Extremism – humanconditioned

Is Voting Conservative An Act of Terrorism?

May 6, 2017Robert1 Comment

Bear with me. Terrorism is defined as the “unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims”. We might associate it with the ongoing bombings and shootings taking place in European capitals. We might associate it with ISIS and Al-Qaeda and other groups of extreme Islamists. We might be less likely to associate it with similar acts of terror taking place in countries such as Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria. We might also not associate it with right-wing terrorism in the US (claiming more lives since the September 11 attacks to June 2015 than jihadist terrorism). Our media inclines us to believe certain things about terrorism whilst ignoring others. And one thing our media never inclines us to believe is that our government may be guilty of it.

If you remove the word ‘unlawful’ from the definition of terrorism to leave “the use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims” it’s not too much of a stretch to see how various policies pursued by the Conservative government over the past few years might fit this bill. The Tories have cut, amongst other things, spending on schools, disability benefits, social security, the NHS, housing benefits, the social housing stock, and support for women and children. In essence, they’ve cut spending on the threads that keep the social fabric together (and remember, they’re cutting because the banks were bailed out after the 2008 crash and never made to pay the money back) and the consequences have included death. One study suggests that 30,000 deaths in 2015 could be attributable to the “relentless cuts” the NHS faced. Of course, the results were contested but it’s worth asking that if there aren’t enough beds at your local hospital, the A&E waiting time is too long and without sufficient money to buy private healthcare where do you go to get support? A local example for me would be the cuts to the organisations in London who help people struggling with mental health problems and/or HIV, again, without this support system where do vulnerable people go to find community and care? It’s also worth noting that hand-in-hand with the cuts goes an increase in privatisation of services. This means what was once free at the point of delivery becomes priced, immediately making it harder for people on lower incomes to access, and it’s also led to people having exceptionally unpleasant and dehumanising experiences at the hands of companies such as G4S and Serco.

So, as the rich get richer but for everyone else the social fabric tears, I argue that one of the consequences of this is terror. People are dying because they’re not getting the support they need, that’s terrifying. Despite the incredible material wealth in 21st century Britain people are still in poverty, that’s terrifying. Local communities are falling apart and we’re turning on each other as a consequence, that’s terrifying. And our government’s solution is to exacerbate the problem, that’s terrifying. The Tories are implementing violent and intimidating policies to further their political aims except they are considered lawful because they’re the government – the ones that make the law! For this reason if you were to vote Conservative on 8th June you will be an active participant in this terrifying process.

However, I doubt that Theresa May sits with her Cabinet (and David Cameron sat with his) and asks, “How can we terrorise the poor today?” or “Who should we murder with our policies?”, instead, I think she and her party genuinely believe that what they’re doing (slavishly adhering to an increasingly feudalist form of neoliberal capitalism and market idolatry) is for the best. Quite how/why they believe is for another post but I think the one thing they lack, which terrorists do not, is intent. So, no, I don’t think the Tories are involved in a class war that involves murdering their opponents with economic policies but I do they are involved in a class war that consists of defeating their parliamentary opposition and its support base with economic policies that kill. Which makes the answer to the post’s title a no – voting Conservative is not an act of terrorism but I think the consequences of doing so will continue to be terrifying.

Now, on the off-chance any of my Tory-voting chums are reading this (and I do have some because I went to boarding school in Kent…but that’s for another post) I might hear them offer this question: weren’t the Labour Party under Ed Miliband committed to the cuts as well? My answer to this would be another question – what does it mean that back at the 2015 general election both of Britain’s major political parties were wedded to destabilising society? My Tory chums can answer for themselves but, if you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know that I like to look to the context and Britain’s current political context is one of different shades of capitalism. We were told this system would redistribute scarce resources into the hands of those that needed them but when money itself, the oil of the machine, is a scarce resource it’s no surprise that it’s the needs of the wealthy that are being met especially as they’ve managed to buy up so much of the market, media and politics for themselves. That’s also terrifying.

Terrorism is a tragic and horrific force in our world and every time anyone in any country dies at the hands of an extremist it is a tragedy. Every time anyone is injured by an act of terrorism it is a tragedy. Every time anyone loses a loved one due to terrorism it is a tragedy. This post categorically does not intend to diminish that truth by perhaps glibly referring to Tories and terrorists in the same sentence (as much as Tories like to compare, say, rail or mining strikers to terrorists and use anti-terror laws to silence opposition and protect corporate interests etc). However, history shows us time and time again that the self-interested pursuit of capital yields only inequality and that rising inequality leads to people taking more extreme actions to express themselves. Of course, the reality is far more complex than that but if we can’t see how these things connect then we won’t be able to change them and history will just repeat itself. However, a vote for any party but Conservative (and Ukip!) on June 8th might be a step in the right direction.

Is Valerian A Metaphor For Europe!?

April 12, 2017RobertLeave a comment

“In the 28th century, special operatives Valerian and Laureline work together to maintain order throughout the human territories. Under assignment from the minister of defense, the duo embarks on a mission to Alpha, an ever-expanding metropolis where diverse species gather to share knowledge and culture. When a dark force threatens the peaceful city, Valerian and Laureline must race against time to identify the menace that also jeopardizes the future of the universe.”

I feel this one might be self-explanatory but it’s true that like Valerian, Europe has often been overwhelmed by dark forces. There were the Nazis in the middle of the 20th century along with fascists in Italy and Spain. And prior to that Europe regularly went to war with itself: the First World War (1914-1918), Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), Austro-Prussian War (1866) and so on and so on. It’s a miracle really to think what Europe has achieved since 1945, that despite countries’ worth of difference, hostility and prejudice we are that bit more peaceful. And now, Europe is often a place where diverse peoples gather to share knowledge and culture. Of course, that dark force of misplaced nationalism, racism and violence has never gone away. Political groups of the right regularly flirt with the values that their more extreme-right friends hold, whilst the extremists themselves, including the Neo-Nazis, just carry on being dangerous and violent. Europe, like Alpha, is under threat.

Now I could end this post by saying that Brexiteers fall into the category of the dark force. However, I am aware there were so many different reasons people voted for Brexit: some wanted a socialist revolution (the ‘Lexit’ vote), some didn’t know what they were voting for, some wanted to stick a middle finger up at the elitist government, some voted believing that Brexit would mean no immigrants, some were privileged Tories who like a bit of national pride and, of course, some were extremists, racists and fascists. I don’t find it too difficult to comprehend these different reasons for voting Brexit, despite my vote to Remain, and I imagine that Alpha, like the EU, has its fair share of internal problems despite all the exchange of culture and knowledge. However, I think it important that we all acknowledge the existence of these dark forces, for they do exist and there is violence. This acknowledgement could be a rallying call that unites Brexiteers and Remoaners around something beyond a hate/love of the shape of bananas, EU bureaucracy and the Common Agricultural Policy. As Syria’s civil war continues to tear the country apart, as the government of Chechnya stands accused of sending gay men to die and be tortured in a concentration camp and as racial violence continues in the States it is clear that the dark forces are amassing and we must come together to stand against them. With Brexit the EU will change dramatically but Europe can still remain united. So I hope we will all jump in our spaceships and send metaphorical laser cannon blasts at all those nasty baddies.

I Call Bullshit Again: Bored Of Being Polite To Bigots

November 17, 2016RobertLeave a comment

A few posts ago I was encouraging people to take an empathetic stance towards Trump voters, trying to understand the lives they live, the difficulties they face and why they might vote for someone like Donald Trump. That was, however, before the election result and now that Trump is in the White House I think things have changed. Someone who promoted racism, sexism, disablism, Islamaphobia and a whole host of other prejudices is now not just the surprise candidate he is the surprise president (and don’t forget that he called for bombing civilians, waterboarding and stealing Iraq’s oil). He might be backtracking on his wall and offering a fence instead and he might be telling people to ‘stop, just stop’ committing violence towards minorities but it is precisely those things that helped get him into the White House. So, once again, I call bullshit to bigotry.

I’ve heard a few people, Barack Obama included, say we should accept the situation and just move on (y’know, that keep calm and carry on bullshit), accepting that Trump has been voted president and hoping he makes good of it. Well, as he welcomes people with even more extreme views into his team, denies climate change and courts demagogues I can’t see this ending well. This guy has profited from capitalism, flaunted the rules and grabbed pussy to boot. There is nothing progressive about this man and just because he called bullshit to the political status quo does not make him a trump card (yup, that word is marred forever). He’s a supercharged Nigel Farage who wants to use inequality, social dissatisfaction and age-old rivalries to promote his political success. He doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process so please, please can we carry on calling bullshit to Donald Trump.

And back to that post about empathy. I think it’s pretty easy for someone in my privileged position – white, male, financially secure, not in America, rarely on the receiving end of prejudice – to make simplistic statements about striving to understand people different to myself but if said people have just voted in someone who will make your life incredibly difficult and add fuel to the fires of hatred in your country then the last thing I imagine you want to do is get empathetic (getting a gun probably seems like a safer bet). Rebecca Solnit, Bernie Sanders, Owen Jones and Noam Chomsky are just some of the few calling bullshit and I reckon we should join them. And more than just calling bullshit we need to get organised. For those of us who can, we need to offer support to those facing prejudice because history has not been made by people turning their backs. We also need to ensure that Trump and his equivalents elsewhere do not have it easy – the Republicans made Obama’s presidency tough, so let’s make sure the Democrats do the same rather than just passively endorse the rise of hate. And, yes, empathy and compassion are important too and so is not stereotyping an entire group but Trump is in the White House and the many wars that the ‘West’ has always waged against itself (e.g. black people v. white people in the US, ‘nationals’ v. immigrants in most countries, rich v. poor, rural v. urban) are getting worse and worse. And sure, as the privileged person I am, I am yet to be at the receiving of said prejudices but I’m not going to wait until I get punched in the face before I do something about it. Trump is in the White Horse. This is not OK. And may I remind you that this has led to the return of Sarah Palin and we all know who she is. She says Trump’s presidency is “going to be so much fun” and that just sounds like a threat. So, game on folks, it’s time to wing a whole load of bullshit at those bigots (and here’s a link to the SNL parody of Palin’s speech but I couldn’t decide which was more funny/depressing/scary).

What Will The History Books Say?

November 10, 2016RobertLeave a comment

If you’d turn to page 342 we will briefly examine that calamitous time in history at the start of the 21^st century. It was a time of economic instability, ecological collapse, war and the end of the Great British Bake Off. It was a difficult time and it’s a minor miracle that we made it into 2116 at all. Nevertheless, what I want to focus on is the period known as the Rise and Fall of the Middle Classes.

So, who were the middle classes? Well, after the Second World War of 1939 – 1945 the largely flooded landmass formerly known as the United States of America realised that the machines they’d use to mass produce weapons and vehicles for fighting in battles could also be used to mass produce household items and other more peaceful commodities. Twin this with the continual ascent of money and we have what was called consumer capitalism: people got paid to make stuff and then the same people paid to buy stuff. All sorts of stuff: fast food, cars, trips to the Amazon, inflatable sex dolls, the works. But the religion of money was never a fair one and some people started off with lots and lots and others started with none. Usually things stayed like that and those who had got given more whilst those who did not have, lost. But in between the rich and the poor a new group emerged, the middle classes. These were the sorts of people who got paid a bit more for the work they did so they could buy more stuff but they didn’t get paid so much more that they could take on the role of the idle rich.

Now, the middle classes were fed a very important lie and it is because they believed this lie that Western Civilisation ultimately fell apart. They were told that if they worked very hard and got lots of money they would achieve stability, status and happiness. Thus, as they were distracted in the pursuit of money and the consumption of things so they forgot that what really tied people together was being nice to one another and trying to do good. Meanwhile, the superrich carried on waving the carrot of success at the middle classes and hitting the poor with the stick of failure, whilst rigging the system to ensure nothing was fairly distributed. But the middle classes were not content with believing just one lie they also chose to believe in another: the lie of progress. Namely, that by sending their kids to school and getting university degrees and buying houses the world would become a nicer place. It didn’t occur to them that the cost of their land of milk and honey was poverty and struggle for so many others. They were far too nice to think on such horrible things.

Unfortunately, to make matters worse the duped middle classes committed another vital mistake: they made a culture. Within this culture there were an awful lot of films about aristocrats and Queens and hardly any on miners’ strikes and civil rights. There were many television shows about buying houses and fashion but also lots about ugly and stupid poor people. There were many articles in newspapers that ridiculed, mocked and tokenised the poor, and transformed any one who spoke on their behalf into some sort of monstrous, loony party pooper. This culture used fancy words learned during fancy degrees at fancy institutions that took themselves a little too seriously. Middle class culture became a kind of club that many were excluded from. Now, I know, it was hard for the middle classes, they just wanted to get by, they just wanted a house, they just wanted security for their kids but in the end wanting a nice life for themselves made fuck all difference.

The catalyst that toppled this world of milk and honey (built on an empire of blood and suffering) happened in a very little country, what we know as England but back then was called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In that country there was an important vote to be held about whether England would stay in the European Union…sorry…yes, um, to be honest I’m not entirely sure what the European Union was but it had something to do with keeping bananas straight and trains filled entirely with gravy. Anyway, all those nice middle class people, full on milk and honey, were very surprised when the poor people, who didn’t have any milk and honey, voted to leave. They were also surprised when all those very rich people they had aspired to be like also voted to leave. They couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe that the poor people hated them and the rich people didn’t care about them. And so those nice middle classes got squeezed and whilst they tried to keep their nice lives together it seemed the pillars of what made their nice lives possible kept tumbling down. Soon the poor of the former United States of America revolted but accidentally voted for a superrich person who cared about them even less than the middle classes. Then the French did the same. And it was like a row of dominoes tumbling down. With everything the middle classes held dear vanishing it wasn’t long before the world was just divided between the rich and the poor, and sadly the former had all the weapons. For a while things had been good and for a while the middle classes believed things could only get better. But soon all those dreams of mortgages, salaries and nice suburban lives far from nasty poor people but closer to those brilliant rich people became just that: dreams. As for those middle classes? Well, they wished they’d woken up earlier. Now, if you look at the holo-screen you’ll see the recordings of a wise sage Queen of that era who recorded all these things in a catchy song. Enjoy.

Adam Curtis’ HyperNormalisation: Over-Hyped

October 18, 2016RobertLeave a comment

If, like me, you just spent two hours and forty-six minutes watching HyperNormalisation, the new Adam Curtis film on BBC iPlayer, who might be despairing at the state of the world. Terrified that the world is run by either nefarious villains who arbitrarily play the system and court paradox with the aim of confusing and alienating the populous (e.g. Trump and Putin) or ardent capitalists who pretend to have values whilst selling out to the highest bidder (e.g. Reagan, Blair, Bush etc). Terrified also of the monsters that thrive in the wake of these superpowers such as terrorists unafraid of killing civilians in a bid to create chaos. Meanwhile, the rest of us, powerless and paranoid, decide to retreat into a world of cyberspace where nothing is real, no one is really listening but we are being watched by nasty megacorporations who just want to sell us more crap. Yup, it’s a horrible world according to HyperNormalisation and even those who attempt to fight it – Occupy, the Arab Spring – end up dead, defeated or defecting to the baddies. But I’m not one for relentless pessimism and I kind of felt much of this has been said before.

Take Guy Debord, one of many 20th century French philosophers with a difficult surname to pronounce. He wrote a book called The Society of the Spectacle (1967) and it focuses on how social life has become increasingly self-reflexive. He wrote that “all that once was directly lived has become mere representation” and what I understand him meaning by this is that we spend far more time looking at representations of the world rather than at the world itself. For example, rather than go for a walk outside we play a computer game about going for a walk outside. Life becomes increasingly virtual as we watch endless TV, surf the web and monitor our online profiles, all the while losing touch with what’s authentic. We get lost in a world of representations, spectacles and signs, and lose our ability to figure out what’s real (the hyperactivity of the world becomes normalised). In HyperNormalisation Curtis picks up on this theme and explores how increasingly surreal politics have become. For example, Western superpowers create convenient supervillian baddies (aka scapegoats) in the Middle East to justify their continued wars waged to maintain the capitalist military industrial complex rather than actually deal with the genuine complexities of a globalised world. I see this as forming part of the larger postmodern critique of modernism – i.e. that those grand narratives so beloved of the US and UK such as Progress, Civilisation, Enlightenment and Happy Endings are a bunch of bullshit facades used to sugarcoat vicious and corrupt political systems that make a bunch of people rich.

However, the problem, and this is one of the problems I think Curtis’ film suffers from, is that the postmodern critique can only go so far. It takes the premises of modernism (i.e. those big narratives), finds them very wanting and then flips them on their heads. But once you’ve flipped a shoddy grand narrative on its head there’s not a lot you can do with it other than get cut amongst the broken pieces. And that’s what HyperNormalisation is – a lot of broken pieces fused together to form their own grand narrative that itself is much too simplistic and keeps reiterating the point that we’re doomed and there’s no alternative. It does this by juxtaposing endless clips from pop culture with pictures of mass destruction and dead bodies. It’s shocking, desensitising and a product of the very HyperNormalised world it tries to critique. Like the conniving politicians who try to bamboozle us into submission with paradoxical messages the film leaves us confused, devastated and gasping for air without offering any hope.

But I call bullshit to a hopeless future. Whilst money and banks are referenced there’s scant economics in this film – namely the economics of consumer capitalism and how it fuels so much of the conflict charted in the film. There’s also little time spent on examining alternatives – steady-state economies, sustainability, gift economies and the like. And whilst Curtis looks at various forms of terrorism and the West’s grand narratives as important systems of belief he doesn’t look at other more peaceful ones, for instance, CND, Quakerism and environmentalism. In essence, Curtis just contributes to the agenda of doom, despair and nihilism that has ravaged so much of our culture and caused the death of so many. He’s a documentarian of apocalypse and whilst he’s certainly created a spectacle that is at times informative and entertatining it’s also incredibly overwhelming and anxiety inducing. It floods us with highly selective information without providing any tips on how to use this information. Now here’s a picture of a banana with a condom on it because, hey, everything’s postmodern these days and doesn’t need to make sense…

Donald Trump Meets Mack The Knife

September 14, 2016RobertLeave a comment

Mack the Knife is the psychopathic protagonist of Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, now showing at the National Theatre in London. He’s misogynistic, greedy, ruthless arch-villain who is obsessed with money. Incidentally he has much in common with Donald Trump, currently doing the rounds in Trumpageddon at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington. One opera and a one-man show both painting bleak portraits of the world. The former a nihilistic, musical satire and the latter an ominous omen for things to come (but hopefully won’t).

The Threepenny Opera first. Wow. What a show. All singing, all dancing, with bits of set flying around the place, a band on stage, costumes to die for (and die in) and lots of jazzy smoke effects. It wasn’t quite Cabaret (but then again that’s a musical not an opera if we’re going to quibble) but Mack’s London is one of back stabbing, front stabbing and rape. It’s not a fun place to be and that’s the point. The joke’s on the audience as we’re mocked for wasting our cash on a show like this, a show full of low lifes and reprobates. Meanwhile, Brecht’s script does its best to ‘alienate’ us – “playing in such a way that the audience [is] hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances [is] meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience’s subconscious” (Brecht). Yup, no sitting back and relaxing, instead we’re regularly reminded by the script that not only is this a play, what with characters shouting “scene change” and “interval”, but it’s also a visciously barbed reflection/refraction of the world we live in. Whilst that’s all well and good not being allowed to connect with the characters meant I didn’t really care what happened to them, especially Mack as he was such an utter b*stard. It also didn’t help that Rory Kinnear, who plays Mack, couldn’t quite maintain his accent (was it meant to be Cockney or Russian or posh English?).

Someone who can maintain an accent is Simon Jay. His show Trumpegedden sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe and won many an accolade including an article in the Guardian and now it’s come down to London town. First I have to make a disclaimer: I know Simon (but I don’t know Kinnear) and think he’s a thoroughly good bloke but when I went to greet him before the show my arm was practically yanked off in a handshake from his orange faced, peroxide blond Trump. He was in character all night and it was terrifyingly brilliant. As he shoved his blond assistant around the stage, as he offended the audience, as he contradicted himself without qualm (often verbatim), so we were given a glimpse of an all too possible world should the real Trump win the vote in little over 50 days time! This will be a world of open hostility and violence that will be worse for women, the LGBTQIA community, people of the Muslim and Jewish faiths, people of colour and so many more. Basically anyone who isn’t white, male, American and rich. We’re fucking doomed if this guy wins and Mack’s dodgy London will appear a mere prelude to apocalypse. So share this new Avaaz thing to encourage US voters around the world to vote (even if they’re not in the US), go watch Simon’s play (next/last show Monday 19th September) and then swing by the NT if you fancy an opera (personally, I’d recommend Chicago).

Operation Breentry

July 1, 2016July 1, 2016RobertLeave a comment

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

The Red Queen, Alice In Wonderland

If we can put people on the moon, if we can build a world-wide web, if we can invent the Hoover, then we might as well try to keep Britain in the EU. We are caught in a unique period of time and history: the leading parties have no plan for the future and faith in our country and economy is wavering yet the catalyst at the heart of it – the Brexit vote – has not been rendered fact. It is still just a story. It’s a powerful one that many people have accepted and has already had adverse social, political and economic impact but it’s still a story that can be challenged. It’s time for Operation Breentry.

What’s Breentry? It is a movement to stop Britain leaving the EU. It involves emailing MPs asking them to reject the result of the referendum. There’s another initiative to call for a second Referendum and the Parliamentary Petition for that has over 4 million signatures. Meanwhile, people are demonstrating in the street to Remain in the EU and other European leaders like Angela Merkel are advising us to think twice. Unfortunately, many people are already resigned to letting Brexit happen and/or think Breentry could/should never happen. I want to challenge these beliefs.

It’s anti-democratic: To annul a referendum certainly appears anti-democratic but that surely requires living in a functioning democracy. But we don’t. The Leave campaign was anti-democratic – it lied with regards spending on the NHS, it lied with regards limiting immigration (the deals we might do with the EU would involve maintaining freedom of movement anyway) and it was only campaigning against something, it had no plans for after winning. However, even taking the Leave-Remain decision at face value is wrong because the calling for the Referendum itself was anti-democratic. David Cameron, who had entered into Parliament with a slim majority, called it to appease his right-wing back benchers so he could become PM. That is power politics at its worst especially when so many of the electorate did not even vote him in. Remember, our head of state isn’t elected, our House of Lords isn’t elected, our mainstream media is privatised and has a clear agenda and we only vote once very five years. So, yes, Britain is an aspiring democracy but it hasn’t got there yet. All is still to be striven for.

It’s too late: No it’s not. Article 50 has not been signed. We can still petition all MPs and leaders of all parties (the Tories included) to not make one of the worst decisions in recent British history. Furthermore, even if Article 50 were signed we could still challenge it. Or perhaps this isn’t about being late or early at all, if we were on time we would have trialled all war criminals, transcended growth-based consumer capitalism, ended all wars and avoided climate change. Let’s just be pragmatic and do what we can in the time we’ve got.

It would lead to violence and civil war: Breentry would certainly anger voters who wanted to Leave but their actual vote to Leave has acted as a rallying call to violent racists and xenophobes. Police have registered a fivefold increase in race-hate complaints since Brexit. Immigrants have been verbally abused, attacked and fire bombed in the past few days. This proves again how misled and misguided many Leave voters were, that they actually believed Britain might become some free-standing, all-white nation surrounded by high walls. That was never what the Leave vote was offering even if the likes of Nigel Farage might have encouraged it. If people do threaten violence in response to Breentry and we don’t act as a consequence then we are negotiating with terrorists, kowtowing to criminals and appeasing racists. We categorically cannot let the bullies win. As for civil war, well, currently the Tory and Labour parties seem to be hellbent on ripping themselves apart as the vote has unleashed a whole wave of vitriol and back stabbing from the parties. Meanwhile, the Referendum has split families and friends, as people fall out with each other in bitter arguments. And every economic forecast looks bleak. Perhaps we’ve always been at war in Britain, certainly a class war, and the Referendum just proves what has always been true. Hence why we must do all we can on all fronts to heal the many deep wounds in our country rather than stick the knives in further.

The Tories will negotiate a good deal outside the EU: No they won’t. The Tory party is swift revealing it’s inability to steer a post-Brexit course. Gove stabbed Johnson in the back and does not have a plan for a Brexit future despite co-leading the Leave campaign. Theresa May is notoriously anti-immigration and yet might have to be the one negotiating a deal with the EU that involves keeping freedom of movement – that’s like asking a racist to argue for multiculturalism. Meanwhile, Liam Fox is anti-EU (and anti-gay marriage, he said it’s ‘absurd’ and ‘social engineering’). Angela Leadsom loves Europe apparently but says, “What I hate is the EU and the way it is destroying such a fabulous continent” – good luck negotiating with the likes of Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker then (she also abstained from voting on gay marriage, she believed it didn’t have a mandate). The irony is that the one pro-Remain candidate, Stephen Crabb, will lose support because of that stance, although he only adopted it out of loyalty to David Cameron even though he’s largely anti-EU. He also opposed gay marriage but apparently is OK with it now, phew. None of these people have the country’s best interests at heart or the intelligence to guide this country into recovery. They’re also all pro-austerity, an economic decision that will grind this country down even further and exacerbate the unrest we’re witnessing. I thought the Tories were supposed to oppose Labour but turns out they oppose themselves as well.

Labour could negotiate a deal instead: No it couldn’t. There’s almost more infighting there than in the Tory party. Corbyn is being relentlessly stabbed in the back by Blairite MPs even though he has a huge amount of grassroots support. He was also anti-EU and decidedly quiet on calling for Remain. If he miraculously became PM (which would be no bad thing as he’d challenge austerity and enrich the welfare state) would he really have the best interests of the UK at heart when dealing with EU bureaucrats? Perhaps he’ll wake up to the Breentry call and take us back, although he’ll have a vicious, untrustworthy party behind him that is just waiting for his political demise. I thought Labour was supposed to oppose the Tories but turns out they oppose themselves as well.

The UK is strong, we’ll get what we want in the end, we’ll “take back control”: No we won’t. Nicola Sturgeon is calling for a second Scottish referendum. Leanne Woods, leader of Plaid Cymru, is calling for Welsh independence, “redesigning the current UK is the only option.” There are calls to unite Ireland and even for London to go independent. Turns out it’s not just political parties that don’t get on, countries don’t either. Add to this deepening austerity, companies threatening to leave/leaving the UK, the loss of our triple A credit rating, a rise in racist violence and I’m struggling to see how the UK stays united. That selfish little world of capitalist consumerism and middle-England-ism is imploding and is trying to take its neighbours down with it. This isn’t new – this has been an ongoing problem for decades, Brexit has just exposed it more starkly. Breentry would just be the first step in trying to patch back together the social fabric of the UK.

But migrants are a problem, we need less of them: No. That is taking Tory and Leave propaganda at face value, as well as various Labour views. Stirring up racial hatred and anti-immigration sentiments are a timeless tactic used to distract attention from underlying economic issues which include rising inequality (how come so many people can’t afford their rent whilst so many others have multiple houses around the world) and austerity (we keep forgetting that it was the 2008 financial crash that brought the global economy to its knees not a “bunch of migrants” nor over-generous Labour government spending on the economy, remember, Osborne’s deficit has been so much higher than that of Brown’s). If we scapegoat and abuse migrants and people whose skin isn’t white enough we will set this country back decades and fall into the same bigoted trap of history. We are better than this and we can learn our lesson.

What if we’d voted Remain and the Leave campaign wanted to challenge it: Then they’d have every right to and could use the same arguments that I have. Except many of the Leave camp voted out of protest on the proviso that Britain would take back sovereignty and control, but that was a lie. They voted to get more money spent on the NHS, that was a lie. They voted for less migrants, that was a lie (plus, I don’t negotiate with racists). But even if this scenario were true the state of our country would still be to play for. We’d still be realising, all too late, that whilst political statements seem like irrefutable truths they are in fact stories and agendas that can be challenged, whoever’s side your on. The game is afoot (and always has been but for too long we’ve let others, including elitist, old-Etonians, play it for us).

The EU won’t get any better: I agree that the EU is a problematic institution. The economic bullying of countries like Germany and France against Greece is outrageous. I know my grandparents didn’t risk their lives against the Nazis just so economic powerhouses could drive other countries into recession. However, I do know they risked their lives to stop war on the continent and that worked, for now. With the rise of the extreme right and this includes the neo-Nazis we risk undoing their good work and whilst we might not have a war with trenches and obvious beginning/end points we will witness the rise of extremist terrorism in Europe directed at groups including Muslims, Jews, the Romani, queers and any other convenient scapegoats. The EU, problematic as it is, is a supra-national organisation built to enhance unity and promote peace but this won’t happen by magic and we must challenge and change it from within to ensure peace reigns. My grandparents fought the Nazis, I think I can fight corrupt EU politics. And the latter is itself a victim of globalised, growth-obsessed, consumer capitalism (that’s the real fight, see rest of blog for thoughts on that).

There is another way and it’s called Breentry. Email your MP and ask them to vote out the Referendum, sign the petition to call for another one, wear a safety-pin to show support with the immigrant population, challenge hate crime, hug your friends, let yourself cry, howl in anger at the moon, smile at strangers and talk, talk, talk. We must dare to be political and we must dare to call for change. A positive post on Breenty and a possible future will come next but this one is getting far too long. Please do challenge me, this is just my opinion, but please let’s keep talking about this. May the force of Lady Gaga be with you – she’s right, we are on the edge but we don’t have to fall.

And news just in, this hilarious facebook post that sums the situation up perfectly!

Britain Has Feelings Too

June 30, 2016June 30, 2016RobertLeave a comment

We British are renowned for our politeness. We doff our caps to strangers, we wait for others to get on the tube before we get off and we drink endless cups of tea, sometimes with our little fingers raised. We may grumble through hard times but only very quietly. We complain but never loudly or crassly. We are a proud folk for in the face of a crisis we always keep calm and carry on. We have the stiffest of upper lips and save our tears for the Queen’s birthday. We don’t like public displays of emotion but we will smile at strangers, although we’ll never grin or laugh out loud in front of them. We are essentially a polite race. But something happened last Friday, Britain changed and that facade of politeness fell as our feelings were unleashed.

And it turns out that British people do have emotions after all. People have been in tears and in despair over the call for Brexit (still not a reality – it’s not legally binding and Parliament have made no decisions, time for Breentry): many are sad about the future they see being dismantled, many are sad about the past they see being ignored and many are sad about the volatile present that we’re living through. Others are in fear and pain as they experience the fists, insults and petrol bombs of racial abuse and violence. Many are angry for many different reasons: because they think the majority of people are idiots, because they think it’s time immigrants went home, because they think they’ve been lied to by the press and the establishment. Even the people of power are expressing emotions: David Cameron shed a tear which may even have been genuine (maybe he realised the enormity of the mistake he made) whilst Boris Johnson has gone quiet, which is most unlike him.

So, yes, British people do have emotions after all – some inspiring and some scary – and over the past few days we’ve been expressing them over and over again. This has been a long time coming – keeping calm and carrying on, grumbling under our breath and being oh so polite are just ways of suppressing our feelings without ever having to address them. But you can’t hide emotions forever. Yet there are ways to vent anger and ways to direct frustration which don’t have to destroy and denigrate and there are ways to express sadness and grief that don’t have to lead to despair, yet we are a vastly emotionally unintelligent country because we’ve never been given the education for it. We have a lot to learn in a very short space of time but perhaps what is happening now is a sharp wake up call: our feelings are powerful, dangerous and transformative. We must acquaint ourselves with them and use them as a force for good.

Befriending Brexiters

June 20, 2016RobertLeave a comment

I walked out of Dalston Kingsland overground station on Saturday into a brief spell of sun. Blinking back the glare the first thing I saw was a friendly looking young white man with floppy brown hair offering me a big smile and a red pamphlet reading LEAVE. Yup, a Brexiter, one of those terribly charming and polite people who wants Britain to leave the EU and ‘go it alone’. Here was my moment, I thought, my chance to engage with the ‘enemy’ and convert him to the Remain cause.

We offered one another friendly hellos and I asked him how he was doing. It transpired he was doing well. I thought I’d meet his friendliness with the like and I said that I’d love to hear more about his argument. He told me that his main reason for supporting Leave was financial, he believed we would have a stronger trading position if we left. I nodded and then mentioned Ngaire Woods, the Founding Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and Professor of Global Economic Governance at the University of Oxford, and what she had said about Britain’s trading position being weaker outside of the EU (see video). He said he hadn’t heard of her.

We carried on in this amicable style for a while as he said one thing, I said something else, then he offered more, and so on and so on until I realised I didn’t stand much of a chance. Not only did I not have enough facts at hand it seemed that for every one I did he had a counter argument. I figured that the likelihood of me convincing him to change his view was low given my limited information and the fact that he was on the street on a Saturday afternoon handing out Leave leaflets – he must be quite committed to the cause.

Instead I told him that I feared leaving the EU would legitimise and worsen the rising levels of violence in the country, violence that stems from extreme, right-wing views about who does and does not deserve freedom from violence. I mentioned the tragic death of Jo Cox at the hands of a man who shouted ‘Britain First’ as he attacked her. I mentioned the rise of the neo-Nazis throughout Europe and how some pro-Brexit people I had spoken to expressed overtly racist views. He looked a little concerned and assured me he wasn’t racist. I believed him. Then his colleague came over carrying yet more LEAVE leaflets and he introduced me to her. We offered one another polite hellos. I told them I had to go, I had a conference to get to, but I said that whilst I would still vote to Remain, whatever the result, it was all of our responsibility to stand up to racism, discrimination and violence. We would have to put aside our political differences (he told me had previously voted for the Lib Dems and later the Tories) and work hard to ensure equality and peace were prioritisied in our country. They both nodded emphatically and as I walked away I heard him say to his colleague that I was “one of the better ones”.

So what had I achieved? Not a lot as I’m sure most of you would observe and you’re right, I hadn’t made them change their minds but maybe I had made them think twice. The task ahead for all of us – peace in our time and peace on earth – is something that transcends political persuasion and that we can all be a part of. And maybe in that brief conversation whilst I hadn’t got them to about turn I might have surprised them, if I was one of the ‘better ones’ I wonder what some of the other Remainers were life. The Referendum, like so much of party politics, is designed to fracture and split but we have to challenge this, we’re humans before we’re Tory, Green or Labour. And if dark times are ahead, which they certainly are, then we’re going to need to make a lot of new friends.

Oxford’s Vigil For Orlando

June 16, 2016RobertLeave a comment

Oxford, England. Thunder boomed, lightning flashed and the rain came tumbling down. The English summer is never one for predictably and climate change just makes that all worse. A brief cycle home and I was drenched, my second shower for the day. It was five o’ clock in the afternoon and there was going to be a vigil in Radcliffe Square for the victims of the homophobic terrorist attack in Orlando. More thunder, more lightning, more rain. The Orlando attack was deeply distressing. It is sad to see people robbed of their lives by atrocious acts of violence and it is sad to see the queer community targeted simply because people want to be free to love whoever they wish. However, I’d seen photos of the vigil in Soho, London, and there had been thousands of people standing in silence, in tears and in solidarity, and this gave me hope.

A few hours later I put my waterproof jacket on, jumped back on my bike and head into town. But the jacket was unnecessary because the clouds were breaking and beyond, even at half past seven, the sun was shining. The view of the changing sky was staggering punctured by the sandstone spires of Oxford University. I arrived at Radcliffe Square where hundreds of people had gathered outside the Radcliffe Camera (the only building in Oxford’s skyline that looks more like a booby than a penis). So many people. Like any community, the queer one can be both brilliant and difficult. Great friendships can be forged but so can cliques. Certain groups come to identify themselves apart from others and ‘politics’ can arise. However, that evening we were gathered for something so much greater than ourselves, we were gathered in solidarity for the victims of Orlando and for queer people all over the world.

A quote from the facebook event reads as this: “LGBTQ people have long been and continue to be the victims of violence and hatred in the places where we try to seek safety. The fact that this attack happened on Latinx night, and that so many of the victims were Latinx reminds us that queer people of colour are disproportionately at risk of violent hate crimes. On Wednesday evening we will come together outside the Radcliffe Camera to remember the lives of the victims of this attack; we will mourn the violence that seeks to destroy our communities. There is no space at this vigil for Islamophobia or racism. We will not be silent in the face of hatred, we will stand together and support one another as we have always done in times of crisis.”

People gave speeches, the names of the victims were read out and a two-minute silence was held. Someone in front of me began to cry and someone next to them gave them a hug – I don’t think they knew each other. There were families there too and heterosexual people, distressed at the attack and supporting their queer friends. Then a beautifully voiced choir sang Seasons of Love from the musical Rent and Somewhere Over The Rainbow. What ace songs. It’s such a shame that it sometimes takes tragedy to bring us together but those moments of unity are exceptionally powerful, and even though I went by myself to the vigil I did not feel alone. Humans have always lived in difficult times and this remains true today. My hope is that the sentiment of belonging to something so much bigger than ourselves – a community of fighters, lovers, queers and allies that runs back throughout history and will run always into the future – will continue to bring us closer together in a time when division is not an option.