Failures of Neoliberalism

Via Sue Jones @suejonessays

One of Corbyn's most important achievements is in extending national debate beyond the limits of neoliberal ideology and challenging the hegemony imposed by Thatcher. The sell by date was last century, it expired in Pinochet's Chile. Yet the Tories continue to sell England by the pound, while selling the public very short indeed.

Conservatives would be better named "Regressives", they're elitist and nasty little inadequate authoritarians, who have chosen to impose a socioeconomic model that fails most people, destroys all of our public services, extends exploitation of labour, creates massive inequality and absolute poverty, damages the environment, eats away at public funds whilst shifting them to private bank accounts, and then manufactures justification narratives to cover the devastating damage inficted which stigmatises and blames everyone let down by this system for being let down. If the public knew what neoliberalism really is, and what its consequences are, they would not want it. People are dying and other people are buying the planned and prepared bent rationale and political denials. "No causal link", "scaremongering", "extremists" and so on.

If you ever wondered how genocide happens, and how a nation come to somehow accept the terrible deeds of totalitarians, well it starts much like this. It unfolds in barely perceptible stages: prejudiced language, exclusion, media propaganda, political prejudice, scapegoating, outgrouping and stigma, acts of violence, and then extermination. Moral boundaries are pushed.The public conforms to changing norms. It's difficult to believe a state may intentionally inflict harm on citizens. Our own government is guilty of "grave and systematic" abuses of the human rights of disabled people. A government capable of targeting such punitive policies at disabled people is capable of anything.

Setting up competition between social groups for resources just means everyone loses except for the very wealthy and powerful. This last 7 years we have witnessed the dehumanisation of refugees and migrants, of disabled people, of unemployed people, of young people, of the elderly and those on low pay. We have also witnesse unearned contempt and subsequent deprofessionalisation of doctors, economists, social scientists, academics, teachers, and experts of every hue in order to silence valid and democratic challenges and criticism of destructive government policies and ideology.

It's about time someone showed us the way out of the dark neoliberal torture dungeon. And once we've escaped, we should jail our jailers.