Isolation XXIII:None Shall Escape The Judgement

"None shall escape the judgement of this time. These words I sing to all mankind" - None Shall Escape The Judgement, Johnny Clarke.

Since I dropped my most recent Isolation blog last Friday my own, personal, life has been quiet, inconsequential, and rather pleasant. I've chatted to Mum, Dad, Vicki, and Michelle, I had a great evening playing Owen's online Kahoot quiz with friends, I've binge watched the brilliant comedy series Dave, and I met Pam for a socially distanced walk around Brockwell Park where we checked in on the baby cygnets and looked at the beautiful flowers in JJ Sexby's walled garden.

In the real world and on the Internet (not exactly the same thing but now more entwined than ever), though, things have been anything but quiet, inconsequential, and pleasant. They've been loud, hugely consequential, and often very unpleasant. Most of all, for me, they've been confusing. Like most people I like to think I have an answer to things or at least a firm opinion but events of the last couple of weeks have made my head spin and not always in a good way.

While deaths in the UK due to Covid-19 are, finally, happily decreasing the fear of a second spike, or second wave, is very real and yet there are people, in their thousands, attending Black Lives Matter protests and that's got a lot of other people, a lot of white people, a lot of very Brexity people, very worked up. Both my cousin and my aunt, his mother, shared links to social media about how these protests will be not just a reason but the sole reason for a second spike in coronavirus deaths.

The people who'd initially posted these things had Facebook pages full of race hate and race baiting so it's safe to say they're not exactly impartial and it's also safe to say they're not allies in the Black Lives Matter movement. I defriended both cousin and aunt because even if they'd shared those articles in good, if misguided, faith they were still using social media to spread a message of hate. As the long stream of comments in the threads below them, mostly just the word "cunts" repeated over and over again, proved.

While I can't condone people gathering in large groups while the virus is still a threat it seems as disingenuous, intentionally so, to single out the Black Lives Matter protests while, at the same time, claiming to support a government that has been wilfully negligent and complacent in protecting its people from Covid-19.

John Boyega, Raheem Sterling, Anthony Joshua, and Lewis Hamilton, it seems, now have more responsibility for running the country than Boris Fucking Johnson and his boss Dominic Fucking Cummings. It's entirely possible that these protests may contribute to a second wave, that's undeniable, but protestors and even the people who have been pilloried for taking day trips to beaches are not responsible for the government's failing and it is those government failings that have been the number one factor in why the UK has the second largest coronavirus death toll on the planet. My cousin and my aunt, unsurprisingly, felt no need to comment upon that.

The Johnson administration and its supporters have been desperate for someone else to blame instead of their beloved Boris and ideally that someone would be young, liberal, living in London or some leftie city like Bristol, and (best of all), black. Sadly, the Black Lives Matter protests (and the small minority who have resorted to violence) have given the government and its supporters just the ammo they needed. They're gonna juice this for all it's worth.

Most of us can understand that structural and ingrained racism is so endemic to our society that those who suffer most from it would rather take their chances with a second wave of coronavirus than live in a world where the likelihood of being beaten up, or killed, by the police is a more real, more common, and more eternal threat. But Tories from the shires won't get that, they'll choose not to get that, they'll focus on the moron who lobbed a brick that hit a horse, they'll post All Lives Matter, and they'll share unsubstantiated stories on social media because it fits what they want to believe.

But these protests have provoked a debate and a change in society that has been long overdue in a way that all the thousands of entirely peaceful protests and all the thousands of people taking the knee have not done. Boris Johnson complains of thuggery but has ignored every peaceful request for change. Boris Johnson's got a bloody cheek complaining of thuggery when him and his Bullingdon Club chums made a point of smashing up restaurants just for fun. Boris Johnson's a fucking piece of shit for complaining about thuggery when him and his friend Darius Guppy have been recorded arranging to have the journalist Stuart Collier physically assaulted.

An assault that only didn't occur because they were unable to find his correct address. Boris Johnson's done more than anyone to turn the UK into a country where bullying and violence works and gives you prominence. Boris Johnson has described black people as 'picaninnies' with 'watermelon smiles', he's called Muslim women 'letterboxes', and he's described gay men as 'tank topped bum boys'. If there's division and discord in this country at a higher level than for generations right now it's not because Boris Johnson's been too liberal in his defence of multiculturalism but quite the opposite.

As Boris Johnson and his government await the news that Brazil has overtaken the UK for coronavirus deaths and somehow try to pass that off as good news (it won't be. Brazil's government is, along with Trump's, one of the only ones in the world worse than Johnson's and is now reported to be hiding the death toll from the Brazilian people) you'll see Johnson and his even more extreme outliers cheerleading for stricter measures to prevent the rioting while at the same time defending the reputation of a long dead slave trader who was responsible for the displacement of over 80,000 Africans and the deaths of 19,000 of them (thrown off slave boats into the Atlantic and eaten by sharks) because he also did some philanthropic work. Should they defend Jimmy Savile for his charity work? Should they erect a statue of him?

Nigel Farage is not far off from calling for a full on race war (intentionally pretending he thinks it's a black v white battle and not an anti-racist v racist one) and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon's unfunny comedy creation Tommy Robinson has posted a video of himself picking a fight with Anthony Joshua. I'm neither a gambling man nor a boxing fan but I'd both tune in and have a wager on the result of that one.

The Black Lives Matter campaigners are, in the huge majority, protesting because they don't want to see people of one skin colour being treated differently, worse, than people of other skin colours. That shouldn't even be a debate. We can debate the rights or wrongs of going out and doing so without social distancing during a global pandemic but that debate will need to be a lot more nuanced than calling them 'cunts' or sharing links provided by known racists.

The taking down of statues of slave traders is a good thing. A fairer, more just, and less racist society is, of course, a good thing. A country built in the image of Nigel Farage, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and Katie Hopkins would be a terrible terrible country. BBQing chlorinated chicken on the Isle of Wight with Richard Tice and Isabel Oakeshott while Michael Gove in a gimp mask hands out cans of warm lager which, when drained, people throw on the floor to take photos of to upload to Instagram complete with a rant about how the country's going to the dogs.

Prince Andrew could get the pizzas in and, hush hush, maybe procure a few underage girls if you keep it quiet. Homeless people could be brought in on buses with huge lies printed on their sides to watch Boris Johnson and his Eton chums burn £50 notes in front of their faces and the new statue of Jimmy Savile, nursing an erection of course, could oversee the whole horrific Hieronymous Bosch/Cold War Steve diorama.

Despite the fact Mark Francois would probably get a boner just thinking about all that, it's not a pretty image but it's pretty much where we're at now and some people think the main problem is that black people and their allies are protesting the right to not be murdered in public or in police cells and to not have statues in our major cities celebrating those murderers. We're seeing, and feeling, the fallout of these protests in the USA, the UK, and Brazil more than we are other countries. The countries with the three highest coronavirus death tolls.

It's not unconnected. The USA, the UK, and Brazil have elected known racists and negligent buffoons and bullies to run their countries and this, the racial tension AND the Covid-19 death toll, is the result of that. This awful dystopia we all appear to be living under isn't some kind of unfortunate accident. It was created the day you followed Donald Trump's Twitter page, it was created the day you ticked the box for Brexit, it was created the day you shared a Tweet by Katie Hopkins, and, painful though it might be, it was created the day you refused to vote for Hillary Clinton because she's not Bernie Sanders or Ed Miliband because he looked silly eating a bacon sandwich. You voted for chaos and now you're fucking getting it. Tax free, cheaper than the shops, but a bit later than you wanted it because that's how Amazon roll.

Trump, Johnson, and Bolsonaro have made bullying, bragging, and lying the way politics, and business, get done in their countries so it's hardly a surprise that those with nothing to lose are taking the law into their own hands. Certainly not in a country where breaking the laws has, as proven by Dominic Cummings, no consequence.

It's good that this direct action has worked in a way peaceful protest simply has not while at the same time it's highly problematic that it's happening when we need to still be social distancing. That's confusing (as I said earlier) but I will still celebrate the fact that a slave trader's statue is now sharing a watery grave with the many thousands of real live people whose deaths he was responsible for and I will celebrate the fact that Bristol's Colston Hall is finally being renamed. But I am also aware, as those not on either extreme of the political spectrum have pointed out, that these actions may have set a lethal precedent. Don't imagine it won't be long before the far right racists are pulling down statues of those they deem insufficiently British. As I wrote earlier, they'll juice it for all it's worth. I won't agree with it but I will be, along with other hopefully progressive thinkers, stymied by the fact we've supported direct action in the past.

The far right have used this against the people before, they'll use it again. The mistake was voting in these racists. Mistakes are very easy to mistake. They take seconds. Undoing them can take months, years, decades, and, as we're still seeing with slavery, generations upon generations upon generations. Power needs prudence but prudence also, we now know for certain, needs power. For the white majority population of Britain a can of worms has been opened. For the BAME population of Britain those worms were never in no fucking can in the first place.