Thursday 29 September 2011

True Lies - when is a trader not a trader?

My previous post concluded somewhat optimistically - perhaps even disingenuously so - that "No matter how crazy our world can seem at times – there are some things that still aren’t quite beyond parody.  (Yet.)"

We have since been confronted by the case of Alessio Rastani.

In case you haven't seen it, the BBC broadcast an interview earlier this week with a 'City trader', Alessio Rastani, who unexpectedly voiced some uncomfortable opinions.

When asked how we can avoid economic collapse in the Eurozone, his response was that his concern is how not how to resolve the problem, but how to profit from it - indeed, he does not perceive the situation as a problem that needs to be fixed at all.  "For most traders… we don't really care that much about how they're gonna fix the economy... our job is to make money from it.  Personally, I've been dreaming of this moment for three years...  I go to bed every night, and I dream of another recession."

 Interestingly he adds that "Anybody can... make money from a crash…  This isn't just for some people in the elite.  Anybody can make money.  It's an opportunity."  The triumph of the freedom delivered by the neoliberal dream. 

This somewhat touching remark reminds me of a time when my sister and brother both scribbled in blue permanent marker all over the piano when they were about four and five years old respectively.  When my mum went crazy at my brother – who, apart from being the elder of the two (should have known better), was usually the one responsible for such acts of mischief - he plaintively sobbed, "But I shared".  This wasn't designed to land my sister in trouble, but a genuine plea that he had been a good older brother by sharing the felt-tips.

Rastani’s logic also reminds me of a woman who once jumped in front of me in the toilet queue at Climate Camp.  When I pointed out that there was a queue, her response was to smile knowingly, and smugly explain the beauty of her autonomist anarchism - that, not only was she was free to jump in front of me in the queue - I too must realise my freedom to jump in front of others in the toilet queue.  Presumably this would lead to a utopian paradise where, just like on X-Factor, everyone has the opportunity to succeed in getting to piss, as long as they want it enough.

These anecdotes illustrate the difficulty with Rastani's ideology.  Not anyone can profit from a recession, because - by defintion - someone (indeed most people) will lose out, and end up with no job, a scribbled-on piano, or piss on their trousers.  At least my brother had the excuse that he was five. 

I digress.  The point about this incident isn't that his views are stupid and wrong;  anyone can see that.  The interesting thing was the response to the incident.

All over Twitter, and even in rightwing newspapers such as the Mail and the Telegraph - who would normally support the essential logic of Rastani's political standpoint - were accusations that the interview was a hoax.  Admittedly, there are strong physical similarities between Rastani and one of the Yes Men, the activist pranksters who have famously conducted hoax interviews on TV news in the past.

This was weird.  Because the view of the media seemed to be not that they were surprised by the content of his speech, but by the brutal honesty of it.  In other words, they acknowledge their habitual collusion in a political ideology that they recognised as appalling when held up to the light.  But, just like a market bubble, this narrative breaks down when one of the actors doesn't stick to their script, doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain to maintain a united front of brazenness.  The reason that characters like Rastani alarm the press is that their honesty isn't just self-destructive – it holds a mirror up to the whole sordid landscape.  In the words of Leonard Coen, everybody knows - and everybody knows that they know that we know. 

What compounded this weirdness was that the public consensus seemed to be that it didn't matter whether the interview was a hoax or not, since we all know that the sentiments expressed are those truly held by free marketeers in any case.  This constitutes not only an unflinching embrace of what Mark Fisher calls 'capitalist realism' – a permeating acceptance of the capitalist ideology on its own terms. 

It represents a total breakdown in the individual's ability to identify the difference between reality and fiction.  Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to suggest that people no longer see the point in making such a futile distinction.  That is, we not only live in a world where parody and reality are literally indistinguishable, it is no longer even meaningful to consider them as separate in principle - since they merely represent alternative stylistic approaches to a single narrative - that of the capitalist infiltration and domination of every aspect of society and the psyche.  This is surely the ultimate capitulation of society to the post-modern political and media culture. 

The icing on the cake came when it transpired that Rastani was neither truly a trader, nor a hoaxster.  He makes a living by speaking about the market to anyone who will pay him, while not actually conducting any significant trading himself.  he is a self-publicist, speaking in order that he may create the opportunity to speak some more, about an entity that is so nebulous one could continue to talk about it for years on end without ever saying anything about it.  This gloriously reflexive and cloudy status, an eloquent example of an existence somewhere between reality and fiction, is surely the perfect vindication of those who see no-difference between parody and truth. 

So maybe, whilst remaining disingenuously optimistic, the statement that "some things aren't beyond parody" is, contains a sense in which it is not entirely inaccurate after all.

Wednesday 28 September 2011

Life neutral?

We all know about offsetting our carbon emissions to balance out the harmful effects of our consumptive lifestyles.  (As Joss Stone said during the 2007 Live Earth concert, “Plant a tree, it’s that easy…”  Ahem.)

So, what if you’re an arms dealer with a conscience (bear with me here), and you want to alleviate the consequences of selling bombs and killing people?

Help is at hand.  Life Neutral Solutions is a consultancy that allows arms companies to ‘offset’ the civilian deaths they cause, by sponsoring western families to have babies.

Luckily for everyone’s sanity, Life Neutral isn’t real.  It was a hoax perpetrated by activist group the Space Hijackers, in order to raise public awareness of the world’s largest arms fair (Defence Systems and Equipment International – ‘DSEi’), which takes place in East London every two years.

Arms dealers, military officials, and civil servants from around the globe, haunt the ExCel Centre to tout every conceivable tool of destruction available to modern military science.  In previous years, this has included banned cluster bombs and torture equipment.  Delegates include those from regimes with the worst records for human rights abuses.  It is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer, mirroring the £700m annual subsidy received by the UK arms industry.

But, despite priapic displays of military muscle – one worker from the neighbouring University of East London tweeted that the battleship HMS Dauntless was parked outside her office window – the event’s organisers are, unsurprisingly, keen to stay out of the media spotlight. There was almost zero press coverage of DSEi in the run-up to the exhibition.  During the 2009 arms fair, the host venue went as far as to erect signposts claiming that it was closed for refurbishment.

Enter the Space Hijackers.  A group of ‘anarchitects’ with a penchant for subverting the corporate domination of public space, we also have a history of resisting DSEi – notably in 2007, when the Hijackers bought a tank, drove it to the arms fair, and ‘auctioned’ it off to the public.

We thought that the merchants of death deserved to receive a little more attention for their activities, and used Life Neutral to provoke interest in the issue by stirring up a bit of controversy.  We simultaneously hoped to scratch away some of the banality that shrouds the defence industry, by parodying the absurdly hygienic and neutral corporate rhetoric.

While studying for a Masters a couple of years ago, one of my lectures was attended by a clique of half a dozen engineers from BAE Systems, who dropped by for a spot of CPD.  When the topic of environmental sustainability was raised, they entered into an earnest conversation with the lecturer about improving the eco-friendliness of their weaponry.  They were particularly interested in removing lead solder from the electronic circuitry in their missiles, to reduce the impact of heavy metal contamination of the soil in warzones.  (When I accidentally laughed, the lecturer and all the BAE staff turned and glared at me;  the lecturer said gravely, “This is a very serious issue”.)

The Hijackers took to the streets of Islington, to entice families into signing up for Life Neutral sponsorship.  After causing suitable outrage among the citizens of North London, we set our sights on wooing the media.  Eventually, a Life Neutral spokesman was invited to interview by the BBC World Service – only to be ‘outed’ as an activist prankster midway through the recording.  This bizarre conversation, which was broadcast on Friday 16 September, is now available online.

Far from being disappointed though, we were relieved to be rumbled as a hoax.  As well as getting an audience of thousands to hear about the arms fair for the first time, it proved that – no matter how crazy our world can seem at times – there are some things that still aren’t quite beyond parody.  (Yet.)


This is cross-posted from a piece that was first published at the Comment Factory.