How could
you pass specific policies that benefit a small elite while being
harmful for the majority? According to a simple principle of
propaganda, you give them a good name by using the appropriate term.
In the end, the term will take a totally different meaning through
the mainstream media brainwash, gaining society's consent, thus
becoming a status quo.
In his book
The
Establishment: And how they get away with it, Owen
Jones gives a remarkably accurate description of the violent
misrepresentation of the term 'reform' by the neoliberal doctrine.
Jones writes:
Language
is a crucial tool in marginalizing political dissent. 'Reform' was a
term once associated with the left: the foundation of the National
Health Service, for example, could be considered a grand reform. But
'reform' is now often used as a codeword for the sorts of policies
advocated by the Establishment, like privatization, unleashing market
forces in public services and rolling back the frontiers of the
state. In this way, opponents of 'reform' can be depicted as the real
reactionaries: stick-in-the-muds who are standing in the way of
change.
'Reform'
has become one of the most recognizable cliches used by the
neoliberal establishment through its dictatorial mechanisms like the
IMF, or, the European Commission, for example. According to the
Corporate
Europe Observatory :
Since
Jean-Claude Juncker took office as President of the European
Commission in November 2014, there has been an even greater
deregulation push, not just on specific rules and laws which should
be scrapped, but on how decisions are made about future laws. Under
Juncker, fundamental changes in policy-making are being introduced
which will put major obstacles in the way of new regulations aimed at
protecting the environment or improving social conditions. It’s
an irony that, while dressed-up as reforms to cut bureaucracy and
red-tape, these reforms will add to the length, cost, and complexity
of the legislative process. And they effectively put the interests of
big business in the driving seat.
Greece
had the very bad luck to confront IMF, European Commission and ECB
(Troika) simultaneously, when the debt crisis erupted in 2010. For
seven years now, the Greek society has been brainwashed by the media
through the projection of the positions of Troika concerning the
'necessary reforms' that the country should take. The IMF economic
hitmen, the Brussels bureaufascists and the German sado-monetarists
repeat this phrase almost in everyday basis.
The
term 'reform' of course, in reality has nothing to do with progress
in the frame of the neoliberal 'values'. What they mean by the phrase
'necessary reforms', exclusively, is privatization, destruction of
the welfare state, elimination of labor rights in slavery working
conditions and looting of public property.
In
other words, the term 'reform' today, briefly means the regression
towards a modern Feudalism.
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