 |
| Source: AFP / Justin Tallis |
Look around you and you will notice very little positive news. It does exist, of course: there is water on Mars; a Thai youth football team was rescued using innovative techniques despite the odds against them; the Duchess of Sussex will probably wear something stunning to a public event some time soon. None of these are political issues, of course. In this field, things seem to be in utter meltdown. Everywhere.
Theresa May’s hijacking of Brexit. Trump’s infallibility despite overwhelming evidence he’s more than likely a big-time crook and a sleazy pervert. Viktor Orbán and his illiberal democracy. Poland’s PiS party taking away citizens’ rights. Spain’s unjustifiably rough treatment of Catalan separatists. Putin infiltrating Western democracy, to the extent he was able to poison a few civilians in the English countryside. But most of all, a large number of ordinary people who either don’t believe these things are actually happening, or worse, don’t wish to know about them because they’ll just make them have to do something that will require time and effort away from their busy lives.
People often try to remain superficially indifferent in order not to get press-ganged into something they are reluctant to do, like make a stand against injustice or read up on important issues, when they could be buying that ultra-important pair of boots on Amazon, or giving the dog a haircut. Others don't want to stick their heads above the parapet in case they have trouble further down the line. Yes, we all hate being accosted on the streets by clipboard warriors. I'm not talking about that.
But...
Right now, we are about to go into a period of immeasurable darkness once again, and what are people doing about it? They're polishing their driveways or mowing the carpets. They're doing anything except confronting the most important issue facing our civilisation since 1936. The current coordinated effort by ruthless individuals like Aaron Banks, or Steve Bannon and his band of merry men and women to smash Western democracy and install right-wing regimes should be blasted all over the media in the same way the Cuban Missile Crisis was back in the sixties.
But it isn't.
And the reasons are simple: firstly, people would be utterly petrified. Secondly, many news outlets are party to this invasion. And thirdly, people are more interested in things that are harmless, fun, or that raise anger and prejudice, which is why the newspapers contain stories of violent lesbians, immigrant sex predators, Polish thieves or Mexican murderers. Of course, none of ours acts remotely in that way, do they? Noooo...
These headlines stand out because they are done by people who aren't in your tribe. The fact is, most of the homosexual people I know are virtually incapable of violence; all the immigrants that I know are more likely to offer me a drink and a chat; all Polish people I know are hard-working, efficient and cerebral, and I know a couple of Mexicans, and they're pretty chilled out dudes. The fact of the matter is, right-wingers, and by that I mean people in the alt-right movement will say "if we can make a few in those enemy groups out to be wicked people, we can fool some in our society that the rest are like that too."
The alt-right is pushing hard against the new 21st-century norms and standards that most of us take for granted as a society, such as women's reproductive rights, choice of gender and sexuality, freedom of movement of goods and people within a trading bloc such as the EU, international programmes such as Erasmus, acceptance of climate change, and I am almost convinced that they are experimenting with wacko ideas such as the flat earthers and creationists to see how far they can push people's gullibility.
Dividing society down very strong, defined lines of demarcation is one of the steps on the road to aggressively marginalising their enemies. Once they have cordoned them off, no matter how large their numbers are in comparison, they can try to gain power through promising certain positive measures that many will benefit from (see the PiS party's rollout of childcare payments in Poland). Then, after they have gained power, they can execute the other things in their manifestos where yes, they carry out what they said they would, but on the side introduce marginalising or restricting measures on their ideological opposites, such as gay people in Russia, or pro-choicers in some parts of the US. They may also try to manipulate the judiciary so that their policies are more easily enshrined in law, sometimes for generations to come.
If you think my opinions are unthinkable, I advise you to check out the current situation in Poland and Hungary. Their spinmasters will say that these are necessary measures to do with the security of the people, but it is more to do with the implementation of their nefarious ideology.
And in all this, the moderate people sit back, content with their twice-yearly holidays, TV packages, family cars and visits to the park. They want life to carry on for them, so they sit there pretending not to notice. Many of them will have voted for all types of parties and both sides of the 2016 Brexit referendum. It's not about one side or another, it's about the silent majority. It is these people that need to be engaged the most, as it is these people that will decide if the nasty guys get in or not.
Think about it: how many decent folk do you know (you know the type: friendly, upstanding, clever, etc.) but wore MAGA caps or stuck a Leave.EU banner in their windows? Many of them voted for Trump mainly because they couldn't stand the thought of Hillary in the White House; many voted Brexit because they felt excluded from society; and that's fair enough. But a lot of them were bombarded with propaganda on immigrants stealing jobs, property and children. They were conned into thinking a darker skin colour is a sure sign of a troublemaker. In the Brexit referendum, there was a twist in the tail: apparently, the full hospitals, blocked roads, lack of affordable housing and overcrowded schools were due to too many foreigners, and nothing to do with government under-investment over many decades.
And this is where we find ourselves today - in this ideological battle between right-wing rule breakers and fair-minded folk. It is not too late to halt this criminal ideological takeover of our society: we can get out the message to more decent, ordinary folk who vote certain ways out of tradition or class rather than for justice. I mean, it is still incredible how many people still want to vote Tory, despite their total mismanagement of the country and the Brexit process. Surely, these people can be persuaded to vote for another party.
We need to halt the rush backwards towards the intolerance and prejudices of the past, and we need to start now. We need to push people's buttons to make them see we are being manipulated into a new era of segregation and fear. The reality is that we have never been more prosperous or contented than now, but it does not feel like that, because it's not in the interests of the alt-right and their friends in the media to portray it so. The alt-right needs to spread misery and doom, and that is what sells newspapers, so they leech off each other.
In order to stop this, we need to look at several aspects: firstly, who is subsidising all this activity, and why? Secondly, just how many fake profiles are there on niche Facebook groups, or the comments section of newspapers, spouting all kinds of aggressive nonsense to make out that there are so many more people out there with the same intolerant views? And thirdly, how can we make a difference in fighting back?
I have myself come up against a neo-fascist recently on Facebook, and it wasn't pretty. When I challenged his views, he accused me of being weak-willed and lacking in coherence (if anyone knows me, they know that is exactly the opposite of what I am). This was despite me banging on vehemently for long, sweeping paragraphs about why he was wrong in every single syllable of his nonsense. I provided evidence and links too. But no, it was dismissed with a figurative sweep of his hands, and a literal one over the "block user" option on his Facebook profile. Just before he did, like some super-villain getting a rush by telling his victim how he's going to kill him, he announced he was going to block me, so I had a millisecond to react, and I managed to accuse him of being a coward because he didn't want to debate.
What happened there was what is happening everywhere at the moment. The Orwellian 2 + 2 = 5 dogma is well and truly alive in these people: it is the twisting of everything to the benefit of the lie. The fact he was the one who more or less called me a snowflake, and yet it was he who blocked me out of unwillingness to have his views challenged, demonstrates a fragility, vanity and feebleness in the minds of these people that can be used against them. By assuring you hold the truth, and enough of your allies rally round you, you can defeat these guys. But here is the catch: nearly nobody will.
I recently had a guy living below me whose premise on this Earth was to get through life without making too much of a ripple. Even if he saw an injustice, he kept out of it. He told me of his "triumphs" at escaping from having to deal with thugs and drug pushers at a bar he used to work in. He disapproved of my outspokenness, not that I took heed of that. These people need to be railed against for their utter refusal to stand up and be counted in these, the most programmatic of days. We cannot afford to just give up and let the alt-right overrun us. We need to give them a good shake to awaken their spirits and get them motivated to do something, even if it is to put their X on a ballot sheet every 4 or 5 years somewhere other than their default choice.
Just remember what John Stuart Mill said: "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."
People often try to remain superficially indifferent in order not to get press-ganged into something they are reluctant to do, like make a stand against injustice or read up on important issues, when they could be buying that ultra-important pair of boots on Amazon, or giving the dog a haircut. Others don't want to stick their heads above the parapet in case they have trouble further down the line. Yes, we all hate being accosted on the streets by clipboard warriors. I'm not talking about that.
But...
Right now, we are about to go into a period of immeasurable darkness once again, and what are people doing about it? They're polishing their driveways or mowing the carpets. They're doing anything except confronting the most important issue facing our civilisation since 1936. The current coordinated effort by ruthless individuals like Aaron Banks, or Steve Bannon and his band of merry men and women to smash Western democracy and install right-wing regimes should be blasted all over the media in the same way the Cuban Missile Crisis was back in the sixties.
But it isn't.
And the reasons are simple: firstly, people would be utterly petrified. Secondly, many news outlets are party to this invasion. And thirdly, people are more interested in things that are harmless, fun, or that raise anger and prejudice, which is why the newspapers contain stories of violent lesbians, immigrant sex predators, Polish thieves or Mexican murderers. Of course, none of ours acts remotely in that way, do they? Noooo...
These headlines stand out because they are done by people who aren't in your tribe. The fact is, most of the homosexual people I know are virtually incapable of violence; all the immigrants that I know are more likely to offer me a drink and a chat; all Polish people I know are hard-working, efficient and cerebral, and I know a couple of Mexicans, and they're pretty chilled out dudes. The fact of the matter is, right-wingers, and by that I mean people in the alt-right movement will say "if we can make a few in those enemy groups out to be wicked people, we can fool some in our society that the rest are like that too."
The alt-right is pushing hard against the new 21st-century norms and standards that most of us take for granted as a society, such as women's reproductive rights, choice of gender and sexuality, freedom of movement of goods and people within a trading bloc such as the EU, international programmes such as Erasmus, acceptance of climate change, and I am almost convinced that they are experimenting with wacko ideas such as the flat earthers and creationists to see how far they can push people's gullibility.
Dividing society down very strong, defined lines of demarcation is one of the steps on the road to aggressively marginalising their enemies. Once they have cordoned them off, no matter how large their numbers are in comparison, they can try to gain power through promising certain positive measures that many will benefit from (see the PiS party's rollout of childcare payments in Poland). Then, after they have gained power, they can execute the other things in their manifestos where yes, they carry out what they said they would, but on the side introduce marginalising or restricting measures on their ideological opposites, such as gay people in Russia, or pro-choicers in some parts of the US. They may also try to manipulate the judiciary so that their policies are more easily enshrined in law, sometimes for generations to come.
If you think my opinions are unthinkable, I advise you to check out the current situation in Poland and Hungary. Their spinmasters will say that these are necessary measures to do with the security of the people, but it is more to do with the implementation of their nefarious ideology.
And in all this, the moderate people sit back, content with their twice-yearly holidays, TV packages, family cars and visits to the park. They want life to carry on for them, so they sit there pretending not to notice. Many of them will have voted for all types of parties and both sides of the 2016 Brexit referendum. It's not about one side or another, it's about the silent majority. It is these people that need to be engaged the most, as it is these people that will decide if the nasty guys get in or not.
Think about it: how many decent folk do you know (you know the type: friendly, upstanding, clever, etc.) but wore MAGA caps or stuck a Leave.EU banner in their windows? Many of them voted for Trump mainly because they couldn't stand the thought of Hillary in the White House; many voted Brexit because they felt excluded from society; and that's fair enough. But a lot of them were bombarded with propaganda on immigrants stealing jobs, property and children. They were conned into thinking a darker skin colour is a sure sign of a troublemaker. In the Brexit referendum, there was a twist in the tail: apparently, the full hospitals, blocked roads, lack of affordable housing and overcrowded schools were due to too many foreigners, and nothing to do with government under-investment over many decades.
And this is where we find ourselves today - in this ideological battle between right-wing rule breakers and fair-minded folk. It is not too late to halt this criminal ideological takeover of our society: we can get out the message to more decent, ordinary folk who vote certain ways out of tradition or class rather than for justice. I mean, it is still incredible how many people still want to vote Tory, despite their total mismanagement of the country and the Brexit process. Surely, these people can be persuaded to vote for another party.
We need to halt the rush backwards towards the intolerance and prejudices of the past, and we need to start now. We need to push people's buttons to make them see we are being manipulated into a new era of segregation and fear. The reality is that we have never been more prosperous or contented than now, but it does not feel like that, because it's not in the interests of the alt-right and their friends in the media to portray it so. The alt-right needs to spread misery and doom, and that is what sells newspapers, so they leech off each other.
In order to stop this, we need to look at several aspects: firstly, who is subsidising all this activity, and why? Secondly, just how many fake profiles are there on niche Facebook groups, or the comments section of newspapers, spouting all kinds of aggressive nonsense to make out that there are so many more people out there with the same intolerant views? And thirdly, how can we make a difference in fighting back?
I have myself come up against a neo-fascist recently on Facebook, and it wasn't pretty. When I challenged his views, he accused me of being weak-willed and lacking in coherence (if anyone knows me, they know that is exactly the opposite of what I am). This was despite me banging on vehemently for long, sweeping paragraphs about why he was wrong in every single syllable of his nonsense. I provided evidence and links too. But no, it was dismissed with a figurative sweep of his hands, and a literal one over the "block user" option on his Facebook profile. Just before he did, like some super-villain getting a rush by telling his victim how he's going to kill him, he announced he was going to block me, so I had a millisecond to react, and I managed to accuse him of being a coward because he didn't want to debate.
What happened there was what is happening everywhere at the moment. The Orwellian 2 + 2 = 5 dogma is well and truly alive in these people: it is the twisting of everything to the benefit of the lie. The fact he was the one who more or less called me a snowflake, and yet it was he who blocked me out of unwillingness to have his views challenged, demonstrates a fragility, vanity and feebleness in the minds of these people that can be used against them. By assuring you hold the truth, and enough of your allies rally round you, you can defeat these guys. But here is the catch: nearly nobody will.
I recently had a guy living below me whose premise on this Earth was to get through life without making too much of a ripple. Even if he saw an injustice, he kept out of it. He told me of his "triumphs" at escaping from having to deal with thugs and drug pushers at a bar he used to work in. He disapproved of my outspokenness, not that I took heed of that. These people need to be railed against for their utter refusal to stand up and be counted in these, the most programmatic of days. We cannot afford to just give up and let the alt-right overrun us. We need to give them a good shake to awaken their spirits and get them motivated to do something, even if it is to put their X on a ballot sheet every 4 or 5 years somewhere other than their default choice.
Just remember what John Stuart Mill said: "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."
