Archive: Britain’s got the Total Politics Factor and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice

First published at Luikkerland, 22nd September 2011
I never heard of the Total Politics blogging awards until a little bird told me that at least one vote had been registered for this site. Sure, I remember now seeing badges on blogs, but I didn’t take much notice of them. I kept my eye on the results this time because I wanted to write about these awards, but only felt that I would able to if my own name appeared in the lists (otherwise it might seem to the ungenerous like sour grapes).

First of all, I’ve never previously published a statement on my objections to the Total Politics poll in anticipation of a bad result or a non-showing, and so I don’t have to lose any credibility by thanking people for voting for this site. Having said that, whereas I appreciate the act of good intent, I’m still not going to thank people for participating in this beauty pageant. Instead, thanks go to you, reader, for taking the trouble to come back here (each and every time you do) after first discovering us.

There is a big problem with the Total Politics popularity contest because what it effectively amounts to is the Establishment media dictating the limits of people’s expectations in terms of conditioning through compartmentalising. It is crucial to the survival of the corrupt, evil-enabling corporate media that the people are made to hold a perception of authority belonging to the well-established forms and titles – the journalism that the corporate media have a monopoly on. The Establishment wants “citizen-journalism” to be unable to see itself past the form of a blog-site, and then believe that blogging is subsidiary to the agenda that the Establishment dictates. In this way, they ensure their supremacy.

If you look at the Total Politics list of winners, the leading blogs are corporate puppets, Establishment types and wannabees, and vanity projects. I try not to get into naming bloggers and carping at them (although it’s a technique that others have used and have been successful with) because all that distracts from the message, so obviously I am not going to talk about specific examples.

Generally, these top sites are not interested in dealing in political reality. They are keen to peddle the “business as usual” lie that there are differences between the LibLabCon, and that it makes the slightest bit of difference what anyone says at the inane Prime Ministers Question Time, or anything at any other time, for that matter, in the Houses of Parliament. These sites want to promulgate the myth that meaningful politics occurs in the arena between the separate elements of the Westminster Triumvirate.

Then there are another couple of categories of blogger that do quite well, but unfortunately are of no help towards a solution. There are the blogs that are a vehicle for sour grapes which get in the way of steering people towards what must be the collective effort. There are the blogs that know about the LibLabCon fantasy, and corporate media establishmentarianism, but cynically won’t deal in the currency of reality because it will scare their readership off.

Of course, we are well aware that the trouble with the average quite-intelligent Briton is that although he might even have a university degree, he has no capability for sifting through received thinking and rejecting it where it needs to be. He is entirely at the mercy of a mentality that tells him that only the official voice on the wireless is the one that has any authority. When a slightly different voice crackles through the ornate speaker fabric, his instinct is to drop his pipe, flee his 1940s armchair, and seek others to see if they, by all consenting to listen, will grant the new voice enough authority for them all to feel comfortable enough to retake their seats. He is entirely a victim of his fear of not being in a crowd.

This is what the Establishment media knows all too well, and stunts like the Total Politics awards serves to corral readership to the fashionable but worthless.

Then of course there is the whole spurious reinforcement of the false Left/Right Paradigm. In a world of the political reality there would be two categories of award: Best Blog by a Controller, and Best Blog by a Controlled Person who facilitates the Controllers. The Best Blog by a Controlled Person would not be a category that anyone would be allowed to vote for.

This site does not recognise the limits prescribed by the Establishment. We are the Controlled, in Rebellion; that is our category. I don’t see myself as a blogger. A blog is part of what happens here, and I understand that it looks too much like a traditional blog than I would like (I’ll be tinkering with different WordPress templates in a future upgrade). What I like to think we are doing is trying to create a space for an alternative to the corporate media. It doesn’t matter that this site is only very small and that such a claim appears to the ear-to-the-wireless sophisticate like a laughingly implausible statement, but the Establishment can only die by a thousand cuts: this is one of them.

Luikkerland.com is a place that won’t make deals, or try to ingratiate itself with an industry that has played a proven active part in our deception and enslavement, and, at the moment, the murder of thousands of Libyans. I won’t curse the corporate media one day, and then embrace it the next; it is all and always corrupt. If people want to contribute to this mission, then their coming here, or sending something to be published, or even putting some coins in the slot at the top is much more important than voting in an Establishment mind-control operation.

OK, that’s enough self-referential stuff for quite a while already.

Update, 27 September 2011: Here is a funny thing that I need to address just so that it is clear that I am not inventing things, and to suggest that those of us who remain naive should not remain naive. Total Politics has for some reason resorted to hiding one particular set of results. I saved a copy [now defunct link].