Paul Mason
Paul Mason is the economics editor of the BBC’s flagship current affairsprogram Newsnight and appears frequently on BBC World News America.He has covered globalization and social justice stories from locations aroundthe world, including Latin America, Africa and China. His book Live Working,Die Fighting was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.Blog
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Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere
Two days before International Workers Day and Paul Mason, BBC Journalist and author of Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere, asserts a global revoultion is taking place.
Read the article in full here."Two years on from the Arab Spring, I’m clearer about what it was that it inaugurated: it is a revolution. In some ways it parallels the revolutions of before – 1848, 1830, 1789 – and there are also echoes of the Prague spring, the US civil rights movement, the Russian ‘mad summer of 1874’ … but in other ways it is unique. Above all, the relationship between the physical and the mental, the political and the cultural, seems to be inverted. There is a change in consciousness, the intuition that something big is possible, that a great change in the world’s priorities is within people’s grasp."
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"The neoliberal era is over"—Paul Mason multimedia links
Earlier this month, BBC economics editor and author of Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere Paul Mason, took part in two conversations in New York, which are now available online.
On April 11, Mason talked to NYU students about his journalism. A video of the talk—which includes his film about the neo-fascist party España 2000—can be viewed here.
Last week, Mason spoke to American labor journalists Sarah Jaffe and Josh Eidelson about Margaret Thatcher, austerity resistance in Europe, and the end of the neoliberal era, for the second episode of Dissent magazine’s new podcast, Belabored. To listen, click here and to subscribe, search “Belabored” in iTunes. -
The welfare state we’re in – A reading list for the present class war
In the UK this month austerity has revealed itself to be in the mode of naked class war. Monday began with welfare reforms, the introduction of the notorious bedroom tax and reductions in the access to Legal Aid. These attacks will be followed in the coming weeks by the replacing of disability living allowance with a personal independence payment policed by Atos, the reduction in the 50p tax rate (providing tax cuts to the rich) and the introduction of the controversial Universal Credit scheme. Combined with other aspects of late capitalism (from food prices to housing shortages) the reality of life in austerity Britain is uglier than it has been for some time.
With textbook ideological manoeuvring these assaults have been accompanied by a rhetoric designed to divide the working classes between “workers and shirkers.” To the chorus of the right wing press, statements, such as this one by Liam Fox or this from Iain Duncan Smith, ultimately aim to crush the possibility of an organized resistance. Most revealing this week has been efforts by the right wing to frame the horrific Philpott manslaughter as a result of ‘benefit dependency.’ Almost beyond belief, this story’s beginnings in the Daily Mail and right wing blogs were reinforced yesterday with this statement from the grubbiest man on earth: Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
Discussions
Discussions occur on book pages throughout the site. The most recent discussions about the works of Paul Mason are listed below.
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In the new edition of his acclaimed account of the financial crisis, Paul Mason shows how, for the last fourteen months, the illusion has been sustained that no matter how badly the world economy slumps, there is always a pain-free way out of it. With the realisation slowly dawning that there is not, and that the pain will be severe, the question is: who should feel it?