It genuinely beggars belief for me why people are still voting Tory. I’ve been wracking my brains and reading as much as I can about this whole affair, and I’ve come to the conclusion that people continue to back these sinister, money-hoarding, privileged elites for one of the following three reasons.
They’ve been misinformed.
They’re xenophobic, racist bigots.
They’re rich.
If anyone voting Tory falls into the last two categories then there is no reaching them. They’re too far gone. And that is – in part – the point of this article.
I’ve lost a number of “friends” over the course of this election due to my posts on supporting a forward-thinking, literally life-saving, green, progressive, and fair government that is focused on our NHS, police and fire service, small businesses, education, environment, equality, a deal Brexit and affordable transport infrastructure. In spite of my best efforts to reach them (the vast majority fall into the above first category), they’ve refused to believe they’ve been conned. Throughout the relatively few discussions I’ve had, nobody has been able to give me a genuinely concrete reason for voting Tory – apart from hating Jeremy Corbyn. In the place of rational, coherent, and measured debate, there’s a lot of anger and there’s a lot of hate. Sometimes, something deeper and darker creeps in. Sometimes, although they try their hardest not to mention it, the ‘I’ word is bubbling beneath the surface.
Immigrants.
For a great number of little Britain citizens – the jingoistic, flag-waving right – Brexit means nothing more than to “get our country back.” They live in a fantasy world of endless Churchill speeches with a soundtrack of Land of Hope and Glory, wanking off to the fact we still have the Falkland Islands and we’re pretty decent at rowing in the Olympics. They’re the kind of people who believe the United Kingdom is the be-all and end-all of this planet, foaming at the mouth with their bigoted patriotism, screaming about what their parents or grandparents “fought for,” still convinced that British imperialism raping the world was a good thing.
But many are not foaming at the mouth. Many don’t even so much as glance at a progressive discussion on social media. Many are just going to quietly put a little cross in the blue box on Thursday, go home, make the tea, put Corrie on and say no more about it. They have been hypnotised by a decade of Tory propaganda, lies, smears, and bullshit.
“Let’s get Brexit done,” someone comments on an anti-EU page. “Then we can vote for who we want after that.”
“A second referendum is a betrayal of democracy! Share if you agree!”
“Jeremy Corbyn is a traitor!”
The idiocy witnessed in this election has been astounding.
For one, I fail to see how having a second referendum is a betrayal of democracy. In many countries, it is required by law to vote twice on such a monumentous, impactful, and generation-changing decision. The fact that Labour has said they will broker a good deal within three months and then put it to the people for the final vote is just a no-brainer for me. Remember, this is something that three Tory Prime Ministers have failed to do so far over four years – and now we’re led to believe that mini-Trump will suddenly “get it done?” If you all want Brexit and you’re the “majority,” surely you’ll have nothing to worry about and you can just vote for it again? What, in the name of all that’s holy, is undemocratic about that?
(As a side note, my maths has never been good, but I believe that “winning” the EU referendum by a margin of 3.8% with a voter turnout of 72.2% is not a “majority” and the people haven’t “spoken.”)
In reality, these vocal, bigoted patriots have realised that people have become informed. That many have changed their minds after witnessing the utter shit-show that we’ve been dragged through. Imagine if we’d put all the money spent on Brexit back into the country? What might have been if our government had been ploughing funds into the economy and services instead of pissing it up the wall on billboards and bus slogans with not the slightest grain of truth to them?
And yet how is this still allowed to happen? How are the Tories still up in the polls a day before we hit the ballot boxes? What the actual fuck is going on?
While back in the UK for my birthday in October, I chanced upon a conversation between local lads in a beer garden in my hometown of Wetherby. One of these guys was banging on about how Corbyn was a terrorist, seen operating at all these shady deals, pictured with some bomber, not watching the Queen’s speech. A voice piped up to interrupt this rather tall lad and all his mates, countering that they’ve all been led up the garden path by a media that is owned by billionaires. To my utter surprise, I found out that the voice was mine. After a good couple of minutes of pleading with them – as working-class lads – to not believe everything they read from an oligarch’s agenda, the tall lad responded with – “yeah, but how old are you?!” (He was clearly ready to counter with the fact that Corbyn was promising free university education to the likes of me – so of course, I’d vote for him.)
When I told him I was 40 he nearly had a cow and then allowed me to continue – blessed as I was for having come of age. But it wasn’t long before the ‘i’ word came out and my heart sank. He started randomly pointing at buildings and saying how they’d stood for a lifetime because they were built by “the British” and not some Pole. Up until that point, I felt I was doing pretty well, then once he switched to the “I’m really fuckin’ patriotic” rhetoric the argument was lost. And that’s just it. That’s the problem. Therein lies the rub.
Patriotism.
Oscar Wilde said, “patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” It’s one of my favourite quotes of all time and never a truer word was spoken. Imagine, for a moment, a world without patriotism. Picture an existence where there weren’t any flags. A place where the lottery of where you were born just didn’t matter. Imagine all the people…something, something, something…peace. If only we could rid the world of patriotism, it would be a much better place.
And religion. Let’s finally put that archaic practice in the bin where it belongs, too.
(Disclaimer – I don’t believe everyone who votes Tory is a bigot, nor do I believe that everyone who is patriotic is problematic. It’s just if we could have a little less of both and a bit more empathy it would be nice).
With that in mind, let me return to the people who are in category one of the reasons they’re voting Tory. The misinformed. I could write pages and pages about how it’s painfully obvious that they’ve been spun a yarn and fallen for it hook line and sinker – but it’s a waste of time. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and many people don’t take it well. You only have to look at Trump supporters for a similar reaction. They’ll never admit they’ve backed the horse that’s only good for glue. I watched one lady say she would still vote for him if he went out into the street and shot a kid. This is what we’re up against.
But I’ll summarize. Every slanderous thing written about Jeremy Corbyn has been debunked.
DEBUNKED – Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a Marxist. He’s not “radical.” He’s following the very successful model of Norway, Sweden, and Iceland et al. They’re not broke – and neither will we be unless we continue to allow the billionaires to control us. I fail to understand how people think that by voting Labour and Jeremy Corbyn we’re going to suddenly be in a worse state and in deeper poverty than we are now. It’s so mind-numbingly asinine that these people need their collective heads examined.
DEBUNKED – Jeremy Corbyn isn’t an antisemite. EVERYTHING – and I mean everything, that has been said against him on these allegations has been proven to be false. A web of lies and skewed media weaved by the money men who are running scared of him. Wanting a fair deal for Palestine and to uphold HUMAN RIGHTS does not make the man an antisemite. But apparently challenging anyone on this who is Jewish makes me one. Meanwhile, the actual Prime Minister is on record countless times with Islamaphobic, homophobic, and xenophobic comments and we see and hear nothing about it in the tabloids or on the British Biased Corporation.
DEBUNKED – Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a terrorist. Throughout his political career, he’s been sitting down at every table to try and broker peace deals. To try and find a better solution than simply bombing the shit out of each other. And in order to push for peace – surprisingly enough – you have to listen to both sides of the story. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, and we’re never going to resolve the conflicts of this world by violence. Violence radicalizes – not reforms. To believe that the security of Britain is under threat from a man who holds two peace prizes and tends an allotment, and wants to reach out across the table rather than murder everyone – is one of the fucking dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
Finally, a friend of a friend recently posted a comment about how she could never back Labour because Jeremy Corbyn is a “disaster.” This response isn’t verbatim, but I said that I couldn’t believe quite how a man who has spent his entire political career fighting for people regardless of their background, religion, colour, or upbringing – could possibly be a disaster. A man who has been up against some of the most vicious, vitriolic bile ever spat at a leader of the opposition in the history of politics, from a media controlled by billionaire oligarchs intent on seeing the Tories win for their own nefarious agenda. And although the vast majority of the working class read these comic-book rags, There’s Jeremy Corbyn, still fighting for you, me and the many – when any less of a man would have fucked off and hidden in a ditch. The only disaster I see is if we wake up with a Tory government on what would be the unluckiest Friday the 13th in history, led by a man who literally hides in a fridge to escape an interview.
Jeremy Corbyn isn’t going to be around forever, so anyone who is even considering voting Conservative for the reason that they don’t like him – please, just don’t. Perhaps you’ll prefer Labour’s next leader – but by then we’ll have had to grease our arseholes in preparation to be shafted by another nine years of Tory plundering and pillage that we will never truly recover from and the future generations will despise us for.
I’ve never written anything political before – as it just frustrates me. I find I have delusions of grandeur of wanting it to turn out as an award-winning piece of cutting-edge journalism, but it always turns out something of a mess. This is no different, given I began writing on a whim three hours ago and it’s just gone 4 AM here in the States. I’m tired of all this and I’ll probably wake up to regret this post – but it really, really matters.
Please, don’t vote Tory on the 12th of December. Whether you’re leave or remain, vote however you need to in order to keep them out of power. Then, and only then, will we truly start to get our country back.
But hey, what do I know? I’m a fuckin’ unpatriotic snowflake.
Propaganda, Patriotism, and Politics – My Two Cents on this Election
It genuinely beggars belief for me why people are still voting Tory. I’ve been wracking my brains and reading as much as I can about this whole affair, and I’ve come to the conclusion that people continue to back these sinister, money-hoarding, privileged elites for one of the following three reasons.
If anyone voting Tory falls into the last two categories then there is no reaching them. They’re too far gone. And that is – in part – the point of this article.
I’ve lost a number of “friends” over the course of this election due to my posts on supporting a forward-thinking, literally life-saving, green, progressive, and fair government that is focused on our NHS, police and fire service, small businesses, education, environment, equality, a deal Brexit and affordable transport infrastructure. In spite of my best efforts to reach them (the vast majority fall into the above first category), they’ve refused to believe they’ve been conned. Throughout the relatively few discussions I’ve had, nobody has been able to give me a genuinely concrete reason for voting Tory – apart from hating Jeremy Corbyn. In the place of rational, coherent, and measured debate, there’s a lot of anger and there’s a lot of hate. Sometimes, something deeper and darker creeps in. Sometimes, although they try their hardest not to mention it, the ‘I’ word is bubbling beneath the surface.
Immigrants.
For a great number of little Britain citizens – the jingoistic, flag-waving right – Brexit means nothing more than to “get our country back.” They live in a fantasy world of endless Churchill speeches with a soundtrack of Land of Hope and Glory, wanking off to the fact we still have the Falkland Islands and we’re pretty decent at rowing in the Olympics. They’re the kind of people who believe the United Kingdom is the be-all and end-all of this planet, foaming at the mouth with their bigoted patriotism, screaming about what their parents or grandparents “fought for,” still convinced that British imperialism raping the world was a good thing.
But many are not foaming at the mouth. Many don’t even so much as glance at a progressive discussion on social media. Many are just going to quietly put a little cross in the blue box on Thursday, go home, make the tea, put Corrie on and say no more about it. They have been hypnotised by a decade of Tory propaganda, lies, smears, and bullshit.
“Let’s get Brexit done,” someone comments on an anti-EU page. “Then we can vote for who we want after that.”
“A second referendum is a betrayal of democracy! Share if you agree!”
“Jeremy Corbyn is a traitor!”
The idiocy witnessed in this election has been astounding.
For one, I fail to see how having a second referendum is a betrayal of democracy. In many countries, it is required by law to vote twice on such a monumentous, impactful, and generation-changing decision. The fact that Labour has said they will broker a good deal within three months and then put it to the people for the final vote is just a no-brainer for me. Remember, this is something that three Tory Prime Ministers have failed to do so far over four years – and now we’re led to believe that mini-Trump will suddenly “get it done?” If you all want Brexit and you’re the “majority,” surely you’ll have nothing to worry about and you can just vote for it again? What, in the name of all that’s holy, is undemocratic about that?
(As a side note, my maths has never been good, but I believe that “winning” the EU referendum by a margin of 3.8% with a voter turnout of 72.2% is not a “majority” and the people haven’t “spoken.”)
In reality, these vocal, bigoted patriots have realised that people have become informed. That many have changed their minds after witnessing the utter shit-show that we’ve been dragged through. Imagine if we’d put all the money spent on Brexit back into the country? What might have been if our government had been ploughing funds into the economy and services instead of pissing it up the wall on billboards and bus slogans with not the slightest grain of truth to them?
And yet how is this still allowed to happen? How are the Tories still up in the polls a day before we hit the ballot boxes? What the actual fuck is going on?
While back in the UK for my birthday in October, I chanced upon a conversation between local lads in a beer garden in my hometown of Wetherby. One of these guys was banging on about how Corbyn was a terrorist, seen operating at all these shady deals, pictured with some bomber, not watching the Queen’s speech. A voice piped up to interrupt this rather tall lad and all his mates, countering that they’ve all been led up the garden path by a media that is owned by billionaires. To my utter surprise, I found out that the voice was mine. After a good couple of minutes of pleading with them – as working-class lads – to not believe everything they read from an oligarch’s agenda, the tall lad responded with – “yeah, but how old are you?!” (He was clearly ready to counter with the fact that Corbyn was promising free university education to the likes of me – so of course, I’d vote for him.)
When I told him I was 40 he nearly had a cow and then allowed me to continue – blessed as I was for having come of age. But it wasn’t long before the ‘i’ word came out and my heart sank. He started randomly pointing at buildings and saying how they’d stood for a lifetime because they were built by “the British” and not some Pole. Up until that point, I felt I was doing pretty well, then once he switched to the “I’m really fuckin’ patriotic” rhetoric the argument was lost. And that’s just it. That’s the problem. Therein lies the rub.
Patriotism.
Oscar Wilde said, “patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” It’s one of my favourite quotes of all time and never a truer word was spoken. Imagine, for a moment, a world without patriotism. Picture an existence where there weren’t any flags. A place where the lottery of where you were born just didn’t matter. Imagine all the people…something, something, something…peace. If only we could rid the world of patriotism, it would be a much better place.
And religion. Let’s finally put that archaic practice in the bin where it belongs, too.
(Disclaimer – I don’t believe everyone who votes Tory is a bigot, nor do I believe that everyone who is patriotic is problematic. It’s just if we could have a little less of both and a bit more empathy it would be nice).
With that in mind, let me return to the people who are in category one of the reasons they’re voting Tory. The misinformed. I could write pages and pages about how it’s painfully obvious that they’ve been spun a yarn and fallen for it hook line and sinker – but it’s a waste of time. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and many people don’t take it well. You only have to look at Trump supporters for a similar reaction. They’ll never admit they’ve backed the horse that’s only good for glue. I watched one lady say she would still vote for him if he went out into the street and shot a kid. This is what we’re up against.
But I’ll summarize. Every slanderous thing written about Jeremy Corbyn has been debunked.
DEBUNKED – Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a Marxist. He’s not “radical.” He’s following the very successful model of Norway, Sweden, and Iceland et al. They’re not broke – and neither will we be unless we continue to allow the billionaires to control us. I fail to understand how people think that by voting Labour and Jeremy Corbyn we’re going to suddenly be in a worse state and in deeper poverty than we are now. It’s so mind-numbingly asinine that these people need their collective heads examined.
DEBUNKED – Jeremy Corbyn isn’t an antisemite. EVERYTHING – and I mean everything, that has been said against him on these allegations has been proven to be false. A web of lies and skewed media weaved by the money men who are running scared of him. Wanting a fair deal for Palestine and to uphold HUMAN RIGHTS does not make the man an antisemite. But apparently challenging anyone on this who is Jewish makes me one. Meanwhile, the actual Prime Minister is on record countless times with Islamaphobic, homophobic, and xenophobic comments and we see and hear nothing about it in the tabloids or on the British Biased Corporation.
DEBUNKED – Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a terrorist. Throughout his political career, he’s been sitting down at every table to try and broker peace deals. To try and find a better solution than simply bombing the shit out of each other. And in order to push for peace – surprisingly enough – you have to listen to both sides of the story. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, and we’re never going to resolve the conflicts of this world by violence. Violence radicalizes – not reforms. To believe that the security of Britain is under threat from a man who holds two peace prizes and tends an allotment, and wants to reach out across the table rather than murder everyone – is one of the fucking dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
Finally, a friend of a friend recently posted a comment about how she could never back Labour because Jeremy Corbyn is a “disaster.” This response isn’t verbatim, but I said that I couldn’t believe quite how a man who has spent his entire political career fighting for people regardless of their background, religion, colour, or upbringing – could possibly be a disaster. A man who has been up against some of the most vicious, vitriolic bile ever spat at a leader of the opposition in the history of politics, from a media controlled by billionaire oligarchs intent on seeing the Tories win for their own nefarious agenda. And although the vast majority of the working class read these comic-book rags, There’s Jeremy Corbyn, still fighting for you, me and the many – when any less of a man would have fucked off and hidden in a ditch. The only disaster I see is if we wake up with a Tory government on what would be the unluckiest Friday the 13th in history, led by a man who literally hides in a fridge to escape an interview.
Jeremy Corbyn isn’t going to be around forever, so anyone who is even considering voting Conservative for the reason that they don’t like him – please, just don’t. Perhaps you’ll prefer Labour’s next leader – but by then we’ll have had to grease our arseholes in preparation to be shafted by another nine years of Tory plundering and pillage that we will never truly recover from and the future generations will despise us for.
I’ve never written anything political before – as it just frustrates me. I find I have delusions of grandeur of wanting it to turn out as an award-winning piece of cutting-edge journalism, but it always turns out something of a mess. This is no different, given I began writing on a whim three hours ago and it’s just gone 4 AM here in the States. I’m tired of all this and I’ll probably wake up to regret this post – but it really, really matters.
Please, don’t vote Tory on the 12th of December. Whether you’re leave or remain, vote however you need to in order to keep them out of power. Then, and only then, will we truly start to get our country back.
But hey, what do I know? I’m a fuckin’ unpatriotic snowflake.