“I think about my father. He never reached the heights like me, but in a lotta ways he had it better. He had his people. They had their standards. They had pride. Today, whadda we got?” - Tony Soprano
I have taken too many National Express coaches in this country to have any illusions about ‘community’. However, in my short and brutal life, I have had one privilege which only a few others share, and that was to be witness to the birth of right-wing politics in Britain during the Covid-19 pandemic. The ‘movement’ which arose from the Britpopper meme would, in the next five years, bully open borders libertarian think tankers into crypto-fascism and terrorise a whole generation of ‘politics adjacent’ millennial women into locking their accounts. The firmament of Fraser Nelson and Sunder Katwala has been torn asunder, and all manner of manna is now raining from heaven.
But as right-wing politics has developed on audience, I’m afraid that a certain dignity has been lost. Much like Paulie Soprano, I see tracksuits and widening waists replacing the sprezzatura of a Don Corleone. Accounts which once called all journalists retards preen when they are mentioned in ‘ToryDiary’. Thralls prostrate themselves, worshipping at the altar of Neil O’Vaccines. I see screenshots in group chats celebrating retweets from ‘normie’ think tankers. I see celebration of theft, under the guise of ‘posting-to-policy’. I see it all, and it depresses me so.