Propaganda: 'Poverty is an insignificant problem in fantasyland.'
One of the key ways to make poverty not a problem is not to talk about it.
When 40% of the population can be wiped by $400 expense - and that's not THE topic of discussion - we know something is wrong. When society makes sports scores, award shows or Netflix more important than poverty, then we are being deceived into a false sense of reality. We are being "gaslighted" by the system into thinking the suffering of our fellow human beings is not an issue. This is propaganda at its finest because you can't really attack an invisible problem.
“If you truly decide to, you can do almost anything" – is a good representation of the individualistic messaging that permeate through society. Consequently, if one finds themselves without the ability to feed, clothe, house, medicate or educate themselves, it's their fault.
Counter-Propaganda: Exposing the silence around poverty
To understand how this process works, Bill Moyers exposes how Barack Obama talked about poverty before becoming president, but not after. As Moyers points out, “for three years in the 1980’s he [Obama] was a community organizer in Roseland, one of the worst, most poverty-stricken and despair-driven neighborhoods in Chicago. He called it “the best education I ever had.” However, when Obama became president, any mention of the poor went out of the window. Moyers notes: "Oddly, though, for all his rhetorical skills, Obama hasn’t made a single speech devoted to poverty since he moved into the White House.”
He also notes in the discussion the following:
“The Chronicle of Philanthropy issued a report on charitable giving. Among its findings: “Rich people who live in neighborhoods with many other wealthy people give a smaller share of their incomes to charity than rich people who live in more economically diverse communities.” Responding to that study, social psychologist Paul Piff told National Public Radio, “The more wealth you have, the more focused on your own self and your own needs you become, and the less attuned to the needs of other people you also become.”
Those few who dedicate themselves to keeping the poor ever in sight realize how grave the situation really is. The Associated Press reports, "The number of Americans with incomes at or below 125 percent of the poverty level is expected to reach an all-time high of 66 million this year." A family of four earning 125 percent of the federal poverty level makes about $28,800 a year, according to government figures.”
So, it should be no surprise that cities criminalize the homeless so that poverty is "out of sight and out of mind." This preventing not only charity but also activism from dealing with the root causes of poverty. Take, for example, this story from the Denver Gazette:
“As the homeless population becomes more visible, some city leaders are turning to the criminal justice system in a short-sighted effort to force people out of certain areas in Denver. People surviving on the streets are threatened with arrest and constant displacement, making it even more difficult to find stability. Jerry, who had to undergo the time-consuming and costly process of getting his tent and blanket back, was later tried and found guilty of violating Denver's anti-camping law and sentenced to community service. Others who have been arrested for the "crime" of surviving could find their future job or housing opportunities at risk, making it even more difficult to break the cycle of homelessness.”
The other problem is the issue of individualistic propaganda that continually bombards us into thinking that wealth we have accrued to ourselves is because of our own efforts. Such is the myth of individualism that permeates through society, which ascribes success or failure to the individual. It's what Chris Hedges refers to as “magical thinking” – the non-reality based belief that resources are going to pop out of nowhere into your life:
“Oprah peddles this fantasy that we can have everything we want if we just focus on happiness and grasp that we are truly exceptional and dig deep enough within ourselves and this is just magical thinking. It's not just peddled by Oprah. I don't want to pick on Oprah. The Christian right does it, Hollywood does it, corporatism does it. Tony Robbins, self-help guru and it's just a myth, and frankly it's a myth that's used to beat up on the poor.”
As discussed previously, Kevin O'Leary admitted that his ability to understand "how the world works" came from the fact the man his mother married was an oil executive. What if his mother was unable to remarry? What if he had to resort to crime to support their families? But we don’t have to hypothesize about this: a UK government found that kids “dealing drugs for violent “county lines” gangs to provide for their families." Could these kids become the millionaire-star hosts of Dragon’s Den? Probably not.
People don’t spontaneously come out of nowhere but are born to other people. If you’re like Bill Gates, your mom sits on the board of the United Way of America with the chairman of IBM. And as they say, the rest is history. However, if you are Malcolm X, your dad is killed by white supremacists, your mom has a mental breakdown (because of that), and you end up being raised by strangers. And so, you don't get a lucrative contract with a high-tech corporation. Instead, you get introduced to a life of crime and end up in jail.
When Reagan rose to power, he exploited the story of a (black) Welfare Queen that scammed the welfare system of $40,000 over many years. There was one big problem with this story. It was not true. She was charged with stealing around $9,000.
Truth doesn’t matter an era of “alternative facts." What mattered is that Reagan used this dog-whistle attack to undermine the idea of providing welfare to the hard-done-by. It turns out that Linda Taylor is precisely the type of person that arose from difficult circumstances: being born to a white mother and black father in apartheid America. On top of that, she was the product of an affair. This resulted in her being rejected by her white family (it is unknown whether she knew or met her father's family) and heading down a life of crime.
If society is not there to help the Linda Taylors of the world, then who is it there to protect?
Previously, I’ve discussed how society is not just individuals. It’s the collective thoughts, emotions and systems that bind us together to make society. As I pointed out here, the Koch brothers spend $300 to $400 million for us to be "collectively individualistic." That is, if they didn't spend that money, the society would reconfigure the institutions of society to encroach more on the individual through higher taxes, regulations, etc.
But let's put that aside. Are you a good neighbour if you don't share your tools or even something as simple as smiling (which is considered charity in Islam) to them? It's strange how such a basic human concept of neighbourliness is something that needs to be debated or heralded as some ingenious insight.
What would it be like to live in a neighbourly society?
Because Capitalism rules the planet, it's hard to know. However, the remnant Islamic character of Muslim societies may give us a clue.
A brother I know told me about how, in a town in Syria, some kid got hit while riding his motorbike (before the uprising). Then everyone went to his father to help pay his medical bills. The father refused because he was one of the wealthiest people in the city. But that's precisely the point. It's not about class struggle or social justice. It's about knowing there's a connection between you and the other people around that manifests itself in kindness, caring and other non-materialistic gestures. It's that well-being you get from being with friends, family and others. The Capitalist society of devil-take-the-hindmost is a horrific vision of society. There is no point in even carrying an elder's luggage to the train platform, let alone work helping a rich man with his son's medical bills.
In sha Allah, in the next post, we will look at the issue of hunger and food.