>Well, I know that not everybody on L-I has a liking for Heartfield, and
yours
>truly has personally clashed with him on first acquaintance. But this
posting
>is at least as enlightening as Patrick's.
>
>Never runs smooth the path of true love, or something like that...
>
>Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On the back of the November 2000 issue of the University of Kent Newsletter
is a diary item by Frank Füredi--Heartfield's guru--about worries on the
eve of his appearance on British radio. It reads in part:
'Tuesday: I am in a quiet state of agitation. The headlines are dominated
by the outbreak of violence in the Middle East and no matter how hard I
try, I cannot remember the name of the right-wing Israeli politician, whose
visit to the Muslim shrine (whose name I can also not recall), sparked the
whole thing off.
'Wednesday: More violence in Israel. But things are looking up -- the
debate on sex education is in the news. That's more my kind of issue. Now
if only there was another nice controversy about something with a
sociological edge.
'Thursday: I am feeling depressed. The violence in the Middle East
dominates the news. The media have dropped the sex education debate.'
Despite their pleasant demeanor on various progressive Internet forums,
people like James Heartfield are Thatcherites who choose to use Marxish
verbiage as the need arises. Their big concern is "freedom"--freedom to say
whatever they like just like P.J. O' Rourke or any other libertarian. Or
the freedom for big corporations to make a profit without interference from
Green groups. To try to salvage their reputation because they oppose
intervention in the Congo makes about as much sense as supporting George W.
Bush who is also committed verbally to get out of the "humanitarian
interventions" business.
Heartfield's LM was the British counterpart of such outfits as the Reason
Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute or the Cato
Institute. The only difference between the Furedi cult and these groups is
that he had dispensed with the Cold War rhetoric. When you stop and think
about it, that kind of rhetoric had outlived its usefulness anyhow.
The LM'ers have formed a new outfit called the Institute of Ideas to
replace the magazine. One of their first activities was to sponsor a debate
on smoking with Forest, a pro-smoking group funded by the tobacco industry.
One of the co-organizers was Dr Masden Pirie of the free market Adam Smith
Institute, who also functioned as chairperson. According to the Guardian
newspaper, Pirie said "We get on very well with these people."
Some of the groups that operate under the aegis of the Institute of Ideas
are: Families for Freedom, Freedom & Law, the Association of British
Drivers and Audacity.org, a body opposed to restraints on "devolopment". If
you go to the audacity.org website, you will find them describing
themselves in the following terms: "We are a research company of industry
professionals determined to question assumptions and limitations in British
construction, with the aim of advancing development practice to make our
own lives easier." In other words, this is the kind of outfit that gets
scrutinized by Mike Wallace on Sixty Minutes every so often after a
building collapses from inferior materials or construction techniques. Is
this who Marxists want to network with? What kind of Marxist would want to
network with these people?
Another friend of the Institute for Ideas is the Reason Foundation which
has been promoting the corporate takeover of schools in the US. Both its
founder and senior editor accepted invitations to talk at ex-LM events -
and paid their own way to come. If you go to their website, you will find
proposals on privatizing foster care agencies and airports, screeds against
global warming and other goodies. Their leading writer, the syndicated
columnist Sandra Postrel, is author of the libertarian book "The Enemies of
Freedom" and frequently talks at the Hudson Institute.
A group affiliated with Institute for Ideas has set up shop in Frankfurt,
Germany and works with former cold warriors and provides "research" that
attacks environmentalists and social democratic governments. In Italy the
director of something called the Progress Consultancy, who was a writer for
LM, writes articles stating how hard it is for business to operate in a
risk-obsessed society.
Ex-LM'ers continue to burrow away on Great Britain's Channel Four and BBC,
most recently arguing on the latter's Counterblast program that organic
foods were more dangerous than conventional foods. This idea was first
raised by the Hudson institute which is funded by Monsanto, among others.
Appearing alongside our friends from LM was leading pro-GM scientist
Professor Anthony Trewavas of Edinburgh university, who has several
articles on Monsanto's website and will be at one of the Institute for
Idea's debates.
Ex-LM has forged strong links with internet companies, including cSscape, a
US corporation that has worked for Monsanto's PR company, the giant Burson
Marsteller. Other hi-tech companies supporting Institute for Ideas include
Gap21 - which calls itself a "21st century dialogue on globalisation and
power", Internet Freedom, a radical free speech group, and Designagenda, an
internet design operation set up by LM writer and academic Andrew Calcutt.
For those with a morbid curiosity, I recommend a trip to:
http://www.spiked-online.com, the new website of the Furedi cult. It
contains all the usual garbage, including a defense of the right to hunt
foxes. It also includes an article by Dr. Norman Levitt, their new friend,
who is upset over the government turning the Kennewick bones to the
Umatilla tribe. Levitt is an interesting character. He was the NYU
professor who got Alan Sokal on the warpath against pomos. While Sokal is a
social democrat, Levitt is a neoconservative whose animosity against
postmodernism comes from the same place as New Criterion and the rest of
the rightwing haters of 'political correctness'. Levitt organized his own
conference on the "science wars" at NYU that was funded by the ultraright
Olin Foundation, that made its money in weapons manufacturing. He is the
perfect playmate for the Furedi-Heartfield-Hume gang of black-clad,
hair-geled, Grundrisse-quoting Thatcherites.
Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
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