On 2/25/2021 2:22 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
What? I did review it.
Yes, my apologies, Louis; that's a fine review, comrade. Sorry I missed
it last year. /
/
/Influence /really is excellent and since the South African bot armies
hired to spread weird (albeit superficially-plausible, left-sounding
race/class) analysis about "White Monopoly Capital" led to Bell
Pottinger's death, we should all be aware of how Zuma-era Talk Left,
Walk Right politricks can be danced even at London's once-premier PR
firm. It's so surreal that from helping Margaret Thatcher and Augusto
Pinochet with ideological zeal, the firm had no qualms in working on
race and class frustrations in this, the world's most unequal society,
for the Gupta brothers. They had infiltrated the SA government starting
around a decade ago, and are now enjoying their riches in Dubai where
they appear to be beyond the reach of SA extradition for long-overdue
prosecution.
Frantz Fanon's chapter in /Wretched of the Earth /about "Pitfalls of
National Consciousness" helps explain the material constraints on a
local ruling elite, who turn to this sort of left rhetoric as a function
of frustrated class mobility - especially severe in circumstances
combining durable settler colonialism and a hostile world economy.
Plenty of our current ruling-party hucksters, as well as others in the
political scene here purporting to hold lefty values, still mouth a
"Radical Economic Transformation" narrative along these lines, though
next to memories of the late Robert Mugabe in his prime, they're mere
pretenders.
Incidentally, in spite of this underlying hot-rhetorical context, it's
quite rare for South African journalists and scholars to actually
address systemic corporate corruption here - especially given that the
likes of KPMG, EY, PwC, Deloitte, McKinsey and international banks
(recently nailed for currency manipulation) feed off bad habits by the
local bourgeoisie in Joburg, Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Durban. In the
PwC "Economic Crime" reports dating to the early 2000s, including
"bribery" and "corruption" categories, our corporates regularly rank #1
(last year, tied for #2 with China, behind India). In contrast, the SA
state typically ranks around #110th most corrupt of 180 countries
Transparency International measures.
The liberal intelligentsia and media harp on state corruption which is
mediocre, but dare not discuss the world-class character of the
corporates' accumulation by dispossession. Economic crime here regularly
ranks our firms' profit rates in the top half-dozen in the world (in IMF
Article IV Consultations) and indeed just raised the SA stock market's
"value" to the level of the world's second biggest-ever bubble - if
measured as market capitalization/GDP (the "Buffett Indicator", where
today SA ranks - at around 400% - behind only Hong Kong).
But there are exceptions; yesterday, SA's main tv network (with its own
history of sleaze
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/30/who-really-runs-the-south-african-show/>)
asked me to babble on this topic, so here are 9 minutes worth
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu7hRtiBq2I> if we've peaked your
curiosity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu7hRtiBq2I
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/11/from-aipac-to-the-dogs-of-istanbul-the-2020-doc-nyc-film-festival/
3.Influence <https://www.docnyc.net/film/influence/>
“Influence” is structured around a long interview with Sir Timothy
Bell, the disgraced former CEO of Bell Pottinger, the British PR firm
that served the needs of rightwing governments from its inception. The
best way to see Bell Pottinger, a firm I never heard of before
watching the film, is as a counterpart to Hill and Knowlton that led
the propaganda campaign leading up to the first Gulf War.
Chain-smoking throughout the interview and cynical to the bone, Bell
is asked if he had any regrets about doing wrong. He replied that he
was a businessman, not a priest.
Bell got started as a top salesman for Saatchi and Saatchi, the
British advertising company that was notorious for its edgy
commercials, both for commodities and public service. In one famous
ad, you see a photo of a “Pregnant Man” meant to promote the use of
contraceptives. When Margaret Thatcher decided to run for office, she
hired Bell to supervise the production of Tory campaign ads, including
one titled “Labor is Not Working” that incorporated the kind of cheap
demagogy people like Lee Atwater an Roger Ailes used in the USA.
With the huge success of the Margaret Thatcher ad, Bell went on to
form his own company and take on clients like apartheid South Africa
and Pinochet’s successor in Chile. In other words, we are talking
about Scumbags, Inc. Finally, Bell got his comeuppance when his
company was implicated in a propaganda campaign for the Gupta family
in South Africa that was conniving with Jacob Zuma to fleece the
country’s treasury. His firm was delisted by the governing board for
PR and advertising firms and then abandoned by clients, even those
scuzzy enough to hire Bell and Pottinger in the first place. This is a
terrific film that will give you a good idea of how the Big Lie
operates in England.
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