Britain in Dystopia
The Potentially Dark Future of Ultra-Nationalism
As a British person, it is time to address something. As a country, we have this closed mindset, a lot of us anyway. We are against change, we are against the extraordinary. We write off anything supernatural or unbelievable as just that — unbelievable, not likely. Dismissing anything that seems strange as misunderstanding or a mistake, rather than wondering why this is as it is.
People who do not fit inside the conventional lines of a modern society, lots of British people view these people as unusual, strange or sometimes, worse. This is why nationalism is becoming a larger issue in this country, and as an Isle.
Yesterday, I watched the film Children of Men, which was written in 2006. Based on a novel, it details British life in the year 2027, with the whole world being infertile for 18 years. Whilst this is the main crux of the plot, the whole film tackles a number of hot button issues, such as Immigration, Mental Health and Governmental Surveillance. This film really spoke to me, and it is crazy how much it is simply an exaggeration of our current lives. Immigration, especially after Brexit, has split families apart, and mental health services are struggling to keep up with demand, with mental conditions at an all time high.
The film, and I assume the book (which I have never read), remind me of V for Vendetta and 1984, which share very similar ideas of what a British dystopia would look like. It would most certainly revolve around politicians/political parties manipulating middle-aged, working class white males into believing that refugees were at fault for things such as job less, crime and any other social issues faced by the country. And, if we look at news channels like GB News and newspapers such as The S*n or Daily Mail, this is exactly what is occurring.
What a lot of these people seem to fail to understand is that, at some point, we were all refugees or migrants in this country. Plenty of British residents have Irish heritage due to Irish migration during the 19th Century, to name but one. To then target individuals fleeing war-zones, many of which our government has had some part in, to look for a better life in our country, is ridiculous. Instead of targeting these individuals who have no other options, we should be challenging our government on other issues, such as higher tax rates for the rich, stopping the extortionate pay rises for bankers and politicians, and look at the lies told during the Brexit campaign, which gave us empty promises to reach their unified goal.
Sometimes, I do wonder whether in these dystopian stories, where the government tries to vilify people from different backgrounds, whether this is due to them trying to cover up the fact that our government has created some of these situations in the first place, by destabilising regimes and funding freedom fighters who then turned on the Western World. By vilifying the victims of these conflicts, the government would then be killing two birds with one stone effectively — hiding their own mistakes and also blaming societal issues on these individuals who are seeking safety.
An argument I always see on Twitter (I am not calling it X) by ultra-nationalists and those who stand in support of people like Tommy Robinson, is that these “illegal immigrants” are the causes for grooming gangs, among other things. These people always fail to address how this is a small percentage of a large group, similar to how a small percentage of our own citizens commit similar atrocities, or worse. Also, they do not see that the leaders for these groups, such as the EDL, tend to have lots of criminal convictions, which contain offences which are sometimes worse than what they are alleging these individuals are committing.
This is why films like Children of Men, V for Vendetta and 1984 scare me, more so than actual horror films. We are already seeing a rise in ultra-nationalist groups and attitudes, and how anti-immigration believers are having their opinions strengthened by the biased reporting of right-wing media, fuelling their hatred. Therefore, with the British attitude of keeping your head down and writing off things as mistakes, if the government were to introduce much stricter immigration policies, on a similar level to these films and books, would we challenge these barbarian measures, or would we simply stand by, until eventually all our freedoms were swallowed up? I will leave that for you to decide.
