I have mentioned on several occasions, in relation to understanding the current cultural climate and where it's being directed to go next, the BBC drama, Years and Years.
Released seven years ago, it charts world events from 2019-2034, as seen through the eyes of the fictional, Manchester-based Lyons family.
A true testament to progressive and enlightened modernity, the Lyons clan is almost entirely gay, trans, and non-white.
Oldest brother, Stephen, aged around 40 when the show begins, is a boring old straight white male... but in keeping with the egregious evils of this demographic, he cheats on his (black) wife with a (white) woman, after losing all his money and becoming homeless.
Next up is eco activist Edith, late thirties, who is gay. Whilst initially single, by the later episodes, she has a black female partner, as well as lethal radiation poisoning from her heroic activism (although the show's token evil conspiracy theorist doesn't believe her illness is real).
Thirdly, we have Danny, mid-thirties, also gay, and married to Ralph, who he cheats on with a young illegal immigrant named Viktor. Danny then dies trying to sneak the deported Viktor back into the country via dinghy. This is presented as the show's central love story.
Finally, we have single mum, Rosie, early thirties, who is disabled and in a wheelchair (yet lives at the top of a high rise block of flats), abandoned by two feckless men to bring up her boys alone. One of her sons is half-Chinese, and starts going around in a dress and ribbons, calling himself Susie. His cousin, Stephen's daughter, Bethany, announces she is also "trans", but transhuman in her case, and she spends the show's six episodes getting an increasingly sinister array of tech products embedded into her body. Bethany is also gay.
If you had gone to some sort of cultural Marxist PR agency and asked them to script the "perfect" family to push all the major cultural change items as envisioned by the architects of Agenda 2030, you would pretty much get the Lyons family.
The parents of the clan are never seen, the saintly mother having died of cancer after being abandoned by her evil husband, who left her for another woman, but that's what straight white men do, as the Lyons' grandmother bitterly points out to eldest brother, Stephen, when he does it too.
The demographics of the family are sharply juxtaposed to the cultural and political events they witness unfolding through the 2020s, and this is, of course, intentional.
The Lyons endure a political climate which swings dramatically to the right, after (as the show correctly predicts), Donald Trump wins a second term in the USA, whilst, in the UK, the populist right-wing 'Viv Rook' (who is openly modelled on Nigel Farage - they're even said to share a hairstyle) storms to power, following winning a high-profile Manchester by-election in the mid-2020s.
You know, like the high-profile Manchester by-election we've got coming up later this week...
In the show, 'Viv' wins the Manchester election, thus making her a first-time MP, but Nigel Farage is already an MP, so it may not be necessary for Reform to win Gorton and Denton to fulfil Years and Years eerily prophetic track record (the show accurately foreseeing the death of the Queen, the war in Ukraine, and the current endless rain).
The show depicts Viv Rook's meteoric rise to power through the 2020s, as she ignites political engagement in previously apathetic voters (including youngest Lyons sibling, Rosie), due to her promises to take a hard line on such things as illegal immigration.
This ultimately translates as Rook rounding up immigrants - including the doe-eyed, photogenic Viktor, grieving fiancé of dead Danny - and dumping them in what are literally described as concentration camps, where they are effectively left to die, and sometimes, helped along the way.
Evil straight white male, Stephen, ensures that Viktor is moved from his relatively safe refugee hostel, to one of these shady sites, as Stephen blames Viktor for his brother's death.
Meanwhile, heroic gay activist, Edith, and mastermind transhuman, Bethany, are able to strategise a plot to liberate Viktor, and by virtue, all the inhabitants of the various camps, which they livestream across every TV channel, leading to a mass uprising and Viv Rook being ousted from power.
Rook is presented as the first Prime Minister in history to be arrested whilst in office, but it is later revealed to us that the woman serving time in prison under her name is not really her, which may tell us much about various high-profile "arrests".
Additionally, in a brief encounter with Stephen before she is arrested, Rook confirms there is a "them" behind the scenes who control her, and that, if she ever tried to escape their clutches, "they'd kill me".
An interesting revelatory detail, given the show otherwise totally demonises and discredits 'conspiracy theorists', depicting them as, at best, thick (Danny's dim-witted ex-husband), and, at worst, downright evil (Stephen's boss, who is involved in overseeing the immigrant death camps).
The show ends when Edith dies of radiation poisoning, and the family are gathered on tenterhooks around a 'Siri' type device (called 'Signor' in the show) to see if she has been able to successfully download her consciousness into it and thus become immortal.
The show's overall message is not, shall we say, subtle.
In short, it seeks to demonstrate that anyone with right-wing tendencies, concerns about immigration, or the sheer indecency to be straight, white, and male, is very evil and a force for nothing but ruinous destruction.
If we want a kind, tolerant, and humane future, where people aren't ruthlessly abused for being non-conformist (Viktor is depicted as seeking asylum from the Ukraine because he was being tortured for his homosexuality), we must abolish all forms of right-wingery, because - although right-wingers may pretend initially simply to want sensible border controls and reasonable social policies - really, they're all just rabid Neo-Nazis who want to kill everyone who's gay, black, or an immigrant.
Now, switch channels to the current streaming soap opera known as "the news", and we seem to have a number of pantomime political figures doing their very best to prove that this is actually true.
In my last article, I wrote about the debut of Rupert Lowe's "political party", Restore Britain (exploring, amongst other things, Lowe's shady business connections to Mrs Rishi Sunak). What I didn't know when I wrote this article is that Restore is not actually a political party at all, but rather, a limited company, with a single shareholder (Lowe) which, at the time it "launched", had not even applied to the Electoral Commission (EC) for registration.
In order to be a functional political party that can stand candidates at elections, all aspiring political parties must apply to, and be accepted by, the EC in time for whatever elections they wish to stand in. The process typically takes 7-9 weeks and it is not uncommon for initial applications to be rejected. Therefore, were a political party seriously intending to stand candidates in the upcoming May elections, where the candidate registration deadline is 9th April, they would not be expected to leave it until late February to apply.
Why, we therefore wonder, did Lowe launch Restore as a "political party" when it was not, and is not, any such thing, and when he had not even found the time to put in an application to become one?
It may very well have something to do with the fact that, just six days before Lowe publicly launched Restore as a "political party", the competitor party, Advance UK, held its first major members-only conference where it unveiled its policies on immigration and national restoration.
For those not familiar with Advance, as it hasn't had a fraction of the online attention Reform or Restore have, it's a right-leaning political party, headed by ex-Reform Ben Habib, and it describes its mission as to "build a proud, independent and prosperous United Kingdom. We stand for nation, freedom, democracy and equality under the law."
It is registered with the EC and appropriately structured to ensure democratic accountability - that members can vote on policy and leadership.
This is a problem for the establishment.
And there's another big problem.
The leader is named Ben Habib, and he is half-Pakistani.
How can he be convincingly portrayed as an evil white supremacist who hates immigrants if he himself is mixed race and from an immigrant background? (His mother is English, his father Pakistani.)
It doesn't fit the script. The script as so clearly detailed in the spectacularly sinister and eerily accurate Years and Years.
It is made abundantly clear in this piece of intelligence agency predictive programming that the evil right-wing leader of the UK in the late 2020s must be white British.
Vivienne Rook.
Rupert Lowe.
Nigel Farage.
Not Ben Habib, for goodness sakes, not Benyamin Naeem Habib! It destroys every two-dimensional, crass, degrading caricature of the puce-faced 'gammon' right-winger the establishment needs to shove in our faces to make us appropriately despise them.
Ben does not fit the desired casting description for the role and thus, he is not in the club. Regardless of whether you like his politics, or the man himself (and plenty of people don't, as is par the course for any contentious political figure), I don't believe that Ben is insincere or "in on" the same big plot that Farage and Lowe are. This is why Ben's initial offer to merge Advance UK with Reform (which I, like many people, initially thought was a done deal) appears to have been completely rejected by Rupert Lowe.
Rather than wish to merge with Advance, it very much looks as if, in fact, Restore's mission is to destroy it, launching as it did - before Lowe had even applied to the Electoral Commission for registration - less than a week after Advance's first major conference, and when their power and membership base was rapidly growing.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, which I am, I might therefore suggest that ex-banker, Biopharma director, and pal of Sunak's, Rupert Lowe, got "the call", yelling at him "Advance are getting too big, shut them down NOW! I don't care if your party isn't registered yet, just do a rabble-rousing, welly-wearing video and get these bloody voters to leave Advance!"
Since the launch of Restore, support for Advance has rapidly dwindled to the extent some sources suggest Advance is losing as many as 2,000 supporters a week to Restore.
To reiterate, Restore is not actually a political party, and may never be one, but such is the limited public understanding of how political and electoral processes actually work (and this understanding is kept limited on purpose), few of Restore's members seem to know or care.
What they care about is that they feel part of a movement that speaks to them and reflects their concerns, because - just as Years and Years appears to have been scripted by a cultural Marxist PR agency - Lowe's Restore is deftly designed to appeal to every concern and prejudice the hard right (as distinct from the centre right, or just 'right') possesses.
Most of the right-wing has spent many years demonstrating that they are not in fact evil unreconstructed racists who want to send everyone who is not 100% white British back "home", but Restore is emboldening a small but very vocal group of people who do.
Whilst this is not something Lowe himself has overtly endorsed, he is closely associated with those who have called for mass "remigration" of those not considered sufficiently British, and Britishness has been defined by one central Restore figure as involving being a Christian.
A recent survey conducted by the Church Times found that just six per cent of UK adults are practicing Christians - 'practising' defined as regularly attending church and reading the Bible - so it's unlikely that most of Restore's own membership would fit the definition by this description. Hence, already, the whole thing is descending into farce, and that, I believe, is the point.
The online world is not the real world, and more to the point, not the voting world. Whilst "extreme" ideas as reflected by Restore may gather a lot of traction on Twitter, they have little appeal in the real world or, crucially, at the ballot box. As such, a "hard right" party such as Restore (if indeed it ever does become a party) would never be elected.
The purpose of Restore, therefore, seems to be two-fold - one, to neutralise Advance UK, a genuine right-wing party with sensible policies on immigration and culture, by replacing it with a grotesque caricature of a "right-wing" party that will never gain meaningful mass appeal in the way that Advance could have (and that completely lacks the proper structure and democratic accountability that Advance possesses).
This is not a formal "endorsement" of Advance, by the way. I'm not a member of the party and don't agree with them on everything. Yet I can recognise a properly structured political party when I see one, and it's important to highlight that's what it is: a real, functioning political party, capable of standing candidates and doing all the other things political parties are formulated to do.
Restore, by sharp comparison, is not, and may not ever be, even if it gains Electoral Commission registration.
Secondly, the purpose of Restore clearly appears to be to make Reform look far more moderate (and thus far more electable), by hoovering up all its "fringe extremists" who so damage its credibility to the wider voter base. The last thing Nigel Farage wants to be seen as is the poster-boy for "far-right extremists", as that's the death knell to political credibility, and he made that clear in a recent speech.
He needs to present as moderate to get into power. As and when he achieves that, then all his "far-right extremism" can emerge, as depicted in Years and Years. It's the predictable political pantomime of presenting one way to get votes, then revealing one's true colours once in power.
This will then be used to "prove" that all right-wingers are the same. Whether they overtly present as "hard right", like Rupert Lowe and Restore, or pretend to be more moderate, like Farage and Reform, once they're in power, they all behave the same way - as virulent racist, misogynist, transphobic mass murderers.
We saw it in The Handmaid's Tale (a seemingly moderate, populist right-wing faction mutate into monsters once they have power).
We saw it in Years and Years ("people's politician" Viv Rook, who even dances along to pop songs in her election campaign, reveals herself as the vicious crook she really is once in power).
We will see it in our own culture, once Reform is elected to government (and likely in the US, too, under Vance).
It's all being deftly directed from behind the scenes in exactly the same way TV productions are, and we can discern the scripted soap opera nature of all this posturing political theatre by the fact that we have so many recurring characters.
Who's now publicly championing Rupert Lowe? Oh look, it's Lucy Connolly, the high-profile "political martyr" who wanted to burn immigrants to death.
Which journalist is eagerly promoting Restore? Why, it's Dan Wootton, the same hack who was one of only two reporters Connolly agreed to speak to in her immediate "release" from prison.
Who submitted a petition to parliament concerning Connolly and took her and husband Ray into Westminster to pose for pics? Oh, no kidding, it's Rupert Lowe!
See what I mean? It's just one big - or quite small, actually - contrived club, where the same names come up again and again, all playing pantomime characters and delivering scripted soap opera responses to keep the audience hooked - and crucially, neutralised in the real world.
High-profile current events and well-known people aren't "real", they're actors playing parts and reading from scripts, controlled by an intricate network of hidden hands.
Restore and Rupert Lowe aren't ultimately any more "real" than Vivienne Rook and her Four Star Party (so named because of her relatable everywoman tendency to swear) in Years and Years. They're there for the same reasons: To manage the mass mind. To engage in predictive programming. That's what soap operas do.
Yet in recognising this, there is no reason to feel hopeless. On the contrary: just as we can distinguish between Years and Years and real life, we should be able to distinguish between high-profile pantomime "political movements" and real ones, too.
There are real, authentic people trying to make a difference in politics, often on the local level, so they get little or no mainstream press attention, and typically have a smattering of followers on social media.
I've written about my own forays into local politics before, having stood both as an independent candidate, and for the anti-lockdown Freedom Alliance party, in local (council) elections, several times from 2021. I didn't come close to getting elected, but it was a worthwhile experience, in terms of learning how the political and electoral processes work - since, as I alluded to earlier, most people don't know, and politicians ruthlessly play on this - as well as in platforming an anti-lockdown, pro-freedom message to a wider, real-world audience.
As has been decried about the freedom movement many times, it mainly exists online, and this is probably its fatal flaw, as "they" completely control the digital space (more so than ever since the advent of the deeply Orwellian Online Safety Act, and its equivalents around the world).
The real world is our domain - that's why they're so desperate to keep us out of it, by having us all working from home, socialising online, and - if they get their way - fully surrendering our 'reality privilege', existing merely as avatars in the metaverse.
They want us all bickering online, drawn in by the endless dopamine-spiking drama of the digital panto: the addictive, fully interactive social media soap opera that is high-profile politics.
'Restore', therefore, is a digital project for a digital age (see how sharply Rupert Lowe's behaviour as an MP in parliament contrasts with his performative persona online), which - even if it does achieve full registration with the EC - will never really exist in the real world in a meaningful way.
You, however, can. We all can. Of course, there are many ways to do this, but one option worth currently considering is engaging in the local elections, coming up in May. Local elections are usually largely ignored, with typical turnouts hovering around 30% - or much lower in some areas - and they generally generate little press attention, but this year's are likely to attract significantly higher engagement, because Keir Starmer tried to cancel them. A lot of eyes will therefore be on them, and that presents a vital opportunity to get a message out. I don't merely mean voting in them, but standing yourself.
To stand in the local elections, you don't need any special qualifications, money, or to be a member of a political party. You just need to live, work, or own property in the borough in which you wish to stand. Then, you download a form from the council website, fill it in, hand it in at the council offices, and voila, you're on the ballot paper. That's it, that's all there is to it.
Whether you then canvass and campaign - or even vote - is entirely up to you, but if you do decide to campaign, it's a very useful way of engaging local people in the real world on issues you might not otherwise have found a way to discuss with them.
When you tell people you're "standing for the council" they will often open to you about issues they might otherwise not have disclosed, perhaps including family experience with vaccine injury, or issues of local corruption.
You can also disseminate leaflets saying, more or less, whatever you like, which are given extra gravitas in many people's eyes when the sentiments are accredited to a political candidate, rather than a random person on the internet (which, indeed, is precisely why Rupert Lowe is presenting his opinions as coming from a political party rather than simply a "movement" - because he knows this imbues his statements with much more power).
You can either stand as an independent, not affiliated with any party, or you can join one of the many legitimate smaller pro-freedom parties, of which there are several (Heritage, Freedom Alliance, and ADF, to name but a few). Joining a party may be preferable for first-time candidates, as parties can give you vital extra support in guiding you through the process and helping you to campaign. If you find a party that interests you, just contact them and let them know you'd like to know more: they will invariably be thrilled to hear from you, as smaller parties inevitably don't attract a fraction of the support the "big boys" do.
Now, I know there are vast swathes of the freedom movement who believe voting is rigged and/or pointless and that "you can't vote your way out of tyranny", with which I agree. I suggest political engagement, at the local level particularly, not because it will make a difference to any Grand Plans the overlords may have on the national and international level (it won't, even if you get elected, which you almost certainly won't).
Rather, I suggest it because it is a real-world way of platforming pro-freedom ideas that many in your local community may not have heard before; because it breaks the digital stranglehold on alternative ideas by getting them off the internet and into reality; and because it does actually really rattle the establishment.
The uni-party considers local politics, like national politics, to be a closed shop that they control, which is why they intentionally don't educate the masses about how local politics works, and everyone leaves their government school after fourteen years completely clueless about how to get directly politically active themselves - as in, actually standing as a candidate, not just voting for one. People are left with the impression that only special, qualified people can be candidates, and that it's difficult or impossible for ordinary people to get involved.
The reality is that pretty much anybody can enter politics and put themselves down as a candidate - and when "anybodies" do do this, when ordinary people infiltrate the establishment's little (uni) party - they are absolutely furious. This is because they know there's a chance - and it may often be small, but it's there - that one of these impertinent outsiders could actually oust them from their position (even if not by getting directly elected, an unanticipated outsider can certainly change the outcome of an election by taking votes away from a leading candidate).
I've been to several electoral counts now, where votes are totted up after the polling booths have closed (candidates are invited to supervise these counts to ensure no skulduggery goes on), and the open air of brazen hostility towards independent or small party candidates from the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems and Greens is palpable. They mostly won't even acknowledge your existence at all (whilst all confabbing and chit-chatting amongst themselves), and, if they do, it's only to throw you a filthy look. You should try it for yourself: it's one of the few environments in the world where it's a joy to be actively hated!
So, the takeaway from all this is, don't mistake soap operas for reality, whether they're presented via the TV or Twitter, but also, don't lose hope: remember that, just because soap operas are fake, doesn't mean everything is. The real world is just that, and that's the one environment "they" can't control with their algorithms, bot farms, and shadow bans.
So get out there and get real! (But please make sure to share my online web address with others when you do...).
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