George Monbiot
@georgemonbiot.bsky.social1. Consent in our pseudo-democracies is strained at the best of times, but it hangs on the belief that there is some kind of justice: through inquiries, tribunals, sometimes even the law, powerful people who commit crimes against us will one day be held to account. But what if this no longer works?🧵
2. What if we have entered a new age of impunity, in which elite interests can get away with murder, through a combination of capturing or bypassing the judicial system, distraction and brute force? This may now be the case in the US and Israel, and could be starting to happen here.
3. Our centralised, hierarchical political systems were never designed for democracy. When the ruling powers had no choice but to grant people the vote, they did so grudgingly, and held onto as many elite forms of governance as they could get away with, even in most post-revolutionary nations.
4. In the UK, they managed to preserve almost everything: the House of Lords, the Privy Council, first-past-the-post, Henry VIII powers, presumed consent between elections and all the other tricks and ruses that make a mockery of the concept of “rule by the people”.
5. They scarcely seek to disguise it. Look at the symbol of Parliament: a crown (unaccountable power) over a portcullis (exclusion) with chains on either side (oppression/slavery). When a system tells you what it is, believe it.
6. To the extent that we consent to this farce, we do so because of accountability. Those in power are supposed to answer to the people, one day, somehow. But this concept, always threadbare, might now be wearing away altogether, as elites learn better how to game the system.
7. Trump, like many other demagogues, has shown that if you have no shame you cannot be shamed, and you therefore cannot be held to account. Boris Johnson went a long way down this road in the UK. His frightful punishment? Multi-million pound book deals, lecture tours and newspaper columns.
8. Tony Blair pioneered the model: he and his crew suffer no consequences for the hundreds of thousands who died in their illegal war of aggression in Iraq. Now rich beyond belief. Gordon Brown, who financed the war and backed it all the way, has reinvented himself as the nation’s moral guardian.
9. Netanyahu, the ICC decision notwithstanding, has demonstrated that if you can sufficiently demonise and dehumanise a population, you can do whatever the hell you want to it, and – perhaps – escape accountability.
11. I don’t think any of us are ready for that.
12. Here's the thread on one page
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