chickenfeet

I'm trying hard to suppress my basic "grrr" response. I have a visceral dislike of authoritarian politics coupled to a deep sense of betrayal that "my" party is perpetrating this stuff but I also realise when I try to finger just what it is about Blunkettblairclarkethought that I really object to, the exercise becomes quite difficult. There is a "theory" that is being articulated here and it's different from any I've come across before, and, in many ways, harder to refute. This isn't a blatant class-based power grab of the Thatcherite smash-the-unions, bring back the birch, Tory conference type. In a sense it's rooted in ideas of "community" that many on the left have been drawn to because the individual-state nexus mediated by 15 second sound bites and a flawed electoral system is so obviously unsatisfactory as Habermas has pointed out. What we seem to be getting though in "New Authoritarianism" is a technocratic rather than democratic version of Habermas' public sphere. "Community standards" are to be enforced not through and by the community after due reflection and debate but by "benevolent" state agents who understand the needs of "ordinary people" better than they do themselves. I don't think "we liberals" are going to win this debate on classic civil libertarian grounds. We need to find a way to link this opposition with the whole "democratic renewal" agenda.