INTERVIEW: LOWKEY DISCUSSES THE 2017 GENERAL ELECTION AND HIS SUPPORT FOR CORBYN

Lowkey speaks on his stance on the 2017 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and why we need to be engaged in the polit­ic­al pro­cess with fel­low artist Apex Zero for I Am Hip Hop Magazine and Glob­al Fac­tion. 

Apex: You’ve come out, in past inter­views and your social media, strongly in sup­port of Jeremy Corbyn. You’ve been clear and unam­bigu­ous with that sup­port. So for any­one who hasn’t heard your views, could you tell us why you sup­port him?

Lowkey: He is rep­res­ent­at­ive of dis­sent, rep­res­ent­at­ive of a rejec­tion of an eco­nom­ic philo­sophy that became pre­val­ent in this coun­try (and the U.S) since the 1970–80s.This ideo­logy, which became the dom­in­ant and defin­ing eco­nom­ic philo­sophy of our time, is neo­lib­er­al­ism. The idea of neo­lib­er­al­ism is that the mar­ket must be left unim­peded to be allowed accu­mu­late as much cap­it­al as pos­sible. What that leads to is a polit­ic­al class that believes in a weak state. At no point have we had the oppor­tun­ity to elect a lead­er who has been unequi­voc­ally clear about the inequal­ity and des­pair caused by neo­lib­er­al­ism. Instead, we have been offered crypto-pro­gress­ives of the mod­el like Obama & Tony Blair, who appeal to aes­thet­ic needs (in some ways) through mys­ti­fy­ing lan­guage. Jeremy Corybn has been abso­lutely clear. He is talk­ing about ren­ation­al­iz­ing the energy, water, rail­way and postal sec­tors that in the Thatch­er era had privat­ised.  Our pub­lic ser­vices have been turned into busi­ness com­mod­it­ies to be bar­gained over.

We see this hap­pen­ing across the board. Brit­North­Sea Oil is now part owned by a Chinese com­pany. BP is now owned by Amer­ic­ans.  So what I find so amaz­ing is that the Con­ser­vat­ives are able to employ the sym­bol­ism of pat­ri­ot­ism whilst sim­ul­tan­eously dam­aging the coun­try. That’s why I use the term, ‘glitch in the mat­rix.’ That’s what Jeremy Corbyn is. That’s why he’s been pro­pelled to this pos­i­tion. He goes against New Labour, who stands for the accept­ance of neo­lib­er­al­ism as the most ideal way for a soci­ety to func­tion.

The myth behind neo­lib­er­al­ism is the idea of ‘trickle down’ eco­nom­ics – which has been proven to be a com­plete lie by people like Joseph Stiglitz. It leads to more inequal­ity, not less. We are now in a coun­try where 250,000 people are home­less. 1 in every 59 people with­in Lon­don are home­less. We have mil­lions of chil­dren offi­cially liv­ing in poverty. Two-thirds of those chil­dren are from homes with work­ing par­ents. How are we going to alle­vi­ate these issues?

Corbyn has come in and said ‘I’m going to build 1 mil­lion homes, half of them coun­cil houses’ and ‘I will get rid of zero-hour con­tracts and bring in a £10 per hour min­im­um wage’. Mean­while Teresa May com­pounds the afore­men­tioned issues by intro­du­cing tuition fees for nurses to ensnare them in debt.  Corbyn pri­or­it­ises try­ing to invest £30 bil­lion into the NHS. It is a choice about what kind of soci­ety we can live in.

The oth­er thing that is so insi­di­ous with neo­lib­er­al­ism is that it hides behind the ambi­gu­ity of bur­eau­cracy. For example, if the Tor­ies cut dis­abled liv­ing allow­ance and you are someone who relies on it to live, who can you blame? Can you blame your loc­al bene­fits officer? You can’t, because it wasn’t their per­son­al decision. Jeremy Corbyn is rep­res­ent­at­ive of an idea; dis­sent against neo­lib­er­al eco­nom­ics.

Apex: I hear you. That is a strong and val­id point. Espe­cially the idea that he is a product of a move­ment, and this is not just about Corbyn, it is about chal­len­ging the cur­rent mod­el.

For me, to hear you, who in the past has been extremely crit­ic­al of the polit­ic­al sys­tem as a whole, to back someone who is a part of that sys­tem, sounds very strange. The Labour Party, who Corbyn is the lead­er of, has been a part of cre­at­ing and uphold­ing neo­lib­er­al­ism.

Lowkey: Jeremy has held his Labour con­stitu­ency since 1983, but it was the decision of the James Callaghan gov­ern­ment that lead to neo­lib­er­al­ism becom­ing the eco­nom­ic philo­sophy of this coun­try when he took his $3.9 bil­lion loan from the IMF. What the IMF has done all over the world is con­demned many soci­et­ies into cor­por­ate ser­vitude. Once the loan is taken, they come in and push their struc­tur­al adjust­ment plans and sell off huge parts of the state The IMF are essen­tially a con­glom­er­ate of the bank­ing sys­tem. You are right that Corbyn is a mem­ber of that party. But if you look at his vot­ing record and the cam­paigns, it’s clear that hav­ing him in num­ber 10 is bene­fi­cial. Moreover, if we look at the mani­festo he’s put togeth­er, it is by no means rad­ic­al, but it is bat­tling the cor­por­at­isa­tion of this coun­try. Jeremy is talk­ing about rais­ing cor­por­ate taxes to 26%, that’s not massively rad­ic­al; it’s merely bring­ing it back to the level it was at in 2010. The big argu­ment against this is that cor­por­a­tions will leave this coun­try and that will cause mass unem­ploy­ment. I’ll tell you why that’s not true; dur­ing the Thatch­er era the cor­por­a­tion tax was about 50%.

So, to answer your ques­tion dir­ectly, what would make me sup­port Jeremy Corbyn? I, as a human being, devel­op, and my ideas that devel­op. If we had a con­ver­sa­tion in 2007 and then again in 2017, it’s inev­it­able we would devel­op and our ideas would change. In many ways, we may also be the same per­son. In terms of judging this situ­ation; I’m judging the mani­festo, I’m judging off his vot­ing record. The Iraq war has been the most opposed mil­it­ary action, quite pos­sibly, in human his­tory. No oth­er war mobil­ized so many people to demon­stra­tion it in oppos­i­tion. We now know com­pletely futile our protest was as the war still went ahead. The mech­an­isms of the state and the viol­ence still went ahead. We’re still deal­ing with the rami­fic­a­tion to this today. On anoth­er point, 75% of people going to uni­ver­sity will die without pay­ing off their debt. We pro­tested that too. We were beaten by police and they still went ahead raised the fees. Now we have a politi­cian say­ing he’ll erase that debt, alle­vi­at­ing the issue for people already in that debt. I have a mor­al imper­at­ive and oblig­a­tion to sup­port someone com­ing through with that kind of mani­festo. For me to turn around and not sup­port someone like that – it’d be an act of crass selfish­ness that I could not for­give myself for. As an artist, I am in a pos­i­tion where I can be a con­duit for cer­tain ideas.  Most of the time people who have a fol­low­ing like I do play the role of a con­duit to big busi­ness. I have the oppor­tun­ity to be a con­duit to sub­vers­ive action. There­fore, I use my voice to the abso­lute fur­thest extent. This is some­thing that our chil­dren may thank us for.

 Apex: I hear you. It’s raised two key things I want to ask you. I under­stand that his mani­festo has made a lot of beau­ti­ful sound­ing prom­ises. I also agree with your point about protest­ing against the war tuition fees which was ignored…

Lowkey:  And he (Corbyn) was there protest­ing with us.

Apex: Sure. Even if we say ‘he voted against the war’ – he’s still been a part of the sys­tem that allowed it to hap­pen. He’s believes in the polit­ic­al pro­cess that sup­presses his and our wishes. As someone who was also involved in those protests, I believe that the situ­ation isn’t futile, but the sys­tem is. My issue is that even if he is the most genu­ine and caring politi­cian; could he even change the sys­tem that we have? That’s the first ques­tion. He still has to con­vince par­lia­ment to vote in favour of his agenda, which is incred­ibly dif­fi­cult to do. Then you have still have pass it up to the Lords who can reject it. Secondly; I think the ques­tion isn’t wheth­er we should vote May or Corbyn, it’s should the people even engage with an arti­fi­cial form of demo­cracy? The sys­tem sug­gests it has par­ti­cip­a­tion by people, but if you study the actu­al nature of what demo­cracy is sup­posed to be – this is not it. A lot of politi­cians rep­res­ent big busi­ness not the will of the major­ity. For me, by par­tak­ing in that pro­cess, you are in a sense legit­im­at­ising it.  I agree you have an import­ant voice as an artist. I feel you are lead­ing people back into a sys­tem a lot of us, your­self included, have been telling people to be scep­tic­al of. I know those are two big ques­tions!

Lowkey: Ok, num­ber one, I’ll break down in two ways. Jeremy Corbyn is not put­ting him­self for­ward as a revolu­tion­ary. What it seems to me is that you are put­ting for­ward is a revolu­tion­ary argu­ment. Undoubtedly, we live in a time where state oppres­sion is powered by tech­no­lo­gic­al advance­ment. To pur­sue civil dis­obedi­ence has a place of import­ance. How­ever if you are pur­su­ing revolu­tion­ary activ­ity, the oppres­sion is so strong that it’s not really a likely you will suc­ceed. Corbyn is a social-demo­crat; he believes that he can use the bal­lot to pur­sue change. What you’re allud­ing to is what Shel­don Wolin refers to as ‘inver­ted total­it­ari­an­ism’. Essen­tially point­ing out how the epis­od­ic nature of ‘demo­cracy’ we live in is over­shad­owed by unchangable things, i.e. people can vote for a new pres­id­ent but can’t vote against the interest of Wall Street or private banks. Same thing here, we can’t vote against North­ern Rock being sub­sid­ized in a semi-privat­iz­a­tion of the treas­ury of this coun­try, we can’t vote against, say, the Mon­archy; that’s not open to your vote. But we vote for a more par­ti­cip­at­ory pro­cess and this is an oppor­tun­ity for that. You may sup­port that, you may not. You are in a situ­ation where you have to choose between your chil­dren being ensnared in debt for the rest of their lives or being able to go to uni­ver­sity, which would you choose? You have to choice between help­ing a dis­abled per­son afford 3 meals a day or sur­viv­ing off a car­ton of milk, which do you choose? That’s what this is about, it’s not about the wider polit­ic­al issues that you’re talk­ing about, but that doesn’t in any way neg­ate their valid­ity. We have the abil­ity to effect change through par­ti­cip­at­ing in vot­ing. That doesn’t mean that the deep­er state isn’t con­spir­ing against this change. That doesn’t stop the mil­it­ary say­ing if Jeremy was to get into power they would con­sider launch­ing a coup. I just don’t believe in per­ceiv­ing polit­ics in such an abso­lut­ist way as many do, and I think that is dis­ap­point­ing, as we have a chance to make a real change.

If the Tor­ies win, people will die. We can sit there with our arms fol­ded and say, ‘oh it would have happened under Corbyn’,  but we don’t know that it would would. If May wins, it will hap­pen. She will privat­ise the NHS. Look at the U.S, people can’t afford to get urgent treat­ment so they have to chose between their health and debt. It’s not the kind of sys­tem that you want to live in. These are things that are pos­it­ive about this soci­ety and we can’t deny that. As much as we have exper­i­enced the bru­tal­iz­a­tion at the hands of this soci­ety; on a spir­itu­al, emo­tion­al, and psy­cho­lo­gic­al level, it doesn’t neg­ate that the positive’s aspects that were fought for and won by people like Corbyn. At every point through­out his­tory there have been people who’ve said ‘noth­ing pos­it­ive will come of par­ti­cip­at­ing in the polit­ic­al pro­cess’. Then they (those who par­ti­cip­ated) passed a law that out­lawed chil­dren work­ing under the age of 12, and then they gave women the right to vote.  Why par­ti­cip­ate? – Because people’s lives will improve.  It is silly not to.

Apex: That’s the point I think – it’s not about win­ning the argu­ment over who is right, it’s about improv­ing and sav­ing lives. My strategy has been not to legit­im­ize the pro­cess, which in itself is ille­git­im­ate, and imposed the laws that we are try­ing to erase in the first place.

Lowkey:  Wheth­er we legit­im­ize or not, it exists. It’s not wait­ing on my indi­vidu­al recog­ni­tion of it. I buy food to live and I pay tax to this state. So in that way we are sup­port­ing the state. I don’t think any­one should be con­demned for want­ing changes to the con­di­tions of people’s lives. I think your point is, can we have hope with­in that equa­tion? My answer is, yes we can.

Apex: There are people who will argue to their grave that Theresa May is the per­son who will best improve the mater­i­al con­di­tions of people’s lives.

Lowkey: Yeah but they’re actu­ally wrong. People will fac­tu­ally, mater­i­ally be stolen from.It is Robin Hood in reverse – the dis­tri­bu­tion of wealth upwards. That is what happened when they cut bene­fits.

Apex: Agreed. Mov­ing on to anoth­er point. After the Blair era, voter par­ti­cip­a­tion slid rap­idly, until this elec­tion. In the last elec­tion had a 56% voter turn out. Dav­id Camer­on has argued that if less than 50% of uni­on mem­bers vote, it should be con­sidered ille­git­im­ate. So if vot­ing turnouts sink under 50% in this elec­tion, it would show the ille­git­im­acy of their own sys­tem. That could poten­tially force big­ger sys­tem­at­ic changes. I under­stand it’s not always just about massive ideo­lo­gic­al shifts. The small changes are import­ant. But to me, this was a win­dow of oppor­tun­ity to make a strong state­ment. To then encour­age people to re-engage with the sys­tem goes against all of that.

Lowkey: I think that’s an inter­est­ing idea. But one of the things your idea is rely­ing on is the idea of inver­ted total­it­ari­an­ism. That revolves around the demo­bil­iz­a­tion of masses by the cor­por­ate media. So while I think what you’re say­ing is def­in­itely inter­est­ing and may be a pos­sib­il­ity, it rely­ing on a pop­u­lous that has been largely de-politi­cised though neo­lib­er­al pro­pa­ganda to act in the oppos­ite man­ner.

We could philo­soph­ize with each oth­er until the cows come home, but what really counts is human being beings live’s. These policies will actu­ally affect who gets to live. Why let people die, when people have the chance to con­tin­ue liv­ing. To me, that is the begin­ning and end­ing of it. I’m not here wav­ing uni­on jacks and singing ‘God Save the Queen’, that’s not me bruv, but it’s not Corbyn either. I think if we were to pass up this chance, we’d regret it.

Apex: I hear you. But this hope in a polit­ic­al lead­er, haven’t we been here to a degree before?

Lowkey: I don’t think we have.

Apex: Prom­ises are made by politi­cians are usu­ally broken. Things are giv­en in one hand, and things are taken in the oth­er. Even worse, often atro­cit­ies are com­mit­ted whilst good things being imple­men­ted. Prob­ably the best example of this in liv­ing memory is Obama. You laid out per­fectly in ‘Obaman­a­tion’. Des­pite the ‘hope’ and ‘change’ cam­paign, the dream of hav­ing being a black pres­id­ent – all we got was neo­lib­er­al­ism and war mon­ger­ing. I under­stand he has some dif­fer­ent polit­ic­al ideals to Corbyn, but it’s a very sim­il­ar set of cir­cum­stances. A cham­pi­on of the people who has voted for ‘pro­gress­ive’ (I hate to use that term) prom­ises. He prom­ised to shut down Guantanamo, he prom­ised to with­draw from Iraq and Afgh­anistan; none of those things happened, not to men­tion the war atro­cit­ies that were com­mit­ted dur­ing his terms.

Lowkey: Corbyn and Obama come from an ideo­lo­gic­ally dif­firent place, that’s why I focus on neo­lib­er­al­ism. The state is not com­pelled to act against com­pan­ies. It has led to things like ‘TPP’ which is a law where cor­por­a­tions can bring charges against states if they try to reg­u­late them. For example, tobacco com­pan­ies have taken charges against the Aus­trali­an and Uruguay­an gov­ern­ment for want­ing to put health warn­ings on cigar­ette pack­ets. That’s what neo­lib­er­al­ism does, it is a mor­ally bank­rupt eco­nom­ic philo­sophy that has been proven to be harm­ful, that it causes inequal­ity, that it causes poverty, that it causes people to die.

To be hon­est I feel you are paint­ing a false equi­val­ency between Obama and Corbyn because they are both polit­ic­al fig­ures. Again I, pose the ques­tion to you, if you have to choose between a mem­ber of your fam­ily hav­ing 3 meals a day or sur­viv­ing off milk. If you have to choose between a mem­ber of your fam­ily dying in debt or being able to go to uni­ver­sity. If you have to choose between a mem­ber of your fam­ily dying from cold or liv­ing in warmth, what would you choose? That’s what this is about.

Apex: I under­stand. That ques­tion you pose there is a very is poignant one. But I can’t answer a short term ques­tion without think­ing about the long term rami­fic­a­tions.    

Lowkey: Of course, you’re right, it is short term because it’s 5 years. Look at the United States, their lead­er is will­ing to let fuel com­pan­ies dic­tate their cli­mate policy; they’re allow­ing mil­it­ary indus­tri­al com­plexes to dic­tate their for­eign policy. On a wider scale we have a choice between the between the sur­viv­al of the human race. The choice of do we con­tin­ue waging wars. Jeremy, as imper­fect as he may be, is far less likely to kill hun­dreds and thou­sands of people in a heart­beat. Some­thing May has said she would do.

 Apex: Well, we don’t know that for a fact.

Lowkey: I’ll tell you why we know that. We are deal­ing with some­body that was cam­paign­ing against wars since before we were born. It is wrong to for us to turn around and use oth­er polit­ic­al exper­i­ences (like Obama) and some­how apply it to this situ­ation. It is not right.

Apex: If he does become prime min­is­ter and shit has hit the fan, where he is being told by his peers that you need to attack a cer­tain coun­try, or you need to press that but­ton. It is impossible for us to say, ‘no, he would not do that’. He might have a more con­sidered opin­ion but we still don’t know that he wouldn’t do it.

Lowkey:  Then it is impossible to say that he would.

Apex: I’m not say­ing that he would, I’m say­ing we can’t deny that it is a pos­sib­il­ity.  

Lowkey: It is impossible to say if Jeremy would, but it is def­in­ite that Theresa May would. So there’s your choice – who are you going to chose?

Apex: It’s dan­ger­ous to paint a pic­ture to people that this guy is not going to that.  

Lowkey: This idea, this nihil­ism, this apathy is dan­ger­ous. Hon­estly, I believe that if some­body sits really stud­ies his track record and his mani­festo; they’ll see that it is in their own interest to vote Labour. Even though, they’ll be para­dox­ic­ally vot­ing in many people who are mem­bers of the party who are anti-Corbyn off the back of this.

Apex: Yeah, for sure.

 Lowkey: Two-thirds of his party are saboteurs, essen­tially against him. Yet many are going to be voted into their seats off the strength of him. This is con­tra­dict­ory, nobody’s deny­ing that. Just ask your­self, are we in a bet­ter pos­i­tion with him in num­ber 10? It’s as simple as that. It’s an easy decision.

Apex: This is going to sound very nihil­ist­ic. There is an argu­ment he can’t make much of a dif­fer­ence at all, because, as you said, he has a massive amount of saboteurs in his party. If he wants to pass the motion to say, abol­ish fees, he has to con­vince two-thirds of his party, who think dif­fer­ently. Not to men­tion the oppos­i­tion or the House of Lord.

Lowkey: The labour party have all signed on to the mani­festo.

Apex:  To win an elec­tion, to win an elec­tion bro.

 Lowkey: You’re say­ing to win an elec­tion. But in life, we can’t pass spec­u­lat­ive asper­sions on oth­er people’s motives. We’re deal­ing with people’s lives here, we’re deal­ing with real prob­lems in this coun­try, we have to try and address them. If we have the chance to address them and we don’t address them, it’s selfish. We have a small win­dow of time and oppor­tun­ity to do good in this world. If we can have some kind of pos­it­ive affect on oth­er people, we should use it. That doesn’t mean that the wider, over­arch­ing issues of injustice and our unfree­dom aren’t import­ant. In no way, shape or form I am say­ing that injustice should be giv­en a free pass.

I think we’ve reached a point of dis­agree­ment. I’m com­pletely con­vinced of my point and it seems you’re con­vinced of yours. That’s fair enough man, that’s com­pletely fine. I will implore you, and any­one read­ing this to vote because – I’ll say it again – this is a ques­tion of people’s lives.

One thing that Jeremy spoke about, which was def­in­itely sig­ni­fic­ant for me, and I ima­gine for you, as well as many oth­ers in our coun­try; is put­ting the colo­ni­al his­tory of the Brit­ish Empire on the edu­ca­tion cur­riculum. This would make a cog­nit­ive dif­fer­ence on a soci­et­al level. It would make us, as a soci­ety; recog­nize all the cul­tures of its own cit­izens that have been com­pletely wiped out by the Brit­ish Empire.  This is some­thing that nobody else in his pos­i­tion has ever pre­vi­ously spoken about and is sig­ni­fic­ant for real change.

He has also men­tioned issu­ing offi­cial apo­lo­gies for the 2003 Iraq inva­sion. That would open up leg­al pos­sib­il­ity for the pro­sec­u­tion of Tony Blair. That is why they (the polit­ic­al class) fear him. This action could open up the poten­tial for repar­a­tions and help atone, on a soci­et­al level, for our deeds.

You know the very idea of ‘Brit­ish­ness’ is amal­gam­a­tion of oth­er cul­tures which we have taken. The quint­es­sen­tially Eng­lish prac­tice of drink­ing tea is not nat­ive to Bri­tain. There’s not one tea plant in this coun­try. The sug­ar we put in tea came from the slave trade. Even Prince Philip, the fath­er of the future king, is an immig­rant. The idea of Brit­ish nation­al iden­tity is a con­tra­dic­tion. Corbyn is cer­tainly pro­gress­ive in terms of recog­niz­ing these aspects of this country’s his­tory. This is import­ant, as I believe so many of our society’s prob­lems are rooted in this deni­al of the past.

Apex: Well, this won’t be easy. Is that enough to chal­lenge the cen­tur­ies long colo­ni­al ideo­lo­gies?

Lowkey: He said that he would try, he would aim to make it part of the new gen­er­a­tions edu­ca­tion­al cur­riculum. Now, is that a pos­it­ive thing or no?

Apex: Of course.

Lowkey: What he is sug­gest­ing is not rad­ic­al. I sense maybe you are look­ing for a more rad­ic­al change. I am as well, but he is address­ing import­ant points and try­ing to make a pos­it­ive change. Mean­while the oth­er side (right-wing) is only try­ing to push neg­at­ive changes.

Apex: Sure, I agree with that. My issue is that should we be try­ing to assim­il­ate to the sys­tem? I feel like from my own stud­ies and exper­i­ences that we have star­ted to move away from the idea that we should be ask­ing for help from the oppress­or.

I am not neces­sar­ily say­ing this about Corbyn, but rather the polit­ic­al sys­tem, which, as you know, stemmed from the Empire you just men­tioned. This polit­ic­al sys­tem was the force that enabled the crimes of colo­ni­al­ism. To ask that very polit­ic­al sys­tem to solve your prob­lems is some­thing that I’ve strongly dis­agreed with for a long time. I’ve played with the idea that maybe we should in some ways engage in the polit­ic­al sys­tem. I have thought maybe we can make short term changes; maybe we can aim for a restruc­ture of the sys­tem. But if you are going to encour­age change, shouldn’t we do it whole­heartedly?

I under­stand that this elec­tion rep­res­ents a cru­cial moment between a really fucked up cur­rent gov­ern­ment party and a pos­sibly more pos­it­ive oppos­i­tion. How­ever, wouldn’t sup­port­ing him be re-assim­il­at­ing us back into a polit­ic­al pro­cess which bought my ancest­ors here through slavery, which is cre­ated con­tinu­ous wars on our home­lands? I don’t believe that Corbyn, or what he rep­res­ents, is going to undo or stop what has been done over cen­tur­ies. Small domest­ic issues might be improved, but there is more at stake than that.

I think it’s neces­sary for us to not legit­im­ize and sup­port the sys­tem, regard­less of who the face is. What do you think of the idea that we shouldn’t even be invest­ing in this coun­try any­more? That we should go back to our (ances­tral) home­lands, wherever they may be, and aim to build up those places. To no longer engage in the sys­tem that was nev­er been cre­ated to bene­fit us, even with Jeremy Corbyn involved. A sys­tem that doesn’t even work in the interest of the so-called ‘indi­gen­ous’ (people whose ancest­ors might have immig­rated a sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions earli­er via the Romans, Gauls, Ger­man­ic, Scand­inavi­ans ect). Maybe there is some­where else we can go instead of try­ing to keep this sink­ing ship afloat?

Lowkey: This is the inter­est­ing argu­ment. I think what it comes back to is the com­mon belief in the idea there is abso­lute good and abso­lute evil; that there is a purely good God and an evil Dev­il, which comes from the (ancient) Per­sian reli­gion of Zoroastri­an­ism. How­ever there is the philo­sophy of Ibn Sina who argued for acci­dent­al evil. What do I mean by acci­dent­al evil? Well think about fire, it warms people, it cooks our food right? So it’s essen­tial thing for the world to func­tion. How­ever fire can also burn down a vil­lage and kill people. So you have acci­dent­al evil com­ing from some­thing which is essen­tially good. The point I am try­ing to make is that there is good in us vot­ing for pro­gres­sion, even if it does have an acci­dent­al evil byproduct.

I agree with many of your points, but I don’t think I see the polit­ic­al sys­tem in this coun­try as an abso­lute good or evil. I don’t think I see it as purely neg­at­ive. I think there’s no shame we, the dia­spor­ic pop­u­la­tion, being the chil­dren of empire. We’re products of things that we did­n’t choose. We have been born into situ­ation that we had abso­lutely no con­trol of, but we can choose what we do with the con­di­tions we are put in.

Apex: To me the big pic­ture is just as import­ant as the small things are, if not, more essen­tial. So we might get some short term advant­ages, like improv­ing the NHS now, but we might miss out on a big­ger oppor­tun­ity; like cre­at­ing a bet­ter health­care sys­tem all togeth­er. I don’t want to make it seem like I am say­ing we should­n’t par­ti­cip­ate, but we need to con­sider the long term effects of what we do.

I left the UK for a few years and now I’m really see­ing these things from the out­side. For a men­tal per­spect­ive change I think it is import­ant to phys­ic­ally move ourselves to dif­fer­ent parts of the world. I know you have trav­elled as well, and I am guess­ing you must’ve felt these things. You see things from the out­side and you learn that Brit­ish or West­ern sys­tem is not the way to live. There are all kinds of soci­et­ies out there who wel­come you with open arms; Skilled or unskilled, edu­cated or uneducated. As long as you are will­ing to help build up that place.  Rather than try­ing to fix a res­ist­ant sys­tem, we can build up oth­er soci­et­ies who maybe have more pro­gress­ive life­style. Maybe we should be defend­ing those cul­tures against the colo­ni­al onslaught. That is what I would aim to encour­age people to do. If you’re going to vote, then vote and if you’re not then don’t; but aim bey­ond this elec­tion. Aim bey­ond this polit­ic­al sys­tem.

Lowkey: I agree def­in­itely. I don’t think, that either of our points neces­sar­ily neg­ates to the oth­er.  I think that both of them can be brought togeth­er and acted upon.

Apex: Def­in­itely.

Lowkey: It depends if you have faith in this polit­ic­al sys­tem. If Corbyn is in put into power, then we have to voice the points you men­tioned. That is role of the people that pro­pelled him into this pos­i­tion. We can’t just relax and enjoy just him being there.

Apex: I think that’s a good point to end on. A lot of polit­ic­al debates talk been divis­ive with the men­tal­ity of either; ‘if you don’t vote and you’re fuck­ing up,’ or ‘if you do vote you’re fuck­ing up.’ People can make their own decisions about vot­ing, but we still have to togeth­er and make pro­gress hap­pen. Regard­less of the elec­tion out­come, we need to press for­ward.

Lowkey: Yeah of course. It needs to start in a way where we can build a way to co-exist. Not just with each oth­er, but with the nature of the world.

We need to apply our ideals into our daily exist­ence. The­or­iz­ing and debat­ing is all good, and it’s been a part of my life, but we have to see if it works in real­ity. When I came into uni­ver­sity I was armed with so many emo­tion­al invest­ments. Many of the things that I thought I believed in, essen­tially, did­n’t stand up to rig­or­ous invest­ig­a­tion. For me it has been a con­tinu­ous pro­cess of break­ing and re-break­ing.  I have ideas I believed in for years and seen it proven wrong in one after­noon. I think that is def­in­itely a healthy the pro­cess.

That’s also one of the reas­ons why I think it’s so import­ant that uni­ver­sity do not become some­thing only the rich can access. High­er edu­ca­tion allows for more social mobil­ity, but it also allows for people to devel­op their ideas. That’s not to say people can’t cre­ate ideas thoughts without going to school. Many people are auto­di­dact­ic, but uni­ver­sit­ies cre­ate a space for people to think crit­ic­ally.

Any­way broth­er, I enjoyed our talk and learned from this exchange.

Apex: Yeah, like­wise.

Lowkey:  I implore any­one who reads this to vote for Labour on the 8^th June. I’m not say­ing it will be the key to everything. We won’t wake up on Fri­day morn­ing to be in heav­en. But we will have the chance to build a soci­ety which func­tions in a more healthy way. And we will have a chance to build more healthy rela­tion­ships with each oth­er. That’s what I feel.

 Art­icle edited by Merz 

*** This is an abridged ver­sion of the dis­cus­sion. To read the full dis­cus­sion vis­it http://designchaos.co.uk/ ****

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Apex Zero

An emcee, beat­maker, film­maker and writer from Lon­don with Gren­adian roots, Apex Zero has spent his life learn­ing and liv­ing Hip Hop cul­ture, using it to inspire and affect change. Based in Beijing for a few years and reg­u­larly tour­ing the globe, Apex is well trav­elled, and uses the les­sons this provides to inform his art and out­look. He is a mem­ber of the Glob­al­Fac­tion digit­al pro­duc­tion house and the inter­na­tion­al Hip Hop col­lect­ive End of the Weak.

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