The mythology that covers up the social reality - and makes the status quo seem natural, and unchallengeable, and prevents real social change - couldn’t have been more perfectly expressed than what happened recently in Catford.
The local pub, boarded up, had slogans daubed on its walls shortly after the lockdown. Local leftwing activist graffiti. ‘Covid Futurism’ ‘Economy of Care’ ‘Basic Universal Income’ ‘Bury Capital’.
Within two weeks, the activist graffiti had been replaced by the property owner with corporate-sponsored, state-sanctioned-style messaging ‘street-art’ graffiti’ by corporate artists Nathan Blackmore/Harry Bowen, whose work is already plastered on every building site in London to ensure actual graffiti can’t appear. Again, perhaps the two artists are genuinely committed to nice things like the NHS. But the thrust - the way cultural hegemony is acting here - is clear.
Each one a little NHS figure. Each one trumpeting a soothing mainstream message of the moment. Stay Positive! (Meek and mild.) Think smart! (Think the right things, those which you have been told by your masters.) Stay Safe! (Because you’re fucked if you get the virus as we no longer have a health service.) Care for others! (Because we don’t.)
If you wanted evidence of the mythological cover up of the Covid crisis of capitalism it would be hard to look further than actual street art about soclialism being literally covered over by corporate street art about the myth of the NHS hero.
There’s another question, about strategy.
One thing you might ask is: what would people who aren’t into radical politics make of the first lot of slogans? Who will understand ‘Covid Futurism’? ‘Basic Universal Income’ doesn’t have the same ring to it as ‘Stay Safe’, does it?
One thing we have to note is how powerful, how effective right-wing mythology is, because it hooks itself onto things people they can easily read, easily understand, and which seem true because they are connected through signs to everything we have been exposed to since we were born. One thing left wing activists need to do is think harder about what myths we can make, and use, to combat those of the right wing.
It’s no use being sniffy about it. The evidence of our history, and our present suggests that myth is simply how we learn, think, and relate to our social reality.
It’s all the more difficult when left wing totems such as the NHS are taken away, and turned into symbological weapons to degrade and dismantle the very thing they were originally meant to stand for.