Come on, England!
What side are you on in the culture war?
The Tory Party in the UK, in pace with their ideological right-wing sister party in the US, the Republicans, are stoking a full-blown culture war against what they term to be ‘left wing’ or pejoratively, ‘woke’. This seems to range from climate change to basic human rights. Rights to protest and even vote are being actively suppressed, academic freedom is being attacked in schools and universities. Critical race theory and Black history, designed to counter centuries of the mythologisation and white-washing of the history of imperialism and colonialism is being specifically targeted. Statues of slavers now have more protection under law than the victims of sexual assault. In the past few weeks, a British government select committee report recommended that the teaching of the term ‘white privilege’ should be made illegal.
Meanwhile in Canada, there is the horrific discovery of more evidence of the systematic genocide of First Nations people — planned and executed by the Canadian and British governments, hand-in-hand with the Catholic Church — crimes that, to use the language of the old Catholic catechism, truly “cry to heaven for vengeance” (peccata clamantia).
The past weeks, thousands of people took to the streets all over the UK to defend the simple right to protest, as well as to voice their anger at the blatant and unapologetic corruption and incompetence at the heart of the Tory regime. This was epitomised by the Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, as CCTV from inside his own office was mysteriously leaked to the tabloid press, showing that the old university friend that he hired to a £1,000 a day job, whose brother’s company has been in receipt of lucrative health contracts, was in fact his mistress.
The shocking breach in security at the heart of government will apparently not be investigated. Neither will Mr Hancock’s evidenced breach of the COVID social distancing regulations, as the police have decided that this apparent illegal activity was in the past. His appointment of the woman in question, Gina Coladangelo, was apparently investigated at the time and no conflict of interest was discovered. It turns out that part of her job was scrutiny of her lover’s department — and she attended meetings she was wholly unqualified for, having no experience whatsoever in medicine or healthcare management. Those findings, as well as the awards of any contracts to family members should also now be investigated — or at least they would be in a democracy where government ministers and employees were accountable to Parliament and the nation.
In the past, though minsters (and monarchs) certainly behaved no better in private, at least they attempted to cover their corruption, and if caught in flagrante delicto they would ‘do the honourable thing’ and resign to ‘spend more time with their family.’ There was the need to observe some code of behaviour in public office, at least to have even a pretence of personal honour, respect for parliament and the electorate, and a modicum of accountability. However, in Johnson’s regime this is simply not the case. Seemingly every week, actions of the Home Secretary or some other department are found to be illegal by the High Court, but these indictments simply fall into obscurity, unreported by the state media, unanswered by ministers. Despite the large Tory majority the Prime Minister seems to favour ruling by decree, announcing policy changes to the media before even bothering to present them to a powerless parliament — his government being the first in British history to be found in Contempt of Parliament.
In this culture war, the government proceeds with complete impunity, whilst those who try to stand against it are targeted for derision. Right-wing pundits cry that they have been ‘cancelled’ on every channel on TV and radio, to their thousands of followers on social media and in their articles commissioned by the press, whilst government committees and quangos threaten universities with sanction for teaching Middle-Eastern studies and simultaneously not opening their doors to far-right and white supremacist speakers. Ethical issues that have been accepted as self-evident and even into law are now questioned as if these are simply ‘opinions’ and the bigotry and discrimination these measures were designed to eradicate is re-stated and validated.
The right and the Tory government have been radicalising their supporters throughout the Brexit campaign up to the present day. Nationalism, in its most radical forms of jingoism and xenophobia, is being deliberately stoked even to the point of mandating a ‘patriotic song’ to be sung by primary schoolchildren. The failures of the government to secure a proper and practical brexit deal, along with all the other predicted economic effects of brexit, are all being blamed on ‘Johnny Foreigner’.
But of course, it’s not just the government. The Labour Party is breathing a massive sigh of relief after having held on by a thread in the Batley and Spen by-election, their vote share literally decimated. It appears that most of the Asian vote, traditionally Labour, was lost to the Workers’ Party. Posts from official Labour sources and commentators have been painting the Asian community as radicalised and homophobic, rather than considering that their real concerns about islamophobia within the current Labour Party establishment and the lack of policy support for the Palestinian and Kashmiri causes have been downplayed or even ignored. Ironically, Labour peer Lord Mandelson blamed ‘corbynite factions’ of campaigning against the party in an attempt to oust the current leader, Sir Keir Starmer.
Tonight the England football team will make history, being in the final of a major international tournament for the first time since 1966. Already we have seen how the government has switched from refusing to condemn ‘fans’ for booing the team as they take the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Tory commentators have accused the team of being influenced by what they term a ‘neo-communist political movement’. Then England won all the way through, and suddenly the Prime Minister was pretending to be a football fan, members of the cabinet were ordered to post social media content of themselves supporting the team. Members of this team directly stood up to the government on child poverty and free school meals — and have announced that their prize money tonight will be donated to the NHS. The government and the right want to encourage nationalistic fervour as a diversion from their own shocking corruption and incompetence, in particular the need to identify the portly figure of Johnson himself with this success and victory.
Yesterday evening, the UK’s state broadcaster, the BBC, ‘coincidentally’ showed the disneyfied-history propaganda film The Darkest Hour, which fictionalises and aggrandises the role of Churchill in the decision to go to war against Germany in 1939. Private revelations have shown indicated that Johnson idolises the mythical Churchill, and has written his own hagiography. The tabloids have as usual reprinted and misquoted propaganda slogans from a war that is now beyond living memory, hearkening back to the days of empire enforced by the British Army boot, Maxim gun and Lee Enfield rifle. City squares across the country are filling with drunken mobs of unmasked men in what will be the latest and perhaps biggest super-spreader event. Hospitalisations and deaths arising however won’t show upon until at least a week after Johnson’s Freedom Day, 19 July.
It’s about the freedom to dissent, to declare and demonstrate your opposition. But this is something the political right have always wanted to suppress, usually by arguing the reverse logic, that the real dissenters are those who support the one-party state — the ones standing against the woke. Churchill was a hero, for a Britain that stood alone against the foreign enemy. The empire was a force for good in the world, that brought civilisation and British values to indigenous people. Britain policed the seas, stopping the transatlantic slave trade not for political influence or control the price of stocks, but purely from the principle of abolitionism. In the US, the same arguments are made — those that stand against the myth of the founding and establishment of the United States are the traitors, the unpatriotic.
In the weeks ahead, as the UK becomes the COVID centre of the world, mask wearing is set to be the next identifying trait of the woke, of the threat within, the traitor. Standing up to defend workplace safety for transport and hospitality staff and for others forced back into unsafe offices and factories will be considered an act of sabotage, of disloyalty. Johnson’s regime will pass another set of laws to reduce the ability to protest or even vote against the government, and his popularity will rise, unopposed by the Labour Party, boosted by English victory on the pitch and a dangerous illusion of normality on the streets.
Which side are you on?
Come on, England!