I am staying on the Brand theme a little longer.<\/p>\n
As I mentioned yesterday, the liberal media backlash against Brand has begun in force. Below\u00a0is a prime example of the vacuous responses to Brand that pose (and, sadly, are widely accepted) as sophisticated analysis. Sunny Hundal over at Liberal Conspiracy makes this preposterous criticism<\/a> of Brand’s interview with Evan Davis<\/a> on Newsnight I posted last night:<\/p>\n But Davis has a more profound question that Brand clearly doesn\u2019t want to answer. My version of that question goes like this: If you want to replace the current system of capitalism with something else, who is going to make your jeans, iPhones and run Twitter?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here, in a nutshell, is what the liberal’s\u00a0concern amounts to: I am doing fine in the current system. I like my privileges. How can you promise me that in a fairer society I will\u00a0not\u00a0lose\u00a0any of\u00a0those privileges?<\/p>\n One has to credit Hundal for his honesty. When I\u00a0speak\u00a0of gatekeepers, this is exactly what I mean. If Brand\u00a0wants to get a fair hearing in the media, he needs first to reassure people like Hundal that they will not lose their iPhones. If Brand\u00a0doesn’t think such reassurances are a\u00a0priority as we try to address climate meltdown and social collapse, he will be dismissed as a\u00a0simpleton or court jester.<\/p>\n I have no doubt Brand can answer this question, as can I. But not in a way Hundal or anyone in his blinkered generation of coopted liberals could understand. That is why Brand is talking about a revolution: not in the facile sense of cutting off our rulers’ heads, but in consciousness \u2013 consciousness about who we are and where we live. In short, to drop our God-complexes and learn a little humility and humanity before it is too late. That revolution is coming whether we like it or not because our consciousnesses are going to be forced to understand the answers by far superior forces – those of the natural world. Mankind in a fist-fight with the planet is going to lose.<\/p>\n So I recommend to those like Hundal for whom the most pressing question right now is where their next iPhone is coming from to read the\u00a0article below. It answers the question. It is long. It is thoughtful. It is sensitive. It is worldly, in the deepest sense of the word. And its sensibility most certainly can’t be expressed in soundbite interviews on our most serious TV shows, like Newsnight. And hardest of all, it is only an answer if you\u00a0know what the real\u00a0question is.<\/p>\n