Are we there yet?
Worn down by a decade of austerity, and mesmerised by and addicted to new technology and mindless entertainment, the people failed to take warnings of the dangers of their new leader seriously.
He was funny, charismatic, and popular, and in his apparent candour and jovial demeanour, made a refreshing change from the boring, serious and often aloof leaders of the past.
Almost imperceptibly at first, the democratic rights, institutions, processes, and protections built up over centuries were quickly, systematically, and ruthlessly rolled back.
The international bonds designed to maintain peace and prosperity forged in the aftermath of two World Wars were weakened then fatally undermined.
Full-time, well-paid, permanent, and meaningful jobs rooted in functioning communities were replaced with low-paid, insecure, and soul-destroying ones in anonymous hollowed-out hubs.
Decent pensions, free healthcare, and social care for all were gradually replaced with privatised, profit-motivated and individualised insurance.
Access to impartial, objective, intelligent and high-quality news and information designed to inform, educate, and entertain, which helped to foster tolerance of diversity and mutual respect, and which helped to ensure the powerful were held to account for their misdemeanours, breaches of trust, and outright lies and corruption, was replaced with partisan and polarising ignorant hateful and willfully misleading rhetoric designed to make people angry, stupid, suspicious and divided, yet simultaneously docile, obedient and malleable.
And the nation’s enormous wealth, produced by centuries of colonialism and the hard work and innovation of its people, was transferred into the hands of a powerful, brutal, manipulative, and insatiable elite.
And then, under cover of a global pandemic which led to 150,000 tragic but largely avoidable deaths — more than twice the number of all British civilian deaths in WWII — the increasingly authoritarian Government Ministers opportunistically wielded their previously unimaginable power not to protect and enhance the lives of Britain’s people, but to increase their own power, to line the pockets of their already grotesquely wealthy supporters by suspending the usual checks and balances and norms of behaviour, to usher in draconian legislation designed to ban protest and limit opposition, and to fill powerful positions with allies similarly prepared to say, do, or deny anything in exchange for the chance to have a seat at the top table.
Much of this the world has seen before: the rise of damaged charismatic ‘strong man’ leaders promising the impossible, prepared to say anything their fanatical supporters want to hear, no matter how untrue, irresponsible or dangerous, and who are unafraid to eliminate from their inner circle anyone daring to disagree with or blow the whistle on the direction of travel; the relentless demonization, scapegoating and silencing of ethnic, religious and non-conformist minorities as well as judges, lawyers, intellectuals, experts, teachers, community leaders, campaigners, protesters, charities and disabled people, along with any journalistic or political voices challenging their authority; the systematic undermining and ‘taking back control’ of the legal, media and educational systems; voter-suppression and gerrymandering; and the co-opting of extremely wealthy individuals and corporations into a project seemingly designed to restore the nation’s pride by strengthening it, but in reality whipping up a populist nationalist jingoistic and xenophobic mindset, based on fantasies of exceptionalism.
Everyone who knows any colonial or twentieth century history knows the script, and we know beyond any doubt that ordinary people, and especially the troubled or vulnerable, are in great danger.
We know that a handful of media owners, hedge-funders, bankers, corporate leaders and especially a tiny number of Libertarian ideologues with unimaginable wealth are now many years into their project to remove any and all barriers to ‘economic growth’ and profit maximisation - no matter what the true cost, such as worker, consumer, citizen and environmental protections designed to keep people and the environment safe and well - along with replacing the entire system of taxation and welfare with a barbarous survival of the fittest ideology, utterly devoid of compassion.
For now, a thin veneer of democracy remains: a Government elected within a dysfunctional political system that requires fewer than three in ten of the electorate to support it has no need to publicly declare a dictatorship. It just has to keep voters angry and divided by offering a constant supply of scapegoats and folk devils, onto which the problems caused by their greed, cruelty and mismanagement can be projected.
The Government are perfectly aware that all they need do is invest in sufficient propaganda to convince their passionate supporters that even though the measures they are taking may initially appear to be antidemocratic, and may well cause them hardship to begin with — perhaps even for a generation or two — ultimately all the Government’s actions are necessary and in the country’s long-term interests, to persuade their supporters that only a strong and ruthless Government can save and protect the British people from the barbaric Others who hate and envy ‘us’, and who want to destroy ‘our’ unique heritage and cultural identity by replacing it with ‘their’ weak, impure, emasculated and inferior version of ‘our’ once globally respected Great British bulldog spirit.
Like all tyrants before them, they faithfully promise to represent ‘the will of the people’, and promise to give their loyal supporters liberty and ‘real’ freedom — freedom from a ‘tyrannical nanny state’; freedom from the ‘inferior foreigners’ stealing our resources and dictating our laws; freedom from the ‘faceless technocrats and bureaucrats’ who don’t understand real, authentic people like the Government do; freedom from ‘an intolerant woke virtue-signalling authoritarian Left’ and an out of touch ‘liberal metropolitan elite’ who speak with forked tongues and who serve only their own interests; freedom from so-called ‘experts’ motivated by selfish ambition, who feather their nests on the endless gravy-train paid for with unjust taxes; and freedom from the ‘ungrateful pushy minorities’ and ‘deviant migrants’ who seek to exploit the resources, tolerance and kindness of the British people. All of these enemies within want nothing more than to impose their alien anti-British culture, and to force to submit and eventually usurp the the strong, proud and superior indigenous white British population gifted with ‘common sense wisdom’.
Instead, what they have actually given the British people is by far the most antidemocratic, intolerant and authoritarian populist nationalist Government in modern British history, who care not one jot for the people they disingenuously claim to serve, and who are deliberately and systematically dismantling all the progress Britain has made toward the noble objective of a fairer, more meritocratic and more equal society, formulated after millions of citizens from around the world were killed during WWII resisting an antidemocratic, intolerant and authoritarian populist nationalist Government which increasingly resembles our own.
Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838 and rose to become a principal leader and spokesperson for the U.S. Abolition movement. He would eventually develop into a towering figure for the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. On August 3rd, 1857, he delivered a “West India Emancipation” speech at Canandaigua, New York, serving as a reminder of the crucial role of the West Indian slaves in their struggle for freedom. His words still have great resonance today:
“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this, or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
