Facebook hires former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg
By
Joe Mount
16 November 2018
Facebook’s decision to appoint former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg as its vice-president of Global Affairs and Communications epitomises the integration of the social media giants and the capitalist state apparatus in every country.
After reportedly extensive discussions with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Clegg claimed to be impressed by the company’s recognition that it “is on a journey which brings new responsibilities not only to the users of Facebook’s apps but to society at large. I hope I will be able to play a role in helping to navigate that journey.”
These “responsibilities” involve a stepping up of internet censorship as part of the efforts of the ruling elite in every country to suppress working-class resistance to austerity, militarism and war.
Clegg led the Liberal Democrats party into coalition government with Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives between 2010 and 2015. He is mainly remembered for betraying his party’s pledges of opposition to tuition fees that were instead trebled under the coalition. This was part of a savage increase in austerity measures that created the conditions for last year’s Grenfell fire disaster, which cost the lives of 72 people. It was the Tory/Lib Dem coalition, with Clegg as deputy prime minister, that backed the 2011 war on Libya, which devastated that country, and it was under Clegg that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was forced to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The Liberal Democrats’ vote base collapsed as a result. In place of being a stooge of private capital in government office, Clegg is now hawking out his tattered liberal credentials to one of the wealthiest…