Samizdata

I find myself wondering if Britain is a Communist country.

“If the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were a Communist country you would not be allowed to ask that question.”

I think I might be. If Britain was under Marxist rule (which is what is normally meant by “a Communist country”) I think the rulers might allow me to ask how long we were going to be under socialism before we reached the end state of advanced communist equality – they might even give me a date when the new society would be achieved. The Soviet rulers did this from time to time – normally many decades in the future.

“The means of production, distribution and exchange are not under public control – so we have not even reached the socialist stage yet”.

That would be a better reply. However, almost half of the economy is taken by government spending alone (if one takes account of Mr Brown’s smoke and mirrors), and the rest of the economy is so controlled by endless regulations that it is at least close to be under “public” (if by this we mean state) control.

But it is really the near universal propaganda that got me wondering if was living under Communist rule.

This site is not called ‘samizdata’ without reason. In Britain there are many sources of information – books, magazines, newspapers, television and radio broadcasters. But on many matter they all say the same thing.

Take the example of the bailout/takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the United States.

In America Fox News, so denounced as statists by so many libertarians, had many critical voices on Monday September 8th. On Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” show both M. Malkin and Bob Barr (who are very different from each other on so many political issues) both laid in to the corrupt statism. And Mr Cavuto also did so. The next day (Tuesday 9th September) Ron Paul was on the show – continuing the attack. Later on the 8th of September the Brit Hume show (although Mr Hume himself was away) Ed Crane of the Cato Institute was on denouncing the bailout/takeover. There were, of course, other voices and perhaps to let Fannie and Freddie go bankrupt would have been even worse than what the government did – but this is not my point.

My point is that there was no dissent in Britain – from any media source. The BBC did not even report in its main news shows that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by the government and run by political cronies. The leftist Independent newspaper gloatingly declared that President Bush had “torn up years of lassez faire polices”. The claim that there has ever even been a “lassez faire” policy in the United States under President wild spending Bush is such a blatant bit of agitprop that it is hard to know how to respond to it.

And the so-called ‘Conservative’ newspapers? No dissent anywhere – at least none I could find. In fact the Daily Mail was demanding something similar for Britain.

It must be remembered that in Britain ‘Conservative’ means ‘Conservative party’, it does not mean conservative in any philosophical sense.

And it is not true that in Communist countries there was only one legal party – often there were several political parties (organized into a ‘front’), as long as they all supported the regime.

But it is not just this one example.

Take another incident on Monday September 8th – the Fox News refutation of “the Americans killed lots of innocent kids” lie that was going round the world.

Fox News had reporters actually on the raid in question, who had filmed the raid and openly denounced the “killed these kids” claims as lies.

This would simply not happen in Britain. Even if a British television crew had been on a raid with special forces – it would never call the crying and screaming “relatives of the murdered children” (who can cry and scream on que whenever they are told to – and can produce pictures of dead bodies) liars.

“We are libertarians, we are anti-war” – I am saying be “pro-war” (perhaps the Afghan war is all wrong), I am saying tell the truth. Something that does not happen here – on any television or radio station. If you were with someone and know they did not kill kids then it is your duty to say so. And, if dead kids are produced, to ask who really killed them. That would not be done by any British network.

But it goes a lot further than this. For example, today I went round the bookshops in my home town of Kettering Northamptonshire – a typical British town if there ever was one. In every shop there were Senator Obama’s books, and so there should be – he may be elected to a very powerful position, so what he has to say is of interest.

But in no shop was there any book that was critical of Senator Obama.

No “Obama Nation“, or “The Case Against Barack Obama“, or “Audacity of Deceit” or “Obama Unmasked“.

Perhaps these books are useless (although the first two are best sellers in the United States), but why were they not on the shelves?

“Because they would not sell” – how does anyone know, if they are not put on the shelves?

And why are the same leftist propaganda books on the shelves for ever – even though people do not buy them?

For example, in the local “W.H. Smith” there is copy of “What’s wrong with America?” (what is wrong with America seems to be that it is not yet sufficiently Marxist) – and it has been the same copy for at least two years (I know that because there is a bend in the cover).

Does this sound like commercial behaviour by a profit maximising private company? American libertarians often complain that the United States is capitalist in name, but semi-socialist in reality.

Actually that is rather more true of Britain.