And welcome to cross top were all things are considered im Peter Lavelle we live in the age of disbelief the people dont trust the government and the government doesnt trust the people how did we come to this deficit of legitimacy and more importantly is there a way out is dialogue possible. To discuss this and more im joined by my guest judge who brought our in bristol she is the deputy leader of the Workers Party of britain as well as the author of the drive to war against russia and china are upcoming book is identity politics. And in budapest we go to George Samuel he is author of bombs for peace nato is humanitarian war on you ok crossed up rules that affect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate ok lets go to bristol here. A few weeks ago and i think i already told this to george is that i was watching the Tucker Carlson show on fox and he was interviewing the swedish ambassador to the United States. Because kofi annan he was asked the man asking her how her government dealt with it and she started out by saying the people trust the government and the Government Trust the people well. It is so normal a situation in the west right now its remarkably different what accounts for this fear because it the ability to have dialogue is almost impossible now were not just looking left and right are carping about people in the government go ahead i mean to be honest with you im not sure its even really true in sweden anymore ok very i really appreciate that for a while it was it there is trust between government and people when the people fail that the government has their interests at heart now for a long time capitalist governments have been able certainly in the west where we had a kind of welfare state a social democratic consensus that a certain minimum lifestyle must be provided for everybody and therefore people felt the government was kind of happy and back well there was a certain safety net and low level that we were low which they would not now we saw that start to crumble in fact in the 1970 s. When the pows loom was over industrial jobs started to disappear from the imperius countries and many communities where left very devastated by that they didnt have replacement jobs and their communities were just left to rot because they were very small minority of the overall population and the government spelt like kids or the ruling classes felt they could leave that situation and let it rest and most people would be forced to keep voting labor but i mean here all democrats in the in the us and they didnt have anywhere else to go and that was no one else really speaking up to them because we had a lack of real good working close leadership a working class we were in retreat at that time. And so. That was the beginning of this process we can say now that she wasnt financial crisis massively expeller right to that situation because weve got some. Literally the day before that banking crash we were being told that the reason alan comic services were being dismantled was there wasnt enough resources and people go into that people believe people believe the problem was theres too many immigrants and the resources wont stretch and then the next day billions to bail out the banks now that was a shock that was a big shock to people and i as i was already a community socialist talking too much in housekeeping before that crash and after that crash and i can tell you the difference in how people received what i had to say you know overnight was staggering its really in georgia written just in jersey obviously is way left that we are a bit but i like diversity on my program of conversation but i would what i would glean from her is that you know i would agree with her it in the postwar era up into the 1970 s. Maybe even the early eightys we take that us there was a. Acceptance of there would be a level of prosperity of course theyd be dips but overall there would be prosperity and i think that i dont agree i agree with john here in 2000 a that came really crashing to the end because there is no. Promise of prosperity is meant to be a whole postwar paradigm was too big a security and prosperity and they cant deliver on that anymore and they hold the people governments hold people in contempt for not a going along with their our politics of us parity. Yes i think so and i grieve the schwarzenegger seminal moment it brought to power somebody who in the United States barack obama who was for the 1st time in how the member of the centrist Democratic Party he was somebody who seemed to be on the left of so this was a radical change but of course a radical change that his election promise and you had the 1st signs of the kind of popular insurrection against. What happened in 2008 with the occupy movement and that was very quick combination of obama. Taking it over and then you had the other police of breaking it up and that was. What then happened was that that resentment at that movement spun. Taken over by donald trump who was a kind of a right wing populist and who came dramatic change to dramatic change being. End of the wasting money on foreign wars and of importing cheap labor and you know capitalism making capitalism fan for ordinary people that is what he promised in 2016 that was enough to terrify the political to war that the political establishment launched against donald trump is kind of where we are now which is the this crisis of legitimacy dont be one of the things i think is really interesting is that the the astutely the new liberal order will not give any kind of credence or legitimacy to populists on the left or the right and i think thats really the who go where a lot of the the anger comes from here because you know you had like a Bernie Sanders character very popular among very wide variety of demographics but it was taken from him again because they and they dont want and if you if you look at the. Publican party the g. O. P. Has not changed at all you know just because trumps theyre ok i mean they do everything in their power just for him ok its still these populist. Fringes is where were told in the media theyre the ones that are being denied any kind of legitimacy and actually public toral access go ahead joe. Well we have to look back to 2008 what happened who paid for bailing out the banks we were told the banks are too big to fail they must not be allowed to bear the brunt of the crisis of their own system we must pay and how do we pay the working class all over the world has paid by losing a condition security you know Public Service is dismantling of privatization of everything that used to be provided for us to do with taxes out of the wealth that we create but it was a kind of guaranteed minimum that social services where they and theyve been taken away privatized scrapped whatever and in different situations when they happen to be this huge attack on peoples Living Standards and you know recently we were told just before this crash were being told here how brilliant Employment Situation was now we havent seen such good employment levels since the 17th well it was patiently a lot hateley like when they talk about this recovery he was recovering big bubbles in the stock market and a bubble lets not forget is a sign that somethings wrong in the productive economy and means in fact there isnt someone productive to invest your capital. In gambling on the Stock Exchange on the Property Market on the currency markets all these bubbles are not a sign that something is good isnt there a sign that something is inherently wrong. And meanwhile our billionaires are taking thought years off each other on the stock market whats happening to all repeat. 0 hours contracts flex Flexible Working which means you dont know what youre working but you may be who is ready to just in case your employer wants you know say pay no pension no job security nothing minimum wage all below recently there was an outbreak of coding in leicester in britain and were. We finding the conditions that lead to that lester is a town takes so many factories. And there was an obstacle in the Financial Times about cities so looking about the wages that are being paid which will cost minimum wage and Everybody Knows it Everybody Knows thats whats happening theres no health and safety theres no. Welcome conditions and being thanks well call pounds now but Everybody Knows the health and safety net tax people the National Government the local government they all know and they use winch in it and let it carry on george what if the thing that it what were seeing right now is a particularly during this crisis because its a huge crisis if you dont have a job ok particularly. If you had taken a hit in 2008 but we just see more and more transfer wealth going upward with it in a time when we need it going in the reverse direction ok just to save the middle classes and the working class because the government policy is all cross the western world much more so than the United States is it the middle class isnt really necessary anymore theyre paid theyre trying to replace them ok with other demographics go ahead george yes yes no thats exactly the case its there is a transfer of wealth. Moving upwards and thats exactly what was said by Warren Buffett when he said yes as a class war thats going on and my class is winning i dont take this as a job but i want to which the man Warren Buffett is but if i bust it reveals something fundamental about the capitalist economy. What is interesting is that. In this election that isnt coming up in that it was going to get president ial actually nice as this issue isnt and in fact instead of focusing on who is the enemy who should be you know they are the focus of our. The Election Party of the left is focusing its ngo on the middle doubts you know when when Hillary Clinton talked about the basket of deplorable she meant to middle class hopefully the unite they hear the one percent but that is the middle class theyre the enemy and you can be sure that any. Democratic administration will wage a war against the people that they consider wall street as the enemy they dont consider the financial speculators the enemy. Because of the sweat shop owners the interest its the ordinary well the enemy with doing is particularly in the United States is theyre focusing everything on trump because there is a lane in politics right now and it is it is too cute to go in and rescue main street in the middle class nobody wants to do that because this is a job he just told us you know they told us there was no money theres plenty of money apparently ok so trump will not make that bold move and go it saved a little plus working people and of course biting you to get there there are talking points from the transit i mean this is its so gaping with what was happening right now and no one is bold enough to step up job to go ahead lou georgia touched on something really important the majority of the media are busy trying to distract our attention from the real problem which is of course dealing inequalities created by capitalism which is built into it but there is a crisis of legitimacy increasingly people feel the system doesnt work here we have to go to a hard break and out of the park in your 1st question a lot of legitimacy stay. We go to work for you straight home. During the vietnam war u. S. Forces also bombs in neighboring laos there was a secret war and for years the American People do not know. How much it is officially announced every back country per capita all Human History millions of unexploded bombs still in danger lives in this Small Agricultural country Jordyn Wieber went on a canal its happening. Even today kids in laos full victims of bombs dropped decades ago is the u. S. Making amends for that tragedy and what help do the people need in that little land on times. Welcome to cross that were all things are considered to remind you were discussing a crisis of legitimacy. And lets go back to brazil just a bribe to go into the break you want to finish your point or write it back speeches so there you see a growing sense of disconnect between the people and they doesnt between the people in the institutions. The state which increasingly are seen not to be on their side not to be neutral not to be arbiters of justice but to be very much aligned with the interests of the rich and ruling class. Judiciary police you know the Education System all of that over these last 10 years has been really exposed and then of course weve had covert crises which has extension waited exacerbated all of those inequalities in the system and laid them bare you know like never before at suny extent that we are now seeing a growing number of serious misses in the media not the ones in the media that george was talking about how busy trying to divert our attention when the weather was in the Financial Times or politico who are writing you know think pieces saying if were not careful theres going to be a revolution they dont say and that you know as well as back in 2014 plutocrat an oligarch who nicanor billionaire wrote an article i dont know if you guys still recalled the pitchforks. And he expresses it talked about the massive and growing inequality in the world and in the western imperialist countries particularly the us but the u. K. Is not. A way that growing inequality seeing how people felt about the system and about the rich and about their future and he said if we dont do something to halt this. This disparity in this growing disparity then we are going to be in trouble we like to tell ourselves but we will be and marching will go to a sink because in the Financial Times just 2 weeks ago sensually saying the same thing now these people. Really want to save the system they want capitalism to be made to work people enough that it stays in place what theyre unable to recognize is what marx and engels pointed out 100. 00. Years ago which is this growth in disparity of income and situation is hard. And educates well. What they do is george is one of the big youve already mentioned deplorable zoomie i cant you know when you and i were both coming up in the world there was a pretense of some kind of objective body from the media that is legally gone right now and we can use the example be election of donald trump and we can use brakes that i mean you know you know we know that you know the people voted the wrong way and they had it in there theres no forgiveness for that whatsoever and that goes into this. Canceling of culture or censorship i mean it what it was really quite glaring is they dont talk about social and income inequality talk about all these other cultural issues the cultural wars because if you really as john pointed out if you start really seriously looking at whats going on right now the situation is is in the long term its untenable go ahead george prevails in an election the losing side will simply not accept it and this is in fact what happened in 2016 in which they were losing side was at will ditch on meant to sabotage an election result the didnt accept and we can be sure that whoever will be the losing side of this november will react in the same way and of course that is it works very much too early in the its advantage. No one wants to raise the issues of how. All of the benefits of the economy flow to the one percent much less the one percent no one else gets anything out of it instead we have you know warring factions hating one another who are themselves hardly beneficiaries of the system george a kind of debt goodbye to. Could be a Council Culture thing here just one of the things thats very interesting to me is that you know we. Presented this illusion of choice right here there is no choice here ok and the culture wars is a nice diversion and they do give the impression that there is a choice here because at the end of the day theyre going to protect the neoliberal order thats what is made the one percent and the good in the political elite of the media elite so wealthy and so content because if you talk about. Income and social inequality then youre going to have to approach it differently but you know lets talk about statues lets talk about cancel kocher and all of that is a diversion not everything is racist apparently now you know if you start dealing with social inequality i think the whole issue of racism will dissipate very very quickly go ahead. Well you know these latest economic crash which is being you know the narrative is that its all the fault of the pandemic but of course the reality is this crash is in fact it was financial commentators for the last 34 years it was coming its built into the system is systemic crisis that was long overdue kind of its probably over the edge but in fact it was already starting to tick just before you know looked and started to happen so we have this huge crisis which is deepening inequality and i really revealing the nature of a lot of the socalled employment that we had incredibly insecure and on top of that weve had the cloven crisis which is again exacerbated importance here and showed us how its the must essential people who we need to keep society running who are the least paid the least respected more like its jobs more likely to be done by the poorest and most oppressed workers all these inequalities are being deepened and of course what were seeing as well is that women ethnic minorities are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the Health Crisis and the economic crisis and that so this whole deepening of all the inequality its not society is something that they are really worried about us looking at properly and hence this move to turn the narrative away from capitalism creates inequality towards what people hate black people men hate women you know we must fight against the symbols of sexism we must fight against the symbols of racism and to divert us from understanding the root causes