Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - The Bootlickers

Episode Date: April 25, 2014

Andrew Rubin opens up his Archives of Authority to tell us the story of how George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 became global phenomenons. Melissa Gira Grant tells us about her new book Playing the Whore and the complicated relationship between sex workers, Feminists, Journalists, and the Police. And your host turns to ToE correspondent Peter Choyce for advice on how to fight his bike ticket in traffic court. *********Click on the image for the whole story about this week’s installment**********

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called The Bootleakers. Why do we always need to look to 1984 to describe the present? Like we all seem to understand. So as soon as Snowden mentions George Orwell, we all seem to say, oh yes, we understand what he means. But the question I always have is, is that cultural reflex empowering? Is it enlightening in some way? Or is it just, is it kind of a cliche? George Orwell's 1984.

It's getting referenced all the time these days. Edward Snowden, Justice Scalia, even podcasters now regularly name-check Big Brother. But Andrew Rubin, a professor of English at Georgetown University, says that if we truly hope to understand the way power functions today, we must look beyond Orwell's dystopian book. Everyone reads the book as a work of political theory, but, you know, it is a novel. In his book, Archives of Authority, Andrew Rubin tells the story of how George Orwell's 1984 became this global metaphor for talking about surveillance, totalitarianism, and power.

The whole thing starts with a secret list of names that George Orwell gives to a woman. the time 1984 was published in 1949, he contacted this woman, Celia Kirwan, who worked at the British Foreign Office, a division called the Information Research Department. And she was asking for a list of names of writers that the Foreign Office could use to promote a sort of positive image and project a positive image of Britain. Well, instead of doing that, he submitted 34 or 35 names of figures who he thought were fellow travelers and crypto communists. George Orwell sent the IRD this unsolicited list of people he believed the British government should be surveilling about nine months before he died. It remained a state secret until the mid-90s. And when its existence was verified, people started debating Orwell's legacy and reputation. Famed Orwell booster Christopher Hitchens told Andrew Rubin

that the list shouldn't be seen as a big deal. Orwell, he says, was simply showing off. He'd asked to marry Celia Kerwin several years before, and she had denied him, and some say that he was trying to impress her. But if you take a close look at this list, and thanks to Andrew Rubin, you can see part of it on the Theory of Everything show page, you can see that George Orwell offers up more than just names. In some cases, information that could be used by the British government for nefarious purposes.

For example, he outs the poet Stephen Spender. And George Padmore, the Caribbean intellectual, well, he calls him... Pro-Negro. So there's some very disturbing ways in which he categorizes these figures. We don't know exactly what the authorities ended up doing with Orwell's list, but Andrew Rubin says it is this conversation about the list that leads to everything else. The great irony is that 1984 becomes globalized through the very same process that it itself describes, of this kind of surveillance and monitoring and keeping tabs on thought, the thought police. Once he begins to have a conversation with the British Foreign Office about these names,

Kerwin and her boss had the idea of then beginning to translate Animal Farm. It was always interesting to me how global Orwell had become, and it was sort of by accident one day that I went to the Orwell archives at the University College London and found a Tolugu translation of Animal Farm that was done. Animal Farm was initially censored when it was published.

They wouldn't publish it because at the time the Soviet Union were allied with Britain and they were afraid it would alienate them. But then the first translation they did was a Telugu translation, a language that they speak in the Indian subcontinent. This Tolugu translation of Animal Farm takes place just after Orwell initiates his relationship with the IRD, with his secret list. It also takes place at the very moment the British Empire is changing its grand narrative about its relationship with its colonies and former colonies.

Britain's civilizing mission, which they used to colonize most of the globe after the First World War, was no longer justifiable. And so anti-communism, in a sense, became the new civilizing mission. Animal Farm and 1984 were both easy to market as anti-communist manifestos, even though Orwell didn't intend for them to be read that way. The British government and the United States both used Orwell's books for propaganda purposes.

The prevailing interpretation of 1984 at the time that was conventionally held was the one held by Life magazine that the book was an anti-communist book. So the anti-communist interpretation of the book began to appeal to figures like Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, and the U.S. Information Agency as well, which had just been started around 1948 because the Soviet Union was already doing a great deal of propaganda work. It was called the Communist Information Bureau.

So they felt like they needed to respond, and they started using works like that. And 1984 was actually serialized in a magazine that was run by the American army in occupied Germany at the time called Der Monat. It was later, it turned out, funded secretly by the CIA. George Orwell is one of many writers and artists who was used by the CIA and others during the Cultural Cold War.

But even though the Soviet Union's long been consigned to the dust heap of history, his critiques of power are still being used today. But for what purposes and what ends? Andrew Rubin says we must move beyond Orwell's fictional vision of totalitarianism and power because it blinds us to the very real power dynamics that define the world we live in now. Yeah, I mean, I think that the thing to think about now is that the way Orwell has been so popularized and so dominant as a way

of thinking about power, that we need to think about how that way of thinking about power, does it allow us to think more critically about power or does it prevent us from really thinking more fully about power? Does it incapacitate us? Perhaps what we need to do is shift our attention away from the boot forever stamping on a human face to the boot licker. Well, that's the starting point for this conversation about power. As I was putting this episode together, the New York City Police Department launched a campaign on Twitter to get New Yorkers to tweet photos of themselves interacting with New York City police officers.

Oh, the Twitter. Twitter tweet. In a matter of hours, Twitter was flooded with images of police brutality, baton bashings, hair pullings, and bootstompings. And all of them used the official hashtag MyNYPD. I am, as you know, a strong, supportive, and advocate of the social media. There was a time when images like these would spark riots in the streets. Today, all we get are trending topics. Even New York City's police commissioner mocked the impotence of the photos,

social media, and the press. The reality of policing is that oftentimes our activities are lawful, but they look awful. And that's the reality. No, seriously, if you wouldn't mind, I need to basically do a photo of all of you. Okay. perfect. You're now going to be tweeted. In her new book, Playing the Whore, writer Melissa Gira Grant offers us a new lens in which to view contemporary power dynamics. Her book is about sex workers and their relationship with the police, journalists, and feminists, but it's also very much a book about bootlicking and power. workers being controlled, put places beyond their own control, having their money taken away from them, and being bossed around by people without being able to fight back, why on earth would you trust the police? It's a reliance on this system of control rather than a system of actual

empowerment. This particular strain of feminism gets its name from its relationship with the police, carceral feminism. There was a time, I think, when feminists were more apt to support sex workers' own demands and to say, you know, just like abortion, just like homosexuality, just like all these things that are controversial, this is fundamentally about autonomy and somebody's rights. And so, you know, might have personal misgivings, but would not go so far as some feminists do today,

and certainly the most vocal ones, who think that, you know, we need tough laws and we need to put more people behind bars and we need to arrest sex workers in order to save them from sex work. And to think back to kind of the history of feminism as being a movement that's mostly opposed to these very rigid systems of patriarchal control that we understand actually can put women in harm's way more often than help them. That has really been sidelined by this idea that, well, no, we can make the police an arm of our feminist projects. And in a way, it's still using the eye of the police, but with like a nice soft feminist gauze kind of wrapped around it or velvet, you know, where you're like, oh, no, no, no, we're still coming with handcuffs and we're still going to put you in the car and

we're still going to drive you to the station and we're still going to charge you, but we're treating you as a victim. That's just a change in terminology. The reality of who's sitting behind bars has not changed at all. And the logic that animates it, that sex workers are fundamentally out of control and need outside intervention, whether that's from the cops or from a social service agency, it feels the same to the sex workers. There isn't actually much of a material difference in their lives between who is trying to control them. Melissa Giragrant is convinced that carceral feminists just don't understand the true nature of the carceral gaze of the police. Her book is an attempt to get all of us to take a closer look. I wish I could almost draw this out like a circle. And the circle is honestly the people.

The police surveillance camera in the hotel room, the shooting video of the police officer pretending to be a customer, having graphic sexual conversations with a woman in lingerie immediately before other police come in and handcuff her to a chair. When I look at those surveillance videos that police sometimes even post to the internet themselves or will allow media outlets to do it for them, I'm sorry, I think it's fair to ask, how is this scenario distinguishable from a sex act? How is the scenario distinguishable from a cop and prostitute role play? How are police just reenacting these scenarios over and over again and they get paid for it, but she's not allowed to get paid for it? I mean, they are producing pornography.

The carceral eye is fundamentally a sexual eye. Feminists aren't the only ones being used or duped by the police. In fact, the primary targets of Melissa's book are journalists. Journalists, she says, do a terrible job of talking to sex workers and about sex workers. Some, like Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, even partner up with police for crusades to rescue sex workers all over the world. Journalists, she says, are the worst bootlickers of all. I mean, when I look at most of the journalism about prostitution and policing, it feels like it's still an expression of the police's wishes, perspective, point of view.

That's why I would call this the carceral eye in action. That's them applying this logic of criminalization to even the ways that they tell stories. And so, you know, the police are often the only people interviewed. The police's testimony is held up as the expert testimony. The sex workers who are at the other end of the sting aren't even considered to be part of the story, aren't even asked. They don't follow up with them to see what happens after they go to jail to see if this was effective. Was this a rescue? What happened to them? The central character is still the police. And I don't even know if most journalists understand that that's what they're doing because it is just, it's the convention. And sometimes they even collude

directly, I would say, in acts of law enforcement. So, you know, I noticed just in the last few years how many news websites now have these subsections where they have mug shots. And very often when women are featured in the mug shot sites, those are women who've been arrested for prostitution. Sometimes in addition to their photo, it will have their fully old name, their age, sometimes even where they live, the address of where they were arrested. And that's material that just because of the technology of the web is just out there. And it's, you know, it's not a conversation about sex work anymore. It's not, you know, it's not a conversation about sex work anymore. It's not, you know, sex workers aren't even present in that.

This is just sort of this feedback loop between the police and the journalists and the policymakers all thinking that they've got the solution and they're not even understanding how what they have attached themselves to as the solution, which is the system of policing, is actually one of the most violent

and destructive things for sex workers. Hello. Yes, caller, go ahead. Peter Choice, I need your help. Oh, is it Benjamin Walker? It is. You are the only person who can help me. Fancy that. Last Sunday, I was riding my bike up First Avenue in the bike lane, and I get pulled over.

And this awful, super aggressive cop writes me a ticket for riding through a red light. And it's $300. So the reason I'm calling you is that you are the number one person I know that is successful at dealing with the police and with the courts. So please tell me, what am I supposed to do? Here's the most important thing about winning in court. You always have to remember the three L's of court, of winning. And those three L's are lie, lie, lie.

No matter what the policeman says, just say, Your Honor, that is absolutely not true. I came to a complete and full stop. I have no idea why this just lie, lie, lie. Because if there is no camera, there is no proof. And it comes down to who did the judge like better, the jackbooted thug, or did he like the nice, poor, trying-to-be-well-dressed man in the wheelchair? Wheelchair?

Wheelchair is a very big help. The wheelchair skates so much that they would have to be very cruel to under a man in a wheelchair for defenseless. But Peter, I can't pull off the wheelchair, okay? I was on a bicycle. Oh, yeah. Bring a cane or something. Maybe this was a bad idea calling you.

A lot of people just pay these things. I can't believe that they do that. I don't even have $300 to pay this. Right. My motto is not a red cent. Not for my enemies. I'm not going to pay the other side of this war. These are fascists.

These are absolute homegrown fascists. And you know what? It works. It works. When I get a ticket for a red light, I go through 10 times more red lights just to get back at them. Because I don't want to develop a fear of breaking the law because I go to court and I always win. Okay. So tell me what I need to do.

One out of every three times, from my experience, the police just don't show up. And so that's always a possibility, and that has happened to me out of the 11 times, four times the cops didn't show up. It's that great. So it's always show up in court. Okay, so tell me some stories then about what happens when the cops do show up.

Like, what do you do? What do you say? The stories are all documented. I have a thick folder. I have a dossier of every time they tried to take me to court and tried to squeeze money out of me, and I won. I have everything all written down, and it's all right there. It is coming to a point, Your Honor, where there's a conspiracy from the state against me, Peter Choice. You say that to the judge? I have a goal. The goal is to win. So everything is a case-by-case basis. What do I have to do to follow the three L's to win?

How have you never lost? I never lost, but I had my own things. Like you say, you can't do, like the wheelchair. Okay, let's try it this way. Just tell me what you do to make the court side with you and not the police officer. All right? That's what I want to know. Well, we're going back.

The problem with the question here is everything I was bought in on was so amazing. It wasn't like I murdered somebody. It was things I really forgot. It was like there was only, I remember there was only one time I got a speeding ticket. The rest were all called moving violations. California is famous for this. You didn't come to a complete stop. Well, who does?

And this is a, here's one. I actually said this. Oh, I have two stories for you then. One is, Your Honor, in this huge grid that goes on for hundreds of thousands of square miles in Los Angeles, I go from point A in the east all the way point B in the west, and it takes me over an hour to get there and i make one mistake i followed every rule and came to a complete stop 99.9 percent of the time and the one time that i couldn't stop in time is when the policeman sees me, that is not fair. You didn't reward me for the 99 times that there was no policeman, that I did follow everything to the exact T of the law.

I once gave a speech like that and I got off. How could that possibly have worked? My other thing that I lied about, I followed the three L's, this is the classic. Once I went right through his stuff, they have these stupid, stupid things that you might recall in LA. They put a stop sign right before you're supposed to rev up to 60 miles an hour to get on the freeway. They put a stop sign right there on the entrance, right? And I never

would stop at them because in my car, it hurts the car to put on the brakes and then accelerate like that. So you just ignore the stop sign, right? Well, once there was a policeman right in back of me and I got a ticket. So I went to court and what did I say? I said, your honor, I saw, of course, the policeman was right behind me. Of course, I would stop at the stop sign. So I lied and I made it sound like, you know, and I actually got off. I said, how could I not stop at the stop sign when a policeman was exactly behind me? Well, the fact of the matter was I just didn't look behind me. I didn't see the policeman.

This is good. So, all right, all right, ready for this? So, I'm going to practice. So, Your Honor, I live on 4th Street, one block away from where this I was pulled over. Of course I am aware that the police station is on 5th Street, and the cops are always barreling down my street, sometimes with their lights on because they're too impatient to wait,

and going through red lights. You know, it's a big one of the hazards in my neighborhood. Maybe you could look into that. But, Your Honor, of course I'm aware that the police station is on 5th Street. So why would I go through the red light at 5th Street when I know the cops are always turning there? Good one.

Now you're catching. When you are the underdog and you are representing yourself, you don't know any legalese or anything. But you bring up a point like that, that why would I do this right on the same street as the police station? I mean, that makes perfect logical sense. Okay. So you have the three L's and then rule number one be logical. I also show that I'm not a lawyer.

I'm not really so smart, but I'm trying my best, Your Honor. You know, it's actually kind of hard to imagine you saying Your Honor in court, Peter. That's the most difficult thing for me to do. To say Your Honor to someone that I completely disrespect. Honor? You have my honor? What are you, a god figure?

So, rule number two, fake respect. And let's hope you can get at least a neutral judge, because there are pro-cop judges that want to extort the money for the state. For some reason, they get a percentage, I think. I don't know why. But if you can at least get a neutral judge to sway that, then you can get a judge, like sometimes you can get like a black female judge. They are more likely on your side. You can profile a judge the way they profile you.

So what about the cop? What do I do if he shows up? No matter what, whatever the policeman says, you know, don't roll your eyes or look disrespectful, but I think a little Henning, a little Warren, like, look, like,

absolutely surprised when he says, when he states whatever it is he states. Oh, but he's such a thug, Peter. I mean, one of the reasons I actually want him to show up is because I would like to make an official complaint about this guy. He was so awful. He was so rude.

It's like he decided to take out all of his anger that morning on me because I just happened to be there riding by like at old man's speed on a bike. And this guy is totally thugged out. He has tattoos on his knuckles. He has tattoos on his knuckles? I think that's in your favor. How? You say to the judge, hey, your honor, look at this guy.

He's got killed Jews tattooed on his knuckles. He does not have killed Jews tattooed on his knuckles. It doesn't matter. Who cares what it really says? I mean, you put the notion in their head and they'll believe it.

That's how the law works. I cannot believe you. Well, I can't believe me. It's my fault. What was I thinking calling you for advice? The guy's a thug.

You proved your point. Case closed. Next. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called The Bootleakers. wood leakers. This episode of The Theory of Everything was produced by myself, Benjamin Walker. It featured Andrew Rubin, Melissa Giragrant, and Peter Choice.

It was mixed by Bill Bowen, and we had production help from Ethan Cheal. Special thanks to Ravenna Koenig. At toe.prx.org, you can find notes for this episode and our back catalog. This is where you can also subscribe to the TOE podcast. And make sure to visit us on iTunes and rate the show, because that is what helps us rise to the top of the podcast soup.

This program is also part of the Radiotopia Network from PRX. Radiotopia from PRX