More like this
Get used to Cumbria-style killings in neoliberal UK
Neil Clark: The egotistic culture of free market capitalism is to blame
It's tempting to see Derrick Bird’s killing spree in Cumbria as 'just one of those things' - a freak, isolated event that has no real sociological cause. It's certainly a line taken by right-wing media commentators. "Terrible deeds like this happen every so often. Nothing could have been done to prevent it, little can be done to explain it," opines political blogger Iain Dale.
In fact, much can be done to explain it.
US-style killing sprees are a relatively recent phenomenon in Britain, occurring for the first time in Hungerford, Berkshire in 1987. We didn't have such occurrences in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, or 70s - and many countries in the world still don't experience such events. So where have we gone wrong?
The answer is that we've Americanised our economy, and consequently are paying a very high social cost.
In his 2005 book Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion, Mark Ames describes how workplace and school/college shootings became everyday phenomena after Ronald Reagan's 'free market' economic 'reforms' in the early 1980s. Ames notes that while there was only one recorded incident in the States before the advent of 'Reaganomics,' there were 43 recorded incidents in one summer alone in 2003.
Tragically, Britain followed America’s lead.
In their book Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture, Steve Hall, Simon Winlow, and Craig Ancram talk of "the crime explosion that characterised Britain and the USA from the late 1960s to the late 1990s as a reality inextricably linked to the increasing dominance of neoliberal political economy". They quote Robert Reiner, Professor of Criminology at the London School of Economics, who describes how "the egotistic culture of a 'market society' has ushered in a new barbarism".
In continental Europe - which never fully embraced neoliberalism - things have been different. In Steve Hall and Craig McLean's recent paper, A Tale of Two Capitalisms, they compare violent crime rates under US-style neoliberalism, the most aggressive form of capitalism, and European social democracy, the gentlest form.
They warn that by moving to a more neoliberal economic system, continental Europe will become more violent, as Britain did after it embraced 'free market' reforms. There are signs that this is already happening.
In 2009 in Germany Tim Kretschmer, a 17-year-old former student, killed 15 people before shooting himself. Last November, Hungary suffered its first US-style university shooting, when a student opened fire on his classmates in Pecs. Only yesterday we saw two people shot dead in a courtroom in Brussels by a lone gunman.
The dangers to our society of adopting a more aggressive form of capitalism were spotted long ago by both Marxists and traditional One Nation Tories. Sir Ian Gilmour, a staunch critic of Thatcherism, warned against economic liberalism's "starkness" and its "failure to create a sense of community".
It's not hard to see how that happens. By encouraging us to be selfish and ultra-competitive, neo-liberalism destroys social cohesion. Other people are seen as threats and rivals, and not as potential comrades. In a neoliberal society it's much harder to make deep and lasting friendships and for families to stay together. Trust - that most essential element for building meaningful relationships - is eroded.
It's no coincidence that in the two most aggressively capitalist western economies - the US and Britain - people are more addicted to Facebook and other social networking sites which promote a highly superficial and acquisitive notion of 'friendship'. Under neoliberalism, atomisation increases and loneliness abounds.
Of course, all societies can produce alienated, unhappy, obsessive loners like Derrick Bird, the Dunblane killer Thomas Hamilton, or the Hungerford gunman Michael Ryan. But aggressively capitalist societies like the US and Britain produce an awful lot more of them.
Under neoliberalism, money has come to dominate every aspect of our lives. It's no great surprise therefore to read that the events in Cumbria may have been sparked by a row over a will.
Prime Minister David Cameron may talk for as he long as he likes about building a 'Big Society', but so long as he clings to 1980s-style neoliberal economic solutions, we haven't a hope of creating a society where killing sprees simply do not occur. On the contrary, unless we adopt a more humane economic system, one which encourages co-operation and not competition, such bloodbaths are only likely to become more common. ·
Comments are now closed on this article
Comments
Interesting article, almost overshadowed by the extremely interested and fact-packed comments above. NB 'Twaddle' + assertion does not equal interesting or fact-packed.
In my long experience of debating issues such as this one I have found that people who respond almost unthinkingly with abusive terms such as 'twaddle', 'rubbish' and so on tend to know nothing whatsoever about the subject.
Mr Clark's thesis can be backed up by myriad facts, most notably the comparative homicide rates in the unstable neoliberal and the more stable social democratic states. Longitudinal and spatial studies prove this beyond reasonable doubt. The US homicide rate is currently three times the Western European average, and in the midst of the neoliberal economic reforms it was almost six times the Western European average. WE manages lower homicide rates despite imprisonong far fewer individuals; there are about 2,300,000 in US prisons. We can't blame 'moral permissiveness' because of course WE was at the forefront of the sexual and lifestyle revolutions in the 60s; however, despite being permissive in these dimensions most WE nations hung on to the strict moral codes that govern their social and economic relations, and their interpersonal behaviour where it matters, i.e. in the transactions on which their livelihoods depend.
Neither can we blame gun ownershp: Canada, Belgium, Northern Italy and Austria all have higher per capita gun ownership rates than the USA, yet their homicide rates are comparatively low.
In developing nations and post-communist nations constantly disrupted by neoliberal restructuring programmes and political interference homicide rates are also much higher than in traditional societies. The South African acceptance of neoliberal restructuring has been a socio-cultural disaster, and it has experienced a homicide rate of over 50 per 100,000, 5 times higher than even the USA at its peak in 1991. Russia and Eastern Europe became social disaster zones with high homicide rates during the era of neoliberal 'shock therapy'; 'more shock than therapy', as one commentator remarked. There is no space for all the data here, but it is clearly delineated in the literature Mr Clark has recommended. There are myriad facts, and when one gets to know them in detail and in contect they all point in the same direction.
There was one workplace shooting in the USA before 1980, yet there have been dozens since. That's a fact. The detractors here should read Ames's book and educate themselves. They are knee-jerking because they refuse to believe that there are serious problems at such a fundamental level in their own society. It's called enthnocentrism, an infantilising condition that is a killer of intellect and progress. The people of this country are being placed under increasing stress where it really matters; in their livelihoods, their security and their dignity. Unless we stabilise things this will have increasingly deleterious effects, no matter how much we witter about 'personal responsibility' as if it's some sort of decontextualised ontological certainty. Those who cannot see that, I'm afraid to say, are allowing themselves to be trapped in the realm of ignorance and stupidity.
"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men,
we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.
We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.
We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians,
therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another.
We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society."
John (Fire) Lame Deer
Sioux Lakota - 1903-1976
The same people who would deny any legitimacy to this article are probably the same people who would deny the impacts of man made climate change. We live in desperate times if there are those who can't see the wood from the trees. As the joker said in the film the "Dark Knight"....."When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other." Derrick Bird became the Joker and therefore an agent for chaos. "The thing about chaos is that it's fair." In this guy's mind this was the fair thing to do. I hate to say it but as things deteriotate further economically we will see more Joker style characters roaming the streets. This article grasps the underlying unease that people are starting to feel with society as a hole and the direction we are heading.
If a tax dispute caused this perhaps we should ban taxes?
Certainly it points more to a problem with government and our current very interventionist system than it does "capitalism".
Capitalism benefits ordinary working class people. Blaming capitalism for this is absurd, irrelevant, conflated and incoherent. (no, not like my sentences)
It states that someone stated in a book that there was only one mass shootings However there were several mass school shootings before that. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting So.. no facts what so ever but definitely some nasty deception.
Neil Clark's reasoning is good and if there is an error it is in his omissions. In terms of defining the problem Neil has gone only so far. His suggested cause is a subset of what might be summarised as 'Engineered Evolution' or 'Social Engineering', which is some of the machinery used to bring about the 'New World Order' or the Biblical term 'Image of the Beast'.
The issue at hand is complex but a simple explanation should work; there is always a cause of an effect. Derrick Bird's mental health is not known to me but it is not necessary that he be psychotic. The causes being suggested such as Will and taxation problems are not causes but are triggers, causes and effects over a long period, left Derrick Bird enabled waiting for the right situation and the right trigger. There will be a large number of people in the same boat, of the few of them who meet their Waterloo only a few will follow Derrick Bird's course, most will engage in other forms of anti-social behaviour, others will have mental breakdowns.
The causes and effects associated with Engineered Evolution are probably infinite sets and we cannot consider them all so a good place to start is with post traumatic stress disorder. A simple description of PTSD is when we compare the subject's personality to a computer program; the PTSD is present as a virus or a number of viruses. The personality is being continually programmed and viruses can be inserted at any time by an experience that conflicts with the persons embedded value system, such as molestation, rape, experiencing or witnessing violence for starters. The effect of engineered evolution, that is, rapid changes in values and expectations leaves the victim with a fragmented and disoriented personality.
More directly related to the case at hand, there is a process called enabling, or normalising in some cases, where the subject's values are turned upside down, examples are; using human silhouettes and effigies as shooting targets, DVDs and TV making sexual immorality and killing appear normal. Today, when people have a conscience that conscience takes a much diluted form to the conscience of yesterday.
Trust has vanished. Families are separated. The credit system has come from America. It allows those who are ill qualified to manage money to get into the most frightful mess. I have just retired and in my experience the workplace has become increasingly oppressive and stressful.
When the fabric of society is stretched in this way it is no surprise that some individuals will react with violence - like cornered animals
This is extraordinary rubbish. (I'm half expecting Alistair Campbell to start using the #neverhappenedunderlabour Twitter hashtag). And yes, all societies can produce "alienated, unhappy, obsessive loners" - the difference is that in many societies, they actually run the country (Hello, Kim Jong Il).
Vaguely blaming everything from money to Facebook to liberalism for a mass murder smacks of desperation.
An intelligent and interesting perspective. The latest news seems to be that Bird was being pursued for non payment of taxes. The effects of Capitalism on ordinary working class people and every day life can never be underestimated. The article brought to mind Thatchers statement in 1987 that 'there is no such thing as society'.
Paul Robinson: You admit you don't know all the facts - so let the poor journo indulge in a bit of speculation on the issue of the day will you? Your "unknown reason" could well be something related to the UK's brand of neoliberalism. It certainly seems to be money-oriented.
Yes we really are going to have to get used to this, on average 12 yearly, occurance. What twaddle. It is amazing that it doesnt happen very often,but the facts are that it doesn't. Conversly it could be seen as basically a series of ordinary revenge murders. Now these DO happen every day. This journalist has nothing to write about so he writes inflamatory untruths insead.
In a neoliberal economy, trust and community are replaced by transactions. Contracts substitute for a sense of mutual obligation and responsibility to society at large. The aim of society, we are told, is to 'share the proceeds of growth', but such proceeds are not, of course, to be shared equitably. And the means for achieving 'growth' are not up for debate.
Frustration, resentment and alienation grow. People feel trapped and powerless. As the less privileged portion of society--all but the rich--is increasingly stressed, some individuals succumb to violence.
But such violence is just the tip of an iceberg of unhappiness.
The continental Europeans have a better way. Unfortunately, it's under threat.
"Utter twaddle to fill a page"
My thoughts exactly. Strange how lefty journos and politicos will grasp at any straw with which to demonise the USA. So Derrick Bird was reacting to "economic liberalism's 'starkness' and its 'failure to create a sense of community'", was he? That's funny, I thought he got pissed off for some us yet unknown reason, went completely off his head, grabbed a couple of guns, and shot several dozen people, 12 of them fatally, and then himself. I know the news in this country is rather skewed, mainly by journos such as yourself, but... !?
Interesting, but ultimately unconvincing. I suspect a more detailed examination of such mass shooting incidents around the world would reveal a more complex picture. Personally, I have never met a gun owner who was left or left of centre in political terms.
It's not quite true that this contains no facts. It states that these massacres never occurred before the 1980. I think that may be right. Why they didn't is the big question and the difficulty in finding the answer is that the perpetrators always kill themselves. Until one is captured alive so we can find out what's going on in his tortured mind it will always be speculation.
This has nothing to do with our economic system at all. However the erosion of personal responsibility and morality buy state socialism could be the cause. The sense that all are entitled - but none are responsible is a fault of the left not the right.
This article contains a lot of assertions and statements but no facts or evidence. It's the kind of thing politicians & other such religious people come out with. Heavy on belief, light on substance. Utter twaddle to fill a page.