I used to be one to hide behind a mask, if you analysed my social media over the past couple of years then you might have thought the same, and I do not blame you. For once, I would have agreed that I harboured viewpoints that may have kept me in a fared light than if I had exposed many viewpoints that I had. Never once had I ever kept a selfish viewpoint on society, I purged myself of any self-indulgence and selfish narrative on how I thought society should be run. I resonated on the mantra that you should always think of the most vulnerable members of society when you act politically.
Having indulged on the poetics of Wilfred Owen and the semantics of propaganda from allies and axis alike through the 1910’s-1950’s, I am more than able to distinguish the variance between propaganda and mere nationalistic rousing, and the difference is more than blurred even to this day. With the level of bias embedded within the English curriculum, is it not toxic that the public are not more aware of the negative influence they have had on society?
In the shadow of V from V for Vendetta, I channel the same influence. Last November we were offered a different alternative. While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?
There is a reason that dystopian literature is among the most prevalently suggested readings among present day novels, and it's because it reflects a section of society which we do not want to address. We want to feel secure in a world where internationalism equals prosperity but isolationism means safety. We indulge in patriotism, but it does not indulge us. So why even bother?
Every 4 years, the western political system offers a beacon of hope for the hopeful to grab onto. A momentary escape from the discourse we have been force-fed for the past couple of years. And the media reject it outright. 70 years ago, Geobbels cried from the stands, “Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right.”
I am completely perplexed that someone aware of the British education system can understand the overtly (and understandably) anti-Nazi messages intertwined within the curriculum, and still leave the majority of the population falling for the same techniques that their government enforced decades ago. The right-wing messages over the past 15 years- especially since the recession- has been focused around the same scapegoats in which Nazi Germany based their reign on back in the early 1920’s. And yet these ‘followers’ of the message find themselves identifying themselves on the side of a nationalistic narrative that they are above any other culture. It is simply not the case.
Chomsky stated in 1989 that “Citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course of intellectual self-defence to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for meaningful democracy.” Yet this warning from one of literature's most valued linguistics over 30 years ago has gone unheeded.
We, as a British society sat there as a nation and saw 72 people burn to death in Grenfell and voted for the party that said that if they were cleverer then they would have survived. We elected Sally-Ann Hart, a woman who seven days before the election said that people with learning difficulties should not earn full pay because they “do not understand money.” We had Blackpool, the third most deprived region in the UK, vote for the party that put them there, and now we are currently dependent on the NHS. An organisation in which it currently has had to have £13 billion of T*ry underfunding wiped to stay afloat among this virus, an organisation which Tory MPs (including our Prime Minister) cheered among blocking their pay rise had the government voted in that they were on their knees begging not to be. Only for the public to repay them by voting a party that is systematically against them in, in return for a 1 minute applause every thursday at 8pm during the lockdown. Your applause is only to boost your ego in the knowledge that you have helped them into the depravity in which they currently find themselves in. You know it does not help them, and we know that if the public *really* valued them to the extent in which we do now, that we would have been more tactical without vote in December.
The harsh reality is that this virus is extremely political, and although the narrative is that "the country is on hold" it is actually that we are in the preliminaries of even more austerity. Austerity that was a political choice that was originally ‘justified’ by the financial crash of 2008 and will more than certainly be ‘justified’ by this pandemic. And we as a country will accept it. It will maim us and will hinder the working class, but will we allow it to pursue different political avenues? No. We will find comfort in the ambience, from the passing propaganda of The S*n, to the pro-T*ry messages on the BBC, and will therefore more than likely vote C*nservative. Echoes of Cameron ‘balancing the budget’ will reverberate almost a decade on and susceptible people who are too devoid of seeing a better alternative will vote with what they see the most. That they are not deserved of socialist policies and that they would ‘leave the country bankrupt’. The same people that clap for the NHS and want the police to help enforce the lockdown. The two most socialist organizations in this country.
Synonymously, I’d relate this lockdown more with ‘frustration.’ And not because I cannot see my friends, go to the pub or socialise in any other way. It is because I know that we are going to pay the price of trying to survive through the virus through deeper cuts to our public services. More people are going to suffer under the T*ry rein amidst the recuperation after lockdown is lifted, and our bootlicking population will justify it. “It’s necessary”, they will say, and they’ll paint B*ris J*hnson as a modern day Churchill, having guided us through our darkest hour, completely disregarding the fact he allowed a large portion of the public to contract the virus. It was not because he wanted ‘herd immunity’ to properly work, it was eugenics on the sly. He was not being mindful of his millionaire friends when he said ‘a lot of us will have loved ones die before their time’, he was thinking of the working class. He knowingly did nothing to stop the disease from passing through the population. Now it's approaching 1,000 deaths a day and the grand narrative from the media is sympathy for the PM, who allowed this to happen. Fuck Boris Johnson and fuck anybody who sympathises with him, sympathise with the NHS workers who he has attacked with his policies in the past and sympathise with the working class who he has attacked with his policies in the past and who is going to cause further detriment to in the future with his higher austerity measures. All of which will be a choice of unnecessary cruelty.
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