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Zemblanity, the antonym of serendipity, conspired recently to map a pattern, a kaleidoscopic reflection of reality, that’s as glaringly obvious as it is vehemently denied. Criminality in its many forms, so often denounced as aberrations, are in fact the default settings, the modus operandi, of the institutions that organise our lives.

The foundational image, around which this idea formed, settled when some thoughts on Doug Liman’s heist gone bad movie The Instigators (2024), cut across an interview with former city trader Gary Stevenson. Slicing through what should’ve felt like revelations but didn’t, was a transcript of Carol Vorderman‘s Alternative MacTaggart lecture. The final sliver of zemblanity was the publication of Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s inquest report into the Grenfell disaster.

The first image turned to face me while I was considering the internal logic, the organising principle, driving the behaviour of everyone in The Instigators (2024). The filmmakers ask us to think of the titular instigators, the criminals doing the heist, as revolutionaries. It’s a romantic vision of transgression that obscures a sinister truth, the criminals in the film are the least dishonest players, and it’s the “legitimate” society that’s corrupt to the core. Once you’ve internalised that reality, it’s half a turn more to the realisation, criminals are just the ones who get caught.

The Instigators (2024)

This view of society, as seen through the lens of a fiction, solidified into fact when I heard the personal experiences of former city trader Gary Stevenson.

In 2011 Stevenson became Citibank’s most profitable trader, in the world. He achieved his position by betting “society would collapse” and “the economy was never going to get better”.

It won’t surprise anyone to know most traders come from privilege. A private education, followed by an elite university, all cushioned by the advantages of wealth. This path inevitably creates myopic individuals “dehumanised in a way” who don’t care about the real-world consequences of what they do. At the time “I never really stopped to think” confesses Stevenson “because my job was to bet on these things”. But he came from a “very poor background” outside of these elitist pathways, and eventually realised “ordinary people would get poorer” their “living standards would collapse” and nothing was being done about it.

When Stevenson finally made the decision to leave Citibank, his manager took him to dinner and told him the story of a “nice guy, good trader” at Deutsche Bank, dragged through the courts and eventually bankrupted. Deutsche Bank went though the guys trades, all his emails, and dredged up whatever nuggets of compromising information they could. Stevenson was told “I like you, I think you’re a good person, but sometimes bad things happen to good people. We can make life very difficult for you. You’re going to find out about that”.

I think you’d struggle to find a more concise example of the business mindset. As Stevenson points out, it’s “so obviously similar to the way… gangsters speak”, as ruthless as anything heard in the unassuming cafes and gloomy bars of the criminal underworld. It’s little wonder Stevenson thinks “a lot of the guys who become traders, if they grew up on the (Ilford) streets I grew up on, would’ve been drug dealers”. But they didn’t and they’re not.

It’s clear to me, these “too big to fail” institutions are more than willing to accept cut corners, shady practices, illegality, if there’s money to be made. But when an earner expressed a desire “to leave and work for charity” they start “very strongly implying” legal action, intent on wreaking his life.

“The truth is, your family background, where you went to school… determine whether or not you even get your foot through the door, let alone rise through the ranks.” That’s not Stevenson talking but broadcaster Carol Vorderman telling a concurrent truth, this time about the television industry.

Her recent Alternative MacTaggart lecture describes an industry “dominated by nepotism” and unsurprisingly “run by the upper middle class”. If you doubt this, a recent study by the Sutton Trust Social Mobility and Opportunity found “children from richer families enjoy better opportunities in schools (62%), universities (62%)… and jobs (54%)”. In another of their studies Elitist Britain 2019 they highlight “a ‘pipeline’ from independent schools through Oxbridge and into top jobs”. And in yet another, now very old report The Educational Backgrounds of Leading Journalists they found more than “half (54%) of the country’s leading news journalists were educated in private schools”. To put that in context, only 7% of the population get a private school education.

This deliberately constructed, protectionist, pipeline is fed and maintained by, as Vorderman so eloquently puts it, snobbery, “regional snobbery, class snobbery and educational snobbery” all conspiring to create an ecosystem of “programmes awash with views given by those with acceptable accents”. It’s the “same faces talking to the same faces in the same conversations” especially when it comes to political programming. As Noam Chomsky once said to journalists Andrew Marr “if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”.

Another, more accurate, way to understand snobbery, is dissociation. The same detachment from consequence pointed to by Stevenson, allows the beneficiaries of this pipeline to act without conscience or imagination, and without imagination there is no empathy.

Stevenson had become the most profitable Citibank trader in the world betting that society would collapse, and “everybody could see that I’d done that” but no one cared, no one thought, “Should we do something?” because they put their gains before everything else.

If we live in a predatory systems, as I think we do, government should protect its citizens against exploitation, but it doesn’t. In fact, I’d argue, the government is just as much a predator as any individual or business or class. Why have successive governments been so invested in the policy of privatisation? Privatisation is sold as the way to improve services, that’s a lie. Privatisation is just an efficient way to syphon public money into private hands. It’s aggravated daylight robbery. It’s criminal. Which brings me to the last in my kaleidoscope of stories, Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s inquest report into the 72 deaths in Grenfell Tower.

The 1700 page report points the finger of blame in many directions, at cladding manufacturers and architects, builders and third-party testing bodies, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and David Cameron’s “bonfire of red tape” so enthusiastically supported by housing secretary Eric Pickles. But it’s the attitude of the Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) who “consistently ignored residents’ views” and engaged in a “pattern of concealment… in relation to fire safety matters” that reveals the real, foundational, base, reason for this tragedy, dissociation, snobbery.

The TMO had this deadly facade installed on Grenfell because they wanted to “improve its physical appearance… prevent it looking like a poor relation” of other properties in the area. They didn’t care about the tenants of a rundown tower block, only how it looked to their rich neighbours. “Any suggestion it was to improve energy efficiency came later.” One of the richest boroughs in London, with some the most expensive property in the world, didn’t like how a tower block looked. And because the landlord saw those tenants as less than they cut corners, ignored warnings, and clad it in an unsafe product.

Following the publication of the Moore-Bick Report a major police inquiry is under way. Offences could include “corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, fraud, perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office”. But we’ll have to wait, who knows how long, for charges, court proceedings, and any convictions. I have one word to describe my expectations, Hillsborough. 

I’m not saying there aren’t laws or standards of behaviour. I’m saying those laws and standards of behaviour are only considered when the person or company, institution or government, get caught causing harm. Actions speak, and they tell me, only gain is considered.

This criminality permeates every aspect of society. The previous government’s attempts to achieve personal and political gain were extensive. They lied about the benefits of leaving the European Union. Promoted herd immunity at the beginning of the pandemic. Partied during lockdown. Created a VIP procurement lane so friends and donors of the Conservative Party could secure lucrative PPE contracts. They implemented think tank driven policy. Proposed unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy. Introduced authoritarian privacy intrusions and attacks on civil liberties. Crashed the economy. Their actions were criminal both literally and metaphorically.

Into these obvious, headline grabbing, examples of harm I’d lump swathes of other dissociated behaviours, including high prices, low wages, soaring rents, unsafe housing, food poverty, innutritious foodstuffs, fast food, brainwashing algorithms, advertising propaganda, nudge theory, collecting information, selling secrets, profiteering public services, tax dodging multinationals, money laundering banks, low tax territories, colonialism, wars, genocide, ecocide. They’re getting away with murder.

Understanding all of this, seeing what so often looks like a kaleidoscopic mess, relies on separating the binaries of right and wrong, of knowing the difference between the two. But if your life, your entire reason, is unchecked self-interest, then it’s not hard to see how doing what benefits you is considered right and good, regardless of the consequences to others. That to me reeks and wreaks psychopathic. And if that’s the dominant behaviour being pushed and practiced, business as usual, we’re all trapped by a self-perpetuating misery that forces us to choose, exploit or be exploited. To survive these structures, never mind thrive in them, we must become something toxic not only to those around us, but to ourselves. We shouldn’t have to live like this.

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Source:

1. The Instigators (2024)
2. How Millionaire Bankers Actually Work – Insider
3. Everything that is Wrong with the TV Industry
4. The Alternative MacTaggart
5. Grenfell report blames decades of government failure and ‘systematic dishonesty’ of companies
6. Grenfell Tower fire report who was at fault and what was landlord’s role
7. ExxonMobil knew, they knew!
8. The Big Idea – Noam Chomsky on Propaganda – Transcript
9. Social Mobility and Opportunity
10. Elitist Britain 2019
11. The Educational Backgrounds of Leading Journalists