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Fourth Estate or Manufacturers of Consent?

eddie — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:48:06 +0000

Tim Holmes asks if today’s media fulfil their role as a ‘fourth estate’ or whether they have instead become a tool for the ‘manufacture of consent’

The conception of the media as “fourth estate of the realm” is grounded in liberal democratic theories of its role in a functioning democratic polity. Much of the historical mythology such theories carry with them has been convincingly challenged (see, for instance, Curran 2002), but in general their normative content remains useful in evaluating media systems’ performance. Curran provides a concise formulation of the concept in Power Without Responsibility:

“As the “fourth estate”, the press scrutinizes the actions of the executive, and relays public opinion to lawmakers. The press also keeps people informed about what is happening in the world, and provides a forum of public debate. It thus lubricates the working of democracy by facilitating the formation of public opinion.” (Curran and Seaton 2003: 246)

Or, more concisely: “informing the public; scrutinizing government; staging a public debate; and expressing public opinion” (ibid). To these, Curran suggests, should be added a recognition of specifically economic power, so that, in terms of their normative role, “the media are conceived as being a check on both public and private authority.” (2002: 219)

In contrast to this normative ideal, the descriptive framework developed by Herman and Chomsky, principally in Manufacturing Consent (1994), outlines a “propaganda model” of the mass media (specifically the contemporary US media) in a “free market” system. This media’s selective activity is a direct consequence of several core institutional constraints, or “filters”: ownership (by large-scale media oligopolies, generally incorporated into larger corporate entities); funding (through the sale of lucrative audiences to advertisers); reliance on sources (reflecting both the resource constraints of the media themselves, and the relative prominence of resource-rich sources, typically employing techniques derived from the P.R. industry); “flak” (high-profile criticism, complaint and retaliation); and ideology (specifically, in Manufacturing Consent, “anti-communism” – though with the demise of the Soviet Union various more appropriate successors have been identified, among them a quasi-religious “faith in the market” [Herman 1999:269] and the “War on Terror” [Mullen 2006]).

Alex Doherty (2004) has recently proposed an extension of the model to the specific institutional structure of the BBC. In terms of ownership, Doherty notes the BBC’s status as a state-owned broadcaster, with a Government-appointed Board of Governors “drawn from a narrow elite sector of society with intimate links to government and big business”; in terms of funding, the corporation’s “licence fee renewal is at the government’s own discretion”, a significant lever of influence; while the last three filters affect the BBC in a similar fashion to the corporate media.

The overall outcome of this model, Herman and Chomsky claim, is the overwhelming predominance of elite framings in the mainstream media, with dissent marginalised. Where elite opinion is divided, the media will tend to reflect such divisions, but within strict limits. Media staff are selected for conformity to, and will in general tend to internalise, the norms and values of the institutions within which they work. Those that do not, the model predicts, will tend to find themselves marginalised or excluded.

A good deal turns on which of these models more closely conforms to reality. Given the crucial role accorded the media in facilitating the functioning of democracy in liberal democratic thought, the extent to which they follow either the predictions of the propaganda model or the requirements of the “fourth estate” role will inevitably raise fundamental questions about the degree to which a democracy is meaningfully functional.

From “control” to “chaos”?

A considerably more optimistic descriptive framework has recently been expounded by Brian McNair in Cultural Chaos (2006a). Following the model of chaos theory in the natural sciences, McNair proposes an analogous paradigm for understanding contemporary media systems, emphasising their largely unpredictable complexity. While the desire for control over the media on the part of elites remains, McNair argues, their ability to impose it has been undermined by such factors as decreasing entry costs, the proliferation of different outlets, and the rise of new media – in particular the internet, which for McNair represents a genuinely Habermasian “public sphere”. With the end of the Cold War, he argues further, an ideological transformation has overcome the Western media: the frame of the “national security state”, and its threatening enemy in the form of the Soviet Union, have fallen by the wayside. With this change, and with deference to authority generally declining, a new objectivity and pluralism have entered journalistic discourse. The main danger, according to McNair, is in fact an overly critical, “hyper-democratic” media promoting “corrosive cynicism” and frequently exaggerated hype; though, he suggests, this may be a necessary evil in democratic societies.

An examination of the contemporary media, however, reveals some rather significant problems with this optimistic assessment. In fact, as I will argue, while certain changes and developments are worth taking into account, McNair’s optimism is often naïve and largely unfounded, the contemporary media tending not to refute but to vindicate Herman and Chomsky’s thesis.

East Timor redux

One case study that may provide an illuminating point of entry into these questions is the death of former US President Gerald Ford on 26 December 2006, which, as with those of most public figures, provoked a good deal of commentary, reminiscence and reflection on his life and record in office, in obituaries, columns and editorials. One significant episode of his premiership notable by its absence, however, was Ford’s authorisation of Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor. This invasion and subsequent occupation, supported by the United States and Britain, became what many consider a genocide, with around one-third of the Timorese population wiped out (Goodman, Simpson and Nairn 2006).

In the week after Ford’s death, the topic featured in one article in the British media (Mulchrone and Hitchens 2006), and one in the US (Regan 2006). The leader-writers of the Guardian, generally considered the left extreme of the British press, published an editorial titled “In praise of… President Ford”, acording to which “our era is right to see him more generously” than his own. “America,” indeed, “would be truly fortunate if it can find itself another Jerry Ford.” (Guardian Editors 2006) According to an obituary in the same paper (Jackson 2006), apart from “the Nixon pardon, and a bungled assassination attempt”, there was “little to remember about Ford’s presidency.”

If mainstream journalism does indeed display the kind of “hyper-adversarialism” McNair claims, it is difficult to see how such a striking omission could possibly occur. There can surely be fewer more urgent concerns for a democratic polity than its government’s history of complicity in genocidal violence: here, however, that history was almost entirely elided. Overwhelmingly, in the British and American press, the East Timorese fell into the category of “unworthy victims”, as predicted and set out by the propaganda model. As recent research has suggested (Philo and Berry 2004; Lewis 2001), such “black holes of history” are often reflected in public knowledge, and can have serious implications for people’s understanding of the past.

Institutions and influences

While the example of Gerald Ford’s death, then, may illustrate most effectively the operation of ideology within the mainstream press, the other institutional factors described in Manufacturing Consent also persist. Restrictive patterns of ownership have been consolidated over the last few decades, with most media outlets now in the hands of a few conglomerates (McChesney 2002; Bagdikian 2004; Meehan 2005). While direct intervention by owners is not the norm, they are indirectly able to exert a powerful influence by appointing like-minded editors who foster and oversee a generally amenable journalistic culture (Curran and Seaton 2003; Monbiot 2004).

The importance of advertising revenue to the commercial media – what Herman and Chomsky term “the advertising license to do business” – has not lessened since the days of Britain’s Daily Herald, whose collapse despite popularity and increasing sales can be attributed largely to a haemorrhage of advertising revenue (Curran 2002; Curran and Seaton 2003; Richards 1997). The proliferation of different outlets has likely increased advertisers’ power relative to the media, by intensifying competition for revenue. Media personnel, it seems, remain keenly aware of these pressures. As Nick Taylor, editor of the Guardian’s “Spark” magazine, put it in one particularly candid email to the organisation Media Lens:

“Ever worked on a magazine launch? The first and only real questions are: who will advertise with in product [sic.] / Will it be read by people whom advertisers want to reach?

“Readers/viewers/listeners are the most important thing to any publisher or broadcaster. But, from an economic point of view, primarily because high numbers of readers means high ad revenue. And media survive only through ads. I and all writers/editors/ broadcasters would love it to be different but there is no option – the basic cost of producing the Guardian every day is (of course) more than the cover price. No matter how many readers bought it, we would lose money, in fact an increasing amount of money, without ad revenue – unless we put the cover price up to what it really costs us to make the paper, which is somewhere north of £5 a copy.” (Media Lens 2004)

Selling “people whom advertisers want to reach” to those advertisers is a crucial factor in constricting the ideological range of the mainstream press, as the history of the Daily Herald attests. Advertisers not only require quantity from audiences, but also, crucially, quality. As Eileen R. Meehan writes of US television broadcasting:

“Advertisers’ demand for such high-quality consumers means that highly rated programs that attract a broad range of consumers … may earn lower revenues or be cancelled while lower-rated programs that deliver the most valued demographic earn higher revenues and get renewed.” (2005:23)

Guardian writer Nick Davies attests to the stark influence these advertising-derived demographic pressures exert on media workers. “Marketing experts,” he writes, have even “rewritten news values so that it is now commonplace for news editors to demand a particular story in order to appeal to some new target group in the market place.” (cited Curtis 2003:376)

While this appears to be the main impact of the media’s reliance on advertising revenue, it cannot – as commentators such as Peter Wilby (2007a) have suggested – be considered its only influence. Advertisers naturally “require an ad-friendly environment for their commercials” in Meehan’s words (ibid:3), and direct prescriptions on content are far from unknown. As Noreena Hertz notes, for instance, “Procter & Gamble explicitly prohibits programming around its commercials “which could in any way further the concept of business as cold or ruthless”.” (2002:7) Similarly, a memo from Coca-Cola’s advertising department issues pointed instructions to magazines, requiring that:

“all insertions are placed adjacent to editoral that is consistent with each brand’s marketing strategy… We consider the following subjects to be inappropriate: hard news, sex, diet, political issues, environmental issues… If an appropriate positioning option is not available, we reserve the right to omit our ad from that issue.” (cited Steven 2003:110-1)

The power of sources has become an increasingly salient issue in the study of political “spin”. The proliferation of news outlets, and in particular the growth in 24-hour rolling news, have undoubtedly increased the pressures on news organisations in terms of time, money, human resources and demand for content; at the same time, the P.R. industry has undergone a huge expansion, and powerful, resource-rich groups are increasingly well-placed to exploit a generally collusive relationship of mutual dependency (Davis 2003; Franklin 2003). The pressures this relationship can exert on journalists are often very powerful. The New Statesman’s John Kampfner, for instance, has reportedly declared that “[n]obody will bloody speak to me because of the mad editorial line this magazine takes! How can I get scoops from government ministers when we accuse them of being war criminals and Nazis every week?” The magazine’s “far left” stance, according to Kampfner, made his job “impossible” (Private Eye 2004).

Management of access and the flow of information, then, are of considerable importance. Nicholas Jones (2007a; 2007b; also cited Holmes 2007b) has attested to New Labour’s promiscuous leaking of confidential material to carefully selected journalists in an effort to win favourable coverage, and the continuing use of the practice under Gordon Brown. Stories such as the Independent on Sunday’s recent front-page exclusive and editorial on the government’s proposal for offshore wind farms, which painted the government favourably the day after a highly critical protest march, may be seen as evidence both that this collusive, mutually beneficial relationship continues, and that powerful sources can often effectively supersede the publicity efforts of more diffuse, resource-poor groups (Holmes, ibid).

In Britain, a major source of journalistic “flak” derives from the harshly punitive nature of British libel laws, with eminent firms such as Carter-Ruck having earned a notorious reputation among journalists. As Geoffrey Bindman points out, “[l]ibel claims are rarely possible except between millionaires, whether individuals or corporations on both sides”;

“[t]hose who lose out are the poor victims who cannot afford to sue or those who are sued and cannot afford to defend themselves – and they are usually the ones most seriously damaged. Legal aid has never been available in libel cases.” (2000:72-3)

Well-organised and -resourced campaigns of flak by particular groups can also be highly effective. The American academics Mearsheimer and Walt, for instance, have recently noted the significant influence of the “Israel Lobby” in the US, which, “[t]o discourage unfavorable reporting on Israel … organizes letter writing campaigns, demonstrations, and boycotts against news outlets whose content it considers anti-Israel.” (2006:21) Philo and Berry (2004) identify similar campaigns of pro-Israel “flak” mobilization in the UK.

Other factors?

It is also worth considering other, more oppositional influences on the mainstream media besides those outlined by Herman and Chomsky (1994). Some of the filters they describe, indeed, can be exploited by relatively disempowered groups in an attempt to gain greater access and influence. The mainstream news media’s increasing reliance on external sources as “information subsidies”, for instance, can sometimes be exploited by relatively resource-poor actors (Davis 2003), as exemplified most prominently by environmental activists and other exponents of unconventional, attention-grabbing forms of protest. This often allows for some influence over the mainstream agenda, although to an extent that should not be exaggerated. Relatively resource-poor, “outsider” groups are generally confined to a “back-gate” position, unlike more powerful, agenda-setting elites (Wolfsfeld 2003; Anderson 2003). Well-resourced groups, particularly large corporations, are also well-placed to adapt their own P.R. strategies in unconventional ways, in order to garner more favourable coverage – often through the use of front groups, third parties, and even “fake citizens” (Stauber and Rampton 2004; Monbiot 2002).

The use of “flak” can similarly be mobilised by some resource-poor campaigners, including readers and viewers, particularly via the internet. Media Lens’s encouragements to readers to contact journalists, for instance, have mobilised email campaigns that, according to the Guardian’s George Monbiot, “have begun to force” media workers “to look over their left shoulders as well as their right” (Media Lens 2007). Journalistic agency is another factor: media workers are sometimes able to offer resistance which can have an impact on coverage (see, for instance: Palast 2003; Curran, ibid:223). Journalists’ power, however, is necessarily circumscribed by the institutions within which they work, which can make life difficult for persistent dissenters, and foster a (generally internalised) culture of compliance with prevailing norms (Curran, ibid:154-5; Curran and Seaton, ibid:84-5).

Best cases

Given these continuing institutional constraints on the mainstream media, to what extent does its ability to conform to the requirements of its “fourth estate” role survive? Recalling the four major functions of the media in this role – informing the public; scrutinizing government (and private power); staging a public debate; and expressing public opinion – allows us to examine and evaluate the media’s performance on each. For the sake of fairness, I have focused on what are generally regarded as exemplary instances of the media living up to its “fourth estate” ideals.

In terms of informing the public, the contemporary “news environment”, with its emphasis on continual updates and “24/7” rolling news, is often portrayed as an invaluable and unprecedented information resource. As McNair (2006b) writes, “[t]he quantity of news and other information available has increased exponentially”, while “the speed of its flow has increased … [a]nd information, like knowledge, is power.” As noted above, however, if anything the greater demand for content, accompanying more intense resource pressures on media institutions, has tended to make outlets more susceptible to manipulation by high-profile, resource-rich groups. In some cases this has led to the inflation of spurious rumour and unsubstantiated official claims (Lewis and Brookes 2004; Thussu 2003), and even to outright fabrication and “fake news” (Barstow and Stein 2005; Huck 2006; Goodman and Farsetta 2006; Goodman et al. 2006). According to Yvonne Ridley, for instance, during the Afghanistan war, “some TV reporters paid Northern Alliance soldiers $5 a round to start firing off as the cameras rolled”, in order to give the (far-from-accurate) impression that journalists were close to the action (Ridley 2003:249). Thus the media in fact seem ever more likely to supply misinformation.

While this view has been challenged by Norris (2000), who regards the contemporary media as contributing to a more informed public, Justin Lewis (2001:xii) provides an essential caveat regarding such information’s “ideological nature”. “Whether we have more or less of it,” Lewis notes, “information is neither neutral nor necessarily benign”. Indeed given Norris’s further conclusion that the “attentive public exposed to the most news consistently displayed the most positive orientation towards the political system, at every level” (ibid:251) – precisely what Lewis reads as the media’s exercise of hegemonic power – we might reasonably infer a more indoctrinated public.

In terms of scrutinizing government, journalists are often portrayed in certain hagiographic accounts as fearless investigators and exposers of official wrongdoing. Many of these have been vastly overstated, however. The iconic investigation into the Watergate affair, for instance, contrary to much popular mythology, was subject to a great deal of “elite guidance”, which largely framed the boundaries of issues and facilitated the release of information (Curran 2002:222).

A more recent example, cited by McNair (2006a), is Seymour Hersh’s revelation of the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Examining mainstream US press coverage, Entman (2006:216) observes that “stories and editorials were sometimes punctuated by framings of the torture policy that challenged the [Bush] administration’s preferred narrative of a few underlings run amuck.” As Herman emphasises (1999:267), the propaganda model predicts that such factors as “disagreements among the elite and the extent to which other groups in society are interested in, informed about, and organized to fight about issues” will result in a “relatively open or closed” media. These punctuations are worth noting, then – though, as Entman also acknowledges, the latter, officially-endorsed framing still predominated. Worth emphasizing in particular, however – a point Entman includes in a footnote – is the force exerted by the verbal framing within which the episode as a whole was (and generally still is) covered: “the naming of the narrative the “prisoner abuse scandal,” with each word functioning to moderate what might otherwise be more transgressive and dissonant. An example of a more threatening alternative label might be “American torture policy.”” (Entman, ibid:224)

McNair (2006a:70) raises a number of other issues relating to the Iraq war: the critical nature of much media coverage, including predictions of a potential “looming quagmire”; and “a prism” through which one commentator claims the European press “highlighted the human costs, difficulties and risks”.

It is odd that McNair sees this evidence as a convincing counter to critics of the media’s pro-war slant. In their summary of the Cardiff study’s findings, for instance (to which McNair refers) Lewis and Brookes (2004:133-4) explicitly acknowledge the framing of TV coverage around the war’s “process and progress”: “how long would it take for US/British forces to win, and at what cost?” The boundaries of debate here, as one recent comparative examination has suggested (Lanine and Media Lens, 2007), are strikingly similar to the Soviet media’s in covering the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The fundamental questions were not of the motivation or legitimacy of that country’s aggression, but “the merit of the strategies for achieving its goals”. It is worth recalling that the propaganda model does predict criticism and debate, sometimes fierce, but within narrowly-defined boundaries; far from being repudiated here, then, its predictions seem to be confirmed.

To what extent, though, has the Hutton Inquiry facilitated an “ongoing media narrative of lies, deceit and betrayal” in the UK, as McNair suggests (ibid:65)? Again, a relatively narrow framing of the issue seems to predominate, which does not threaten the structuring ideology of Britain’s “basic benevolence” (Curtis 2003:380). Underlying the focus on questions of success and failure in implementing Western foreign policy goals, for example, is an implicit acknowledgement of these goals’ legitimacy. In correspondence with Media Lens in 2005, for instance, the BBC’s director of News, Helen Boaden, wrote in two different emails:

“[BBC defence correspondent] Paul Wood’s analysis of the underlying motivation of the coalition [that British and American forces “came to Iraq in the first place to bring democracy and human rights”] is borne out by many speeches and remarks made by both Mr Bush and Mr Blair.”

“To deal first with your suggestion that it is factually incorrect to say that an aim of the British and American coalition was to bring democracy and human rights, this was indeed one of the stated aims before and at the start of the Iraq war – and I attach a number of quotes at the bottom of this reply.” (Media Lens, 2006a and b)

According to Media Lens, accompanying her email “Boaden supplied no less than 2,700 words filling six pages of A4 paper of quotes from George Bush and Tony Blair to prove her point.” (ibid.) Far from even acknowledging the possibility of “lies, deceit and betrayal” then, Boaden clearly implies that these official claims provide a sufficient evidential basis for “factual” reporting.

Recent exchanges with prominent BBC staff on climate change provide an illuminating point of comparison. Given the scientific consensus on the facts of anthropogenic climate change, growing increasingly robust over a number of years (Oreskes 2004, 2007; NERC 2006; Le Page 2007; Harding 2007), we might expect this to provide a similarly sufficient evidential basis for factual reporting. The BBC’s Newsnight editor Peter Barron, however – having previously stated that “I don’t think it’s right to challenge the assumption that [Bush] wants democracy in Iraq” (Media Lens 2006a) – declared in correspondence that “the issue of impartiality does need to be taken into account in every programme we do”; and that, in this context, the “causes of climate change” constitute “a matter of controversy” (Holmes 2007a).

This apparent inconsistency makes considerably more sense if interpreted as reflecting the influence of powerful political and economic interests. On the issue of climate change, a number of high-profile front groups, funded by the fossil fuel industry in particular, have promulgated a “skeptical” line which the BBC has often given a legitimating platform (Holmes 2006; Monbiot 2006b). Tuchman’s (1972) diagnosis of journalistic “objectivity” as “strategic ritual” would therefore seem to retain its utility here, in describing a means of “balancing out and accommodating the most powerful lobbies and the loudest voices” (Lynas 2007). Far from seriously challenging power, then, the BBC often employs a strident rhetorical appeal to normative “fourth estate” principles in an effort to legitimate coverage favouring powerful interests.

Perhaps the most prominent examples of the news media staging a public debate are such deliberative discussion fora as the BBC’s Question Time. In Cottle’s (2003b:169) assessment, such forms represent “meaningful vehicles for wider deliberative processes”; McNair calls them “a logical and welcome extension of the democratic process in a media age” (2006a:67). Question Time itself, however, manifests clear limitations. Firstly, as Cottle notes, such vehicles are “rarely used”; in his sample, “extended” or “expansive” deliberative forms constitute less than 10% of those broadcast (ibid:162-3). Moreover, the elite predominance in framing the debate is marked. The debating panel tend to be drawn from the three main parties, along with an “expert”, businessman or columnist, and occasional “extra” (Curtis 2003:378-9). The very form of the debate, indeed, may be seen as implicitly favouring a top-down, elitist politics which tends to marginalise both the public and dissenters from the bounds of elite opinion. Aside from the opportunity to ask pre-arranged questions, applaud or jeer, the audience’s role is delimited in quite strict ways. Brief, undeveloped contributions are permitted – far from Cottle’s “sustained engagement” (ibid:168). More fundamentally, the structuring difference between such “opinion-based” forms and “factual”, “hard” news serves to reinforce the latter’s putative “objectivity” – obscuring prevailing patterns of assumption and selection.

A favoured example of the media’s success in representing public opinion is the very plurality of available media outlets, which purportedly reflects the ideological diversity of the public. In Peter Wilby’s (2007b) curt summation: “If you don’t like what’s in the papers, blame the readers, not the journalists.”

This is a misrepresentation in various fundamental ways. As we have noted, in general the market towards which commercial print and broadcast media are oriented is that of advertisers; their “product” lucrative audiences. Thus various rivals in a relatively condensed corporate oligopoly manoeuvre to gain market share (Meehan, ibid:22-3). Traits and divisions within the general population – and even among consumers – do not determine the plurality of media products, then, but rather (at least partly) patterns of variation within those particular, more or less “weighted” demographics “whom advertisers want to reach”. As a result, while news media have often employed a selective appeal to public opinion to justify content (GUMG 1985; Lewis 2001), in the UK evidence suggests that “the press has long been more right-wing than the public it is supposed to represent” (Curran and Seaton 2003:347), with a similar pattern evident in the US (Lewis ibid).

One brief example is provided by a July 2006 poll of British public opinion, which found that:

“More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests.”

A careful examination of editorials in British broadsheets during the same month, using a ProQuest newspaper search (The Guardian, Times, Sunday Times, Independent, Financial Times and Independent on Sunday) found 10 articles alluding to the latter framing. Of these, two tended towards it, while eight tended against – a distribution roughly the inverse of public opinion. Three editorials alluded to the former, “imperial power” frame, tending strongly against it. As suggested above, these frames also appear largely inadmissible for the BBC.

The online revolution?

Like McNair (2006a), some optimists regard the changed environment brought about by the internet in particular as radically different from the preceding one. The internet, McNair argues, massively lowers entry costs: anyone with a computer and internet connection can set up and maintain a blog or website, which can be visited and viewed by anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time. Moreover, bloggers and “citizen journalists” can interact with, and even exert a major influence on, the mainstream media’s content and agenda. Thus the internet and “blogosphere” have become a close approximation to Habermas’s idealised “public sphere”.

The internet has effected various changes – facilitating the organising and mobilising of grassroots movements and campaigns, often via such decentralised outlets as indymedia (Downing 2005; O’Riordan 2005); the formation and dissemination of alternative media; and to a limited extent a greater openness on the part of mainstream outlets, including the ability to “jot in the margins”. McNair’s optimistic rhetoric, however, is grossly overstated. Given that global patterns of material and social inequality vastly restrict access to the requisite technology (Sparks 2005), a key requirement of Habermas’s normative public sphere – that “[a]ccess is guaranteed to all citizens” (Habermas 2001) – can hardly be said of the online environment.

Within those relatively privileged enclaves with such access, moreover, there are considerable efforts to command and direct online attention – “one of the most valuable resources in the new era” (Polat 2005). Those most able tend, unsurprisingly, to be well-resourced and well-established. “Without promotion,” in the words of one internet executive, “you’re just a lemonade stand on the highway” (cited Curran 2002:154). “It is abundantly clear,” writes Ebrahim Ezzy (2006), “that advertisers are seeing a compelling opportunity to leverage the Internet as a powerful medium that drives both branding and sales results”; the Economist (2006) even dubs Google “the world’s most valuable online advertising agency disguised as a web-search engine”. While media and entertainment industries are expected to be the largest online advertising spenders in the next five years, accounting for “more than a quarter of search advertising alone” (Gonsalves 2006), if current patterns of inequality continue, it will be the biggest, wealthiest companies that reap the benefits: in the first half of 2007, for instance, as few as 50 companies accounted for one-third of all ad spending (Peterson 2007). Moreover, online advertisers increasingly rely on interactive marketing (Economist, ibid.), whose relative expense “raises the barriers to market entry” (Freedman 2006:279; Cohen 2004).

The online “main square” therefore accompanies more marginal “back streets” (Curran and Seaton ibid:270). McNair himself acknowledges the importance for aspiring bloggers of gaining mainstream attention – even, as in his example of Norman Geras, through specific ideological positionings – suggesting the “resilience” both of existing mainstream media (Freedman 2006), and of that media’s ideological restrictions. Already, indeed, there is some evidence that the left in particular have been marginalised (Jones 2007c).

Accounts such as McNair’s, then, which stress the transformed character of the contemporary media environment, tend to evince a misguided technological determinism, failing to take into account the surrounding political, social and economic contexts in which such technologies are used. Combined with a failure to convincingly rebut established accounts of mainstream media’s ideological restrictions, McNair’s optimistic description is largely a mirage: a good deal more must change before the contemporary media come close to fulfilling their fourth estate role.

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Taking Crime Seriously

eddie — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:32:27 +0000

Introduction

Socialists need to take crime seriously. Traditionally, the left has been regarded as being ‘soft’ on crime, which is a consequence of two main factors. Firstly, it is in part due to the success of the right in determining the crime agenda, but it is also because crime is seldom discussed by socialists in a way that is pragmatic. In this article, I want to make the case that crime is an issue that the left needs to address, particularly if left wing political parties are to make inroads in terms of broad public appeal. New Labour has presided over a mixed economy of criminal justice, which has included the traditional method of incarceration (which has increased under Labour to alarming levels), alongside a range of policies around the theme of crime prevention, which are the main focus of this article.

Why Crime is an Issue for the Left

In the past two decades, crime control has moved from being a peripheral issue to one that is centre stage both in terms of public debate and social policy. Hardly a day goes by without newspapers, particularly the tabloids, discussing crime. The mainstream political parties compete with one another to be ‘tough on crime’. Amongst the general public there is a real sense that crime and disorder is an issue, particularly in regards to young people. Statements like ‘young people have no respect nowadays for their elders or their communities’ have become truisms in some working class circles. The Labour Party acknowledges these sentiments and responds accordingly. Legislation such as the Crime and Disorder Act, or policies on Anti-Social Behaviour is often aimed at Labour’s heartland vote, particularly the elderly in marginalised housing estates; it goes without saying that this group should also be a natural constituent of the left. During the debate on anti-social behaviour, Labour ministers lined up to explain why this bill reflected the concerns of their constituents and in a sense, for once they were actually telling the truth.

Moral Panics

The whipping up of crime and fear by politicians and the media has created what sociologists refer to as a ‘moral panic’. How then does the radical left respond? Traditionally, the response has been to stay quiet or to discuss crime in a way that is abstract and fatalist. For the left, crime is a product of the capitalist system; therefore it is only when capitalism is replaced by something better that you can begin to think about living in a society free of crime. The consequence of this line of thinking is a fatalism which leads to a paralysis amongst sections of the left whenever crime is discussed. Whilst I consider it to be a truism that unequal societies will produce crime, I also believe that the left, if it is to have broad appeal, needs to formulate workable policies in the here and now and respond to the concerns of many working class people who identify crime as an issue. To say we have to wait until there is a revolution, whatever that means nowadays, is to shirk away from responsibility. Moreover, the left needs to engage in a debate about crime control at the level of policy and on the ground practice. Failure to get involved, particularly in marginalised housing estates, creates a vacuum which will be filled by the ideas of the right and in particular the British National Party.

Putting Crime into Context

There is a debate regarding the extent to which crime is an issue. It is often pointed out by the left, and I believe it to be true, that the fear of crime is disproportionate to the reality. Politicians and the media promote the politics of ‘fear’ on a regular basis and it would be surprising if it was bereft of any effect. The ‘rule by fear’ reflects a broader malaise which has infected the body politic. Politicians and governments have detected that they no longer rule on the basis of consensus and popular support. In the past, politicians, in theory at least, used to claim that they represented the public; today the aim of mainstream politicians is not to represent but to protect. What is occurring is a careful marketisation and production of a political discourse based on fear. The world conjured up by opinion formers is that of danger and unpredictability; it is a world which is inhabited by ‘teenage gangs’, ‘drug dealers’, ‘paedophiles’, ‘foreign invaders’ and ‘Islamic fundamentalists’. In this new ‘risk society’ the part played by politicians and government is that of protector. Consequently, the government’s war on crime is perpetual and never ending.

In the midst of all this panic, much of it manufactured, the left has been right to highlight the ways in which the media and the government exploit crime as a means of social and population control. Moreover, socialists are completely justified to warn against the outcomes of moral panics, which is often the violation by government of civil liberties and human rights. However, to dismiss it all as a ‘moral panic’ that is carefully manufactured by ruling elites would be a mistake. Furthermore, it would ignore the lived realities of many working class people, particularly those in the poorer housing estates where the radical left needs to establish a base.

Class and Crime

Crime is specifically placed and unevenly distributed and in the final analysis determined by social class. Forty per-cent of recorded crime takes place in just ten per cent of areas, the majority of which are poor. More than half of the people who show up in official statistics as victims of crime are repeat victims (Hughes et al, 2002). Consequently, a small proportion of people are experiencing a disproportionate amount of crime. All of the available research highlights that the more impoverished the area where you live, the greater the chances of you being a victim of car theft, assault, mugging, damage to your property, burglary or living next door to a drug dealer.

Crime is a class issue and that is why the left must respond. In practice this means seizing the debate from Labour and the reactionary right. The starting point is to engage with contemporary policies in regards to crime and disorder, particularly those policies which constitute as ‘alternatives to custody’ and ‘diversion from court’ which are sometimes dressed up in the cloak of progressivism and therefore seductive to people who may be left leaning. The two pillars of contemporary policy, which aim to move beyond simply locking people up, are crime prevention and community safety, which I would now like to examine in detail.

Crime Prevention

Crime Prevention (CP) emerged in the UK in the 1980s. Hitherto, crime had been regarded as a peripheral issue and one primarily for the police and the criminal justice system. As the Tories economic agenda was pushed to the extreme there was a corresponding rise in the overall crime rate. By the mid-1980s, mainstream criminologists and officials in the Home Office acknowledged, albeit in private, that the war on crime was being lost. Consensus was emerging in right wing circles that the overall crime rate would not be affected by deterrence through punishment or as a consequence of traditional policing and increased police resources. Moreover, from the point of view of the government, treatment programmes for offenders were costly and unproductive. The Tories found themselves with a contradiction; on the one hand they were committed to a ‘prison works’ ethos, but at the same time they recognised that whilst prison was politically necessary, it was also highly expensive for a government committed to reducing public expenditure. It was in the context of reducing treasury expenditure in the criminal justice system that prevention began to look extremely attractive. Crime prevention was identified by the Home Office as being a policy which in the long term would be ‘cost effective’.

Situational Crime Prevention

In the 1980s, discourses on crime shifted from overall cure to one of managing crime control. Despite the rhetoric of being ‘tough on crime’, which was lapped up by a docile media, what emerged in policy terms was an acceptance of crime as a necessary risk among others in what was referred to as the modern risk society.

Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) measures reflected this new thinking. SCP was seen as a pre-emptive approach that relied not on improving society or its institutions but on reducing the opportunities that exist for crime. SCP has been influenced by behavioural psychology and what theorists call Rational Choice Theory (RCT). RCT posits a common-sense view that crime is committed by rational actors who make psychological judgements or calculations in response to situations. The response to reducing crime is relatively straightforward according to RCT. What you need to do is create an environment where committing crime is difficult or extremely risky. If the criminal knows that he or she is likely to caught, and that the odds are stacked against them, this will decrease the likelihood of them offending. In practice, reducing the opportunities that exist for crime has been divided into two categories, ‘target hardening’ and ‘surveillance’.

‘Target hardening’ means strengthening and making more secure everyday devices such as doors, telephone boxes and cash withdrawal machines at banks. Also included are things such as installing burglar alarms on property and placing steering locks on cars. CCTV is now the main form of ‘surveillance’ in the UK. In fact, British citizens are now the most observed by CCTV than any other population in Europe. Also included under ‘surveillance’ are neighbourhood watch schemes introduced by the Tories in the 1980s.

CP approaches to crime control are viewed by their proponents as offering a way out of the failed traditional sanctions such as imprisonment and rehabilitation. SCP is seen as being able to reduce crime levels without the direct involvement of the criminal justice system. From this perspective, CP is conceived by its proponents as being ‘anti-statist’ and in line with the political philosophy of neo-liberalism. However a social price has been paid and we should ask ourselves if it has been worth paying? We now live in a nation where fear dominates and this has resulted in community segregation and the creation of a fortress mentality towards society. Furthermore, wherever there is fear, there will always be some right wing populist preparing to attack our civil liberties and take more power away from the citizen towards the state.

Community Safety

Community Safety (CS), alongside incarceration and crime prevention is the third pillar of contemporary crime control. Originally introduced by the Tories in the 1980s, albeit sporadically, CS approaches were taken up with zeal when Labour came to power in 1997. Labour controlled local authorities have been enthusiastic to sign up to community safety initiatives, which they like it because it emphasises ‘community’ and ‘grassroots’ approaches to crime. Moreover, local authorities are in the driving seat. Community Safety, according to its adherents chimes with an older aim of Labour and social democracy in general, which is to address the underlying causes of crime. CS is window dressed with buzzwords such as ‘partnership working’, ‘active citizenship’, ‘social inclusion’ and anything which follows the amorphous term ‘community’.

The 1998 Crime and Disorder Act instructed local government to play a leading role in co-ordinating community safety initiatives. CS was introduced at a time when the power and influence of local authorities was waning. It is not that difficult to see why local councillors were keen on CS: they saw it as a means of reinvigorating and giving purpose to local government. In practice local authorities are responsible for establishing various ‘partnerships’ which bring together the public, voluntary and private sectors.

Partnership Working

Labour likes to boast that partnership working is a holistic way of addressing crime control and one which utilises the resources of various stakeholders and actors from differing ends of the crime control spectrum. In addition to this, the government claims that partnership working is reinvigorating democracy at local level. For Labour, the democratic nature of partnership working is evidenced in the ways in which partnerships ‘consult’ with local communities and incorporate the community sector into the partnership model. Despite the gloss of community regeneration and empowerment, the reality of partnership working has been rather different.

Community partnerships need to be seen in the context of the neo-liberal withering away of the social state, whereby services once provided by local authorities, are either contracted out to private tender or are handed over to the chronically under-funded voluntary sector. Partnership working is part and parcel of a culture of managerialism that now exists in the public sector, which in the main demoralises staff and undermines the very ethos of public services. Community Safety Partnerships are littered with terms such as ‘target setting’, ‘crime reduction performance indicators’ and ‘best practice’ guidelines. Labour likes to boast that its response to crime is ‘evidence-led’ and based on ‘what works’. In reality such claims are rather patchy: it is argued by criminologists, that methodologically rigorous research is the exception not the norm (Hughes, et al, 2002). Even the Home Office has acknowledged in numerous reports that monitoring and evaluation are one of the weakest elements of crime prevention programmes. In truth, Labour’s crime control agenda is driven more by ideological factors than practical considerations.

Labour’s modernisation project has introduced a rigorous culture of auditing into the public sector. Auditing, despised by most workers in the public sector, creates a climate that encourages distortion and spin. Auditing creates a mentality whereby community safety initiatives focus on organisational instead of social goals. In practice, this results in organisations producing ‘paper trails’ of achievement and success which bears little relationship to real events taking place in communities (Hughes, et al, 2002).

Community Safety has deliberately de-politicised the issue of crime. Moreover, the appeal to ‘community’ and localised solutions encourages communities to look inwards and removes from the agenda issues such as unemployment and public housing. Noticeable by its absence in the crime debate are traditional social policy concerns such as welfare and re-distribution of wealth. Furthermore, CS has contributed to a culture whereby social policies have become ‘short-termist’ in their thinking. Although there is not the space to discuss it here, the issues raised by crime prevention and community safety highlight bigger concerns about social policy itself which the left needs to address. There is a blurring of the boundaries between traditional social policy and criminal justice. The consequence is that poverty is transferred from the realm of social policy into a matter for penology, criminal law, policing, crime prevention and community safety (Hughes, et al, 2002).

Conclusion

The left must engage with crime at the level of policy and real events as they occur on the ground. This requires two things. Firstly, it means formulating policies in the here and now which can win popular support. It also means engaging in a debate about the ways in which crime has been localised as a consequence of community safety policies. The changes in the electoral system in Scotland (despite the elections debacle) are creating an opportunity for real change to happen at local level. One of the things that could happen is that the localisation of public policy under the term ‘community’ might be introduced to more rigorous scrutiny and public debate. Although it is fashionable for ministers and policy makers to refer to ‘community’ at every given opportunity, the reality on the ground is rather different. Policies such as ‘community safety’ or ‘community planning’ mean very little to real people outside of the apparatuses of bureaucrats and middle managers who are not directly accountable to the communities they serve. An opportunity is emerging for a mammoth spotlight to be shone on public policy in the community. Moreover, there is the potential to introduce a politics which is adversarial and puts back on the agenda traditional social policy concerns such as wealth redistribution and welfare. The radical left, to be credible, needs to be ready to engage in this new milieu. A starting point is to take the issue of crime seriously. This means engaging with crime as an issue not at the level of the abstract, but at the level of public policy.

References

Hughes, G, McLaughlin, E and Muncie, J, (2002), ‘Crime Prevention and Community Safety’, SAGE Publications Ltd, London, UK

Gary Fraser has recently completed a Masters in Social Policy and Criminology and is a member of Solidarity: Scotland’s Socialist Movement

Study War No More: Military Involvement in UK Universities

JamieSW — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:17:56 +0000

Imperial College London sounds like the kind of place where you’d expect to find attitudes sympathetic to the military. London was, after all, once the capital of an empire of such size and scale – encompassing about a quarter of the world – that it required immense military might to enforce its rule. Looking at the level of military research that is being conducted by academics at Imperial and many other UK universities today, you could be excused for thinking that the empire never really went away – at least in the minds of those who seek to defend it.

In December last year, letters were sent to students, academics, staff and alumni at 26 UK universities drawing their attention to a recently published report entitled ‘Study War No More – Military Involvement in UK universities.’ The report, written by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) details the hundreds of military projects that UK universities conduct on behalf of arms companies and public bodies such as the Ministry of Defence. As one of the 26 UK universities covered by the report, letters were sent to representatives of Imperial highlighting how, between 2001 and 2006, the college conducted a minimum of 95 military projects – the 7th largest number in the UK – which netted the university at least £24 million.

The following response to this letter was received from Stephen Brown, Imperial College’s Union President:

“I am delighted that Imperial College has performed so well in yet another league table although given that we only finished 7th there is clearly still a lot of room for improvement. Several of our students are very proud of the excellent work that the College does with our industrial partners and the government to make sure that our armed forces have every possible technological advantage in what is unfortunately a dangerous world. The recent concerns raised in Parliament about the under funding of the UK Armed Forces reinforces the need for this important work to continue to make our service personnel less vulnerable as they bravely go about their jobs protecting UK subjects from those who would do us harm.”

Mr Brown needn’t worry about Imperial’s position in the league table, for the college is working hard to improve its ranking all the time. For example, in 2006, the Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defence joined forces with Imperial to form the International Technology Alliance (ITA). According to Imperial’s website, the ITA will “undertake a research programme exploring advanced technology for secure wireless and sensor networks to support future coalition operations, over a potential 10 year period, with a value of up to $135.8 million”[1]. Other members of the consortium include Boeing and Honeywell – two of the largest arms companies in the world. Imperial’s department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering received a government grant of £1.4 million for its work on this project and there may well be more to come.

It is important to consider the actual practices of Imperial’s ‘industrial partners’ in order to appreciate the likely applications of the military projects conducted at Imperial. As noted above, Imperial works with some of the largest arms companies in the world. As well as Boeing and Honeywell, Imperial is involved in numerous projects with BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, QinetiQ and General Dynamics. As Stephen Brown points out, these companies produce equipment for the UK military, which will have been used in, amongst other places, Iraq and Afghanistan. Notably absent from Mr Brown’s account however, is a reference to the foreign markets that these companies supply through arms exports. For example, BAE Systems, the company that was British Aerospace before it became too ‘global’ for ‘British’, is the world’s fourth largest arms producer. It makes fighter aircraft, warships, tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery systems, missiles, munitions and much more.

These arms are sold indiscriminately around the world and the company thrives on insecurity. Its 2005 Annual Report candidly states that “New threats and conflict arenas are placing unprecedented demands on military forces and presenting BAE Systems with new challenges and opportunities…”. The company claims to have military customers in “some 130 countries”, with its foremost markets being the repressive Saudi Arabian regime and the US, to which BAE Systems has steadily been moving its business. Other export deals to areas of conflict and widespread human rights abuse include sub-systems for Israeli F-16 fighter aircraft and Hawk light combat aircraft to Indonesia during its repression of East Timor.

One of the larger military projects involving Imperial and BAE Systems is FLAVIIR. This is a £6.2 million, public-private funded project, running between 2004 and 2009 and involving ten universities, predominantly in their Engineering departments. According to its website, FLAVIIR will “look at technologies for future unmanned air vehicles (UAV) funded jointly by BAE Systems and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.” A recent report in The Guardian outlined just how deadly the FLAVIIR research could one day be. It describes how the FLAVIIR research is intended to develop existing UAV technology used by UK and US forces. The RAF initially plans to use the unmanned drones for reconnaissance before arming them with Hellfire missiles for ground attacks. The CIA already used similar drones last year to “target a Pakistani village where it was thought Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of al-Qaida, was in hiding. Instead, more than 20 villagers, including five women and five children, were killed.” Unshaken by such tragedies, “British ministers and military chiefs think the drone will be the frontline attack plane in years to come.”

The military sector – both governmental and industrial – has been able to push its way into Imperial and other UK universities through funding a variety of projects, mainly involving research. By sub-contracting research to universities, which have world-class, publicly-funded staff and facilities, the military sector can keep overheads down and, in the case of military companies, profits up. The ease with which military organisations can influence university departments, through purchasing research and services and providing sponsorship, is indicative of the general trend towards commercialisation in higher education. Moreover, the hundreds of projects conducted at UK universities between 2001 and 2006 for the military sector indicate that the military has, in particular, built up strong levels of influence over science, engineering and technology departments.

Public money, mainly from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s collaborative research grants scheme, heavily subsidises many of these military projects, in particular those conducted by military companies, which contribute relatively small amounts of money. The public financing of military research makes these projects more attractive to universities, especially those suffering from funding shortfalls. Academics thus accept and actively seek out military money because they are under pressure to attract research funding to their department. Furthermore, because the university funding system has been used by the government to introduce policies which promote research with economic benefits to industry, science, engineering and technology departments’ funding options have narrowed. Academics may also be more willing to accept military funding if they do not perceive the work to be military. This may be because they don’t associate the research they are being paid to conduct with a direct military application. This is despite the fact that it is often possible to identify work which has been paid for by the military that either have very high military revenues or spend millions of pounds on military production and/ or procurement.

In spite of the Freedom of Information Act, accessing data regarding the funding of universities by the military sector (for example from university and research council websites in addition to FoI requests) is time consuming and only presents a partial picture of the actual economic relationships. Two reasons for this- apart from the fact that institutions are often not compelled to provide such information- are the need for commercial confidentiality between competing organisations (including universities) and the cloak of secrecy surrounding the military sector. Without full transparency in the future, including clear and easily accessible information concerning how public money is used to support projects conducted by the military sector, it will not be possible to accurately assess the extent of military involvement in UK universities or monitor developments and trends.

The first step towards challenging the dependence of UK universities on funding from military organisations is to ensure that information regarding this relationship is publicly available so that it may be freely discussed. Transparency can only be achieved through the use of the media, public debates, meetings and campaign groups to press for change within universities and government. Ultimately, the decision-making structures of universities and government must change if the military sector’s research agenda is to stop being pushed onto university departments and there is to be a reduction in the amount of military projects conducted at UK universities. Thankfully, there are encouraging signs that students and staff will not stand for their universities’ being turned over to the military. Campaigners have already taken part in meetings at several UK universities, including Warwick, Nottingham, UCL, LSE, Sheffield and Southampton and there are plans for many more events at other universities in the future. One would hope that Imperial College and its Union President will continue to take part in this debate, for it is clear that students and staff want to discuss current levels of university participation in military projects given the urgent challenges of climate change, resource conflict, nuclear proliferation and economic inequalities that the UK and the world are currently facing.

1. http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummar…

The Iraqi Holocaust: 90 Years of Imperial Genocide

Tim Holmes — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:12:05 +0000

We hear a lot about the “new” imperialism these days. Indeed, it’s become somewhat of an intellectual fad. Pundits, political commentators, and even professors have been busy debating the “new” Anglo-American empire. The one that spontaneously burst into existence sometime after 9/11, probably around the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Volumes of academic verbiage along with pages of distilled analytical wisdom are poured into efforts to try and understand whether this “new” empire is good or bad for the world. Occasionally, we get a little bit of criticism of the failures of Bush and his neoconservative ideologues. Consistently left out of the debate is, of course, the existence of an overwhelmingly enormous Elephant occupying the Living Room of intellectual freedom.

What is this Elephant, and from whence does it come?

This Elephant symbolises that rather difficult subject matter known as the Brute Facts of History, the absence of which is what permits mainstream commentators to pontificate endlessly in a manner that serves not to illuminate, but to obscure.

Ignoring the Brute Facts of History, unfortunately, is integral to Western political culture. It permits a war for oil and power based on genocide to be paraded as exporting democracy and protecting security; it allows the systematization and globalization of mass death to be legitimized as necessary violence in the service of life itself. Western political culture survives on such methods of misinformation. For suppressing History is precisely how Western imperial power legitimizes its violence.

It is this systematic incapability to practice serious, sustained self-critique and self-reflection that prevents our societies from envisioning what we have been doing in Iraq as it truly is. For what we have perpetrated, and continue to perpetrate, is no less than a protracted 90-year Holocaust. The term “Holocaust” is not used loosely here, but in its full import. Its aptness emerges self-evidently from a brief inspection of the Brute Facts of History. It reveals that our political culture is utterly morally bankrupt, if not pathologically narcissistic; our political party system is hopelessly corrupt and irrelevant, thoroughly complicit in the sponsorship of a century or more of imperial genocide, yet still enamoured of its own “civilized” stature; our mass media, equally bankrupt, narcissistic, corrupt and indeed in many ways irrelevant as far as democracy, the rule of law, and human rights are genuinely concerned.

For the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq was by no means the beginning of the Anglo-American imperial turn. On the contrary, the 2003 Iraq War constituted merely a new phase in a series of prolonged regional interventions from which the 2003 trajectory of Anglo-American power cannot be abstracted if it is to be fully understood.

A broader historical perspective permits us to conceive the 2003 Iraq War as only the end-point of a continuum of genocidal catastrophe wrought by British interventionism, beginning early in the twentieth century. The British state has conducted military interventions in Iraq on and off for 90 years or so, continuing to do so under the leadership of the United States since 1991. Throughout this 90 year period, American, British and other Western states have facilitated, sponsored, commissioned and participated in acts of genocidal violence against the Iraqi people. Yet this brutal, shocking history, so overwhelming, so integral to the fundamental interests of Western power in one of the world’s most strategic regions (the Middle East) is simply not part of the historical consciousness of our societies. It is not part of our self-identity. Because our governments don’t do such things. We are, of course, “civilized.”

With this in mind, we will begin by reviewing Western engagement with Iraq as a continuous historical process consisting of considerable instances of systematic imperial violence, which frequently included episodes that were genocidal. If this argument is accurate in highlighting 1) the continuity of imperial relations between the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries 2) the potentially genocidal impact of Anglo-American military and social policies in Iraq; then we have established the case for a fundamental re-think of our understanding of contemporary international relations. We will proceed by dividing the Iraqi Holocaust into four major historical phases, which we discuss in chronological order.

Phase 1 – The “Arab Façade”

Shortly after the First World War, a number of European powers including England turned their eyes toward the Middle East, with a view to weaken the regional hegemony of Ottoman Turkey, the Muslim caliphate for four centuries. The region encompassed by the Ottoman caliphate included the areas of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and much of Saudi Arabia. Amidst a plethora of ethnic, linguistic, cultural and even religious differences, Islam provided the basis of political unity sustaining the caliphate. [Aburish, Said K., A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite, Indigo, London, 1998] The Ottomans were hardly saints, and had their own fair share of violence and repression. Among other things, they were complicit in the 1915-17 Armenian Genocide.

Yet that doesn’t absolve the British for what they planned and did in the Middle East, which has now amounted to the continuation of relations of violence and even genocide. British officers in the Arab Bureau in Cairo improvised plans to sponsor local uprisings. According to Sir Arthur Hirtzel of the India Office, British aims were explicitly to divide, and thus weaken, the Arabs, not unify them. Despite public overtures of support for Arab unity and independence, the British secretly signed the 1916 Sykes-Pikot Agreement with France, which made official the task of controlling Middle East oil by exploiting internal divisions. Under the Agreement, Iraq was to be carved-up between France and Britain. Thus, Britain invaded southern Iraq as soon as war with the Ottomans had been declared, taking Baghdad in 1917, and Mosul in November 1918. Iraq was not the only innovation. British, French, American and other European manoeuvres saw the creation of twelve new fictional Middle East nation-states from the ashes of the Ottoman empire. The contents of the Sykes-Pikot agreement were revealed in 1921 when the Bolsheviks retrieved a copy. Oil was, of course, a major factor in its formulation, as was officially recognised in the 1920 San Remo Treaty, and in the illegal 1928 Red Line Agreement, involving the British and French sharing of the oil wealth of former Turkish territories originally under Ottoman rule. Here, percentages of future oil production were allocated to British, French and American oil companies. [Aburish, ibid.]

In the aftermath of the war, what remained of the Ottoman empire was divided among the colonial powers in the mandate system established under the League of Nations, by which formerly Ottoman territories were to be governed by the European powers to guide them toward self-government. Britain managed to obtain the mandate for Iraq, even threatening war to keep the oil-rich Mosul province in the country. The announcement of British mandate rule in Iraq in 1920 led to widespread indigenous revolts, which were ruthlessly suppressed by British forces. That year, then Secretary of State for War and Air, Winston Churchill, proposed that Mesopotamia “could be cheaply policed by aircraft armed with gas bombs, supported by as few as 4,000 British and 10,000 Indian troops.” His proposal was formally adopted the next year at the Cairo conference, and Iraqi villages were bombed from the air. [Edward Greer, ‘The Hidden History of the Iraq War,’ Monthly Review, May 1991]

Subsequently, emir Faysal I – who belonged to the Hashemite family of Mecca – was appointed by the British High Commissioner as the King of Iraq. Faysal immediately signed a treaty of alliance with Britain that virtually re-instated the British mandate. To counter the widespread nationalist protests to this continuation of colonial rule by proxy, the British High Commissioner forcefully deported nationalist leaders, while establishing an Iraqi constitution granting King Faysal dictatorial powers over the Iraqi parliament. Iraqi popular unrest, however, was intolerable enough to make this state of affairs increasingly unsustainable, forcing Britain to grant Iraq formal independence in 1932 as part of the process of decolonisation. The gesture, however, was only token. Britain had already signed a new treaty with Iraq establishing a “close alliance” between the two countries and a “common defence position.” With King Faysal still in charge and British bases remaining in Basra and west of the Euphrates, British rule was rehabilitated in an indirect form. When elements of the Iraqi army and political parties toppled King Faysal in 1941, Britain invaded and occupied Iraq again to re-install him.

This policy in Iraq — which included both the colonial phase of direct rule and the transition to effective indirect rule under decolonisation — was candidly described by Lord George Curzon, then British Foreign Secretary, who noted that what the UK and other Western powers desired in the Middle East was an:

“Arab facade ruled and administered under British guidance and controlled by a native Mohammedan and, as far as possible, by an Arab staff…. There should be no actual incorporation of the conquered territory in the dominions of the conqueror, but the absorption may be veiled by such constitutional fictions as a protectorate, a sphere of influence, a buffer state and so on.” [William Stivers, Supremacy and Oil: Iraq, Turkey, and the Anglo-American World Order, 1918-1930, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1982, p. 28, 34]

Lord Curzon had defined in explicit terms the regional framework of political order as a network of surrogate client-regimes. Hence, in attempting to ensure that these client-regimes remain fundamentally compliant with the overall parameters of “British guidance”, regional policy was designed to sustain their internal stability at all costs. As the global hegemony of the British empire faded, virtually eclipsed after the Second World War by the United States, the same policy was pursued. As one US State Department official stated in 1958: “Western efforts should be directed at… the gradual development and modernisation of the Persian Gulf shaikhdoms without imperiling internal stability or the fundamental authority of the ruling groups.” And similarly, the US National Security Council noted in 1958: “Our economic and cultural interests in the area have led not unnaturally to close US relations with elements in the Arab world whose primary interest lies in the maintenance of relations with the West and the status quo in their countries.” [Curtis, Mark, The Great Deception, (London: Pluto) p. 147, 127] Yet a further secret British document from the same year concurs, detailing other relevant strategic considerations:

“The major British and other Western interests in the Persian Gulf [are] (a) to ensure free access for Britain and other Western countries to oil produced in States bordering the Gulf; (b) to ensure the continued availability of that oil on favourable terms and for surplus revenues of Kuwait; (c) to bar the spread of Communism and pseudo-Communism in the area and subsequently to defend the area against the brand of Arab nationalism.” [File FO 371/132 779. ‘Future Policy in the Persian Gulf’, 15 January 1958, FO 371/132 778. Cited in Nafeez Ahmed, Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq (New Society/Clairview, 2003)]

Phase 2 – Our “Policeman”

The period after the Second World War saw renewed imperial overtures from both Britain and the United States to regain hegemony over Iraq. After taking power in 1958, Iraqi president Abdul Qarim Qassem was tolerated by the Eisenhower administration as a counter to the pan-Arab nationalist aspirations of Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt. [Roger Morris, ‘A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making,’ New York Times, 14 March 2003] But by 1961, he challenged US-led Western interests again by nationalising part of the concession of the British-controlled Iraq Petroleum company. He also declared that Iraq had a legitimate historical claim to the oil-rich Western client regime Kuwait. [Aburish, op. cit.]

He thus became “regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed.” Consequently, plans were laid to overthrow him enlisting the assistance of Iraqi elements hostile to Kassim’s administration, with the CIA at the helm.” In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshalled opponents of the Iraqi regime,” notes the NY Times. “Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents.” Former Ba’athist leader Hani Fkaiki has confirmed that Saddam Hussein – then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after attempting to assassinate Kassim in 1958 – was colluding with the CIA at this time. [Aburish, op. cit.]

Aburish collects together official documents and testimony showing that the CIA had even supplied the lists of people to be eliminated once power was secured. Approximately 5,000 people were killed in the 1963 coup, including doctors, teachers, lawyers, and professors, resulting in the decimation of much of the country’s educated class. Iraqi exiles such as Saddam assisted in the compilation of the lists in CIA stations throughout the Middle East. The longest list, however, was produced by an American intelligence agent, William McHale. None were spared from the subsequent butchery, including pregnant women and elderly men. Some were tortured in front of their children. Saddam himself “had rushed back to Iraq from exile in Cairo to join the victors [and] was personally involved in the torture of leftists in the separate detention centres for fellaheen [peasants] and the Muthaqafeen or educated classes.” [Aburish, op. cit.]

US intelligence was integrally involved in planning the details of the operation. According to the CIA’s royal collaborator: “Many meetings were held between the Ba’ath party and American intelligence – the most critical ones in Kuwait.” Although Saddam’s Ba’ath party was then only a minor nationalist movement, the party was chosen by the CIA due to the group’s close relations with the Iraqi army. Aburish reports that the Ba’ath party leaders had agreed to “undertake a cleansing programme to get rid of the communists and their leftist allies” in return for CIA support. He cites one Ba’ath party leader, Hani Fkaiki, confessing that the principal orchestrator of the coup was William Lakeland, the US assistant military attache in Baghdad. [Aburish]

In 1968, another coup granted Ba’athist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr control of Iraq, bringing to the threshold of power his kinsman, Saddam Hussein. The violent coup was also supported by the CIA. Roger Morris, formerly of the US National Security Council under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960s, recalls that he had “often heard CIA officers — including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a ranking CIA official for the Near East and Africa at the time — speak openly about their close relations with the Iraqi Baathists.” [Morris] Thus, two gruesome CIA military coups brought the genocidal Ba’ath party, and with it Saddam Hussein, to power, in order to protect US strategic and economic interests.

Gideon Polya, a retired senior biochemist at Le Trobe University working on a scientific analysis of global mortality, has put together a staggering overview of some of most reliable estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians who have died as a consequence of the direct and indirect impact of these Anglo-American interventions and occupations. Using United Nations data and the concept of “excess mortality” – “the difference between actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently run country with the same demographics” — Polya calculates that since 1950, 5.2 million Iraqis died during the period in which the CIA and MI6 were fostering coups, installing and re-installing dictators, until Saddam himself obtained power [Gideon Polya, “Iraq Death Toll Amounts to a Holocaust”, Australasian Science (June 2004, p. 43); Polya, Body Count: Global avoidable mortality since 1950 (Melbourne: LaTrobe, 2007)]

Western sponsorship of Saddam Hussein, now well-documented, continued through to the eve of the 1991 Gulf War. During that period, funds and technologies supplied by the US, Britain, France, to name only three major powers, served to support Saddam during his war with Iran (1980-88) — killing 1.7 million people on both sides; and his internal repression such as the genocidal Anfal campaign (1987-89) against the Kurds — killing 100,000 people including the gassing of 5,000 at the village of Halabja in 1988. Although the US Senate passed a bill to impose sanctions on Iraq for the Anfal atrocities, the Reagan administration pressured the House of Representatives to block the bill. In 1989, a year after the attacks, the US government doubled its annual Commodity Credit Corporation aid to Saddam to more than US$1 billion. A declassified National Security directive issued by then President Bush Snr. in October that year prioritised the provision of funds and technology to Saddam’s regime, describing it as the “West’s policeman in the region.” The international community, in other words, under US leadership, was complicit in Saddam’s acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing [Anthony Burke, “Iraq: Strategy’s Burnt Offering”, Global Change, Peace & Security (June 2005, Vol 17, No 2) p. 206; Curtis, p. 129]

Phase 3 – “Paying the Price”

Finally, of course, we have the scale of deaths resulting from direct Western interventions in the post-1991 period until today. According to a demographic study by Beth Daponte, formerly of the US Commerce Department’s Census Bureau of Foreign Countries, Iraqi deaths due to the 1991 Gulf War totalled 205,500. Out of these, 148,000 civilians were killed as a direct or indirect consequence of the war, including due to adverse health effects resulting from the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure during the Allied bombing campaign. [Beth Osborne Daponte, “A Case Study in Estimating Casualties from War and its Aftermath: The 1991 Persian Gulf War” Physicians for Social Responsibility Quarterly (1993)]

1991 is also the year in which the Allies imposed via the United Nations comprehensive economic sanctions on Iraq, purportedly to prevent Saddam’s access to weapons of mass destruction, but which tended to entrench the power of his regime while fatally depriving the Iraqi people of essential items to survive. Thus, from 1991 to 2002 under the Anglo-American imposed UN sanctions regime, UN data confirms a death toll of 1.7 million Iraqi civilians, half of whom were children. In fact, officials had occasionally acknowledged that the Iraqi population was the primary target of the sanctions regime, a means of waging protracted war on Saddam. “Iraqis will pay the price while [Saddam] is in power”, warned Robert Gates, then presidential national security adviser and current Defense Secretary [Nafeez Ahmed, Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq (New Society/Clairview, 2003)]

Arguments that the UN sanctions regime constituted a form of genocide are supported by multiple United Nations officials who were directly involved in the administration of the regime, such as Dennis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary-General; and Hans von Sponeck, former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq. Generally, the argument has pointed not only at the immense scale, in terms of numbers of people who have died due to the sanctions, but has also highlighted direct evidence of Western intent at senior levels, by proving that officials responsible for sanctions policies were fully cognizant of their impact in the deaths of Iraqi civilians [George E. Bisharat, “Sanctions as Genocide,” Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems (2001, Vol. 11, No. 2) pp. 379-425; Thomas Nagy, “The Role of ‘Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities’ in Halting One Genocide and Preventing Others”, Association of Genocide Scholars (University of Minnesota, 12 July 2001)

Phase 4 – Exporting Democracy

Then we have the death toll of Iraqi civilians in the 2003 Gulf War. Of the several credible academic studies of civilian deaths in Iraq in the post-2003 invasion period, the most rigorous was the epidemiological study by John Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, which estimated 655,000 excess Iraqi civilian deaths due to the war. Although the study employed standard statistical methods widely used in the scientific community, critics argued that the numbers of bodies being discovered did not match Lancet figures, which were more than 5 times greater than the Iraqi health ministry’s figures. Yet even the Ministry of Defence’s chief scientific adviser described the survey’s methods as “close to best practice” and its results “robust”, advising ministers not to criticise the study in public. [Paul Reynolds, “Huge gaps between Iraq death estimates”, BBC News (20 October 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6045112.stm; Owen Bennett-Jones, “Iraqi deaths survey ‘was robust’” BBC News (26 March 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6495753.stm].

Indeed, Lancet’s figures could be empirically verified if journalists visited several locations at random in Iraq and discovered local reports of 4 or 5 times more deaths. This is exactly what was subsequently done by the British polling agency, Opinion Business Research (ORB), which has tracked public opinion in Iraq since 2005. Working with an Iraqi fieldwork agency, ORB conducted face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,720 adults aged 18 plus. Interviewees were asked how many members of their household had died as a result of the Iraq conflict since 2003. The ORB poll found that 1.2 million Iraqi civilians had been murdered since the invasion. [Tina Susman, “Poll: Civilian Death Toll in Iraq May Top 1 Million”, Los Angeles Times (14 September 2007)] The ORB findings tally with those of the John Hopkins team, whose data-set, according to independent experts such as Australian biochemist Dr. Gideon Polya, calculated for a year later confirms at least one million post-2003 Iraqi deaths due to the war.

These are staggering figures. They suggest that since 1991, the total civilian death toll in Iraq as a consequence of Anglo-American invasions, socio-economic deprivation and occupation amount to 3 million people.

Hand on his heart, Tony Blair told the world before his resignation that he “believed” what he did in Iraq was “right”. I’m sure he did. No doubt, so did Hitler with regard to his exterminatory campaigns in Europe.

We may well believe that what the Anglo-American centres of imperial power are doing in Iraq is right. But the truth is that some of the worst crimes in history were committed by people who truly believed that what they were doing was right. What is worse is that the Iraqi Holocaust is only the tip of the iceberg, a mere fragment of the imperial violence that has been, and is being, committed throughout the world, in our name.

If we have any semblance of humanity left in us as we stand and stare pathetically, immobile, at the scale of the horror our governments have wrought, then our most urgent task must be to find ways to challenge and oppose this global system, which has expanded not only during the era of traditional modern “colonization” but even moreso in the era of postmodern “globalization”, systematically generating genocidal violence against hundreds of millions of people across the South; and systematically finding ways to legitimize this violence as normal, functional, necessary… for us to live, breathe and prosper.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq (New Society, 2003) and executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (www.globalcrisis.org.uk) in London. He teaches globalisation, empire and international relations at Brunel and Sussex Universities in the UK.