RESISTANCE - HERMENEUTICS OF SUSPICION (PART THREE - PROPAGANDA)

Part Three of the ‘Hermeneutics of Suspicion’ was translated from the French version. ‘La Propagande’ focused on the manufacturing of consent, a trollish acquiescence to the State’s media output and the fraudulent Revolutionary claims of liberty, equality and fraternity. Those claims gather dust on the shelves of bureaucracy, with no political ability to deliver on them. It’s time to see them as a conceit, for liberty has turned into control, equality into privilege and fraternity into suspicion.

3. Propaganda (La propagande)

The Government says it is against the persecution of minorities, yet the Projects are now being constructed and testify to something quite different.

If some nations still believe in ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’, why do States control our movements and impose restrictions on our education through the European Vocational Education Act? Where is liberty and equality to be found with those political acts?

It sets the boundaries on liberty, for the future lives of the pupils – our sons and daughters; where those from non-Professional families are limited to a school education, aimed at preparing them for servile work; jobs without careers in a flexible job market – and with no future prospect of a further (university) education.

School ends at age 16 and then they’re placed in menial work so that they can serve the professional classes, who are the true motor behind the economy, with their conspicuous consumption. Or is it just the price they have to pay for their collaboration?

We begin to wonder just who this liberty, equality and fraternity is for? It’s not universal but partisan, intended for those who work for the State; those with the most to gain from their advantageous positions.

As for the rest, they’re just fuel for the beast of the State to feed off - like Jupiter eating his own children.

Spirituality and sexuality are apparently to be controlled by a Church allied with the State. Its sermons and teachings are to be vetted by the Ministry of Communication, all under the watchful eye of the spiritually and sexually ambiguous Joseph Gobelet.

The motto on its departmental seal calls for ‘Clarity and Truth’, (gone are the aspirations of the Latinate) but the adopted political language of our time offers none of these virtues.

‘Obfuscation and Deceit’ would be a more accurate motto, but wouldn’t make for a virtuous sounding department. Is that also what the State Church will stand for?

The monthly publication, beginning its circulation in churches across the land as I write this, bears the title ‘Clarion Call!’ (Yes, with the exclamation mark of joy). The first edition drew on the pacifist task to “Resist not the Government god has put in place”, without any attention to the original language, but more closely allied with the thoughts of royal succession and King James. The British have a love for Royal Documents and of course it was not going to entertain any anti-establishment philosophies, even if Paul the Mystic wrote of such things! The entreaty is more accurately rendered against ‘violent resistance’ and not resistance of any form. But the State in that textual context is for the ‘good of the people’, not for the good of the State. Our new masters must feel comforted by the allusion to power and royalty.

Relationships also suffer from this clarion call of truth in the Churches. Marriage has all sorts of connections with the transfer of property. The father giving the bride away, the woman taking on the husband’s name; but now every marriage connects with a third party, the State.

The vows are passed between the three; and the husband and wife pass on a ‘dowry’ to the State. Yes, a tax on marriage. The final clarion call resounds in the service of Church and State, “Who the State has joined together, only the State can separate.” They can then live in State-provided housing if they’re from the menial class, or if from the professional classes, they each receive an increment on their salary in preparation for breeding to begin at the appointed time; usually not more than 3 years after the wedding has taken place.

As Ellul has written,

“From the moment the church exposes itself to the conflict between sociological determinants and a contrary inspiration that comes from god and is directed toward god - from the moment the church uses propaganda and uses it successfully…At that moment it has chosen power above truth.”

If the State believed in equality, then how does the separation of working-class people into Projects, or let’s call them what they are, Ghettoes, equate to an egalitarian social concept. The professional families find themselves in superior housing.

And what of fraternity - solidarity? Who is my brother? Who is my sister? Is it universal in scope, or based on affordability and income? Will the families in BS6 feel fraternal to those housed in the Projects? Or those in Grigny feel solidarity with those in Serene Trocadéro? It seems that it’s always the poor who cannot afford the freedom or equality offered to them by the State, and not the professional classes.

Words like liberty, equality and fraternity, or phrases extolling the virtue of “One Nation, One People, One State” are meant to deceive the citizens into believing that such things are a reality, when in truth they patently are not. What is held out by the benevolent hand of the State are conceits for those who cannot afford to participate in the grand illusionist’s show.

If the political slogans of the day are ‘equality, liberty, fraternity’ along with ‘liberty and justice for all’, then that is what the State needs to be judged by. Its legitimacy should teeter on the balance and we the people should act upon that ruling and replace the system that is beyond reform.

No better than this is “Bristol Awake”, used on the letterheads next to the Bristol Coat-of-Arms. A throwback to a forgotten age of Fascism? In Paris, we have the same problems with banners in the streets declaring, “Paris Awake”. Maybe this political amnesia is now over and done with. May we have the resolve to make it so.

The Four Horsemen