Stalinist Hermeneutics
29 October 2010
Slavoj Žižek: ‘One should bear in mind the basic rule of Stalinist hermeneutics: since the official media do not openly report trouble, the most reliable way to detect it is to look out for compensatory excesses in state propaganda.’
Now count how many times George Osborne says ‘confidence’, ‘strong’ and ‘secure’ in less than two minutes in this recent interview with the BBC.
To be fair, he actually only said ‘strong’ and ‘confident’ twice and ‘secure’ once – it’s just that he answered every question by repeating his previous statement word for word. Perhaps that’s a compensatory excess, but to be fair, he actually only said ‘strong’ and ‘confident’ twice and ‘secure’ once – it’s just that he answered every question by repeating his previous statement word for word.
More than that if you include cognates: I’m confident he said ‘confidence’ at least six times. At least six times. More if you include cognates. (Nice use of the word ‘fair’, by the way. It means less and less the more they say it.)
There’s an amusing neo-something columnist in the Grauniad who writes, ‘An equally valid idea of a fair society may be one in which people are given the space and the right to strive for inequality: advantage achieved by their own efforts.’
Fair enough, as it were, but if you’re so clever how come you’re not rich?
Don’t forget ‘double dose’. Although after listening to George was almost afraid that perhaps the UK economy could overdose on good news…..apart from those 490,000 people in danger of losing their jobs very soon of course.
In my line of work the tell-tale word is ‘robust’. Any bank balance, procedure, field of activity that is described by that term is suspect. Let me make that quite clear: in my line the tell-tale word is ‘robust’, signalling a suspect or weak area.
That’s absurd and wonderful. Three different questions and yet Osborne repeats the same thing over and over and over again. He’s saying “Fuck you, bitch. Let me talk to my fans”.