this is just utterly shocking: after we discover that Labour Party staff were actively trying to lose elections, actively refusing to act on antisemitism claims to damage the party... who's going to get fired? The whistleblower, of course!
huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labour-s…
huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labour-s…
one of the surest signs of creeping authoritarianism in our media & culture more generally is the total normalisation of going after whistleblowers. It's a peculiarly PMC form of authoritarianism, but just as toxic for that reason. 2/
back in the '60s and '70s investigative reporters were the models for journalism, & people like Daniel Ellsberg were heroes. Since Obama, especially, there's been a trend in the US to prosecute any potential Ellsberg's using the espionage act, unthinkable at the time 3/
Snowden and Assange are symbols, but the instinct is generalised, and seems deeply rooted in professional-managerial culture: abusing power is bad, but rarely punished; REVEALING that someone abused power is much much worse, and invariably punished. 4/
the bizarre thing is the media goes along with this principle, increasingly - which if you're wondering why there's so little investigative journalism any more, that's it. Their instinct is to investigate the unauthorised leak as if it's as much a crime as whatever's revealed 5/
perhaps its not bizarre, since governments' response to the scandals of the '70s was simply to institutionalise official leaking, so reporters no longer have to report at all, who do have to stay on the good side of the powerful. Leaks by the "wrong" people are thus scandalous 6/
I have had some experience of this myself, when I discovered absolutely horrific abuse of workers & others going on in a journal in which I was on the editorial board. Everyone else who knew about it was terrified to do or say anything about it. 7/
I kept thinking 'they're mostly already senior professors what do they think is going to happen to them?' But sure enough when I finally gave up & went public myself, the instinct of almost everyone in the media I encountered was to put ME on trial for going public 8/
this obsession with going after the whistleblower is relatively new. But it marks the almost complete abandonment of democratic sensibilities for PMC proceduralist ones. The fact it makes moral sense to so many people shows just how far public discourse has fallen 9/
