left vs right – Observations and Misunderstandings

Starline Social Club in Oakland has gone up for sale. I have never been to this venue, and likely won’t ever set foot in Oakland let alone this club. I only know it is up for sale because it’s sale was shared by a friend of mine on Facebook. Why this is worth mentioning is because it is yet another venue in the long list of such places that have already closed and others that will. Pubs are struggling but can invariably stay open. Numerous clubs, live music venues, theatres to name but a few examples are likely to go bust if this continues much longer. People’s safety must come first of course and a solution without some kind of financial assistance is far from clear. What the arts do need though is some kind of support.

Rishi Sunak the British Chancellor recently suggested that artists and musicians who couldn’t find work should retrain. There wasn’t any suggestion that they should be supported through this crisis, they should simply become something else. Here he is below doing his best impression of Will from The Inbetweeners.

He may as well have just uttered the ‘get a real job’ statement because clearly he was thinking it. Who needs artists when they can design images for adverts or musicians when they can be creating songs for adverts or playwrights when they could be writing scripts for adverts. How is capitalism going to function successfully if people refuse to exploit others.

More concerning is how this is playing out in the culture wars. I read recently that while the right won the economic war, the left won the culture wars but clearly both are still being doggedly fought. It is telling though that if you were going on probable likelihoods, the arts would predominantly be a theatre for left wing ideals. Are we seeing right wing governments in both Britain and the US intentionally allowing the music and arts scenes to go bust. Is this lack of support and funding simply an ideological attack? It doesn’t need too much of an imagination to make that leap. How better to attack your opponents by watching them struggle, hindering their chances of attacking you in the future.

There is one thing they seem to miss though. You can lose clubs, theatres and art venues but people will always be able to find a way to express themselves. If you try to take away their means of doing so they will simply come up with other ways. They are creative, they will be creative. And most importantly by attacking this scene they are simply entrenching anti-Conservative or anti-right wing capitalist ideals for at least another generation. People don’t forget. If pain brings out the creative, the grassroot streets are going to become a scene of colour before too long.

The Coronavirus Act will likely be renewed this week. It will mark six months since it was initially pushed through. It was supposed to last for two years but this was reduced to six months, I can’t remember why exactly, some kind of outcry over the obvious I suspect. The current discussion is whether the act itself should require a debate and Parliamentary approval before it is renewed. The Government unsurprisingly says this is not necessary and is simply delaying something of total urgency while nearly everyone else seems to think that something which gives quite alarming powers to the police and which limits our abilities to think and act for ourselves should actually be talked about a little. Even with the Tory rebellions expected it will still likely pass once more.

What I’m confused by slightly is how any discussion of civil liberties is unfolding. For the last six months the people who have been fighting the idea of being told what to do, be that movement, the wearing of masks, types of interactions, closing of businesses, are the right wing. The libertarian right wing to be precise but still they have managed to get the attention of many others on that spectrum of society. The left wing though, and that includes left wing libertarians, are no where to be seen. Any discussion of lockdowns and suspicions around this virus have been incredibly one sided, from a political spectrum at least. While the reasons may differ surely there are enough on the left concerned with attacks on our civil liberties.

It could simply be the method of approach. Undeniably there have been plenty of articles on more left wing websites about the dangers of present government policy. It surely can’t just be anyone on the left and in the centre believes this is a very real virus and we all need to adopt these measures to combat it, and that on the right people don’t believe it’s true and are willing to go to great lengths to argue it. I admit I am grouping an awful lot of people in what seems like three rather large and cumbersome boxes, but it makes understanding or explaining it from a political perspective far more straightforward.

It may be a capitalist economic thing pushing on the libertarians. Why the left are so health conscious though confuses me, are they that learned and educated. Ultimately it just appears even this debate has become polarised and not just in the forced clumsy way I have attempted here. Without endangering anyone or being irresponsible, it may just be time to retake the debate. Change the narrative slightly. We can question the motives of government and not give a shit about the economy reopening. That’s an angle I could get behind. I don’t want to go out onto the street with thousands of others to protest but it can’t be a bad idea to try to control or at least influence the debate as it’ll go on regardless.

Tag: left vs right

To Re-Take The Debate