Fun and games to come in 2025?

This piece stems from a strategy review I wrote looking at how the two of us behind this blog, and our sister publication At the grassroots, can make the best use of our time and energy in what’s most likely be a very turbulent year. As this stems from an internal review, obviously there are one or two things that had to be changed for the sake of our security. However, I also believe in being as open and transparent as possible - I owe that to the readers of this blog. Also, being as open as possible sends out a signal to the powers that be that I’m not going to be cowed into a furtive life of secrecy because of the fear of what they might do to me. The same also applies to the cultist worshippers of the likes of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Elon Musk and little Tommy Robinson.

---

While it’s important to look at how we’ve been operating and what lessons can be learned from what we have and haven’t managed to achieve, this can only be done if we look at the social and political context we’re operating in. This is what I’m going to attempt to do with this review. Let’s be brutally honest, the social and political context we’re forced to operate in is far from ideal. In fact, it’s toxic, uncertain, hard to predict and to top it all, there’s a palpable sense of malaise that’s hard to escape. In other words, it’s a festering pile of shite! However, we are where we are... In the toxic climate we’re obliged to operate in, what direction can this Stirrings from below blog take?

In this post - Getting away from the fear porn merchants, rage baiters, pedants and grifters 30.12.24 - which I published at the end of December, I laid into the climate of doom-mongering and rage baiting that we have to endure. I wasn’t pulling any punches, particularly with some of those I marched alongside on the anti-lockdown/anti-vaccine mandate protests in 2021 who now appear to be falling for a lot of the rage baiting that’s going on. I also made it pretty clear that this experience of being let down by people I naively thought might be part of a new political phenomenon has well and truly left me politically homeless. That’s a tough one to take, it really is…

Stirrings from below has to respond to the world as it is. Our problem is responding to that world without getting sucked into the vortex of doom mongering and rage baiting. I’ll be the first to admit that avoiding this is bloody difficult to put it mildly! The only realistic way round the problem is to do what I can to expose the agendas of the rage baiters and fear porn merchants. The people spreading this kind of shite around on social media and also on the streets with their stickers and the like, think they know exactly what they’re doing. Our job, and that of any like minded people, is to relentlessly challenge them and expose their manipulative, divisive agendas for what they are.

2025 is going to be the year of the rage baiting, divide and rule merchants who are implementing an agenda from those who presume to rule over us. The problem is that even if some of these divide and rule merchants realise they’re getting played, they still get too much of a buzz from what they’re doing to even contemplate giving up. That’s even if the consequences of the rage baiting in the form of social unrest bring about a much more tightly controlled, top down society, justified on the basis of ‘it’s what needs to be done to keep the lid on’. At the end of the day, the motivation for allowing divide and rule to rip is to use the ensuing chaos as the pretext for establishing more control.

Sometimes if feels like the human psyche has allowed itself to be corrupted so much that there’s a real appetite for division, confrontation and toxic hostility. It would also appear that there’s a real appetite for bad news, often of the kind that can be manipulated to spread fear and division. Don’t the bastards who want us divided, at each other’s throats and eventually begging for a ‘strong man’ to rescue them sodding well know that!

Sadly, it would appear that applies to a significant minority of the readers of Stirrings from below. Here are the viewing figures at the time of writing for two of the more recent posts on this blog:

All we have is each other 1.1.25 - 189 views

Getting away from the fear porn merchants, rage baiters, pedants and grifters 30.12.24 - 254 views

All we have is each other was an attempt to stress the positive aspects of grassroots solidarity. That has gathered significantly less in the way of views than Getting away from the fear porn merchants, rage baiters, pedants and grifters which was essentially me having a rant about some of the shite I’ve had to deal with online, and also out in the real world. So, it would seem that even on Substack, there’s an element who love their doom and gloom.

Sure, 2025 is going to be a turbulent and dangerous year, there’s no denying that. The shite that’s coming down will have to be dealt with and I have to acknowledge and cover that in Stirrings from below. However, in the midst of all the doom and gloom, there has to be room for hope and optimism. If there isn’t room for that, then I might just as well jack it all in and drink myself to oblivion:( Which is why, whatever the odds that are stacked against us, At the grassroots has to keep going.

So far, most of this review has in a number of ways focused on our audience. So perhaps it’s time to look at what 2025 has in store for us, bearing in mind my view that making detailed predictions is a mug’s game. There are a lot of people out there with agendas, with too many of them having a decidedly reactionary character. As has been mentioned quite a few times previously, some of these people were on the same anti-lockdown/anti-vaccine mandate protests that I was on. Obviously, they never took to heart the message about not trusting government, not trusting authority and thinking for yourself instead. Nope, too many of them have signed up to the fan clubs of the likes of Trump, Musk and for f**k sake, even Tommy Robinson! Once bitten, twice shy. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had to learn some very hard lessons this year: As we move towards 2025... 19.12.24.

I have gone into depth in this piece on issues that I originally didn’t intend to do so. The reason I’ve done that is to try to highlight how situations get manipulated and people allow themselves to get played, even to the point of repudiating positions they claimed to have held just a year or so ago. All of this has played a part in me becoming politically homeless. If finding a tribe means ignoring nuances and complexities, I don’t want to be in any tribe. If finding a tribe means having to look at the world through a particular lens, manipulating the facts to fit a particular analytical framework, again, I don’t want to be in any tribe. It has been a bit of a journey to get here but, I’m glad I’ve arrived.

There’s a lot of discontent out there, much of it existing for very good reasons. However, as the Left has lost interest in the working class and the anarchist movement are too insignificant to make any serious impact, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that grifters and chancers with reactionary and ultimately, authoritarian agendas are happily moving in to fill the vacuum. Which leaves the few class conscious people there are left in the anarchist movement and also, the Left, fighting a desperate rearguard action.

While the likes of Farage (now getting disowned by Musk) may pretend to be the friend of ordinary people, these f**kers are just one of the factions of the elite. They’re there doing the dirty work for some seriously rich people whose agenda can best be described as techno-feudalism. Anyone who hangs onto the words of these charlatans richly deserves to be described as a ‘useful idiot’. As for Tommy Robinson, he’s an Israeli state asset working to their agenda. These people have a knack for latching onto legitimate concerns and then twisting people’s anger to suit their own, very dubious, divisive and dangerous agendas.

So, expect more in the way of divide and rule. Expect more in the way of deliberately stoked inter communal conflicts. I would dearly love to be wrong but, a repeat of the kind of disturbances we saw in the wake of the murder of three young girls in Southport last summer wouldn’t surprise me in the least. All of which would be the pretext for whoever may be in government at that point to start implementing some fairly drastic security measures, all in the name of ‘keeping us safe’. So, if digital ID is introduced to keep track of who’s coming into the country, it will be sold in such a way that too many people will be only too happy to lap it up.

Bear in mind that Farage is a very good friend of the US tech billionaire, Peter Thiel. This is what this sometimes controversial Substack blogger has to say on this man and his potentially massive and malign influence on the UK if he’s not stopped:

Political puppet ping-pong - Miri AF | Substack | 25.11.24.

I don't know for sure if the country will go to the polls again, but I can't really see the purpose of the establishment making this petition quite so prominent if that isn't the end goal.

I have a pretty good idea of what the cabal wants in place politically, and I'm not sure they can wait until 2029 (which is when the UK is currently set to next have a General Election) to get it.

What does said cabal want?

Well, it's extremely significant to mention that Reform leader, Nigel Farage, is a very good friend of none other than tech billionaire and political "kingmaker", Peter Thiel.

Regular readers will remember Thiel's name from our explorations into American Vice President, JD Vance.

Vance is effectively a Thiel-owned puppet, who has been heavily influenced and bankrolled by the tech titan since university (and it's my contention that it was Thiel who put him up to writing his memoirs and ensured they became world-famous, rather than the story Vance himself gives about "being inspired to write them by a professor").

Who is Peter Thiel? He's an inordinately wealthy authoritarian technocrat who is heavily invested in AI and despises ordinary people (he was an early investor in the so-called "seasteading" movement, where rich people pay extravagant amounts of money to live in the middle of the ocean on floating manmade micro-islands, free from the eternal bother of the rest of us).

He's also made his antipathy for any idea of political equality explicitly clear, and, like many wealthy autocrats throughout history, doesn't think women or poor people should vote.

Mr. Thiel, who is gay, asserts to believe that women voting is bad for democracy - so bad, in fact, that female involvement in politics may have rendered the very concept of democracy itself into an oxymoron. He's also not at all keen on anyone in receipt of state benefits being permitted to have a political voice.

Thiel has even gone so far as to state that "freedom [for people like him] and democracy [for the rest of us] are not compatible".

Basically, he believes in an anti-democratic future where a cabal of super-wealthy transhumanist technocrats tell the rest of us what to do, and, by ploughing his vast fortune into American politics and getting his boy JD into the second-most powerful political job in the land, he's doing pretty well at realising this vision... but only for America, right?

Wrong, unfortunately.

Thiel has already firmly set his sights on the UK too, with his highly reviled data harvesting company, Palantir, having secured a £330 million NHS data contract (yes, 330 million, of course).

Palantir also won the contract - unopposed - to run the NHS Covid Datastore.

Yes, I have used this lengthy quote in a previous post. I make no apologies for re-using it here because there are times when repetition to hammer home a point is necessary. These are the kind of evil bastards we’re up against. Fortunately, there are many other talented and committed bloggers and activists out there who broadly share our analysis of the situation and have some idea of what a better, de-centralised future could look like. That still doesn’t make the prospect of 2025 and the years beyond that an easy one to contemplate.

So what can the two of us, both getting on in years, both with other responsibilities and also, both wanting a life outside of activism, do that will make any difference? With two Substack blogs, both supported by Notes which is Substack’s social media, our online presence has been slimmed down to something that’s manageable but also, can deliver results. Our practical work with community gardening is best summed up in this piece: Digging in at the end of the year 18.12.24.

We still have a fair amount of stickers which will require specific trips to both Bristol and Bath to shift. At some point to liven things up a bit, I’ll be looking to get some new designs printed off. Stickering is something that can be done nimbly, opportunistically and also, intentionally. It’s taking memes from the digital realm and putting them where they can be seen by passing members of the public. Seen by many more people than would ever view them online.

Do we attempt to bring out a paper again? Writing and producing a paper is the easy bit - it’s the distribution in a region where to be honest, we’re well out on the margins of the activist scene, that’s the difficult bit. Also, as previously mentioned, there’s not actually a lot going on in the way of large scale protests suitable for paper distribution going on at the moment. The more militant protests and actions that have taken place in Bristol weren’t exactly suitable events for a bit of genteel paper distribution:) Leaflets on stalls? That means being a bit further into the local ecology of activism than we’re likely to get with our reputation. Also, it means prioritising stalls above other, more productive and useful activities. Not only that, an events calendar can be a bit of a tie, particularly if things start to get ‘interesting’.

To conclude, we live in challenging times. We’ve known that for some time to be honest. Without wanting to be a doom monger, 2025 does look like it’s going to be quite a turbulent year. We have to be realistic in recognising that there’s only so much the two of us can do. It’s better to focus down on manageable activities that will avoid us getting burnt out. It’s better to be realistic about what we can achieve than fly too high and then crash. What is vital in that amidst the turbulence, we can carry a degree of optimism that a better world can be built.

Dave A