WHEN news broke of bonkers billionaire Elon Musk’s plans to buy Twitter – potentially the most expensive example of spitting one’s dummy out of the pram in history – I was reminded of Peter Gabriel’s song Games Without Frontiers.
The former Genesis man brilliantly draws on the insidious global forces of nationalism, territorialism and competitiveness through the chilling prism of children’s playground antics. The line “Adolf builds a bonfire/Enrico plays with it” effectively distils world history in eight words – a masterpiece of the pop form.
Sadly, Gabriel’s evocative lyrics continue to resonate in today’s geo-political nightmare. While the names of those in the song may be different, the conclusion is just the same. Power is grossly imbalanced in favour of the playground bullies, the entitled and the opportunists.
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Take Musk, for example. The founder of Tesla and SpaceX may be a maverick visionary, but dizzy on the drug of supreme control, he has blinded himself to his contradictions. On the one hand he describes himself as a “free speech absolutist” yet has blocked Twitter users who question or disagree with him. Accusations of sexual harassment and racial discrimination in his companies have been met with either silence or claims of retaliation. No wonder Twitter staff are dusting off their CVs.
Cue another global playground big shot, Vladimir Putin. Although the Russian despot’s murderous actions make Musk look positively saintly, the pair do share common egotistical, domineering traits.
But while Musk may claim to champion “free speech” (on his own terms), Putin doesn’t even bother pretending anymore. Under his regime the internet is a weapon for political control. The perfect propaganda machine to filter news, warp reality and ultimately justify genocide.
So it seems the world is in the merciless grip of a select few individuals able to bypass the checks and balances of democracy. As recent months have shown, a mood swing here or a petulant whim there of just one man has had horrific repercussions for millions in Ukraine, while threatening the rest of us with nuclear annihilation.
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The West’s surprisingly united response to the crisis has been heartening, but it was the collective naval-gazing by countries unwilling to see the disaster unfolding before their very eyes that allowed Putin to take advantage in the first place.
Gordon Brown may not have “saved the world”, but he does have a point when he talks about global solutions for global problems. The lessons over the benefits of international co-operation that should have been learned from the 2008 financial crisis were ignored.
As a result Covid vaccine nationalism has cost countless lives; oligarchs flashing their stolen cash were given free rein; climate-change imperatives have been kicked into the long grass; tax avoidance scams by the wealthiest continue on an industrial scale; the nuclear arms race shows no sign of abating; and the failure to establish a global regulatory body to oversee Big Tech has allowed cybercrime, misinformation and hate to thrive.
Understandably, with local elections upon us all attention is focused on issues that relate to our everyday lives. Global issues can appear somehow abstract in comparison. But they shouldn’t. Local, national or global, it’s all just different playgrounds, on different levels, with different players.
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