friendlyjordies | manufacturing your consent.

Damn, I almost didn't watch this video because the title and body of this post made me think it was an FJ video and that you were just new around here and didn't think people would already know who he is. But that impression could not have been more wrong! So glad that I came back to reread the comments here and realised the video was worth watching after all.

I rarely watch fj, so I'm not who they're talking about, but Manufacturing Consent is the first political theory book I properly read. It's certainly worth a read and clearly still relevant today (but if you know you never will read it, at least read the wikipedia summary). The book can be easily downloaded online for free.

Reminder for the newer crowd: "This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."

There are chapters in this video labelled "corporatism", and I think this is one of the few times I've seen that poor term used correctly.

The word "corporatism" is so often misunderstood and misused instead of "corporatocracy", a system where business corporations have strong influence in politics (which is effectively just describing capitalism...).

But corporatism isn't even referring to these corporations, it's derived from the word 'corpus'; body, to refer to a system where economic interest groups like guilds and labour associations, collectively bargain on the basis of their common interests. Notably, it advocates for class collaboration rather than class struggle, an idea which sounds pretty nice in a speech but has repeatedly resulted in domination of labour by either the owning class or the state, and the suffering of the worker class, who has been disempowered by being forced into collaborating at a rigged table. Obviously, when the ruling class is threatened by the worker class, class collaboration such as corporatism is an appealing compromise (trap) for them to support.

While corporatism has a long and varied history, and I don't mean to oversimplify it, corporatism is especially well-known as a core aspect in Fascist ideology [wikipedia]. It's no coincidence that the video author is drawing comparisons to Mussolini's face on the Palazzo Braschi. The fascists said a lot of contradictory, arrogant and garbage things in speeches, but one can't ignore this quote of ᴉuᴉʅossnW in the book The Doctrine of Fascism:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Anyone who gets their house fire bombed for exposing corruption is deserving of respect in my book.

The video creator boils Jordies views down to, Labor won't change the system, they just want to be in the drivers seat of the shitshow. A slightly unfair take, because the creator doesn't look at Jordies' reasoning.

Jordies' reasoning is usually, Labor don't have the power to get rid of the elite, everytime Labor try, they're crushed. This is because being the party of government isn't the only centre of power in this country. And while its very strong its a very transient form of power. Therefore Labor have to play ball to a certain extent with these other power centres, then setting up the best direction politically possible in the time they have.

Theres other systems Australia could move to, where power is distributed differently, as the video creator obliquely suggested. But the creator has an underlying assumption those undiscussed alternative systems would, in fact, be better for the country. And most importantly, that the Australian people would see and appreciate the benefits, readily agreeing.

But his critiscisms of Jordies are very valid. If i decide to listen I always take Jordies and crew as partially informed commentators, and not to be relied upon for your base of information on a subject.

he gives me ick, dunno why.

i watched him as a teen growing up in regional nsw, now i just see him as a labor shill.

not to say he doesnt do good work sometimes, his journalistic standards are extremely high, especially compared to most other media. just gives me bad vibes...

Not from aus but I love this channel. He collabs with boy boy and I did a thing who are also really great YouTubers