Well.
That was a bit of a clusterfuck, wasn’t it? Oh Britain, seriously. What did you just do? Are we so determined to be miserable that we would commit such a mass co-ordinated act of self harm by begging for at least five more years of active abuse by a government that hates us with Boris Joffrey Johnson at the helm?
I can’t make sense of it if I’m honest. Even if it had been a minority win I might have just been able to get my head around it, but not this. A landslide victory really is the most apt way to describe it, as we broke away entirely and crashed neatly into the abyss.
I mean after such a tremendous win, you would have expected the delighted hoards in the streets, celebrating the pulling down of the next Berlin Wall before it even got built, right? There should have been street parties. David Hasselhoff. Mass singalongs to the Winds Of Change as they stopped Corbyn in his tracks before he forced us all to work less and join the IRA.
But there was nothing, bar the delighted shrieks of a couple of well known Far Right shitposters. And that’s because deep down everyone knows that they were played and they voted purely from a place of fear.
The Tories used nothing but the dirtiest of tricks during this election, and the worst thing about it, is that it worked. It’s a cliche to call these things Orwellian, I know. I don’t even like Orwell if I’m perfectly honest. When I read Homage To Catalonia, I didn’t understand how the POUM didn’t shoot him on the spot when he swanned in and demanded to be able to drink wine from a glass instead of a porrón in the middle of a fucking war.
But he understood a few things. Who knew how eerily spot on he would be about the effectiveness of Doublespeak? That a man with a history of apalling racism would have the gall to stand up and call a man with a demonstrable history of committed anti racism, who has stood against the oppression of all minorities including Jewish people anti Semitic- and people lapped it up. Because it isn’t the Labour Party that the likes of Katie Hopkins, Tommy Robinson and now Britain First have flocked to now, is it?
So what now? We need to give ourselves time to reflect, for sure. Understand what happened. Address the part mainstream media played in some of the most horrifically bias reporting we have seen in our lifetime, and how we can counteract that in our work.
But we also need to think about where we went wrong as well and hold ourselves accountable to that. For me, I feel that while a lot of people stepped up when the election was called and were really out there trying to engage people and doing an amazing job, we must ask ourselves where we were before that? We cannot complain that people voted for a broken right wing party prepared to lie right to their face when the left are just as fractured and have not been a visible, positive presence in their communities for a long time. Only being available at elections makes us politicians and our communities deserve better than that.
We need to admit we have a problem with classism in our own movements. Stop being a smug lefty prick. Stop correcting spelling and calling people you don’t even know fascists, because you sound like Rick from The Young Ones and it isn’t a good look in real life. Being working class yourself still doesn’t make it okay to do these things. Make allies everywhere, particularly those they are going to come for first: Travellers, the disabled, prisoners. Those who usually find there is no one to defend them.
Be ready to defend the most marginalised, some of who will be the people who you took a lot of shit from during the election. You talk about being a champion of the most ostracised in our society, but do you ever talk to them? This isn’t finding your best ragged trousered philanthropist to save. A pet waif to validate your goodness. These are the people you secretly remark should be made to take an IQ test before they are allowed to vote. These are people who don’t trust you because they have good reason not to trust anyone. Who need true solidarity and recognition of how strong they are, rather than pity or condescension.
As our government will turn things up a notch, so should we. Learn to sabotage diggers on fracking sites and computer systems. Break the fucking law. Strike without permission and make our unions radge again. Down tools. March down the streets that the police said you couldn’t. Stop doing as you are told. Don’t cross picket lines. You were not put on this planet to pay bills and die.
Let people know who you are, wear your heart on your fucking sleeve. Don’t be frightened to talk about politics with each other, but for fucks sake change the way you do so.
Form close, small conspiratal circles of beautiful friendships where you cry laugh at the daring, ludicrous ideas you conjure up to resist the system while drinking well into the witching hours.
Make your anger talk in a French accent.
Do not let these bastards kill your ability to dream of a better life every single day. That would be subscribing to the politics of despair that got us into this mess.
Remember every shitty regime has been brought down eventually no matter how oppressive. Every single one. Remember that every time you see flowers growing through concrete and that with enough roots and just a small ray of light you can rip down a building. We always have.
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