Of late I’ve come to embrace the term ‘hot take’.
Always too scattered in mind and physical movement to be academic, I love a term that is short-form for “this might be a mad idea, but…’ – and it sits more comfortably with the creative minded.
A couple of years ago Novara Media did a very interesting Podcast called The Nasty Noughties. A decade still revolving around the attitudes and norms of the 1990s had lost it’s optimism, public spiritedness and resorted to a downward-punching mentality.
The downward-punching wasn’t a straightforward top-to-bottom class-based exercise, but one that was far more nuanced, based on picking up on any vulnerability wherever spotted (although inevitably slanted in favour of the better off).
The working class began to split itself apart in the years after Blair’s government vowed to build on Thatcher’s work. One section began to see its future within the framework of Blair’s “education education education!” mantra and the other half began to exist, by and large, in a process of intergenerational brutalisation. Jock-type uni lads would pick on the ‘chavs’ (not a term I enjoy using) who couldn’t never go to ‘uni’, and the ‘chavs’ in turn would make life hard for those of similar economic status who had nonetheless maintained abstinence from the self-brutalising processes of post-Thatcher in hope that they too could one day use education as a way out.
All in all, the decade that lasted until the student protests and English Riots of the early 2010s, was one where prejudices and outright bullying were disguised as moral missions.
The 2010s were a weird decade, in the fact that although defined by a brutal Tory regime of public sector cuts and much more, saw less bullying and downward-punching in everyday life. This, for me, rather than being caused by the shame of seeing the lads who used to bully you now sleeping rough in town, was mainly due to the fact that we were all now fully online, able to constantly contact and be contacted and to engage with content instantaneously.
Not without serious concerns, this was still relatively novel, and inconclusive as to where it would all end up. Not only this but for the first time you could walk down a street and pass the kind of places where you used to feel intimidated to find nobody is remotely bothered with you because they are staring at their screens. Subcultures also began to merge into one thing offering hybridised fashion styles, and gym culture and personal goals became more important than hating your neighbour.
Move on to the 2020s, and although delayed due to lockdowns and readustments to public life, my hot take is that we are currently witnessing ‘the Return of Nasty’
My hot take is that Nasty has picked up where it left off at the start of the 2010s, but by utilising cultural norms and events of the day: largely the success of far right politics in infiltrating everyday life.
For those who gain power by picking on what they see as a vulnerability, a politics with a pretence of decency so thinly veiled only journalists and news reporters can believe in it simply offers an opportunity to pick on and take their anger out on whoever they please.
Although a white straight man, I’m also somebody who learnt to be vigilant to bullying in my younger years. This often means, by looking out for it (the bullying) I am spotted more easily. Equally, I wear glasses, which sounds so miniscule compared to other visual differences, but trust me, Nasty is fine-tuned to utilise anything for it’s ends.
Sunday has long since been a ‘day of rest’ on this anxious island, and weekends, albeit a time perceived as one for leisure and pleasure, is the time when Nasty is fully on the prowl.
I walked out of the Poundland in my home town earlier, shoving a drinks bottle I’d bought into my rucksack in the anxious manner of someone always fearing judgement. In the corner of my eye I noticed something, that I’ll never fully know the cause of. Whether it was how I looked or how I moved, I had caught the attention of a woman and her daughter (or granddaughter). I couldn’t help but look back and see her staring at me with what seemed to be a look between disgust, hatred and mockery as she said something to her young daughter to make her also oggle me.
Even as I walked on, she was still looking at me in the same manner. I could only put it down to being akin to what was said to a passer by at a Unite The Kingdom rally: “you look left wing”.
I drove home taking a longer route, wanting to enjoy a percieve peace within the grey skys and rich greenery of June. Yet as I approached the crossroads near to home, a BMW full of young men lunged out and into my path, with enough space to avoid any necessary conflict, but close enough for the driver to still choose to spit at me in my car for no apparent reason then a “fuck you, buddy” gesture to a total stranger.
This is a rambling hot take, and probably needed more punch to highlight something I’m genuinely really worried about right now…
Something’s not right. Something about the behaviour of numerous people in the last month, especially since Reform did well in the local council elections, has made me really worried.
We are still in the Final Battlefield of Thatcherism, and who knows when or how this battle may end.
John B Ledger 