hyperreal virtue capitalism

(Originally posted in 2023)

I thought I might have an aneurysm when I first saw people talking about ‘woke capitalism’ and ‘woke banking’, but I managed to cling on. Long enough at least to write this post.

It’s like the people who think the painfully vain and vindictive adulterer and glutton Donald J Trump is the second coming of Jesus. (The J, by the way, is the new H).

In short, there is something seriously weird going on in the world of business, politics and beyond.

It’s not actually becoming woke of course. God forbid ethical capitalism.

But right across the political spectrum, left and right and centre, and throughout all society including very much in our corporate business culture, there has been this meteoric system-wide rise in virtue signalling.

It’s gotten so bad, it doesn’t feel like people just exist any more. They perform.

I know everyone blames social media for everything, but in this case it’s absolutely the fault of social media. Making everyone the centre of their own media empire was not what human civilisation or the living world needed from us.

So instead of actually doing anything, we perform. We gesture. We pontificate. And then if we see someone else performing a piece we do not like, we cancel. And cancellation is just as much part of the performance as the original piece. We do not simply stop voting for X politician or buying from Y business because we do not like how they operate. We have to perform the cancellation waltz to our prime time viewers to let them know where we stand.

So we end up in situations where we have to witness rooms full of white British suits, awkwardly posing while performing the “taking the knee” in solidarity with some American NFL player they’d never heard of. Meanwhile giving absolutely zero shits about the continued struggles of black people in post-slavery western society, or indeed back in Africa, Australia or anywhere else.

And on the other side of the political spectrum, you have to endure week-long news stories about Bud Light being cancelled by an assemblage of absolute cretins because Budweiser had the audacity to send some of its beers to a transgender person.

The worst part of this whole thing is that this is our culture now. You cannot escape it. You either partake or you sit quietly on the sidelines forced into watching the whole bullshit pantomime play out.

Hyperreal Virtue Capitalism: Do whatever you want, but always say the right thing.

And when I say the ‘right thing’ – I don’t mean the actually right, good, decent thing. Just as I don’t mean virtue in any kind of positive sense. Because there are no longer any universal virtues, apparently. Honesty is weakness. Sharing is delusion. Kindness is manipulation. By virtue signalling, I simply mean a public demonstration of fealty to your tribe. And your tribe could in fact be neo-nazis, so not super virtuous (by historical standards at least).

No example of virtue signaling is clearer than with Israel and Palestine. Or rather, not the actual conflict itself but the western reimagining of it. If virtue signalling were a tradable commodity, then go all in, because unfolding right before our eyes is the most pathetic performative shitshow of modern times.

So far we have seen a British Conservative MP fired for suggesting a ceasefire, and a British Labour MP fired for calling for peace and freedom to all, which was considered “grossly offensive” by his own political party. The British Home Secretary called peace protests “hate marches”.

Care about innocent Israelis and Palestinians civilians equally? Get off the fence, stop both-sides-ing. The semites are antisemitic. Blowing up residential apartment blocks is self-defence. Palestinian occupation is a climate justice issue. Up is black, down is white, take a knee, get extra points – take two knees.

Take all the knees, so long as you can keep selling weapons and showing footage of distraught families holding the remains of their recently bombed kids on prime time news.