Photograph Source: Daniel Torok – Public Domain

Francis Wheen concludes his excellent biography of Marx with the old rascal’s death on March 14th 1883, an event barely acknowledged in the London Press.  In the absence of an obituary, Wheen looked to Marx’s personal life, to his intimate disclosures, for some private assertion to stand as a fitting testimonial. Some years earlier, when Marx was asked by his daughters to name the worst human vice, one might have expected this life-long enemy of capitalism to have responded with ‘avarice’, or ‘oppression’ or some other feature evinced by the exploitative class, but actually it was ‘servility’ that he singled out for opprobrium.

Many of us probably felt something similar when we watched the Pakistan Prime Minister’s oleaginous address to Trump at the recent Gaza ‘Peace’ Summit. In fact, so gratuitous was Shehbuz Shariff’s fawning presentation, as he oscillated between hailing the gifts of this peace-loving wonder-worker and checking back for Trump’s response that even the European vassals looked embarrassed. Apart from Starmer that is, who made ready to applaud as Shariff crescendoed, only to pull back to an embarrassed self handshake when he realised he was on his own. It was the same week that the Nobel Peace Prize – went to Maria Corina Machado – a former Venezuelan politician who had asked for her country to be invaded by a genocidal regime. Presumably that wasn’t the reason she was selected, but it is impossible to know these days. And maybe that’s the point of these extravagant excesses: to deflect our attention from more sober compliances as constitutions, judiciaries, sovereign states and even international institutions like the UN and ICJ all bend themselves to the bidding of the hegemon.

Starmer may not appear much on the international circuit, but at home he’s been most effective in protecting the interests of Western hegemony. Not only has his government provided Israel with full support for its genocide in Gaza. But it has also established an astonishing legal precedent by proscribing a non-violent protest group as a terrorist organisation and inaugurating thought crime as an arrestable offence. To date, almost 3000 citizens have been arrested as terrorists simply for writing a sentence in Palestine Action’s support.  And just when you thought executive overreach could not get any worse, last week the government effected a last minute judge-switch in the proscription’s Judicial Review hearing. Justice Chamberlain – the former sole judge who was familiar with all aspects of the case and had approved the hearing was unexpectedly removed the day before and replaced with three judges unfamiliar with the facts but presumed to be closer to the government’s views. You might have imagined headlines of ‘Stitch up’ and editorials about our ‘Slide into a Police State’ or even some comment about the implications for protest and civil liberties. But there was nothing of note. I don’t believe any mainstream journalist even attended the hearing.

It was Edward Said who drew attention to the relationship between Culture and Imperialism in his 1993 book with that title. Said wanted to show how the wealthy western metropole culturally reconciled itself with the violence and oppression meted out in its colonial spaces, which in 1914 comprised 84% of the planet. Because, as Said points out, the contest for land and resources wasn’t just about armies; it was “also about ideas, forms, images and imaginings.” And it was those ‘cultural forms’ that constituted the ‘mental element’ of western imperialism that Said wanted to bring to light. And he wanted to do that because he recognised that western imperialism is an ongoing process and just as the Victorian novel acted as a ‘cultural palliative’ enabling that society’s aggressive adventuring to be managed back home, similar cultural expressions today provide the same function. So it was in Nazi Germany when subsidised radio sets were provided to ensure that the subtle war propaganda – emphasising Germany’s fight for traditional western values – always bracketed between light entertainment and music – could be comfortably consumed. The essential point being, as Said emphasises, that it was not what was said that mattered, more often the most effective messaging was contained in what was left out.

As we see today regarding the ‘cultural forms’ relating to the genocide in Gaza which is portrayed as a sudden explosion of inexplicable violence rather than as an ongoing anti-colonial struggle for freedom. Compare that with the war in Ukraine, which the British populace are encouraged to get behind. Primarily because the defeat of Russia would further European imperialist ambitions and enable it to prop up the failing capitalist economy whereas the establishment of a free Palestinian state would signal the end of western influence in that region.

However, the most noteworthy cultural response to the Gaza genocide here in the UK has been a renewed, largely right-wing, emphasis on the importance of ‘Traditional Western Values’. Such calls might appear superficial, even hypocritical given the collapse of International law, the UN, the Genocide Convention and commitments to human rights generally, but such post-war international institutions are not deemed relevant by those encouraging a........

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