’s email contacts, Baker suggested, would be a representative sample of those in top positions in government, finance, law, media, academia and big tech, ‘the most advantaged individuals [who] moved around a borderless world’ and ‘who have wielded the controlling influence over our lives, our culture, our jobs and much else for most of the last quarter century’:

‘Thanks to Epstein’s crimes, we have been given a glimpse into the way the liberal capitalist global order has worked. And in the process, perhaps, we can see even more clearly why so many people want to sweep it away.’

There is a temptation, amongst those who want this, to see a network like Epstein’s as part of some set-up whereby some global elite make decisions about what happens in the world. Some have not resisted this temptation and have concluded that the world actually is run by a global elite who plan what to do at their meetings in Davos or at the Bilderberg group or on Epstein’s island. Baker adds some credence to this when he wrote of them ‘wielding the controlling influence over our lives’.

In reality, they are not fundamentally in control of what happens under capitalism. They don’t plan booms and slumps or wars or revolutions. Some of them, in their role as the government of a state, do secretly organise — conspire, if you like — to bring about political changes in other countries in the interest of their particular state or group of states. Stock exchange speculators conspire to influence share prices. But nobody controls, or could control, the way the capitalist economic system works; that depends on impersonal market forces which impose themselves, even on the members of the global elite. That’s ‘the controlling influence over our lives’.

Baker corrected himself when he went to write that ‘Epstein enticed them into his web not with his harem of adolescent girls but … the chance for a few words in the ear of someone who could make you even richer, even more powerful; a little inside info, a potential deal…’ That is the limit of what goes on, not some grand conspiracy.

To some extent the situation resembles that described by Marx on the eve of the overthrow of French monarchy in 1848 when under the dominance of the ‘finance aristocracy’:

‘the same prostitution, the same blatant swindling, the same mania for self-enrichment – not from production but by sleight-of-hand with other people’s wealth – was to be found in all spheres of society, from the Court to the Café Borgne. The same unbridled assertion of unhealthy and vicious appetites broke forth, appetites which were in permanent conflict with the bourgeois law itself, and which were to be found particularly in the upper reaches of society, appetites in which the wealth created by financial gambles seeks its natural fulfilment, in which pleasure becomes debauched, in which money, filth and blood commingle. In the way it acquires wealth and enjoys it the financial aristocracy is nothing but the lumpenproletariat reborn at the pinnacle of bourgeois society’ (The Class Struggles in France: 1848 to 1850).

But even if people like them were swept away (as they were in 1848) there would still be capitalism, the real problem and controlling influence.

Bilderberg group (2001)

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been pointed out to us that a passage on page 4 of the September Socialist Standard about the G8 leaders could have been misunderstood as saying that the "semi-mythological Bilderberg group" were the real rulers of the world. The Bilderberg group is a gathering of politicians and their paymasters in the ruling class and is not beholden to one or another government or state. Beyond the fact that its members and attendees are typically representative of ruling class opinion and powerful in their own right, their collective power as members of Bilderberg is certainly open to conjecture, though it won't extend to controlling governments. 

Editors.

Messenger boys (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The various Christian churches seem to be hitting the secular headlines recently with the Catholic church, by far the biggest, taking the lead. For the last year or so it has been deeply embroiled with the larger than life moneylenders of the international banking world. But it isn’t (as the innocent Catholic might think) the Children of Christ condemning the moneylenders, calling on them to “Store up their riches in Heaven and not on earth where they will rust and be eaten up by moths.”

A collection of about 120 foreign banks and other creditors want to know what has happened to £916 million of their money which was last seen passing through an intricate network of companies and subsidiaries from Liechtenstein to Peru, mostly owned by the Vatican Bank (IOR). Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, ex-head of the Vatican Bank, has been intimately linked with this mysterious affair. A one-time diplomat in the Vatican, Marcinkus seems to have been unwise in the company he kept while head of the Vatican Bank, for two of his closest associates were Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi. Sindona, a successful Sicilian banker, has been convicted of fraud and misappropriation of funds while Calvi. ex-member of the infamous masonic lodge P2. belter known as “God’s Banker”, recently slipped secretly out of Italy. He crossed the Gulf of Trieste to Yugoslavia and London, apparently to hang himself from Blackfriars Bridge, first taking the precaution of filling his pockets with stones and placing half a brick down the front of his trousers.

As with any good story, the plot thickens. In July 1978 Pope Paul VI died and was succeeded by a Pope John Paul I. Pope John Paul I died a few months later in September 1978. Allegations have been made that Pope John Paul I was poisoned because he had uncovered the financial wheeling and dealing of the Vatican Bank and objected to it. Contradictory statements by the Vatican about the circumstances of the death only encourage suspicion. Who really did discover the body? What was the Pope really reading when he died in bed?

All this has cast some doubt on the infallibility of the papacy. How could the Vatican get itself into such an embarrassing mess? Even if Pope Paul VI didn't know what was going on under his very nose (Marcinkus’s office was directly beneath the Papal apartments) you would have thought God would have had a quiet word in his ear. After all the Pope, so they tell us, is our direct link with God.

Of course, the Vatican hasn't admitted to making a mistake. It never does. Nevertheless, Archbishop Marcinkus has applied for immunity from prosecution by the Italian Judiciary. The Vatican Bank has also agreed to pay creditors £180 million. confidently expecting to recoup the loss from contributions by working class catholics.

While the Vatican is uneasily wearing the cloak of infallibility the Church of England has attributed falling attendances to the rigidity and inflexibility of ideas, which haven’t changed much in centuries. It has realised that the mumbo-jumbo of the past that worked quite well is seen to be more and more ridiculous. To counter this it has decided to invent some more modern mumbo-jumbo, adapted from the old stuff. Oxbridge theologians have been telling us that a lot of the Bible isn't strictly true, that the meaning and symbolism of what is written in the Bible is more important than whether or not it actually occurred in history. This innovative bit of philosophical sophistry has not gone unnoticed by the more conservative members of the clergy.The result has been a bitter debate about whether the Virgin Mary was or wasn’t.

In July David Jenkins, a leading advocate for change, was consecrated in York Minster as the Bishop of Durham amid protests and interruptions. A few days later there was an unhappy coincidence when the south transept of the Minster was struck by lightning and burnt down. Not surprisingly some of the clergy put this down to a divine thunderbolt, sent by a merciful God as an act of retribution. Fortunately, York Minster was insured by an ecclesiastical insurance company even if it is paradoxical for the church to be insuring itself against acts of God.

So while the Catholic church is grappling with financial corruption and infallibility, the Church of England is trying to reinterpret the work of God. A church that isn't as burdened with outmoded ideas and traditions inherited from previous centuries is Billy Graham's Evangelism. Everybody living in the English provinces must have noticed Big Brother Billy staring down at them from bill boards. His square set jaw. menacing smile and piercing eyes encourage the question “Would I buy a second-hand car from this man?”, especially in view of the personal testimony from ex-President Richard Nixon: “Billy Graham is one of the giants of our time”. But Dr. Billy isn’t the man he was in 1949 when he terrified all those who would like to sec 1950 with Christian threats like “Communism is inspired, directed and motivated by the devil himself. Either communism must die or Christianity must die”. A couple of years ago he went to preach in that nest of demons and devil worshippers, Moscow. Having been well treated by the puppets of Satan, he returned to cause a storm with some inane comments about the benevolent nature of the Russian state.

For a few months this year Graham was on Mission England. Backed up by technicians, campaign managers, thousand-voice choirs, security heavies and the all important $40 million business machine. Billy visited Bristol. Norwich, Sunderland, Birmingham. Liverpool and Ipswich. It must have been quite a spectacle to sec him preaching from the hallowed turf of Anfield. to hear the stadium echoing to the songs of praise, though not the usual irreverent and profane type. No doubt there was a deathly hush as Billy asked the spectators if they could hear Jesus knocking to come in. Jesus certainly wouldn't have been the first to be locked out of Anfield anyway.

Billy is not, as some might think, a man of peace, for when our masters’ property and profits are threatened he believes in the necessity of defence — of killing people and not turning the other cheek. Although he has gone to great pains to appear concerned about the problems of his flock such as unemployment and poverty, these are problems that God has spared Billy, who lives in a converted log cabin on a 200 acre site in America and receives a salary of $55,000 a year.

It’s all very easy poking fun at the Church now that the age of inquisition and witch burnings is over, but it is beside the point. Why do these ridiculous people and institutions exist? Why do so many people believe in what they say?

It is not possible to prove or disprove the existence of God. who exists only for people who have "faith”, a belief in something for which there is no material evidence. The evidence that Christians will give for the existence of a God is their faith. How could they believe in something of which there is no material evidence (except a book of dubious origin and authenticity) unless that belief was inspired by God himself? Their god is supposed to give them faith and this explains, for them, why they have faith. To break this circle of "God exists because 1 believe in God", it is necessary to understand why Christianity is so appealing to many people.

We live in a friendless society of competition. insecurity and. for many of us, absolute poverty. We live in a cruel and impersonal world, over which we seem to have no control. Most Christians would refer to all this as "suffering”. But they offer a unique "solution” to those who arc suffering, which is most of us — a philosophy, a set of ideas, that turns this suffering from something pointless and wasteful into something worthwhile. If we believe in God and Jesus Christ and accept the suffering doled out to us by the world, so they tell us, we will go to a much better place at the end of it and there live forever. The meek acceptance of suffering is a sort of lest and the better we do. the better the chance that we will be rewarded.

This, in essence, is very much like working for a wage. You graft for eight hours a day in a job you hate for the promise of a wage packet at the end of the week. The difference is that there is no pie in the sky at the end of your stint down here. Only worms and maggots. The idea of Christianity also gives you a sense of control over your ow n life for you can participate in the kingdom of Heaven. In every sense Christianity is masochistic, it dupes you into enjoying pain and suffering. It anaesthetises you against the stresses and strains of society. Once accepted, it becomes more difficult to face up to the real horrors of society

DB

Proper Gander: Crafty cover-ups (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘This strange thing is flying very fast but erratically … We didn’t see a cockpit. We didn’t see windows. And it moved in ways that we didn’t understand’ says Alex Dietrich, a former pilot with the American military, of her encounter with an unidentified flying object. The case was featured in BBC4’s documentary What Are UFOs?, which described current interest among scientists of reports of ‘strange things’ in the sky, with a potted history of the UFO phenomenon as context.

In the documentary, astrophysicists, witnesses and researchers discuss Dietrich’s sighting from 2004, which became known as the ‘tic tac’, and the so-called ‘gimbal’, observed in 2015. Both were oddly-shaped and oddly-behaving objects seen by pilots and tracked on radar, with footage recorded and subsequently pored over without universal agreement on what it shows. As some of the experts featured in the programme explain, ordinary objects may seem to have unusual shapes and move in unlikely ways because of how they appear on screen. Infra-red cameras are sensitive to heat, so an object will be more prominent the hotter it is, meaning that an aeroplane could look like a blob because the camera will only pick up the area around the engine. Another effect of this is that an object may seem to vanish if its temperature becomes close to that of what’s behind it. Also, the way that cameras on planes move in relation to other objects can make them misleadingly appear to travel in improbable ways. Recordings on modern equipment can be scrutinised much closer than in the past and, as repeated in the documentary, unexplained aerial phenomena are now investigated scientifically chiefly by analysing data, rather than relying on the veracity of observers’ testimony.

Scanning footage on computers doesn’t explain everything about all sightings, particularly when objects have been witnessed directly as well as through equipment. And some sightings may still be of craft which the state wants to keep top secret. As the programme demonstrates, the explanation that this cover-up has been of earthly tech rather than of extra-terrestrial spaceships seems more substantial now than when UFOs have previously been in vogue. The UFO phenomenon as we now know it began in 1947, not long after the Second World War cemented an association between objects in the sky and threats. Wreckage was recovered from a field near Roswell, New Mexico, which the army initially claimed was of a crashed flying disc, then a weather balloon. The subsequent saga of this being a captured alien ship (with aliens) drew attention away from the explanation that the debris was really from a balloon launched from a nearby military airbase. However, the balloon wasn’t for measuring weather patterns but was developed through the top secret Project Mogul to detect Soviet nuclear tests. The Roswell Incident coincided with a widely-publicised sighting of UFOs over Washington by pilot Kenneth Arnold. The United States Air Force responded to the subsequent wave of other reports of aerial oddities by investigating them under ‘Project Blue Book’, no doubt looking out for incoming Russian craft.

From the 1980s, reports of traditional saucer-shaped UFOs were often superseded by sightings of triangular objects. The shape was similar to that of experimental American fighter jets tested from Area 51, the research base in Nevada which the CIA only admitted existed in 2013. Restricting information is a prerogative of the military and governments, although they’re more interested in keeping their technological advancements secret from rival states than from the general public. If the issue gets blurred by focusing on aliens, then all the better. As researcher Jacob Haqq-Misra and astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi tell us in the documentary, the gap created by the absence of an official, public explanation for UFOs has been filled to some extent by Hollywood, which has reinforced the assumption that extra-terrestrial spacecraft are involved. 1950s science fiction movies played with the notion of alien invaders symbolising commie infiltrators undermining The American Dream. In its early years, the UFO phenomenon was moulded by the tensions and divisions of the Cold War, and has been a more bizarre effect on people’s consciousness than anxieties about the nuclear bomb.

The end of the Cold War didn’t mean the end of UFOs, which were even more prominent in the culture of the 1990s, when TV hit The X-Files emphasised how the UFO phenomenon is intertwined with conspiracy theories. Running through this is a mistrust of the government and military, concentrating on shadowy cover-ups of captured alien tech rather than of new fighter jets. The more zealous UFO researchers have tended towards the approach of trying to demonstrate something is alien, rather than starting enquiries in a more grounded way. A wilder, interplanetary explanation is more attractive in the sense of being attention-grabbing, and therefore has potential for financial exploitation which more mundane explanations lack. UFOs have been commodified particularly enthusiastically in the sci-fi films of the 1950s and the ‘grey’ alien tat and contactee books of the 1990s. These issues were raised in What Are UFOs?, but predictably the documentary didn’t follow them through. The UFO phenomenon has manifested itself in the way it has because it has been shaped by capitalist concerns: nation states, imperialism, military technology, secretive elites, profitability. This is why the emphasis on gathering data to explain each sighting voiced by some of the featured experts isn’t enough to explain the phenomenon itself. This requires an understanding of the societal conditions which have created it.

A good deal of the ufology phenomenon appears to be driven by capitalist concerns, not from another planet. Perhaps any real would-be extra-terrestrial visitors have been put off from landing by seeing the state of capitalist society (and how it has shaped our impression of them)?

Mike Foster

Anti-climax (1951)

From the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the past year our attention has been turned to the skys in many ways. We had Fred Hoyle’s Lectures (broadcast by the B.B.C.) on the New Cosmology, giving many of us a fascinating insight into the wonders of the universe. In a B.B.C. broadcast we also learned that Societies exist to plan trips to the moon and later to mars, although it is stressed that many years will elapse before they can actually be attempted. In the same programme (Focus on Interplanetary Travel), we were taken on an imaginary trip (by rocket) to the moon.

A book was published entitled, “The Conquest of Space.”  W. Ley had collected technical information on this subject and presented it with pictures (by Chesney Borestell) based on the latest authentic research. The trips to the various planets in the book were, of course, purely imaginary. Becoming “sky-conscious” Hollywood gave us a brace of films, “Destination Moon” and “Rocketship X-M.,” but the most spectacular appeal to public attention was made by the “ Flying Saucers.” This elusive and much publicised phenomena caught the public imagination and the most extraordinary rumours were circulated regarding their speed, manoeuverability and brilliant light, particularly in America where they mostly appeared, although people in British Isles claimed to have seen them.

On 7th October, following much advance publicity, the Sunday Express featured a series of articles on the subject entitled (rather dramatically) “Is another world watching us?” The author, Gerald Heard, was introduced as “distinguished writer and well-known broadcaster,” and the articles were extracts from his book, “The Riddle of the Flying Saucers.” He certainly spread himself at length on the subject as the series did not finish till 3rd December. First a mass of testimony was brought forth by those who claimed to have witnessed the phenomena. Then it was said. “The question of their speed seems to rule out any human designer. . . from a quiet brooding to a speed of 18,000 miles per hour.” Heard put forth an astonishing assortment of suggestions quite seriously, the most fantastic being that they were “manned” by insects from outer space. (Insects being able to withstand the pressure of the tremendous acceleration). Each planet of our solar system was solemnly examined and mars singled out as the only one upon which insect life could exist.

We were told that U.S. Army and Navy denied all knowledge of the saucers: surely Mr. Heard could not be so naive as to accept that as conclusive? A child of average intelligence would realise that if It were a military or naval “ top secret ” it would be disowned rather than acknowledged prematurely.

The conclusion of the articles is more fantastic than all that has gone before and we really question whether Mr. Heard is indulging in that pastime, colloquially known as pulling our legs. He quotes earlier on that “No form of life as we know it could exist on mars, but insect life.” Nevertheless he concludes in the following extraordinary manner:—“The earths rind of rock (the lithosphere) may not be at all thick. It may be possible with our 'modem atom power explosion to burst through it. Then, quite likely, out would come our molten insects. Martians might well have strong views about planets that explode themselves. For turning ourselves into a dust belt filling our entire orbit with a thick mist of fragments we might cut off a dangerously large amount of the all- too-little sunlight they now get . . . When we twice struck Japan and then not to slaughter but to astound— made the Pacific spout, when we, time and again sent up great super-thunderheads of smoke, spray and the wreckage of human industry and human bodies right up into the stratosphere, then we put out a finger to beckon attention on any watching fellow planet that we were the little fellow out for trouble and able and itching to give it. They could hardly have failed to see that defiant wanton signal. Does that close the question Why Now?”

Well! Here comes the anti-climax, the secret is out—flying saucers are atom test balloons. The information was released by the chief of Nuclear Research, U.S. Navy (Daily Herald, 13/2/51).

Shades of Jules Verne. On 31st December, 1950, the Sunday Express patted itself smugly on the back that it had led the field with articles on “that interesting topic Flying Saucers ” and were much flattered that other newspapers were following their lead. They can claim no credit, rather the reverse, for sponsoring these articles as a serious attempt to solve the mystery.

The Astronomer Royal (Sir Harold Spencer Jones) took a dim view of the whole thing and said (when questioned about flying saucers) “It is very significant that most of the reports appear to have come from a country where mass hysteria is rather prevalent.”

We will close by following Mr. Heard’s lead and indulge a short flight of fancy. Supposing that space ships brought beings from another planet. One imagines they would be fleeting visitors to this miserable world of conflicts, and want alongside potential plenty. Interplanetary travel presupposes a more intellectual and very much farther advanced form of life, the outcome of which we should presume to be a classless society, where all the evils that are the outcome of capitalist society could not exist. The inevitable and ultimate goal of all human endeavours.

Many of us would want to “thumb a lift” for the journey back.

F. M. Robins

Awakened, not Woke (2025)

Book Review from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Going Mainstream: Why Extreme Ideas are Spreading, and What We Can Do About It. By Julia Ebner. Ithaka £10.99.

The basis for this book is that far-right ideas have become mainstream and so more widely accepted. The author investigated a variety of movements, on-line and in person, to find out what made people accept the views in question. She also spoke to opponents of such positions and, for instance, presents arguments for the reality of climate change. She also says that trans rights and feminism are not mutually exclusive.

The groups dealt with here are incels (involuntary celibate women-hating men), climate change deniers, transphobics, white nationalists, anti-vaxxers and sympathisers with Putin’s Russia (among other things, Russia’s state propaganda machine fuels conspiracy myths). The internet is a fruitful recruiting ground for such groups, especially messaging apps such as Telegram. Online harassment of people they disagree with is common, and some Extinction Rebellion supporters have received death threats.

One point made is that adopting one conspiracy theory makes a person more likely to accept others too, and there are plenty of people who belong to more than one group. For instance, there is a sizeable overlap between white nationalists and climate change deniers, and also with anti-vaxxers. Many of those who support conspiracy theories see themselves as ‘awakened’, having seen through the lies of the establishment and the traditional media. Online groups in particular foster a feeling of belonging among people who are alienated and perhaps lack social skills. Vested interests and right-wing organisations provide sizeable funding for those who attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

One of the nastiest organisations examined here is in the UK, Patriotic Alternative, where practically everything is seen as ‘white genocide’. By 2066, supposedly, ‘indigenous people’ will be a minority in Britain (the date is presumably not a coincidence). White Lives Matter sees white people as being victimised, while All Lives Matter fails to acknowledge discrimination against black people, and has only evolved as a movement since the rise of Black Lives Matter.

The final chapter deals with what can be done to fight against the spread of extreme ideas. It includes such suggestions as dealing with the sources of discontent, not just symptoms, and ‘prebunking’ disinformation (empowering people to spot factual distortions before they occur). The interesting part of the book, though, is the exploration of extremist views and why people are attracted to them.

Paul Bennett

What the heck is Cultural Marxism? (2024)

Wojak Karl Marx

From the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

You may have seen it on a clumsy wojak speech bubble via a Facebook group or on Twitter, more than likely in a 4chan meme, but the buzz phrase ‘Cultural Marxism’ has entered the political lexicon. A term rooted in the theoretical work of the Frankfurt School, which sought to apply Marxist theory to culture, it has also been appropriated to denote a sinister conspiracy theory. That is to say, it initially referred to Marxist critiques of culture but has been adopted by some right-wing and far-right groups to describe perceived threats from progressive social reforms. Members of the Jewish community and anti-racist groups hold that using this term perpetuated antisemitic conspiracy theories.

In 2019 the Guardian, referring to Suella Braverman, reported ‘Tory MP Criticized for Using Antisemitic Term “Cultural Marxism”.’ Other Tory MPs have been criticised for this including the Croydon South MP and multi-millionaire landlord Chris Philp (tinyurl.com/skkrr33e). Somehow he retained his seat in this constituency that has large parts among the country’s lowest twenty percent deprived areas.

This portrayal of Marxism is a misrepresentation that conflates a broad and complex set of ideas into a monolithic threat. As a party with a strong basis in Marx’s actual writings, we can easily dismiss this definition as not only inherently incorrect but also because the term serves not as analysis but as a dog whistle for any type of racist, misogynist or bigoted behaviour.

In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition or for avoidance of true understanding. Much like ‘woke mind virus’ and ‘social justice warrior’, what ‘Cultural Marxism’ means isn’t as important as who it is being used against and who’s listening.

Cultural Marxism 1.0

‘Cultural Marxism’ initially referred to the work of the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist theorists established in the 20th century, intellectuals like Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse, who aimed to expand on Marx’s work by applying Marxism to cultural and social phenomena. The goal was to understand why capitalist societies had not yet collapsed despite the inherent contradictions that Marx had drawn attention to.

The Frankfurt School theorists argued that culture, ideology, and mass media play significant roles in maintaining the status quo by shaping public consciousness and discouraging revolutionary thought. They explored concepts such as the ‘culture industry,’ which describes how popular culture is mass produced to reinforce consumerism and passive acceptance of the capitalist system. These ideas were not about destroying ‘First World culture’ but about critiquing how cultural forms are manipulated to maintain the capitalist dominance.

Gramsci contributed to this school of thought with his concept of ‘cultural hegemony’. He posited that the capitalist class maintains control not just through force or economic power, but by dominating cultural norms and values, peddling the capitalist worldview as common sense. This notion emphasized the need for a counter-hegemonic culture to challenge and replace the dominant capitalist ideology with socialist ideas.

Appropriation and distortion by the far-right

In the cold dead claws of the alt-right, Cultural Marxism loses its meaning as a critical theory and is presented as a pejorative term engineered to invoke the conspiracy theory that Marxists are covertly campaigning to subvert ‘White’ culture by accepting the value of equality between race, genders and sexuality. The distorted view accuses these socially progressive changes as part of a coordinated effort to destroy ‘White’ culture. Popping another red pill and through fash-tainted glasses, this conspiracy theory goes on that Cultural Marxists are waging a war against traditional and Christian values to weaken the West from within. This reframing is a gift to the alt-right fash, reformed to paint itself as the victim of a red terror and saviour of Western civilization against a perceived cultural invasion.

The alt-rights use of ‘Cultural Marxism’ as a catch-all term for everything it opposes — feminist, multiculturalist, LGBTQ+, atheists, even the vegans — serves to rally the right and reactionaries against imaginary bogeymen (but usually minorities) and anyone really. This approach allows them to cosplay as the last line of defence against an existential cultural threat. As Slavoj Žižek noted in The Sublime Object of Ideology, ‘The more we discuss the impact of political correctness, the more we lose sight of the actual economic struggles’. This diversion helps the alt-right avoid engaging with tangible issues of capitalist exploitation and economic hardship and racial inequality. Paul Mason in Post-Capitalism added ‘The conspiracy theory of “Cultural Marxism” is an attempt to reduce complex social phenomena into simplistic and unfounded narratives.’

Let’s make sense of the frothing-at-the-mouth rhetoric.

From a socialist perspective the appropriation of Cultural Marxism is a deliberate calculated distraction from hardships and truths facing workers. By focusing on cultural battles it serves the interests of the ruling class by preventing the working class from recognizing its own power. Meanwhile, the capitalist class continues to exploit labour, accumulate wealth, and consolidate power, largely unchallenged by a fragmented and tired populace.

Rosa Luxemburg argued that ‘the most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening’. Thus we argue that the real struggle is not over culture or identity but over who controls the wealth generated by the working class. The focus should not be on fighting imaginary cultural enemies of fictional conspiracies but on the working class organizing to liquidate the capitalist system that exploits them.

This alt-right myth is a convenient albeit dangerous tool for the ruling class to attack the working class, keeping us divided and distracted. By promoting fear of cultural change, the capitalist class can avoid accountability for the economic exploitation and inequality that capitalism perpetuates.

Who smears wins

The tactics used by the alt-right in promoting the Cultural Marxism narrative is a direct lift from the 20th century fascist propaganda tactic of scapegoating with fear-mongering. Smears and vitriol, less blood and soil, more shite and bile. Fascist states thrived on dread and fear of the external enemy — whether it be other nations, communists, a minority, or immigrants — this all served to unify their base and justify extreme political violence. By positioning themselves as defenders of traditional ‘White’ values against a supposed cultural onslaught of the unknowable hordes and heathens, they seek to rally disaffected individuals around a nationalist identity and exclusionary vision.

In The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism in Europe, Paul Hanebrink, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, points out that ‘for much of the twentieth century, Europe was haunted by a threat of Judeo-Bolshevism myth’. He examines the unfounded and damaging narrative that falsely connects Judaism with Bolshevism. This myth emerged in early 20th century Europe and falsely claimed that Jewish people were behind the rise of Russian ‘communism’. The conspiracy theory was employed as a propaganda tool to justify antisemitic policies and actions, contributing to the persecution of Jewish communities and supporting authoritarian regimes. He underscores the myth’s impact on European politics and society, demonstrating how such harmful narratives can distort public perception and fuel discrimination.

Fascism relies on an us-versus-them mentality, which is why the alt-right’s use of ‘Cultural Marxism’ as a bogeyman is so effective. It allows them to present themselves as the last line of defence against a cultural apocalypse, even as they promote intolerance, exclusion, and violence. As political theorist Hannah Arendt observed in The Origins of Totalitarianism, ‘The essence of totalitarianism is not merely a system of government but a state of mind that relies on fear and hate to unite and control’. The alt-right’s approach is not new; it’s a recycled form of demagoguery used to maintain control through division and fear.

This approach ultimately serves the interests of the capitalist class as by promoting cultural conflict, it enables them to continue to exploit labour and amass wealth without facing unity of resistance.

Socialism offers a world where the wealth we create together is used to meet our needs, not to enrich a privileged few. It’s about a future society where we work cooperatively, where resources are shared equitably.

Socialists have a clear-eyed understanding of the challenge we face and reject the false narratives peddled by the alt-right, other bad faith actors and their allies. It’s essential to recognize that the real struggle is not over culture but over economic power and control. By dismantling the capitalist system, we create a society where cultural diversity is celebrated and where all people have the opportunity to participate fully in shaping the world around them.

A. T.

For or Against Parliament? (2010)

From the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

People who come into contact with the Socialist Party and learn that we advocate revolution are often surprised that the revolution we urge is one that can be brought about by parliamentary means. They are used to associating revolution with the violent overthrow of governments, not with peaceful democratic elections. This is understandable given that, historically, revolutions of whatever kind have tended to be accompanied by bloodshed and violence and most organisations or political parties calling for revolution still envisage, whether explicitly or otherwise, violent means.

But the latest Socialist Party pamphlet, What’s Wrong With Using Parliament? The Cases For and Against the Revolutionary Use of Parliament, makes it clear that, for the establishment of the wageless, moneyless free access society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life that defines socialism, it is essential for the revolution to be brought about by a majority using democratic means. And since such means are available in most countries in the form of elections by universal suffrage, there is no reason why these should not be used in order for that majority to take control of governments and establish a worldwide socialist society.

While this is the basic premise of the pamphlet, most of it is actually taken up explaining why the common objections to the use of parliament to carry out revolutionary action do not hold water. These are objections often put by those such as anarchists who may broadly agree with the kind of society we want to establish but believe that any attempt to do so by parliamentary means is doomed to failure. There are two main arguments along these lines.

The first argument is that socialists elected to a capitalist parliament will not be able to withstand the ‘system’ and either will find that it forces them into complying with the status quo or will be seduced by being part of the ‘power structure’ and will voluntarily fall in with it ignoring their roots and the mandate on which they were elected.

The pamphlet answers this argument firstly by showing that the capitalist form of democracy, though seriously flawed, has in fact no formal means of preventing sufficiently determined individuals representing a politically conscious majority from using the political system it has developed in order to overthrow it. It deals with the ‘power corrupts’ idea by arguing that the delegates in question would be operating in a different social framework from the one that currently exists, one that would be shot through with the notion of participation and democratic accountability at all levels. It expresses the idea in the following way:

“With the spread of socialist ideas all organisations will change and take on a participatory democratic and socialist character, so that the majority’s organisation for socialism will not be just political and economic, but will also embrace schools and universities, television, film-making, plays and the like as well as inter-personal relationships. We’re talking about a radical social revolution involving all aspects of social life.”

A far more advanced form of democracy therefore than offered to us by capitalism today, where once every few years we are asked to put an X on a ballot paper to choose the best capitalist-management team from amongst competing groups of politicians, who then go away and take all the decisions that influence our lives without consulting us. Yet weak democracy is better then none and, as the pamphlet makes clear, it still provides a means for the majority to take political power once a socialist majority has emerged.

The second argument against the use of parliament is that the powers-that-be would never tolerate a democratic takeover by a socialist majority because of the loss of authority and privilege this would mean for them. They would therefore, if necessary, prevent it by force. There are many suppositions underlying such an argument but the main one is that there is somehow a power behind or beyond elected governments that in reality controls them (some kind of shadowy group or committee or boardroom that is really in control) and that, therefore, if its position is seriously threatened it has the means at its disposal to clamp down on those threatening it and will not hesitate to use violence to do so, perhaps in the form of a coup or a military takeover.

The pamphlet confronts this position by challenging the ‘conspiracy theorists’ to provide evidence that there is a conspiracy behind government and the way the system is organised and argues that, while capitalism with its inbuilt rivalries and vested interests may provide a fertile breeding ground for many individual conspiracies, no evidence exists or has ever been presented that there is an overall conspiracy running capitalism and its governments. That being the case, any attempt to use violence to prevent socialism being brought about by a majority in parliament with undisputed democratic legitimacy would have to be made not by people in the ‘background’ but by non-socialist politicians, yet how would they go about using violence against a majority that included workers from all walks of life and occupations, including the police and armed forces? Is it conceivable that they would obey orders from politicians to suppress the majority of their fellow-socialists and, even if there were enough elements from those quarters who would be prepared to take such action, would they not be overwhelmed by the majority who would oppose them in self-defence?

The essence of the socialist position on the use of parliament is summed up in the following way towards the end of the pamphlet: 

“Once there is an organised, determined majority, the success of the socialist revolution is assured, one way or the other. It is then a question of the best tactic to pursue to try to ensure that this takes place as rapidly and as smoothly as possible. In our view, the best way to proceed is to start by obtaining a democratic mandate via the ballot box for the changeover to socialism. The tactical advantage is that, when obtained, it deprives the supporters of capitalism of any legitimacy for the continuation of their rule.”

The other, related point made is that the organisation of the socialist majority that develops within capitalist society will reflect – will have to reflect – the essentially democratic nature of the future society it will establish. It will in fact have to prefigure that society and so be entirely democratic, and without a leadership which can impose decisions on the rest. All important decisions, in fact, will come from the majority via referendums or meetings of mandated, wholly accountable and recallable delegates. In this light, it is not surprising, as the pamphlet points out, that those groups who support left-wing, Leninist-style ‘revolution’, with its ideas of leadership and decision-taking by a vanguard, dismiss socialism by the ballot box as ‘utopian’. Not that the ‘socialism’ those groups say they stand for amounts to anything more than some form of tightly organised state control of capitalism. Not either that the ‘socialism’ they endorse is any closer to a society of free access and democratic control than the aims of supporters of established parties such as the Labour Party who wish to press their parties into somehow overcoming the economic realities of the profit system and bringing in reforms that will allow it to be governed more humanely.

So this pamphlet puts the case for a revolutionary use of the ballot box to establish socialism and in so doing provides powerful arguments against those who advocate a more benign form of capitalism via parliamentary reforms, against those who want to bring in forms of rigid state control over the capitalist system, if necessary by minority action, and, more specifically, against those who seem to share the socialist aims of a stateless, free access society but still think that parliament cannot be the route to achieve it because the ruling class will never give up power without the use of armed force.

Howard Moss

For a copy of What’s Wrong With Using Parliament? The Cases For and Against the Revolutionary Use of Parliament, send a cheque / money order for £1.50 payable to 

“The Socialist Party of Great Britain” to 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.

Danger: conspiracists at work (2024)

From the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The assassination attempt on Donald Trump immediately gave rise to a frenzy of conspiracy theories. One story that quickly spread was that the whole thing was staged by supporters of Trump. One US-based YouTube account said the picture was just ‘too damn perfect” and described how they got ‘the flag positioned perfect and everything’. But more widespread was the idea that assassination was ordered by anti-Trumpers of various kinds – the CIA, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Mike Pence, or even Joe Biden. What has unfolded since then has been straight out of the conspiracy theory playbook with committed activists on social media who deny almost everything (the Covid pandemic, climate change, mass shootings, terror attacks) putting out a panoply of overwhelmingly improbable stories. In their minds not just one thing is suspect and said to be the subject of a hidden conspiracy but very many.

Another striking example of such ‘invented knowledge’ is the idea that ‘weather manipulating’ or ‘geo-engineering’ is taking place enabling governments to control both weather and climate for sinister purposes. Such stories have been around for some time but spread more widely in the UK recently based on the erratic and unusually cool weather experienced in June and July followed by one of the wettest winters in recent years. This is being done, so the claims say, by such methods as ‘cloud seeding’ (which does actually exist and was experimented with in the 1950s but shown to have only small, localised impacts) and ‘solar radiation management’. There is even talk of ‘chemtrails’, said to be a secretive plot to spray people with dangerous chemicals. As a result, according to the Royal Meteorological Society, weather forecasters have been on the end of significant abuse from conspiracy theorists on social media, accused of hiding truths about weather from the public. One user on ‘X’ wrote, ‘Imagine watching the geoengineers at work, and you report the weather without telling the truth about what really is going on. That is sick’. No attention is paid of course to the reality that, on a warming planet, warm air is able to hold more moisture, which in turn fuels more intense rainfall and erratic weather conditions. All this is dismissed as ‘climate scam propaganda’.

The BBC’s fact-checking service, ‘Verify’, which looks into stories circulating on the internet that may seem the result of some form of conspiracy theory or at least questionable, has found no evidence for such theories and credibly debunked them. But what one writer has termed ‘belief perseverance’ among conspiracy theorists persists even in the face of solid contradictory information and facts. Of course those who spread such ideas will say that the BBC is itself part of the conspiracy seeking to exercise control over people and the environment and take away their ‘freedoms’ and therefore its findings cannot be trusted. And it must be said that it has been ‘verified’ that in past times the BBC did function as a servile collaborator of the Secret Services when it came to the British state’s attempts to sniff out ‘subversion’.

Luckily the myths propagated by conspiracy theorists are rarely shared by whole populations, as they might have been in the past. They tend rather to exist among a certain segment of the population, perhaps as an expression of despair among people who find their existences particularly confusing, stressful and alienating, feel impotent to influence events or their own lives, and so seek consolation in such theories. It is only a pity that many other myths are shared by large swathes of people: for example worship of non-existent gods, devotion to leaders, the idea that one’s accidental country of birth somehow makes that place superior to others, and in particular the acceptance of class-divided society based on obscene wealth for the few and just getting by or dire poverty for the many as a natural and unchangeable way of organising human society.

Howard Moss

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

While Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola was watching his team play Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals on Tuesday, his watch was making headlines around the world. Guardiola was wearing an extravagant Richard Mille watch worth £1 million ($1.26 million) on his wrist at Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabéu.

 (CNN)

Conspiracy theorists have for years now insisted that COVID-19 vaccines were the real killers, especially among young men — but a new study shows that there’s no data to back that up. 

(Futurism)

Actual science is the great accomplishment of mankind. The antidote to ignorance, superstition, religious zealotry, and nonsensical beliefs in general. An eclipse exemplifies, to even the lay-est of laypeople, just how advanced modern science is. We were informed by astronomers, years in advance, exactly when and exactly where the eclipse would occur — down to the second, down to the meter — and everyone in the path of totality could literally see how exactly right those predictive calculations were. We should be celebrating and emphasizing this to laypeople, because these same scientists are the same people who’ve been telling us for decades that we’re destroying our climate with carbon emissions. So here’s my “by the way” retort to Montúfar’s aside: how many astronomers today — not in “ancient” times — are also astrologers? Spoiler: the answer is fucking zero. 

(Daring Fireball)

… I am aware of the dishonesty and stupidity of choosing any side in any war, and I am aware that all wars are immoral exercises in folly and absurdity. The only real beneficiaries are politicians and weapons makers. The great masses of regular people on both sides of any conflict always have to pay the price. The unlucky individuals who get killed or come home from the pointless war with mangled bodies and fucked-up minds pay the biggest price. Furthermore, whatever outcomes result from a war, no matter which side “wins,” serve mainly to lay the groundwork for future conflicts and more wars. 

(International Clearing House)

South Africa has undergone a nutritional transition over the past 30 years characterized by the triple burden of malnutrition: households are simultaneously experiencing undernutrition, hidden hunger, and overweight or obesity due to nutrient-poor diets. The results of the first in-depth, nationwide study into food and nutrition since 1994, the National Food and Nutrition Security Survey, found that almost half of South Africa’s adult population was overweight or obese. While there was sufficient food to feed everyone through domestic production and imports, many families and individuals went to bed on empty stomachs.

 (Alliance for Science)

Thirty years after the former liberation movement won the first democratic elections, South Africa remains the world’s most unequal nation, suffering from high unemployment, rampant crime, widespread corruption and a stagnant economy. 

(AFP)

Rough sleeping increased in all regions of England between 2022 and 2023 despite a Conservative 2019 manifesto promise to end rough sleeping before the next general election. An estimated 3,898 people slept rough in 2023, an annual increase of 27% – the largest annual rise since 2015. The numbers are more than double (up 120%) those in 2010. 

(Guardian)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Proper Gander: Mindsets And Misinterpretations (2022)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Questioning what we hear and see in the news and asking why events are presented to us in the way they are is a worthy response when so much of the mass media deliberately or unwittingly supports the interests of the minority who own it. But there’s a big difference between reasonable scepticism and rejecting what must have happened because it doesn’t fit with a distorted worldview. The latter was the subject of an edition of Panorama titled Disaster Deniers: Hunting The Trolls (BBC One), presented by Marianna Spring, the BBC’s ‘Disinformation Correspondent’. Frustratingly, watching the documentary is like catching highlights of a longer, better programme. Half an hour wasn’t enough to comprehensively cover the issue of people who broadcast their views that some of the most shocking tragedies of recent years didn’t take place.

Alongside interviews with researchers and survivors of terrorist attacks, the programme focuses on two conspiracy theorists: Alex Jones and Richard Hall. Hot-headed Alex Jones owns the far-right Infowars website, and on his radio show claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in America didn’t really happen. His view was that the massacre was faked by the authorities to create a scenario that would push people to want stricter laws about gun ownership. This fitted in with his overall perspective that there’s a secret elite acting to exert more control over people. He was subsequently sued for defamation by families of the victims, who won their case in court. A red-faced Jones ended up accepting that the attack took place and faced paying out almost a billion dollars, leading Infowars’ parent company to file for bankruptcy. In Britain, shifty Richard Hall publishes books and DVDs and posts online to promote his view that the bombing of the Manchester Arena in 2017 didn’t occur. The documentary doesn’t examine whatever reasons he has for this belief, although a shadowy elite is probably involved. He’s somehow decided that footage of the bombing shows ‘crisis actors’ who have all conspired to act out a tragedy and its continuing after-effects. Part of his approach has been to seek out and spy on survivors of the attack with the intention of proving they have faked their injuries.

Although both Jones and Hall’s views on the incidents are, at the very least, eccentric, this doesn’t mean that they are shared by just a handful of weirdos. Conspiracy theories used to be a fringe interest, but now they are more mainstream, according to Sasha Havlicek of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think-tank. The programme quotes findings from a survey carried out by King’s College in London on the prevalence of alternative views about what’s in the news. It found that as many as one in seven people doubt that incidents such as the Manchester Arena bombing or the 2017 Westminster Bridge killings took place. Almost one in five people surveyed say that survivors of these attacks haven’t been truthful about what happened. Spring interviews some of the victims who have received distressing and abusive messages from people they don’t know accusing them of being ‘traitors’ and part of a conspiracy.

The ease of using social media to throw around abuse anonymously is one of the less attractive consequences of the internet age, with its near-limitless opportunities to have our say. Opinions and analysis can be published online without having to adhere to the editorial policy of a traditional news outlet with its own agenda. But because this is happening in capitalism, news and views are a market, and money can motivate some people to use their stance to build a brand and attract consumers. The most bizarre opinions can get the most traction, according to one of the interviewees on the programme. The debate then gets played out online in echo-chamber web forums and social media. According to Sasha Havlicek, ‘as we’ve seen the rise of these kinds of internet subcultures we have at the same time seen the plummeting of trust in institutions, of trust in mainstream media and we’ve actually seen a complete decrease in support for democracy as a concept’. Her argument is that democracy relies on ‘the idea of shared reality’, which has been undermined by the polarisation between fringe theories and mainstream explanations. Declining faith in capitalism’s structures would be welcomed, but the conspiracy theorists’ mistrust has gone astray from reasoned criticism into paranoia and narrow individualism. And to reach that point they have to selectively misinterpret the evidence to match their mindset.

Unfortunately, the documentary doesn’t explore further how society’s divisions fuel conspiracy theories or the tragic events which prompt them. While the BBC is often critical of the effects of capitalism, it wouldn’t promote the idea that the capitalist system itself is ultimately at fault. As this programme was produced by the BBC’s own ‘Disinformation Correspondent’, it would naturally keep the explanations to within BBC limits.

Mike Foster

Trump and lying as a tactic (2020)

From the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The reign of President Trump in the United States has been characterised by open deceit. Many of his opponents berated the media for not calling his lies outright lies, but even when they have, it has not scratched the levels of support he possesses among his millions of followers. A recent example was following the revelations, in the Bob Woodward recorded interviews, that Trump had tried to downplay the seriousness of Covid 19, while knowing full well the danger it posed (as he later found to his cost). His team’s response was to announce that Trump had never played down the seriousness of Covid, despite him – on tape – saying he would and the plethora of public statements that can demonstrate that he did. That does not matter, they are sticking by the lie.

As Gary Kasparov, former Soviet chess grandmaster, has had occasion to point out, the purpose of such lies is not just to deceive, but to prove loyalty by seeing who is willing to swallow their pride and utter deliberate untruths that they know not just to be untruths but unconvincing ones at that. Kasparov had experienced this first hand in the Soviet Union and under Putin. It is an exercise in raw power. It promotes the cult-like following President Trump has whipped up.

Of course this is nothing new. As Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology:

‘The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it’.

Those ideas, necessarily, are going to serve that class (and they are by no means homogeneous and uncontested within the ruling class and between contending classes). To the extent that they present the interests of the ruling class as the interests of the whole of society, they are inherently deceitful (but not necessarily consciously so).

This accounts for so much of the noise around Trump: as a billionaire capitalist who surrounds himself with millionaires, centimillionaires and the billionaire Betsy DeVos, and who took the reins of power from the career politicians, he refuses to think and act like a career politician with the sensibility and decorum usually demanded of a candidate or office holder. The Democrats who find Trump uncouth are precisely the technocrats Noam Chomsky warned about in his essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals, who believe that ‘the age of ideology is ended, supplanted, at least in the West, by a general agreement that each issue must be settled in its own terms, within the framework of a Welfare State in which, presumably, experts in the conduct of public affairs will have a prominent role’. (chomsky.info/19670223/).

Those ‘experts’ dominated the Clinton, Blair and Obama governments. As the late David Graeber pointed out, they represented the ‘peculiar fusion of public and private, market forces and administrative oversight, the world of hallmarks, benchmarks, and stakeholders that characterizes what I’ve been calling centrism is a direct expression of the sensibilities of the professional-managerial classes’ (tinyurl.com/rmeyu88). Professional-managerial classes who value procedure over substance, the upshot of which is worth quoting at length:

‘All this also helps explain the otherwise mysterious popular appeal of the disorganized, impulsive, shambolic (but nonetheless cut-to-the-chase, get-things-done) personas cultivated by men like Trump and Johnson. Yes, they are children of privilege in every possible sense of the term. Yes, they are pathological liars. Yes, they don’t seem to care about anyone but themselves. But they also present themselves as the precise opposite of the infuriating administrator whose endless appeal to rules and demand for additional meetings, paperwork, and motivational seminars makes it impossible for you to do your job’.

The anger against the infuriatingly anodyne procedures designed to smother conflict in the workplace and society lies behind much of the willingness to submit to the enthusiastic lies of Trump. Added to this is the conviction that Trump’s Democrat rivals are themselves pathologically dishonest (albeit they prefer more plausible lies).

Some of this stretches back to Trump’s role in ‘birtherism’, the unshakable belief that Barack Obama wasn’t really American enough to be president (despite production of his birth certificate). But it also goes back further to things like 9/11 Truth, and the refusal to believe the ‘official story’.

QAnon

His most fervent acolytes have been found through incidents like the  Pizzagate furore (the belief that high ranking Democrat officials were meeting at a Washington DC pizza restaurant that was a front for human trafficking and paedophilic abuse). It was totally false, but one man decided to take action, and attack the restaurant. There has also been an arson attempt. The man claimed to believe he was freeing the children

This story has since merged with QAnon. Q is a putative member of the Whitehouse staff, leaking the ‘real’ agenda to the Trump administration. It is best summarised by the Wikipedia entry:

‘QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling them, leading to a “day of reckoning” involving the mass arrest of journalists and politicians. No part of the theory is based on fact’,

Q posts gnomic comments on various right-wing communities boards, and his followers seek to decode them, believing that Trump is playing a long game against entrenched powerful interests, until the day they will all be arrested and tried. His lies are part of that game against the corrupt officials who infest Washington.

Q followers post on Twitter under the hashtag #WWG1WGA (‘Where we go one, we go all’) as a sort of rallying cry. They also post a lot under #SaveTheChildren. The centrality of the paedophilia claims is curious. Certainly, it is common to impute absolute immorality to opponents. In this instance, partly, it is a method to gain support by finding people who will be upset by the horror of child abuse. It is also likely that this is an imaginary sublimation of the idea that their enemies are taking something precious away from them, and children are the most precious thing most people possess (as well as being metonymically linked with vitality and the future).

Dan Olson, in his YouTube video, In search of flat Earth, puts forward the analysis that the QAnon believers are actually engaged in a form of violence. Their whacky ideas are not about debate but about forcing people to choose sides (firstly by weeding out adherents who don’t buy the theory wholesale, then by closing down debate with anyone who tries to argue with them factually). QAnon is a refusal to see a structural problem, instead believing the system itself is being subverted by infiltration, which must be fought by any means necessary, including outright conscious lying. They want to shut up the critics of the system.

Trump turned himself into a danger to the world by clamping down on US state-sponsored climate science. Lies are a weapon against humanity. They cannot simply be debunked, the antidote is the building of conscious analysis of the way the world really is, and finding a constituency willing to listen to that truth that is bigger and better organised than the QAnon cultists.

Pik Smeet