Patriotism is supposed to be about loving your country – ensuring it prospers, thrives, and doesn’t collapse into a smouldering ruin. Yet here we are, watching Brexiteers and the MAGA crowd gleefully take a sledgehammer to everything in sight. They’re not interested in building anything. Oh no – they’re here to smash the place up, dance in the ashes, and call it a victory while standing in the wreckage. It’s about wanting the best for it – making sure it thrives, prospers, and, ideally, doesn’t collapse into a burning heap of economic ruin. So how do we explain the Brexiteers and the MAGA crowd? Because they don’t seem interested in building anything. Oh no – they’re here to smash the place up, revel in the destruction, and call it a great victory while standing in the wreckage.
At least the Nazis and the Communists – for all their murderous lunacy – had a plan. A horrific plan, granted, but they wanted to build something. They wanted industry, power, expansion, and, in the case of Communism, a grand utopian workers' paradise (which, like all utopias, rapidly turned into a dystopian nightmare). Even fascism, when not busy goose-stepping its way into oblivion, understood the need for infrastructure, manufacturing, and military strength.
But Brexit? MAGA? What do they want? They don’t have a vision – they have a grudge. Their entire worldview boils down to one thing: sticking it to Remainers, liberals, experts, immigrants, and anyone else who might once have had the temerity to suggest that burning your own house down isn’t a particularly smart move.
Brexiteers didn’t set out to make Britain richer, stronger, or more influential. That was just the sales pitch. What they really wanted was to rip everything up just to watch the supposed “elite” squirm. They didn’t care that the economy would shrink, that businesses would flee, or that we’d end up grovelling for trade deals with Pacific islands most people couldn’t find on a map. If anything, they liked the idea that things would get worse – as long as it made Remainers miserable.
MAGA works in exactly the same way. They don’t actually want America to be great. They want it to be angry, divided, and engaged in an endless battle against the “woke mob,” the “deep state,” and whoever else is ruining their lives by daring to drink oat milk. They will cheer on policies that harm them as long as they believe it upsets the right people. Universal healthcare? Socialism! Infrastructure investment? Communism! Better wages? The work of the globalist elite! If they could vote to replace their own hospitals with a giant statue of Donald Trump giving the middle finger to liberals, they’d do it in a heartbeat.
And this is where Karl Marx – bless him – was half-right. He coined the term lumpenproletariat to describe the dispossessed underclass that existed outside the traditional working class. These were the grifters, the drifters, the underemployed and the angry – the people who, rather than engaging in productive work or class struggle, could be easily manipulated by the ruling elite to act against their own interests. Marx saw them as unreliable in any political movement because they were easily swayed by demagogues. What he didn’t foresee was just how enthusiastically they’d take to self-destruction in the 21st century.
Brexit and MAGA have turned the lumpenproletariat into a full-scale political movement. The people who should be demanding better wages, better jobs, and a better future have instead been weaponised into doing the bidding of multimillionaire conmen. Instead of fighting for investment in their communities, they’ve been convinced that the real enemy is the foreign nurse keeping their local hospital running, or the student with pink hair who once rolled their eyes at them in a pub. It’s not just political manipulation – it’s political masochism.
At this point, we may as well talk about Girolamo Savonarola – Florence’s own medieval MAGA prophet, minus the spray tan. He convinced his followers that Florence had become a den of sin and corruption, so naturally, the best solution was to burn everything of value. Art, books, jewellery – straight into the flames. His followers, the Piagnoni (“Weepers”), roamed the city like Renaissance-era culture warriors, smashing up taverns and harassing anyone who didn’t subscribe to their joyless, paranoid worldview.
MAGA operates on the same principle. They may not be tossing Botticellis onto a bonfire, but they are banning books, scrubbing history curriculums, and working themselves into a state of moral panic over whether a cartoon character is insufficiently heterosexual. It’s not enough to disagree with something – it has to be purged. Where Savonarola saw sinful vanities, MAGA sees “wokeness.” Same zealotry, different century.
Like MAGA, Savonarola’s movement was fuelled by a mythical past – a time when everything was supposedly purer, simpler, and free from decadence. For him, it was a vision of divine Florence before the Medici filled it with art and philosophy. For MAGA, it’s the 1950s, before civil rights, feminism, and globalisation ruined everything. Never mind that neither of these golden ages actually existed. The important thing is that they feel real.
And, of course, Savonarola’s rule didn’t last. Florence eventually got tired of the book-burning and moral policing, realised they were worse off than before, and promptly hanged him before setting his corpse on fire. The lesson? Fanatical movements always eat themselves. MAGA will implode too. It’s just a question of how much damage they do before the inevitable collapse.
So why do they do it? Why would someone actively vote for policies that make their own lives worse? Because, psychologically, it’s not about making things better – it’s about making sure someone else doesn’t get ahead.
This is politics as grievance therapy. People who feel left behind, ignored, or humiliated by modern life aren’t looking for solutions – they’re looking for revenge. They want to punish those they believe have looked down on them. If that means making themselves worse off in the process, so be it. Better to suffer and know your perceived enemies are suffering too than to admit they might have had a point all along.
This isn’t politics – it’s a death cult with a flag.
The irony is that the people who call themselves “patriots” are the very ones making their countries weaker, poorer, and more divided. They wrap themselves in flags while gutting the economy. They shout about democracy while undermining it at every turn. They bang on about free speech but can’t handle a mild bit of criticism without launching into a full-blown meltdown.
Meanwhile, the rest of us – the ones who actually want things to improve – have to stand here, watching them kick over the sandcastle, chuck the bucket into the sea, and declare victory. They won, apparently. And now the country they “saved” is falling to bits.
Brilliant job, lads. Absolutely top work!
No comments:
Post a Comment