The Reality Is More Sinister

Ricky Hale writes:

The Labour Party is a death cult: freezing pensioners in winter, taking away unemployment and disability benefits, offering euthanasia as a way out, supporting the genocide in Gaza, participating in the bombing of Yemen, and extending the war in Ukraine. The government’s solution to everything is death - and now they’re taking their death plans one step further.

You can’t have failed to notice the newspapers rabidly pushing the idea of conscription, but conscription poses a problem for the government. It would mean the children of middle-class voters would be conscripted. It would mean their own children could be conscripted. They could try removing their kids from the register, but that would be a bit obvious, so they have a plan and they’re not being discreet about it. They are going to coerce the unemployed into signing up for the military.

The Minister for Death really just came out and said it!

For those who are unclear, Liz Kendall is the one who looks so much like Rachel Reeves, you probably thought they were the same person, or maybe twins, but they are in fact clones. You can tell them apart because Reeves is the one with the carbon fibre wig, and Kendall is the one with eyes blacker than that void in space where there are no galaxies for like a billion light-years. Neither of them has a human soul.

Kendall is affectionately known in Labour circles as “4.5% Liz” because that’s how much of the vote she got when she stood for party leader. It’s good to see someone whose ideas were emphatically rejected by her own party getting her way, isn’t it?

The government’s problem is that 2/3 of people of fighting age say they wouldn’t volunteer for the military or believe they wouldn’t be needed in the event of a world war. The military is woefully low on numbers, struggling to recruit, and seeing 15,000 resignations a year so they need things to change.

In the US, the strategy has been to deprive the working class of healthcare, but we have the NHS so an alternative plan is needed. It remains unclear how 4.5% Liz would bully young people into joining the military, but we can take a guess.

At first, enlistment would be a “voluntary” thing. The army would place ads in the JobCentre and staff would start recommending those jobs at interviews. Perhaps jobseekers would be threatened with sanctions if they didn’t apply. The expectation would be that if you can’t find alternative employment, you sign up for the army.

When I was young and unemployed, the JobCentre would force us onto these employment schemes after six months without a job. In more recent years, they have forced young people into unpaid work (slavery). I would not be surprised if the government started telling young people that after six months, they have to enlist in the army or get no money.

This would seem like a stupid strategy because you would get a bunch of resentful, unmotivated, out of shape recruits who wouldn’t be much good to anyone… unless your plan was to use them in meat grinder attacks, which it would be.

If full war broke out, enlistment would essentially be a death sentence. These recruits wouldn’t be seen as real soldiers and would be sent to the front as soon as “the coalition of the willing” decided to take a pop at Putin. Do you prefer the idea of death to the idea of a peace agreement? Because that’s what you’re being offered.

This explains why the eligibility for disability benefits has been tightened and those with mental health conditions are being thrown under a bus. A few years ago, it was “if you have depression or anxiety, please speak up”. Today, it’s “fuck off, they’re not real illnesses!” because they can’t let people use mental health to avoid enlistment.

If war broke out, everyone’s excuse would be anxiety and they would hardly be faking it. World War III would be a collective panic attack, so they are getting ahead of us, making sure that unless you’re in a wheelchair or blind or in a coma, you aren’t getting out of this, you feckless layabout!

This is where the demonisation of benefits claimants has led us. The aim is to make life on Universal Credit so unpleasant that young people have no choice to enlist, unless they have parents wealthy enough to support them. From the establishment’s perspective, this kill’s two birds with one stone: they cut the benefits bill and have their ready-made army.

If full war breaks out, they can either let youth unemployment rise to increase enlistment, or reduce Universal Credit payments and blame economic necessity. Perhaps, they can go all the way and say “no more benefits” for those aged 18-40. In other words, fight or starve.

You might think there is no way they could discriminate based on age, but you would be wrong. It used to be that under-25s couldn’t claim housing benefit. It is still the case that young workers get a lower minimum wage. The government plans to deny incapacity benefits to under-21s. Presumably, they think 21-year-old disabled people don’t need food… The reality is more sinister: their age group has no power in the voting booth. Governments long ago learned they can be cruel to working class youths without it costing them electorally. Indeed, it seems to be a vote winner.

The middle class vote for this cruelty because sacrificing the working class to maintain their own privilege is what the middle class has always done. Indeed, this mentality is the cornerstone of neoliberalism.

My question to young people is why the hell would you go along with this? As someone who was long-term unemployed and homeless in my youth, my government would have seen no use for me, other than to throw me into the trenches. Those people gave me nothing and yet they would give themselves the right to take my life. There is no way I would fight for these scumbags, and you shouldn’t either.