By Daviemoo
In America, the US government passed a bipartisan bill declaring that TikTok should be banned, citing national security concerns for citizen data. This, coming from a government that is allowing a man who tried to pull off an insurrection to run for president. This from a government who is ignoring the will of its people to continue to fund, aid and deny a genocide we can watch from those same phones they’re so afraid we’re vulnerable on. How coincidental.
Meanwhile in the UK, the government has unveiled new plans to call socialists, communists etc extremists- essentially making those who speak out against their failed regime extremists. If extremism is wishing to remove our responsibility for mass murder abroad, and if extremism is speaking out against a government who has ruined the lives of every generation following their own- then I guess we’re all extremists.
Michael Gove vacillated on an LBC interview this week when asked whether Gaza was under occupation. You could see the cocaine-softened wheels turning in his head as he played with delicate phrasing to avoid upsetting the Israeli state- for how dare we suggest that the well documented mass slaughter they’ve been performing on innocent bystanders as a response to Hamas’ terror attack as occupation, as genocide, as mass slaughter, as wrong. But when do we ever see a government minister in the UK not performing this delicate dance of wording. Well, ironically from Michael Gove again, for once strong of speech as he unveiled the plans to label movements like communism, socialism and “anti government sentiment” as extremism.
It may sound like weaponised incompetence, but I fail to see how being unhappy with the state of affairs in the UK counts in any way toward the lofty label of “extremism”. From hospitals unable to treat patients in time due to chronic understaffing even with locum agency help ready, to schools at threat of falling in on our children’s’ heads- from working for 15 years and still not having enough saved to be able to purchase property to watching the government superfund a police force which is regularly in the press for another racism, sexism, homophobia scandal. From the government being caught out and exposed for lying to the public about their actions during lockdown to Paterson scandals to over 50 of our elected representatives being investigated for sexual misconduct, from Benton’s own lobbying scandal to defections to sordid parties due to racism and islamophobia, to more racism scandals as a donor who pays the government 10 million pounds and is rewarded to the tune of 200 million pounds of government contracts- being dissatisfied with this, being angry about this, being fed up of it- is not extremism… it is sanity.
For years now we have watched as surface level culture war nonsense is dragged into the public eye- this week, the government banned puberty blockers from being issued to children: do you think there is a huge, terrifying number of children being given these drugs? The number is 83. But do they deal with the rising costs of living? Of companies making record profits from their horrendously inflated prices? Do they deal with the undriveable roads, the strangled industries? No. It’s more important to pander to the very stupid and loud in this county than make living here possible. Small government is their moniker, yet it’s harder to exercise our rights to vote, to strike, to protest. How small is a government who prevents you from exercising your basic rights?
These government bans and crackdowns and laws and legislations, from protest blocking to superfunding the police to redefining extremism is ludicrous. If they want to crack down on extremism they could block the hard right who were tussling with the police in November and did so all throughout the lockdowns implemented to save us from dire illness and crashing the healthcare system entirely. It is a controlled response to their fear of our mass organising.
Slowly but surely an ill defined movement has coalesced from the misery in which we all find ourselves. This movement is not named, it has no head or heads because it is so far reaching and egalitarian. So many of us are fed up of society as it shakily stands, tired of struggling to make ends meet, tired of having our welfare threatened by those stirred to extreme modes of thinking by government and press idiocy. As I’ve said numerous times, no trans people or immigrants are ruining our lives- it’s the corrupt charlatans who’ve been driving things for our whole lives, enriching themselves using the cracks in the foundations of our governance whilst pointing their soiled fingers of blame at everyone else. And too many of us are so deeply indoctrinated that we believe it, we think all it takes is a surface level sweep towards a new government and that’ll be job done. The problem is that our politicians are in it up to their necks, immersed in the swamp of corruption that our modes of governance quietly fell to at some point and that we all, until we really looked- missed.
Government is a vital aspect of all of our lives. They control law, tax, projects for how the country should develop, they mandate education, structure healthcare… are they sucessful? In whatever country you’re reading this from, are they doing a good job? A good enough job? Politicians are public servants and the public is exhausted, battered, bruised from years of financial crush, from unprecedented world events, from so many different things all at once- and our politicians are banning us speaking out about this feeling of ennui, this sense of dislocation from what is right, what is moral, what is necessary for a fair, open society built on solid foundation. They bar social media apps and call us terrorists- rather than working to improve the lives their decisions have blighted.
These moves the governments are making are a shoring up against the movement we’re all in to various degrees as it begins to coalesce, an attempt to break those threads. But it is too late. Those threads aren’t made in the wires and bytes of the net. They aren’t made in the strings of data that head to our phones or computers through the wifi of our homes. It’s in our DNA. We’re all fed up- we all want change. And this isn’t something our governments can drain out of us under counter terror indoctrination or by barring us from watching HD videos of innocent people starving. If anything trying to stop us seeing it makes it worse- their authoritarianism is writ large in their determined blinkering of our ability to see it. They- and I mean our supposed representatives, our MPs, our congresspeople- they work together to prevent us from this uprising and by doing so they seal it’s happening.
The other name for MP’s, Members of Parliament, is “civil servants”. We are the people they are meant to serve, they work for us- we pay their salaries, we elect them, we ask- tell- them to represent us- and now they repay this by trying to blinker us, or call our discomfort with their poor work extremism.
I accept your label cheerfully- for it if it is extreme to be uncomfortable in this world as it stands, then that I may be, but I see it as the only sane response to this insane world.
I created this blog to speak out against a corrupt government- and as long as I am able I will speak out against every single person who would rather force us into a scold’s bridle than deal with our dissatisfaction with a society that fails at every juncture to function as a just one should.
Politically Enraged 