Extract from the books 'From Democracy to Dictatorship' & 'Corpalism'.

The Independents - Only a Psychopath


Maurice Clarke took his place at the rostrum and looked around the hall; he’d been introduced as an anthropologist, a professor no less. He’d got the look right; tweeds and horn-rimmed glasses but he looked about 30 so he’d obviously fast-tracked through the education system. He was bright probably, connected possibly. He’d declared his interest in a seat in Winchester so affluent perhaps.

“In this England of ours we once had serfdom where a lord owned his workers, his field hands and could order them to bear arms against his enemies. Once upon a time we profited from slavery, we profited from child labour, we destroyed people in work houses and when they were unable to work we threw them into the poor house. We progressed from serfdom to tied cottages and paltry wages for the workers, yet it was still a time when only the ‘stake holders’ in the country could vote, that being the wealthy land owning few. Great wealth and boundless opportunity was enjoyed by a few and debilitating poverty, rife with typhus, small pox and dysentery, endured by the many. Over time, over the centuries our ancestors fought for the rights of the workers, of the vast majority of British people, they fought for the rights of the 99% against the greed and selfishness and social crimes of the 1% who held all the power and wrote all the laws to defend their greed.”

Maurice paused for a moment, removing his horn-rims and twirling them by one arm, “We achieved certain things – abolition of slavery, the Mine’s Act, the Factory Act, universal suffrage, the NHS; a social network to protect those less able; affordable council housing, free education for the masses. These things were hard fought and some of them only recently achieved.” He laughed self-deprecatingly, “If it happened in the last 100 years I think it’s recent, sorry, perils of the job.”

He put his glasses back on and shuffled the papers on the table in front of him. “Our ancestors argued with these tyrants, they fought these sick psychopaths, for clearly these people were psychopaths. Who other than a psychopath would enslave and beat another human being? Who but a psychopath would force children up chimneys, force them down the mines, force them to undertake dangerous and life threatening jobs, jobs which could maim or kill them outright or leave them scarred, diseased for life? Who but a psychopath would force women and children into the poor houses of old, who other than a psychopath would walk past a destitute and impoverished child begging on the street? Only a psychopath would do these things.”

He opened his arms and lifted his shoulders “but surely, we need not worry ourselves with the past, with history for it is just that, it is history, and now we live in a far better time, don’t we?”

He paused again and looked around the hall, “Or do we? Do we live in a far better time? In a time of social equality? A time of shared social wealth? Of shared social responsibility? Of social consciousness? I say NO! We don’t. We live in a time of unrestrained greed, of unrestrained selfishness, of unrestrained barbarity; we live in a time of unrestrained theft. The psychopaths of old have returned and they are better equipped than before.”

He took off his glasses again, this time folding them and putting them in the top pocket of his jacket, patting them as he did so.

“They have the miracle of propaganda on their side, and for propaganda in this day and age we should read ‘spin’. We have been seduced by this word ‘spin’ as if it is somehow harmless, this habit of showing things in their ‘best’ light, we even allow them to call themselves ‘spin doctors’, thus allying this sly practice to a noble calling, when it is a form of deception no less pervasive than the propaganda used by the greatest exponent in the 20th Century, Joseph Goebbels. He lived by it, he breathed it and he controlled the German people with it. He managed to convince them that whatever Hitler and the Nazis party thought up and said, it was for the benefit of the Germans as a whole, for the benefit of Germany and ultimately for the benefit of mankind. By the time Goebbels had finished they thought Hitler was the new messiah. That’s what ‘spin’ does, it allows you to take an evil idea, an evil lie, and an evil act and re-model it into something pure and clean merely by changing the language you use to describe it.”

He took a deep breath, pausing to let his words sink in, “And what is the modern lie? What is the modern evil? What is the modern propaganda? I intend to concentrate on one act, just the one crime which is so huge, so beastly that it eclipses all others… the crime of exploitation, of the modern slave, of abuse of women, of children and of men, the crime being carried out by our leaders and the wealthy of this country merely for the purposes of personal, I emphasise, PERSONAL profit and gain. They are not doing these things for the nation, they are not doing them for the benefit of the masses, and they are not fighting some evil to save mankind, NO! They are lining their own pockets with gold at the expense of the rest of society, at the expense of the rest of humanity. And how are they doing this? What is the lie and how are they spinning it?”

He paused for a moment, “The spin is that this country is no longer competitive, no longer able to make products cost effectively, that we can’t compete with the low costs of China and India, that we’re greedy, we pay ourselves too much, want too much, that is the spin, that is also the lie, for tell me, how can this really be so? How can it be so? ...It’s not possible.”

The audience was quiet, paying rapt attention.
Maurice patted his pockets, seeking his glasses eventually finding and repositioning them. “Why? Because we produce things more cost effectively today than we ever could, it is cheaper comparatively for us to make things in the west than it used to be – mass production, the microchip, streamlined processes, skilled workers and custom built factories.”

Maurice paused for a moment, “Yet still they say we can’t compete with China and India. This, they say, is why everything is made in these countries, and we’re partly to blame because as consumers we all go shopping and buy the cheapest things… which are made in China and India.”

There was some awkward shuffling in the hall; many people aware of the labels in their own clothes and the shops from which they had been purchased. “But what they don’t tell you is how these products are being made so cheaply; they don’t tell you how the 3rd world is managing to undercut competitors so completely and how they have transitioned so meteorically to being a major exporter of goods the West wants to buy. They don’t tell you that the companies producing these products in China and India are western companies that used to have factories here in the west; that the wealthy individual who invests in emerging markets is investing all of his money in China and India instead of here in the UK; that the wealth from these investments goes directly into the pockets of the rich investors here in the west; that part of the taxable wealth created by manufacturing these products in the 3rd world goes directly into the hands of the tyrants running these countries.”

He stopped abruptly, breathing as if completing a race.

Then began again, “And most importantly, what they don’t tell you is that to ensure this wealth, to ensure prices are cut to the bone, the 3rd world worker is treated as little more than a slave, a serf. The rich are boycotting their own country to avoid paying the decent living wage, supporting the benefits our ancestors fought for, to avoid paying tax that in turn provides better living conditions, a fair share of the wealth. The rich and their lackey politicians have bypassed us in the west, bypassed their social responsibilities and found a new class of slave, a new class of serf, they now have their new child workers, and they now have their new set of peasants who work for a dollar a day. They have chosen to withdraw as much money as their political servants could get them and reinvest this money where human life is considered worthless, where the life of a child, the life of a woman and the life of a man are considered no more than a cheap resource to be spent, squandered, maimed and struck down by disease wherever these fiends decide to set up their hellish factories where workers’ rights are negligible, where workers safety is not taken into consideration, where workers lives are constantly put at risk and often snuffed out.”

He stared around the hall, “Where the poor, the masses, where humanity itself is deemed a tool to help the rich get richer and where the old and weak are left to rot in their hovels without help or hope; where the weak are considered excess to requirement because they cannot work. We had a fine example of such practices at the start of the 20th Century under the Nazis, with their concentration camps where they worked people to death. What is the difference between a Nazi and an investor in the 3rd world, nothing but time and distance …for their inhumane treatment of people is just the same.”

“The rich have their new slaves; they don’t have to consider safe working conditions, fair pay, don’t have to treat these 3rd world workers like human beings, they just invest and wait for the dividends to come rolling in. Western companies can close down their factories, sack their workforce and reopen in the 3rd world where they can gain more profit from the exploitation of the weak but this is not right.”

His voice reached the back of the room with ease. “This is a crime against humanity. The spin doctors are always at work and they portray it as pragmatic, business sense, economically indisputable. They paint a picture that no company has a choice other than to invest in the 3rd world and employ slaves. They portray the investment in emerging markets as the natural resting place of any savvy investor; they make it all sound so natural, so logical, so respectable. Surely, they imply, anyone would do it. Anyone who had money would invest in a company that sends women and children to work in the cotton gins with no masks; in conditions that destroys their lungs, cripples their backs, breaks their spirit and reduces them to a decrepit state before their time. According to the ‘spin doctors’ anyone given half the chance would treat other human beings as economic fodder, as economic waste, as economic effluent to be used as desired until every ounce of energy, every ounce of sweat, every possible effort has been extracted from them for the least possible financial outlay and the most possible profit.”

He was fairly gasping for breath, “Well let me tell you, this is not so; human beings are social creatures. I say again, this is not true; human beings live and work together in tribal groups. I know that this is a lie; tribal groups look after their elderly and their young. It is pure spin to cover the fact that the psychopaths are in charge, that we are being lead by psychopaths!” he yelled this last word, to the accompaniment of much cheering and applause. “Only a psychopath would ever think of doing these things, only a psychopath would dream of abusing other people in such a way, only a psychopath would treat people as less than human just for money. The shocking truth is, even though they now have most if not all of the money, they want still more, they want all of the money that you have left in your pockets, they want it all because they have no empathy with other people, with other creatures, they have no feeling for the world which they exploit, they have no love or sense of being or belonging for their souls are dead, dead to all things but greed and a desire to rule over others.”

“That’s their plan for the 3rd world, that’s their plan for their new servants, their new serfs, their new slaves. But what’s their plan for their old serfs, for their old slaves, what’s their plan for the now ‘excess to requirement’ and plainly redundant workers of the west? What’s their plan for the unwanted British worker?”

He gripped the desk as he stared around the hall, “It’s in play now…it started with the barriers to migration coming down; the influx of cheap labour from the EU. Managed properly this shouldn’t have been the problem it has become but they under-estimated badly the numbers that would arrive, or so we are told. They under-estimated the detrimental effect huge numbers would have on local communities if they were to arrive and settle all in one place, or so we are told. They under-estimated the massive strain this would put on local facilities such as schools and hospitals and community services, or so we are told.”

He noted nodding heads and murmurs of agreement, and hastened to add, “Sympathetically managed immigration can bring in vital new and fresh ideas, concepts and vision… but this has been anything but that. The devastating results are still being felt in certain parts of the country where the landscape has changed probably irrevocably, where the indigenous population has been over-whelmed and forced out. Wages have fallen for jobs usually undertaken by the poorest in our society because the migrant workers expectations are significantly lower even than the minimum wage. They don’t need us; they have their money; their dividends from their 3rd world investments. They’ve started their spin… they’ve already said we can’t compete, already created their world recession that forces them into acts of austerity; they have no choice. There’s no money, what else can they do?”

There was movement in the hall as some people who’d been sitting in the back walked forward to a few empty seats in the front rows.

“They’ve already set a cap on benefits so that the millions they intend to make unemployed will receive less, they’ve already destroyed the savings and earning capacity of the middle classes, they’ve already set in motion their plans for economic cleansing by reducing housing benefit, by cutting back on social housing, by raising rents and house prices."

Maurice paused for a drink.

"So the process of driving the redundant, unemployed workers from the South into the North has begun. Once in the North it is not hard to imagine what will happen next … they will be ghettoized, they will live in poverty, with no hope and in the absence of hope they will drink cheap, freely available alcohol, take mind-obliterating drugs, eat nutritionally empty fast food which will reduce their life expectancy and further stultify their brains, thus reducing their enthusiasm for protest and leave them sapped of energy, overweight, directionless. They will adorn sofas watching mindless TV drivel; insignificant peasants living out their meaningless and poverty stricken lives … that’s what they intend for the workers of the west, that’s what they intend for the workers of the UK …BUT WE WILL NOT LET IT HAPPEN!”

The audience stood as one and cheered and applauded.

“We are the Independents and we will stop them. We cannot trust any of the politicians from any of the political parties for they have all sold themselves. They have sold their souls to the corporate and economic lie that they feed us, the lie of the free market which isn’t free. Let’s be honest, they know how to protect themselves, how to protect their investments, how to protect their money, that’s why they bailed out the banks. It wasn’t your money they were protecting, it wasn’t my money they were protecting; it was their money and their political pay masters’ money. That’s who benefitted from the bank bailout, that’s who gained from the bank rescue packages.”

Maurice raised his hands from the rostrum, “But they have not fooled us, they have not fooled the free thinking individual, they have not achieved their goals as yet, they have not won yet, they have not beaten us yet and we are not for beating. We are not going to let them win, we are not going to let them beat us, we are going to rally, to rise up, to march on the streets, to spread the word. We are going to let the British worker know that it is not too late, that we are competitive and that we can make a better world not only for us but for our coworkers everywhere around the world. We are going to stop the political tyrants, these economic psychopaths in their tracks and we are going to wrest power from their grasp and together, we are going to change the WORLD!”


Thanks for reading


Arun