Apocalypse April 2021
Project Fear
What historic progress was not won through unlawful action, just protest of unjust rule, in revolt? We must be past the stage of endless discourse, wallowing in postcolonial melancholia, raising awareness of every significant social issue, looking at it, stunned. The trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd really should have been a foregone conclusion, but wasn’t. I watched, heart banging in my chest in wait. The whole world watched what happened this time. Still to lie to defend police conduct, protect police personnel, would be getting deep into hypernormalisation: you know, we know you know, we’re doing it anyway. The verdict came, and with it accountability, but not justice. Innumerable other racist state killers have to date faced no punishment for their crimes. Let me be clear: I can’t believe I have to say this but: understand how racism is weaponised by power: do crime; use crime; tar people with crime: oppress. The power of persuasion is deliberately understated. Racists, like liars, never self-identify though it happens all the time.
Denmark has revoked the residency permits of Syrian refugees, and said they should go home as it’s safe. Germany’s highest court rules a policy to freeze rents in Berlin for five years to combat soaring living costs is unlawful, a blow to millions of tenants. Shares in Deutsche Wohnen, Berlin’s biggest landlord, jump on news that the city’s rent cap has been overturned. I had boasted Berlin was doing more than elsewhere to protect ordinary people, affordable housing. Now as England’s opening up, Germany’s locking down, so in this twisted version of events the hare might beat the tortoise after all.
The Tory sleaze row is a big talking point. Sleaze? Why are we calling it sleaze? The Labour leader keeps taking the wrong stance on the fundamentals. Starmer says anti-social behaviour is ruining people’s lives. We need to get serious about tackling it. Labour would put more police on our streets… Starmer says the monarchy is the one institution for which the faith of the British people has never faltered, which bugs somewhat after MPs spent seven and a half hours in the Commons giving tributes to Prince Philip, longer than the scrutiny for the final Brexit deal, and the headlines tell of plans for a new £200 million royal yacht in the late prince’s name, after the government pretended there simply wasn’t the money in the public coffers to feed hungry children, to address the rise of food banks, to pay NHS staff fairly for their essential work.
Where is progressive populism? Millions are left disregarded, a demographic that will only grow with time. The anger is the loss of youth (1). It’s a fact that conservative boomerism will soon be dead, and hypothetical centrism (trend towards mean) never matches up to real, political centrism (not radical enough to face systemic failings). Incrementalism can only go so far. In the face of ever-more evident climate breakdown, radicalism will increasingly, inevitably, have to become the orthodoxy. We’ve got to look top-down sociological; yes, people make their own choices, but their whole conditioning is societal. I am a spectator at the unfolding of my thought; I watch it, I listen to it (2). If individual agency is a necessary but illusory figment of our perceptions, then crime is public health, and that old conservative fallacy of earning what you get in life is bollocks.
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(1) Blindboy
(2) Arthur Rimbaud
