Unless your views on politics and indeed international news
in general is a form of aggressive apathy, you have no doubt heard about the
“Occupy” movement, that gripped first Wall Street, then the rest of the United
States and now, the entire world (though its presence here in the UK, occupy
LSX, at least from personal observation, seems subdued at best, though they have managed to
close St Pauls, surprising considering there is only about 200 - 400 of them camped outside it).
The American right wing media have been quick to portray the protests as
dedicated towards ending capitalism and populated exclusively by unemployed losers who are also elitist upper
middle class students (I assume this makes some form of sense in their minds).
By the terms of the left wing media, this is a massive grassroots progressive
movement that is entirely moderate in
its attitudes and actions and with a completely reasonable set of demands. The
truth I strongly suspect is somewhere in between. Certainly, looking at the interviews,
a number of the “occupiers” do fit the Damn Dirty Hippy stereotype while many
others do not, indeed the movement seems to have more than its fair share of
veterans, teachers, retirees and even (though perhaps unsurprisingly given the
turbulence in the financial sector) a number of white collar wall street/former wall street workers .`
What
many see as the reason behind the protests is the perception (rightly or
wrongly depending on your point of view) of the overall unfairness of the
current system. It is indeed hard to read the wearethe99percent’s tumblr and
not be moved by some of the entries. Stories of students completely unable to
cope with massive levels of debt and struggling to survive, of families forced
to choose between affording health insurance or having a roof over their heads,
of countless highly skilled professional’s completely unable to find a job, any
job. Now obviously In spite of opposition, it is not hard to see there is
genuine rage against a system wherein the exceptionally wealthy are treated
very well by the political establishment whilst everyone else seems neglected
and indeed in some cases even demonised by the same establishment. This has obviously not been lost on the right
who have rather unsurprisingly begun their own fight back. Opponents of the OWS
movement have started their own movement “We are the 53 percent”, ostensibly to
represent the 53% of Americans who pay federal income tax and therefore imply
that many of the protesters do not (of course there is no evidence to
substantiate this, and even if there were it is important to note that those
who do not earn enough to pay a federal income tax do pay taxes in terms a
sales tax and the perversely regressive payroll tax), yet their tales of “Well
my life is tough too but you don’t hear me complaining” never fails to come
across as a little petty by comparison to the heart wrenching stories from the
former camp.
Perhaps
the opponents of OWS would have some credibility but for that fact that many of
them were rather open and proud supporters of the tea party movement whom while
campaigning for absolutely no government spending and policies largely prefaced
by “I’m not racist but...” were also, rather ironically, massively opposed to
the bailouts, TARP and what they saw as
“all the money in politics”. Yet the tea party were always a largely
right wing phenomenon, and they saw no place for any form of government regulation
of those very sectors, putting them at complete ideological odds with many of
the OWS protesters. That being said it is impossible not to note the
similarities between the two movements. Both started out as small scale
grassroots movements that grew substantially and quickly (though a certain
degree of the tea party’s growth can be traced to funding from groups related to Koch Industries), as
aforementioned, both object to corporate power and both want to see America
taken in a different direction. Yet while the
tea party were always very goal driven with specific accomplishments in
mind, this seems to be missing in the OWS protest. Some of the demands put out
by those purportedly representing OWS seem hastily put together, wildly optimistic and with no real plan as to
how they would be push for them to be implemented (indeed some seem outright
unimplementable). This strikes me as pointing to the movement facing a risk of
hijack from anti-capitalists and those who want a complete top down system
change as opposed to gradual evolution and realistic laws enacted to ensure fairness.
This does not (from the interviews I have seen) seem indicative of the majority
of protestors, who are instead far more interested in more interested in
fairness and for the government to take some more active action in ensuring
that they have access to vital services (such as affordable health care and
social security) and for the banks to release more money to allow for jobs to
be created (not an unreasonable request given that the banks were saved from
disaster with injections of taxpayer money through various forms).
Of the OWS protesters, one subset who I do find it very
difficult to muster any sympathy for are the liberal activists (and with that I
am not just referring to the anti-capitalism morons) but rather those who I
feel have a certain level of responsibility for the disastrous policies of the
republican congress. Consider November 2010 when the democrats still held the
house of representatives but were now facing a major threat in terms of the tea
party. It was at that time that Obama truly needed their help and support to
energize his base, but instead they largely shrugged him off, whining instead
about Obama’s perceived failures (How getting 30 million people who were
previously uninsured healthcare, pulling America out of recession and enacting
financial regulation can be considered a failure is anyone’s guess). This
rather selfish attitude was instrumental in the republican wins last November
which led to the current Republican congress whose existence is built around
rejecting anything sensible. At the end of the day, their president needed them
to allow him to continue fighting for them and they turned their backs.
Honestly they need to grow up and actually start fighting for their president
rather than against him.
One thing that I do think odd and somewhat concerning is the
efforts to internationalize the movement, or indeed the desire of people from
around the world to jump in on the movement’s bandwagon. This seems off because
it to a certain degree it seems to imply that the rather unique problems that
are prevalent in the American system (lack of healthcare, extremely painful
rates of payment of student loans, now social security) are global which they
are not (case in point the UK, where there is universal health insurance and
student loan repayments are not particularly severe , indeed becoming
progressive in the near future). In fact the UK protests seem more about actual
focussed opposition to capitalism as a concept and a rejection of any cuts with
no middle ground (though for full disclosure I should state that I only read
those views from various media outlets that might have likely had biases in
this matter and their presenting of it). These are views that do not seem to be
shared by many of the American protestors that have been covered on MSNBC and
CNN and such and as a result there is a danger of them being associated with views
they do not hold (as I mentioned earlier).
