NEW YORK, Feb. 9 (DPI) — In another era George Monbiot might have been called a communist subversive. But today – in this cacophonous age of a million small audiences, and only a few communists – he’s just subversive.
Why? Because readers tell him every day.
Monbiot, a regular columnist with The Guardian newspaper of Britain, is more than a gadfly — he’s fast becoming the foremost agent provocateur of online commentary. His ideas are far-out: He recently proposed a “maximum wage” for private sector executives, posited that Conservatives have lower IQs — and then said the Left is even dumber because it can’t counter the Right’s influence.
In a sense his commentaries – sometimes rambling and always strident – are secondary: That’s because reader comments reacting to his column are among the most colorful and lively anywhere.
The US media has influential columnists from Krugman and Krauthammer, but none of them go off the markets-oriented ideological reservation quite the way Monbiot does. Thus he spurs a huge and entertaining range of reader feedback, both from readers in Europe and the US.
Monbiot, now in his late 40s, is a onetime documentary filmmaker for the BBC, who along the way reported on the modern-day degradations of both the earth and the poor. According to Wikipedia his efforts made him persona non grata in no fewer than six countries.
Fundamentally he is anti free-market, and believes that all public policy should focus on wealth transfer: “There should be a cast-iron rule for all public policy: it must not discriminate against the poor,” Monbiot recently wrote in a column in energy subsidies. “No tax or charge should be approved which transfers money from the poor to the rich.”
What’s more, Monbiot has strong views on the environment and global warming, a kind of parallel cause to championing the world’s poor. He is a great rarity in mainstream media today: He is a global socialist and internationalist. His ideological cousins, of course, were regularly sent to Gulags in the first half of the 20th century.
Here’s how he began his recent screed against bankers’ compensation:
“The successful bank robber no longer covers his face and leaps over the counter with a sawn-off shotgun. He arrives in a chauffeur-driven car, glides into the lift then saunters into an office at the top of the building. No one stops him. No one, even when the scale of the heist is revealed, issues a warrant for his arrest. The modern robber obtains prior approval from the institution he is fleecing.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/23/george-monbiot-executive-pay-robbery
And a typical reader reply:
“Monbiot’s article is the usual bunch of socialist bollocks. Do I know what the answer to this issue is? Hell no, but the minute you set a ceiling on what people are allowed to earn, you immediately run the risk of the inventors, entrepreneurs, and other potential high earners moving to places where there are less onerous restrictions. Also, would this not reduce the taxes that can be received from such people, or is the intent to seize 100% of any earnings above a certain (arbitrary) level?”
Even competitors can’t resist reacting to him: