Following the Brexit vote, a social revolution has taken place, the likes of which has never been seen before.
Not that you’d know it from the lack of media coverage but it’s a social revolution which has turned the accepted norm onto its head and left those in power scrabbling around trying to play catch up.
Some and by that I mean “The Remoaners” have defaulted to the tried and tested response of labelling those who voted for Brexit as xenophobic little Englanders but that’s a facile insult and nothing could be further from the truth.
The majority are idealistic revolutionists.
Now usually revolution is a term associated with the youth of a society. Who are wide-eyed and full of naive but passionate idealism. Who are still finding their voice and rebelling against their parents’ old-fashioned views and who are ripe for left-wing educators to influence with the promise of how much better or fairer the world would be if only x,y or z was done.
Which is why student activism exists the world over.
Look at the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the eyes of the young. If I was a student now I too would probably follow him as he paints a picture of the world’s ills as being down to the mistakes of the older generations.Forgetting to add obviously that the biggest mistake which the older generation ever did in living memory was to elect his fellow Labour leader Tony Blair for 3 terms as Prime Minister who spent, borrowed, and hocked everything which he could lay his hands on, leaving the gap between the Governments incomings and outgoings running at a deficit of £153billion per year. That’s £153billion of extra outgoings every year which we as a nation had to borrow just to meet spending commitments.Yet why remind the impressionable of the mistakes made in your name when you can just keep blaming everyone else and eventuality a younger demographic will arrive without the personal experience of the past and believe your lies once again to allow you access to Number 10.The austerity we experience today is as a direct consequence of Blair’s profligacy and yet the revisionism of the Corbynistas now blame the Tories and their cold-heartedness for implementing swinging cuts to Public Services.Its akin to blaming a fireman for damaging your house with water from his hose as he extinguished your house fire, instead of actually blaming those who started it as you forgot.You cannot blame the youth though for believing the simplistic arguments of Corbyn, as they have no means of judging it against reality as only experience can teach them this, despite repeated pleas from those who have actual life experience of it.Sometimes people really do need to learn a harsh lesson in order to come to an understanding and this is why the rebellious nature of youth has been harnessed throughout history by people who want to further their own agendas.It’s purity and naivety are both its strength and weakness and as the saying goes, “You cannot put an old head on young shoulders,” which is what the Corbyn’s of this world rely on in order to survive.Every generation has its own rebellious nature and each has been manipulated at their moment in time to mobilise against great perceived injustices.My parents’ generation lived through the 50s and 60s where they rebelled against rationing and social conditioning.My generation lived through the Thatcher years, the miners’ strikes and the Poll Tax riots.Every generation has lived through their own period of frustration and anger at the mess left by the generation which came before and youth has always led this protest with its sense of idealism and injustice fanned by the Socialists and Marxists to bring about changes which THEY want to see.
Yet the Brexit Revolution wasn’t youth-led.
It has been led by my generation and older, who were doing so without left wing educators and agitators whispering in their ears and urging them to “Stick it to the man”.
As a young man, I had plenty of time to question things and I remember wondering why my parent’s generation had never sorted the problems in our society which were so plainly obvious for me to see, yet which they had seemingly given up on trying to fix?
It’s only as I’ve got older that I’ve realised that it wasn’t through neglect or through a conscious decision on their part but because children, bills, mortgages and life, in general, were their main focus and they just didn’t have the time to think about everything else going on in the world around them.
They never gave up, they just didn’t have the time to fully delve into everything with the required attention to detail, which is why this new social revolution occurred in a way which has never been seen before and why the desire for change is being led not by the youth but by their parents and grandparents as now they had not only the time to ask questions but also the means to get the answers and all at the click of a mouse.
It’s a very peculiar issue and a complete anomaly in modern times and I imagine that social commentators with far more sense of their own importance have their own theories, but I have my own and it’s a very simple one;-
We were lied to and we found out about it
We can now watch 24-hour news coverage and foreign news stations for a differing viewpoint. We can read things on social media never before accessible to normal people and for the first time see we can see how little has changed since we too were young and full of wide-eyed idealism.
Most of the things we did to make the world a better place only made other people richer. Usually, those who had told us to rebel in the first instance.
Now we are able to see that the youth of today are still being manipulated by vested interests in order to push a narrative which isn’t wholly accurate. Social media has lifted that veil and like Pandora’s box of old, once opened it couldn’t be unopened.
We looked inside behind the lies and had an awakening, where we thought back to our own rebellious youth where we thought that we were changing the world for the better, whereas in reality, we were merely changing it for others who could then benefit from our efforts.
The same stands true today as Corbyn’s fan club will find out if they ever manage to get him elected.
Yet it’s a strange kind of muted revolution which he is offering where he is advocating huge changes within the UK but at the same time quelling any rebellion against one of the largest instruments of oppression we have, the EU
Can you imagine a situation where young people are apparently screaming for the status quo to remain?
Yet that’s what they are doing and its an unheard of situation. Youth want revolution, but not this generation apparently. Which is not strictly true in that like our rebellions in the past, theirs is being manipulated in a certain direction which the vested interests want
My generation now see this for what it is and it’s because we see it that we felt the need to actually, finally,
“Stick it to the man”
The EU Referendum was that opportunity.
After all these years of manipulation and only because of the power of instant communication and the knowledge available at our fingertips has a generation had the ability to finally change things for the better? A complete rejection of multi-nationalism, of cosy arrangements at our expense, of powerful, self-opinionated windbag politicians who tell us that something is for our benefit when it is so plainly for theirs and not ours, has occurred.
We rejected it and we rejected them.
Finally, our idealism which others had directed for their own ends back in our youth was finally being directed where it should’ve been directed in the first place.
At the politicians
At the multi-nationals
At everyone who has robbed us blind and used us as pawns in their power plays.
When the vote to Leave was announced we rejoiced. We had done it. Now we just had to explain to the young that we hadn’t robbed them of a future. That we had saved their future despite them being fed with inaccuracies by the same left-wing educators we once had.
Despite the media, big business and our Political masters telling them this was a mistake we still voted out as they all forgot one basic thing.
We are no longer stupid and uninformed in the 21st Century.
We now have the means through Social Media to expose their lies and once exposed is it any wonder that people don’t like being lied to and if the youth had the benefit of our experience, then they too would be stood hectoring the Corbyns of this world who lie and manipulate with an apparent impunity.
They would know that those companies who used the Single Market to relocate to cheaper areas within the EU, taking jobs with them and leaving poverty behind are the same companies now bankrolling and demanding that the UK remain in the Single Market.
In voting for Brexit we’ve had to bear being labelled as xenophobic, uneducated populists by the sneering vested interests, but it’s worth it as their labels mean nothing if dismissed them with the contempt which they deserve.
We voted for Brexit and we rebelled, finally and gloriously we rebelled and we did so not because some left-wing academic whispered in our ears but because they did so 30 years ago and what they whispered were lies.
So my generation finally broke the cycle of big business and politicians manipulating us all for their own ends and we can, and will explain this to those currently crying as if their world has ended by us choosing to Leave the EU.
Social rebellions usually stem from the youth but Brexit came from their parents and at last the generation who came before had the opportunity to sort out the mistakes of the past and it was glorious.