Hans Sluga Blog

Neoliberal doctrine proclaimed the liberation of the market from political control but it failed to foresee that the centralization of market power which came with the liberalization of the market would increasingly embroil the market with the state.

The modern state with its claim to sovereignty is giving way to a strange, new conglomerate of state and corporate power, call it the corporate. Billionaires like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their associates are the protagonists of that turn of events. Neoliberalism, we now realize, was the last gasp of the modern state.

Where the rich used to assert political influence through sympathetic politicians, they now want to do away with the middle-man and rule by themselves for they believe that they know better than anyone else what is needed, and their experience as corporate leaders has convinced them that they also know how to execute their plans.

It remains to be seen how well Trump and associates will succeed. But the corporate is not likely to go away soon. Its tentacles are already spanning the globe. It is a small hope that every form of political organization fails in the long run. Our prospect for now is that of the emerging corporate. Or, to put it negatively, the disappearance of the modern state with all its organizational variations, including that of popular democracy.

Having recently sold part of my library, the empty shelves invite me now to contemplate the void in a new way.  Some books I miss already. How can they have disappeared? Others I can’t even remember- they may not have proved  worth reading or worth reading just once only to be forgotten. What I call my view of the world has always been a tissue studded with holes, but those holes now appear larger and the void one can glimpse through them more evident.

Elon Musk illustrates the fact that you can be both smart and stupid at once.

We find ourselves living now in the world of Donald Trump. What kind of place will it turn out to be? To begin with, keep two thoughts in mind: The United States is in a profound state of crisis and Donald Trump is one of the symptoms of that crisis, not its cure.

A catalogue from the University of Chicago Press just fluttered into my house. I am almost sure that I will never read any of the advertised books. Almost all of the authors are unknown to me.  Even the topics they have written on sound unfamiliar.  Some of those books would, no doubt, tell me things that are true and worth noting. Should I care that I will never see the words printed between their covers? No.  I am content to face the ocean of my ignorance, its waves splashing over the sand at my feet.

It is remarkable that none of the great dictators of the twentieth century (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao) ever succeeded in realizing their visions. It is not that the world resists planning altogether, but the outcome will always be something unanticipated.

The great dictators of the 20^th century were, no doubt, immensely powerful, but their power consisted only in their ability to bring about gigantic unintended effects.

“Gleichschaltung” was the term the Nazis used to describe the process through which they sought to impose their vision of politics and society on the German people and make them conform to their ideology. It is an insidious word which suggests that the state is a machine of which human beings are functional parts that can be turned on and off in unison. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis may have provided the inspiration for it.

The process it describes is of long-standing. It was at work in the Christianization of Europe, in the Protestant Reformation, in the twentieth century in Soviet Russia and in Nazi Germany, and then in Communist China. It has definitely now reached Hong Kong. (See preceding blog)

In the case of Nazi Germany, the attempt at Gleichschaltung was ultimately not successful. The regime ran out of time to carry it through. The Christianization of the world has shown us, on the other hand, how a heathen society can be turned into one of rabid believers. Sometimes the process of Gleichschaltung is exceedingly violent, as it certainly was in Nazi Germany, or it is repressive in the way it has been in Xinjiang, or it uses legal and bureaucratic maneuvers to bring about the desired effect, as seems to be the case in Hong Kong. Resistance to Gleichschaltung is also sometimes violent, at other times devious, but it can also easily melt away.

The rulers in Beijing must think that they have the means and the time to make Gleichschaltung a success across their empire. But they still have obstacles to overcome such as the older traditions of China, a diverse set of belief systems, local histories as well as lethargy, corruption, and hypocrisy.

At the time of its handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong was promised a high degree of autonomy under the heading of “One Country, Two Systems”. The people of Hong Kong might have thought that they could expect to live in a socially and politically free society. But Beijing was, in fact interested only in keeping the former colony’s capitalist market economy in place. The two systems the Communist authorities had in mind were just two ways of doing business. Hong Kong was supposed to be Beijing’s trading post with the West; the Communist leaders had no interest in a free society.

As the people of Hong Kong continued to make a claim to such a society, the Beijing authorities eventually found it necessary to clamp down on their expectations. Under the command of the authoritarian Xi Jinping, the decision was taken to integrate Hong Kong into mainland China. The policies that had been applied to the obstreperous folks in Xinjiang were to be extended in an appropriately modified form to Hong Kong.

The result was an abrupt change in Hong Kong’s political system, followed by drawn-out political trials intended to squash the Hong Kongers’ appetite for democracy. No sign of political independence or social resistance has proved small enough to be ignored by the local handymen of the Communist system. National Security has become the policy under which the entire population is being rectified. The actions of the police are petty and vindictive.

Hong Kong is now subjected to an ever-widening course of repression: books, media, public organizations, independent voices are being suppressed. The process is slow but thorough and unlikely to stop very soon.

In the latest turn, Xi Jinping Thought is now to be taught to public school children, as The Hong Kong Free Press reports (August 1, 2024). The previous curriculum which meant to help students “to understand, appreciate, respect and reflect on the values and attitudes that underpin the local society, including rights and responsibilities, freedom, rule of law, social justice, democracy” has been scrapped. Instead, there is now an emphasis on patriotic education intended to get students “to understand the development of our country and the importance of the close relationship between the Mainland and Hong Kong to the development of our society, thereby cultivating students’ sense of nationhood, affection for our country and sense of national identity.” In order to achieve that end, students will devote themselves to “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

Hong Kong’s Gleichschaltung will certainly not end here.  Policies are in place to whittle away any difference between Hong Kong and the mainland. Hong Kong is to be made part of the “Greater Bay Area,” i.e., the surrounding territories of the mainland. The border between Hong Kong and the rest of China is already becoming increasingly porous. While the former colony continues to operate with the British common law system, the existence of two different legal systems will eventually be seen as too cumbersome for the Chinese state and as an affront to Chinese sovereignty. As China becomes fully established on the world market, there will also be less need for the special economic status that Hong Kong still retains. It is only a question of time till the Beijing authorities will abandon the entire pretense of “two systems.”

Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?

Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following:

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’ If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.