“Besides, they were informed that he was even intriguing with the helots; and such indeed was the fact, for he promised them freedom and citizenship if they would join him in insurrection, and would help him to carry out his plans to the end.”
Thucydides, on the Spartan general Pausanius attempted revolt in league with the oppressed helots, 5th Century BC
March 2017
Ah yes, the truth! The sordid, amoral, entitled nature of Britains ruling class is laid bare for the world to see thanks to Brexit and the wonder of instant communication. Travelling the globe to shamelessly pander to all the worst dictators and regimes on the planet. Of course, as historians, and particularly historians in Ireland, we know they have been like this for centuries, but have carefully controlled their image to maintain an aura of respectability, to bluff the world and, most importantly, their own people. But now the mask has slipped. Social media casts a light onto events and characters impossible to achieve before, and with this claruty, the narrative is not theirs alone to control anymore. .
Recent avents suggest that Brexit represents perhaps a unique opportunity for the British people to think about how to remove or curtail their parasitical ruling clasd once and for all. Perhaps a chance to reform the archaic system of first past the post voting, that has created virtual perpetual rule by the Tories. Surely the alternative is not to be countenanced? With the Tories consorting with the Saudis, Trump and the murderous Duterte (a person who boasts about personally throwing criminals out of helicopters) they have certainly found their own ilk to hang around with. Their Britain entails an economy based on money laundering & arms dealing for the idle rich, supported by the labour of a helot class who toil in zero hour contracts and uncertainty designed to keep them too desperate, insecure and distracted to effectively resist their exploitation.
In a world of plenty, they have nothing…and thats on purpose. Helots must always be kept in fear, and so they are bombarded daily with enemies, immigrants, Spain, the EU. Anything to create fear, to distract, to divide, because this prevents any concerted action against the real enemy of the British people, the ruling class. So much for the historical analysis.
But now with the Brexit vote, the logical consequences of how they have retained internal power, and what is rational action in the outside world, are at odds with each other. This is an opportunity to expose what they are doing, and when we understand a mechanism, we can redesign it. The British state as it developed in the 16th century relied on external enemies to maintain the small elites control of a dangerously fragmented nation. The technique was successful, it led to Empire. However there are costs. National identity is defined in relation to the “other” . The system becomes unstable in the absence of an external enemy.
So, in the absence of a more traditional enemy, the EU served as a convenient enemy in the time honoured tradition. This was meant to be routine use of an enemy to create fear and distract the people, it was not meant to be acted on, but Cameron miscalculated and the people, fed a steady diet of hysterical anti-EU rhetoric, called his bluff, and now Brexit must be gone through with. This misstep may ultimately lead to their demise, as their willingness to sacrifice their peoples long term interest just to keep themselves in power has now been exposed. The British ruling class have been hoist by their own petard.
Brexit is said to be a disaster for Britain, and perhaps in an analysis devoid of historical context this is correct. However, reading it as a disaster assumes that all is well and functioning in British society, that historical tensions are not under the surface, ready to emerge as change progresses, And we know that for large parts of the country, they have been abandoned to their fate. Does it really make any difference to modern helots what is happening in the outside world? Shorn of rights and opportunities surely their first priority is to free themselves from the criminal gang who have held them hostage, in one guise or another, for roughly 9 centuries….and when the opportunity came, they took it.. the peasants (as the Tories would see it) revolted.
And in this analysis Brexit may not make much sense from the outside, either socially or economically, but if you are inside it does, because it is not a thought out action of the ruling class, or a democratic, or rational and progressive movement, it is a revolt, a revolt of the dispossessed in the tradition of the great peasant revolts of the Middle Ages, such as the Wat Tyler revolt of 1381. A revolt explains the total disarray of the British establishment, whether left or right, both equally horrified at the seemingly mindless destruction of Brexit, they do not know how to respond. Only the extremists are happy, and their agenda is being followed, no matter the cost to the economy, to social cohesion, to the existence of the UK itself. So, as the establishment implodes, the next step is to lay out a way forward for the democratic reform of Britain in the long run, and there is much that we, on the outside, can do to help that.
Viva la Revolucion!
Note on helots..https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots
All is Motion 