BY GARY MCGHEE

There is currently an unfortunate malady afflicting British Left-Wing group-thinkers (I use the word ’think’ advisedly.) It runs thus: The Tories won a thumping majority at the General Election because the majority of We ordinary Brits are brainwashed by a right-wing media and are increasingly racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, hate Europe, are nationalistic and fascistic and prone to the overt influence of right-wing demagogues and Machiavellian behind-closed-doors schemers and plotters. We are sufferers of the ravages of toxic masculinity, unconscious white bias, white privilege and we do not care about the poor, the disabled, the disenfranchised, the environment, animal welfare, the young, the old, people from other countries, immigrants, refugees, anyone with brown skin, police brutality or anyone who is on benefits. We are also the ‘microaggressors’ who must be stamped down on. Moreover we are the useful idiots of the capitalist class, obsessed with consumerism and beholden to an imperialist past that enslaved people and is uniquely responsible for all slave trades and most of the evil in the world.

You got that despicable Tory voters? YOU ARE EVIL. The idea that people walked away from the Left/Labour because of these lunatic judges and their identitarian claptrap – their concomitant abandonment of the working class – does not register with these Marxist drones.

The thing about Leftist group think is that it/they accept no responsibility whatsoever for its/their role in anything that happens, any outcomes, any eventualities. Their assumed moral superiority excuses them from criticism, their projection of negative traits onto those who have the temerity to disagree with them is of course morally justifiable because they are the good people, the bien pensant, right (small r) thinkers and are therefore beyond criticism. It is not the same if they stereotype, label and discriminate because they are GOOD, and you are EVIL, so it is alright if they do it, in fact it is their moral duty.

Historically this mentality has always ended badly. Utopian ideals always end up with dystopian outcomes because they have to be imposed. The rules have to be enforced. Individual agency and the indomitability of the human spirit – the fundamental nature of man’s thirst for prosperity and freedom – must be suppressed for the ‘greater good’. The examples in living memory are legion: Stalin’s pogroms, purges, gulags, and the starvation of Ukraine. The Stasi spies and snitches and incarceration of subversives, the Nazis’ Einsatzgruppen death squads and extermination of the Jews, Polpot’s killing fields, Shining Path’s massacres, Mao’s cultural revolution mass murders through enforced starvation and repression of dissent. Add the Chilean ‘disappearances’, the central and south American fascist juntas… feel free to add more. We should think ourselves fortunate to live in a society where you can write things like this and not get a knock on the door in the early hours of the morning, to be imprisoned and shot for espousing the ‘wrong’ opinions.

This malady – a total lack of perspective – has led to the descent of Leftist thinking into an assertion that Britain is now a dystopian society. It must be because there is a virulently right-wing government with untrammelled power in power, apparently. The reaction of this mentality to Covid restrictions for instance has been to exacerbate this paranoid mindset, bring it to a fever pitch, see every move and rule and containment measure as clear evidence of the descent into a dystopian, Orwellian hell from which we may never escape. And it is all the fault of Tory voters and ministers (although some elements of the restrictions like Covid Marshalls are an example of zealous bureaucratic over-reach.)

This ‘dystopia’ schtick (or should I say chic) smacks of bourgeois whining and is the product of privilege. It is an adjunct of the fact that the current pick ‘n’ mix protest ‘movements’ are made up almost entirely of white, middle-class trustafarians. Students who have no idea what dystopia really means, have never really experienced oppression and have no real understanding or knowledge of history. Those whose expensive educations have been, therefore,  largely a waste of money. They seem unable to decide whether they are protesting about racism, climate change and fascism, and/or the need to overthrow capitalism. One suspects the former are just a convenient front for the latter. Their right to protest peacefully about whatever they like however is and should be sacrosanct. In a truly dystopian society, they would not be allowed to protest, and would be taken away and disposed of.

Let me unpack the current reality of ‘dystopia’ and what it is: there are dystopian societies extant in the world currently, but none of them are in the Western world or where democracy thrives. They are in undemocratic places like one-party state China, Venezuela, most middle Eastern Arab states, especially Iran, North Korea, Cuba (despite a good education system) and see-sawing African dictatorship states. These are still true dystopias that maintain high levels of poverty and degradation as a means of social and political control and limit the freedom of their people to a large extent.

Yes, there are some dystopian elements in Britain today, but they are all coming from the Left. The irony of that cannot be understated. Cancel Culture, no platforming, tearing down statues, graffitiing historic buildings, vilifying, and mobbing people for using a wrong word and committing wrong-think and trying to get them sacked and banned and hounded with the use of offence archaeology and advocating violence in pursuit of this. The ahistorical Year Zero mentality underpins it all. Darren Grimes is again on the receiving end of ridiculous charges of racial hatred by the Met police because of something somebody else, an interviewee, said to him – these are examples of creeping and actual dystopia. 

The need for over-wrought and ridiculous dystopia-mongers to buy some perspective is apparent. Vaclav Havel talked about Czech society becoming morally sick under Communist Party rule because people were forced to believe in things that they knew were not true. Conform to the correct opinions or else.

I will leave you with a comment made by Mike Pence, the US Vice President, when his daughter asked about a protest they were watching. He replied that ‘this is what freedom looks like’. So much for the supposed ‘dystopians’ in the White House.

Guest Writer Gary McGhee is a semi-retired screenwriter, loving the outdoor life with his partner in the Norfolk countryside. Gary was ‘red-pilled’ before it became fashionable, and believes in liberty, freedom, modernism, and defying herd-mentalities.