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August 17, 2011
Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian rails against the ABC as an example of the intellectual class being ideologically blinded in offering a Left-liberal explanation of the recent London riots.
Martin Rowson
This political class she says, is blind because it avoids the criminal mayhem (pure criminality) of the riots. it also avoids the right of centre 'broken society ' explanation of the poisonous cocktail of welfare dependency, broken schools, the absence of family authority and a vacuum of values that bind communities. This is David Cameron's "slow-motion moral collapse" in Britain's "broken society"---the old theme of civilisational decline.
For Albrechtson social unrest and instability is not difficult to explain. The (elite) ABC journalists, who are obviously out of touch with mainstream Australians, failed:
to cast Aunty's net of analysis wider during the London riots tells us much about the state of debate on important issues in this country. This is a debate that requires some genuine curiosity and courage from the broader political class if we are to learn anything from the riots across London. And there is plenty to learn. Lessons such as what happens when we fail to attribute responsibility to individuals for their actions, when we fail to lay down boundaries for behaviour, when there are too few expectations on people, when generations grow dependent on the state, when they have only a sense of entitlement to handouts rather than a sense of contribution to the community in which they live.
The left liberals are actually to blame for the dumbing down of schools because they failed to implement structure and discipline, build high expectations and instil competition among the kids and help build their motivation.
Albrechtson's column uses the hook of the street riots to bash the liberal left yet again, and to push neo-liberalism's core memes: big intrusive government, individual freedom, accountability and responsibility for our actions as free agents; and acceptance of trickle-down economics and inequalities of income and wealth. There needs to be an end to living off the state.
There is nothing in Albrechtsen's article about how these values have lead the Cameron Government in the UK in an authoritarian direction that ignores the multiplicity of layers in favour of criminality. It has adopted a zero tolerance law and order approach; barring individuals suspected of causing social unrest from Twitter and Facebook, and the eviction of the families of rioters from council houses and to halt benefit payments to offenders.
Secondly, Albrechtson ignores that a "broken society" happens somewhere, and that geography matters in that those people who have been appearing on riot-related charges (typically young males) live in some of the most deprived areas of our largest cities, and in neighbourhoods where the conditions are getting worse rather than better. So we have cities becoming increasingly Balkanised and unequal.
Albrechton's approach does not show any genuine curiosity or a willingness learn anything from the riots across London. She does not bother to explore the link between austerity measures and social unrest because cut-backs usually hit some parts of the society disproportionately more than others; or acknowledge that the neo-liberal view that expenditure cuts can be growth-enhancing is questionable.
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Albrechtson conveniently forgets that neo-liberalism (and its refusal to accept that rich people should be taxed more) is in a long term marriage with social conservatism--- that means homophobia, anti-abortion beliefs, Christianity verging on the evangelical, disbelief in science.