Dear Richard Seymour – Heinz Kiosk Was A Joke

Or perhaps a satire, but even so Heinz Kiosk was more of a warning of what not to say than what to utter. Pity you didn’t get the memo:

The days after the death of Caroline Flack have seen an admirably sober, reflective mood on the part of politicians and the public. Labour leadership candidates are denouncing press intrusion and calling for regulation of social media, while Downing Street wants social media firms to be more proactive in removing “unacceptable content”. Journalists are contrite over allegations that the tabloids hounded Flack. After the feast, the penitence.

Amid the contrition, of course, everyone is searching for someone else to blame. Social media users blame trolls. Politicians blame social media. The press blames reality television – a format that specialises in “interpersonal torture”, as Douglas Rushkoff puts it.

But this problem can’t be reduced to a single source, and Flack’s trials in particular seem to have been orchestrated by an informal alliance between the press, social media, and police and prosecutors – who furnish the titillating details for lurid headlines and furious tweets. But there is no single villain in this coalition of moral persecution: in fact, it involves us all.

Yep, there we go. “We are all guilty” was something for us to marvel at in its stupidity, not an exemplar of societal commentary.

But then that a modern Marxist matches the 1950s satire of a Marxist just shows how little Marxism and Marxists have developed over the 70 years.