An official confession of corruption can itself mark a turning point
Evidence
It took all of Cameron’s replicant smarm to get through this morning’s astonishing press conference. Events have moved so swiftly this week that it’s easy to overlook how momentous some of his admissions were. Many are rightly sceptical about whether Cameron will act on what he said today. Sometimes, however, words are acts, and the ultimate significance of what Cameron said today is that it constituted an official acknowledgement — from the very mouth of the beast — that there is indeed a corrupt system involving the press, the police and other politicians, and that he is implicated in it. We’re all in it together, he ruefully observed, another iteration of the fateful phrase that will define his wretched premiership. This might count as capitalist realism’s equivalent of Krushchev’s acknowledgement of corruption in the USSR. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1574
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Fisher’s larger ‘capitalist realism’ thesis elsewhere in this collection — the system’s self-acknowledgment rather than denial. — connects to: Revolution transformed the occupier’s lie into evidence of national truth — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 273; A real official’s appearance validates a pirate’s otherwise dubious confession — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1710; The anti-corruption crusade itself functioned as political corruption. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 726
Broader Connections
- Revolution transformed the occupier’s lie into evidence of national truth
#corroborates(0.78) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 273 - A real official’s appearance validates a pirate’s otherwise dubious confession
#exemplifies(0.78) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1710 - The anti-corruption crusade itself functioned as political corruption.
#complicates(0.71) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 726