Culturally most events seem random. But sometimes there are a constellation of events that seem meaningful. Which makes this month’s triptych of Ted Gurner, Russell Brand and Rupert Murdoch so intriguing. Now who do these three remind us of? If one name doesn’t spring to mind, then really we are not paying attention.
For anyone not following the meta, over the last month these three men seemed to be quite articulate in defining our modern world.
Which is actually a good thing, as post Brexit, Trump and Covid, I suspect we are all losing our collective minds, as individuals in an atomised world, and as humans in an increasingly inhuman world of AI, algorithms, and vast wealth inequality allowing some few billionaires to dictate our future.
And, sorry, not to mention Authoritarians often backed by such concentrated wealth.
So let’s appreciate these three voices of the male id, representing as they do the ongoing power of Patriarchy: it’s good to get some clarity.
First, Gurner, Brand and Murdoch all share the same genitalia and the patriarchal benefits that come from this anatomy.
Second, they are all Privileged White Men living at the Apex of Western Imperial Wealth.
And they each have enormous political influence, whether it be it by wealth, audience or sheer voice in the ideas markets of western opinion
So let’s take Gurner.
Who has had a number of notorious comments and always seemed to bounce back.
First there was the “avocados are stopping young hipsters buying houses”.
Do you remember the avocado line in inner cities, supposedly only crossed if you stopped eating avocados on toast to buy a Gurner property?
Then this month he declared unemployment needed to rise 50%.
And that workers needed to feel pain and realise they were subservient to their boss.
To be fair, Gurner sought to retract.
Still, I agree with him.
He has merely proclaimed the essence of Capitalist markets and no doubt Ayn Rand would be proud.
Then we have Russell Brand.
Hiding “in plain sight”.
Arguably someone who is smart enough to interrogate Power and Patriarchy and who at one point seemed to do so.
But then Wealth and bonks led him astray.
Finally Rupert…The ultimate capitalist Lad.
Who built his empire with the anti-Establishment Schtick and page 3 girls in the News of the World.
Who corrupted politics across three continents.
And an id and ego totally immature for the Power he created.
A man with no insight for the damage he unleashed. Imagine hacking into phones to give the impression a dead girl was alive?
Murdoch knew what his army of minions did.
That is not to say he wasn’t highly aware of his own Power.
Seducing and blackmailing Western leaders from Reagan and Thatcher, Clinton and Blair, Howard and Abbott et al, to his own obsessive neoliberal self-interest.
Gurner, Brand, Murdoch: an Unholy Trinity of Patriarchy.
Gurner speaks as a Capitalist. Brand as a Sexist. Murdoch as the Elite of Wealth… who somehow believes he is not elite and blames other educated “elites” for not telling the “truth”.
Now who do these three remind us of?
If Donald Trump doesn’t spring to mind then really we are not paying attention.
Trump a sexpest capitalist braggart who delivered massively costly tax cuts of over $1.7 Trillion US, to principally the wealthiest 1% of Americans. This was the Laffer Curve of Reagan and Bush (cutting tax rates to theoretically “increase” tax receipts) on steroids.
And for Trump personally? According to some experts such as Pulitzer winner David Cay Johnson, Trump had nearly $US 2bn flow into his accounts during his first Presidency: foreign governments rented whole floors of his hotel five blocks from the White House while K street lobbyists and law firms conducted business in the hotel’s restaurants. Payday lenders and other industry associations moved their conferences and events to Trump venues and golf resorts. Individual favour seekers joined his private Mar-a-Lago club at $200,000.
Still, as Johnson says, despite earning $1m a day for every day of his Presidency, Trump left office cash strapped.
So in a very real sense Trump’s campaign for the White House now is just another example of his rampant “Carpet-baggery”.
Will anything stop him? Not anything to stop him attaining the Republican nomination. And given recent polling he remains a 50/50 bet for being the next President.
Still, his legal entanglements may provide some obstacles.
Only last week the NY Supreme Court found Trump guilty of fraud for having vastly overinflated asset valuations to obtain loans. As Judge Engoron Trump operates in a “fantasy world, not a real world”.
Trump then embodies the Apex of the Unholy Trinity.
And there are students waiting in the wings – in America and globally – who are studying the effectiveness of his nativist demagoguery – and especially how they wield power to crush independent media coverage of their actions.
Foreign Minister Wong likes to say that the case of the Australian citizen and publisher Julian Assange – charged by Trump and now facing 175 years in a US maximum security prison – is not an Alliance issue.
Sadly for her and Australia, it’s hard to see how a Trump Redux will not be.
Tony Nagy
Tony Nagy is a political and business consultant.