Spectacular War
Yesterday, hundreds of heavily armed Government agents swarmed through Heathrow, frisking grandmothers, confiscating children's toys, and delaying more than 400,000 passengers. In the meantime, the home secretary John Reid went on television to issue a state of maximum alert, claiming that a massive terrorist operation on a scale comparable to 9/11 had been only just narrowly disrupted.
Yet the truth is that no evidence at all has been offerred to support these claims. Government security agencies have stated that the plot involved the use of liquid explosives, concealed in soft drink cans - but where are these explosives? If the Government had really found some, they would surely be parading them.
Perhaps the most interesting about this entire story is that Reid effectively trailed it - in the manner of a coming attraction - in the speech he delivered to Demos the day before. The mere presence of this fact already confirms that we are in the realm of the spectacular, the only question is: how deep does it go?
It is worth drawing attention here to the last disrupted terrorist operation officially compared to 9/11: the Chicago plot of June 2006. In that case, seven men were seized in Florida and immediately declared by the media to be Al-Qaeda operatives. Later, the FBI was forced to reveal that the group had no links whatsoever with Al-Qaeda, but rather only with a government informant who claimed this status for himself in order to infiltrate - and almost certainly entrap - the group - a group which moreover amounted in truth to a motley crew of impotent dreamers.
In this way, the Chicago plot was ultimately revealed to be not only a entirely homegrown operation, but moreover an entirely government sponsored and orchestrated one, entirely fabricated in order to meet the political economic imperatives of spectacular war. K-punk has already concisely summarized this logic: "the War on Terror is inherently and inescapably spectacular; it arises from the demands of the post 9/11 Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex: it is not enough for the State to do something, it has to be seen doing something."
This logic extends beyond rational limits - to the point whereby the State was must be seen to be doing something even and especially if there is really nothing to do. If terrorists do not exist, it is necessary to create them, since the spectacular control required by contemporary kino-kapital must be maintained, and the correct epistemological frame secured at all costs.
In his own comment on the Heathrow circus, George Bush made the point clearly: "The recent arrests, that our fellow citizens are now learning about, are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us that love freedom, to hurt our nation...It is a mistake to believe that there is no threat to the United States of America, and that is why we have given our officials the tools they need to protect our people... The American people need to know that, we live in a dangerous world, but our government will do everything we can to protect our people from those dangers."
The fact that every aspect of this statement is a transparent nullity is not the point. The point is rather that if you repeat something often enough, no matter how stupid, then it will eventually take on the aura of truth and accordingly start to function effectively as such. It was none other than Hitler himself who grasped this logic most fully: "The task of propaganda lies...in directing the masses toward certain facts, events, necessities, etc., the purpose being to move their importance into the masses' field of vision."
In the meantime the IDF continues to rain death and destruction onto the cities of Lebanon. It is clear that Blair and Bush are still considering a general expansion of that conflict to Syria and Iran, but both surely know too that such an expansion -the consequences of which which would be colossal - could not yet be realistically staged under present conditions. Hezbullah first need to be smashed in Lebanon, and dissent meanwhile crushed at home. The theatre of blood at Heathrow airport on Thursday will have bought Capital some time and momentum - such indeed was the purpose of it - and in the coming weeks expect to see it moving aggressively towards both of these goals.
Yet the truth is that no evidence at all has been offerred to support these claims. Government security agencies have stated that the plot involved the use of liquid explosives, concealed in soft drink cans - but where are these explosives? If the Government had really found some, they would surely be parading them.
Perhaps the most interesting about this entire story is that Reid effectively trailed it - in the manner of a coming attraction - in the speech he delivered to Demos the day before. The mere presence of this fact already confirms that we are in the realm of the spectacular, the only question is: how deep does it go?
It is worth drawing attention here to the last disrupted terrorist operation officially compared to 9/11: the Chicago plot of June 2006. In that case, seven men were seized in Florida and immediately declared by the media to be Al-Qaeda operatives. Later, the FBI was forced to reveal that the group had no links whatsoever with Al-Qaeda, but rather only with a government informant who claimed this status for himself in order to infiltrate - and almost certainly entrap - the group - a group which moreover amounted in truth to a motley crew of impotent dreamers.
In this way, the Chicago plot was ultimately revealed to be not only a entirely homegrown operation, but moreover an entirely government sponsored and orchestrated one, entirely fabricated in order to meet the political economic imperatives of spectacular war. K-punk has already concisely summarized this logic: "the War on Terror is inherently and inescapably spectacular; it arises from the demands of the post 9/11 Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex: it is not enough for the State to do something, it has to be seen doing something."
This logic extends beyond rational limits - to the point whereby the State was must be seen to be doing something even and especially if there is really nothing to do. If terrorists do not exist, it is necessary to create them, since the spectacular control required by contemporary kino-kapital must be maintained, and the correct epistemological frame secured at all costs.
In his own comment on the Heathrow circus, George Bush made the point clearly: "The recent arrests, that our fellow citizens are now learning about, are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us that love freedom, to hurt our nation...It is a mistake to believe that there is no threat to the United States of America, and that is why we have given our officials the tools they need to protect our people... The American people need to know that, we live in a dangerous world, but our government will do everything we can to protect our people from those dangers."
The fact that every aspect of this statement is a transparent nullity is not the point. The point is rather that if you repeat something often enough, no matter how stupid, then it will eventually take on the aura of truth and accordingly start to function effectively as such. It was none other than Hitler himself who grasped this logic most fully: "The task of propaganda lies...in directing the masses toward certain facts, events, necessities, etc., the purpose being to move their importance into the masses' field of vision."
In the meantime the IDF continues to rain death and destruction onto the cities of Lebanon. It is clear that Blair and Bush are still considering a general expansion of that conflict to Syria and Iran, but both surely know too that such an expansion -the consequences of which which would be colossal - could not yet be realistically staged under present conditions. Hezbullah first need to be smashed in Lebanon, and dissent meanwhile crushed at home. The theatre of blood at Heathrow airport on Thursday will have bought Capital some time and momentum - such indeed was the purpose of it - and in the coming weeks expect to see it moving aggressively towards both of these goals.
9 Comments:
'The theatre of blood at Heathrow airport on Thursday will have bought Capital some time and momentum'
How? Surely Kapital hates this kind of biological/ideological incursion into the smooth, achronic (non)real...
At this point it's hard not to oscillate between the two poles of 'the antinomy of dialectical leftist reason', i.e. it's all structural or they're all evil.
Good point. Certainly, on the level of pure economics, Kapital prefers not to be stopped and searched at the border. But on the other hand, there may be pressing ideological reasons for doing so - as indeed there is in this case.
Was not Kapital basically making a marketing move on Thursday, shoring up a representation at the cost of some temporary frustration caused to itself. It is indeed caught in a dialectic with itself.
But perhaps this is indeed a "theoreticist error" - the other way of looking at it would be to say that it was a state managed and sponsored performance, staged on the body for kapital, but ultimately irreducible to it. I'm not averse to this interpretation, but does it not basically, eventually, wind us back to the same place, since the state is after all a product of kapital flows?
ok - well I often think about the internal struggle of capitalist transport markets. For example, the way planes used to show 'Titanic' on flights (don't sail again!), or the comparative 'statistical analysis' of deaths by road/train/plane etc.
Clearly statistical analysis 'doesn't work' in the sense that cars are generally deemed to be 'on the side of democracy, freedom and life' even though they kill more poor bastards than any guy/lass with a cause and a detonator. Car deaths (and we don't need Ballard to tell us how weird this is) are 'natural' in the way that even cancer or old age are not - the bad enlightenment in which progress depends upon one's autonomous relation to the brake pedal (are we there yet...?).
But various forms of kapital are at war with each other - if planes become the psychic nesting ground of intolerable nightmares (and what are things like 'Lost' etc. other than this 'realisation') then trains and boats and automobiles will flourish. I don't know what this means for the state.
Incidentally, nobody talks about trams anymore. This is a shame but also indicative - trams are the most communist form of transportation in every possible way. States hate 'em, Kapital hates 'em...
Trams over bikes?
literally! heh heh heh.
Bikes, like cars, are bad autonomobiles too. Dangerous, inducive of ideological smugness...ok, not as bad as cars, obviously, but still, not a collective form of transportation, horrah.
Anyway, er, sorry, I 'derailed' this thread. It wasn't about transport at all. Or not really.
okay, but what about flying cars?
You'll never see clogs and trams again.
Communal flying cars, ok. Had things been, er, otherwise, I imagine the Soviet space programme would have gone in this direction.
Clogs can be left behind, unless they're communal clogs, like that old lady living in a shoe with all her family.
two points of doubtful relevance
- they have trams in croydon and nowhere else in the m25. they also have em in the eastern and NOT western side of berlin, so trams as collectivist has that behind it- but why croydon...? i guess it has some v futurist 60s office blocks...and the post-situ Suburban Press was based there...hmmm
-on clogs, delia derbyshire said the sound of hundreds of clogs of proletarians on their way to work was one of her inspirations to make abstract electronic music
Post a Comment
<< Home