Dublin Opinion

Miriam Cotton of Media Bite has done a very long interview with Professor Kathleen Lynch of the School of Social Justice in UCD. It’s brilliant. The conversation mainly centres on the media in Ireland and their collective response to the financial crisis.

You should read the whole thing, but here are some samples…..

When the crisis happened first I thought that the source and cause of the crisis would be identified by the media – which was the unregulated power of global capitalism and what happened in Europe in the 1990s in Europe and throughout the world when capitalism won the cold war and was given free reign. Whether you like it or not – and you don’t have to be a socialist to believe this – or a feminist – the fact is that capitalism is for profit, the way it has been regulated is for share holder interest only, not for workers’ interest and certainly not in the interest of the common good in any sense of the term.

What happened in Ireland was that at the very beginning of the crisis there was huge criticism in 2008 of unregulated capitalism. But slowly that dissent started to fade away. I think that is very worrisome because what is happening now is that the blame is being shifted. For example, you have this ideology being put about that welfare fraud must be taken on. This is risible in the context of a society which has been impoverished by its political and commercial elites – both the banking and development sectors have bankrupted the state. To make your main platform the taking on of welfare fraud which is tiny by comparison to major corruption and tax evasion which are widespread – is extraordinary. But that is what is happening – there is a deliberate attempt to scapegoat the vulnerable.

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There are always alternatives. There is a deliberate attempt here to frighten people and to tell us we have no choice, that we can’t negotiate with Europe and that we can’t raise taxes. It’s ludicrous. I think that some of the media people should get out of their comfort zones and go around and look at the wealthy parts of the cities. Go and use their eyes and their ears. Look at the cars that sit on people’s drives. Go into Dublin or Cork City and see where people are wining and dining. There are a lot of very well off people in this country. I don’t know where the media do their research but I believe there is a lack of honesty about people in privileged positions in this country. There are wealthy people who are not being targeted in any serious way. Instead of that the average person is being made to feel “Oh well, you had a good time and you had security and now you can’t have that security any more”.

I have given a lot of attention to the party manifestos and the Fine Gael ’5-point plan’ is straight out of a Tory text book. It’s full of soft language hiding hard policies. It’s full of vagueness. I’ve looked at their policies on higher education, for example, and nobody seems to have picked up on the fact that the fees will be about doubled for arts degrees and approximately trebled for science degrees. You’d have to pay a percentage up front and balance when you are finished. That sort of hiding of policy is going unexamined. The failure of the media to interrogate policies is in my view shameful.

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You demonise the dissenter and so the dissenter is defined as ‘the other’ and ‘the outsider’ before they even begin. Whereas change in society always comes from the periphery – never from the centre. It’s naïve to think that it can. If you want to bring about change, listen to people on the outside and not at the table of power. We can be wrong like anyone else of course but I’m talking of the principle in general of listening to the outsider and learning from that perspective.

A lot of countries have far better intellectual frameworks for doing that. Whereas here, the country is so small and people take things personally that are not intended personally. I hold my views not because of some ideological perspective that I want to uphold but because I know the research. I know more equal societies are more sustainable. There are thousands and thousands of articles and books published on this. It’s not like I get up in the morning and say “I’d like to be a socialist so I’m going to find the truth that suits me.” You read, you do your research and find out over time.

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It’s time to tell it as it is – time to call a spade a shovel. This sort of control is going on everywhere – in academic life too. The sociology of knowledge is a major interest of mine so I’m keenly aware of it. Who controls your pen and who controls your voice is what I’d ask any journalist about – because somebody controls it. If you are under the illusion that you have complete control, try saying something that is completely dissenting and see how far you’ll get. The mind is a big site of political struggle and we need education about how people’s minds are being managed.