About the author
Why I am who I am
…and why I do what I do
Why I’m writing this
I originally wrote this short autobiographical article solely for my family and friends, in order to explain from a personal perspective why I am so vocal about politics. After receiving such a warm and positive response, I decided to share it with a wider audience. Whatever your political opinions, please take a few moments to read to the bottom and respond to my call to action.
About my heritage
I was fortunate enough to grow up in a middle class family in a nice house with a nice garden in a nice town. I had food on the table, received a good level of education and most importantly, I have a loving family. They weren’t so lucky themselves.
My dad wasn’t nurtured or cared for by his working class parents and he was passed from one relative to another and to a foster home. My mum’s upbringing was loving, and somewhere between working and middle class, but her Austrian and Czechoslovakian parents, fearing for their lives, had emigrated to the UK from Vienna just a few months after Kristallnacht — the anti-semitic riot that massacred at least 91 Jews and led to the arrest and internment of over 30,000 more in concentration camps. My grandfather was even arrested and taken to a train station, where he was forced to scrub the floors. It was only because he was ill and physically unable to do the labour that a guard let him go and he didn’t end up on a train to a concentration camp himself. He and my grandmother were only allowed to ship over a single trunk and some furniture, and to bring only £5 worth of money — worth just £312 today — to start their lives in the UK. They worked hard and integrated into society. Despite my grandfather’s strong Viennese accent, he was proud to be British. Some of his siblings perished in those camps, alongside millions of other Jews, other religious minorities, travellers, homosexuals, Poles, Slavs, people of African origin, disabled people, communists and resistance fighters.
Nature vs. nurture & the role of the state
In my opinion, the way that our parents nurture us is very important, and I have been very fortunate in that regard. But we can’t rely on every parent being a decent person and doing the right thing for their children, especially when so many people in our society are struggling to look after themselves.
This is why the role of the state is so important. The state should be providing a support mechanism that ensures everyone has an equal start. But let’s not stop at just an equal start — let’s go a step further and ensure there is always a safety net that helps people through difficult times. Not only does it make sense in terms of morality and principle, even though I consider that to be the most important issue: it is also economically viable. If everyone knows there is a welfare system that will protect them in times of need, they will be better equipped to overcome their difficulties and return to being a net contributor. If those people are abandoned by the state, they will not fully recover and will likely remain an economic burden to it.
We also need to ensure that hatred of others is not allowed to perpetuate, so that we can ensure the atrocities of the past century are not repeated. The stirring up of racial and religious hatred by fascist groups such as English Defence League, Britain First and the British National Party is a tool used to divide people and gain power. The exploitation of ordinary people’s fears that their jobs are being taken by immigrants — when the reality is that successive governments have failed to invest in most regions of the country — for political gain is cynical and counter-productive to society. The outright lies and hate speech in the mainstream media cause further division. We need a system that protects against these issues, but instead, anti-Muslim hate speech has proliferated in recent years, and even anti-semitism has risen steeply.
The libertarian ideology — that we should be “free” to do whatever we want, with minimal or no intervention from the state — is 100% flawed. It relies on everyone being good, yet it is a law of nature that there will always be a minority that exploits others for personal gain. Poorly regulated capitalism is what has led to eight people owning the same wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion. That is unacceptable.
What inspired me
A lot of people ask me why I am so passionate about politics and why I bother writing about it so much, especially as I live abroad and complain about UK issues. Some even believe that I shouldn’t be entitled to a say in the way my country is run when living abroad.
It was actually when I moved to Sweden that I first started following politics closely. I have to say, like most people, I don’t find politics particularly interesting — but I do feel very strongly that we have a duty to ensure our society is run so that it protects people like my parents and grandparents. I now live in Finland, which like the rest of the Nordic countries, has a social democracy with a strong welfare state that ensures its citizens are cared for and nurtured. Through redistribution of wealth, it also tries to ensure that the wealthy minority cannot grow too disproportionately so as to have full control over the average person. Seeing how much better life is for everyone in a country that nurtures people and supports them in their everyday life, including in times of difficulty, is what inspired me to start writing about politics. Strangely, this made me become more patriotic about Britain, as I wanted my fellow country-people to experience a fair and equal society.
The importance of education & tolerance
I formed my own opinions based on my life experiences. My education has also played a huge role. Although everyone has their own bias and opinion, I know that my own views are flexible and open to change. This is because my scientific background has trained me to think critically (I am a postdoctoral researcher in the field of stem cell biology). Despite the relatively decent level of my school education, I have to say that our training in critical thinking was very limited. In history lessons, we learned mainly to remember dates of events so that we could parrot them in exams, rather than discussing in any detail why events happened, why they were good or bad and how we can either prevent the bad things happening again or ensure that we can change things in the future in a positive way. This seems to be lacking from the education system and therefore from the minds of the majority of the British population.
I also suffered a lot of bullying at school: for my lower-than-average height, for being skinny, for my thick glasses, for my disinterest in rugby, my academic achievements (above average at middle school and below average at grammar school) and my religious background. Despite being atheist, whilst growing up I suffered anti-semitic abuse from: a working class white kid who seemed to come from a troubled family; a Brit of Iraqi origin who said his grandfather “had been killed by a Jew” (meaning an Israeli); and a group of Muslim kids who continually harassed me under my chemistry teacher’s nose for being Jewish (the same teacher also publicly mocked me for not understanding his poor level of teaching and refused to help me understand the subject). The anti-semitic group got away with it by claiming I was saying anti-Muslim things to them, which was a lie — in fact, I got into more trouble than them because they were able to gang up on me and back each other up.
Despite all these things, I have not allowed my opinion of Muslims to become smeared by the actions of a minority. I have plenty of Muslim friends and routinely speak out against the terroristic actions of both the Israeli state (not all Jews), the terroristic actions of Islamic extremists (not all Muslims); the terroristic actions of white fascists (not all white people); and the terroristic actions of the UK through its foreign policy (not supported by all UK citizens).
If we had a more caring school system, perhaps these children would not have felt the need to spread hatred at such a young age, perhaps they would have been helped with the issues in their private lives and perhaps they would have understood the causes of prejudice and seen past them. Our curriculum teaches mainly about British history and how we benefitted from Imperialism, but overlooks the harm it has caused much of the world. Perhaps if we had received a better level of education, they would also have understood the complexities of the Israel-Palestine situation — a situation in which the state of Israel (which does not represent all Jews), the Palestinian National Authority (which does not represent all Muslims) and the British government (which does not represent all Brits) are all to blame for the wars and terrorism that have been going on for the last 70 years.
Corbyn’s speech today was refreshingly inspiring — instead of sabre-rattling, he set out a plan for how to deal with radicalisation by addressing the root cause of terrorism, which is decades of unjustifiable interference in foreign affairs by the British government and our US “ally”.
I believe that everyone has a moral duty to engage with democracy and make sure that society benefits everyone and prevents hatred. I come from a comfortable background. I could easily overlook the government’s abuse of the majority in our society, but instead I choose to work positively towards informing people about reality.
A call to action
Taking all of these things into account, I hope you will consider doing at least some of the following:
- Regardless of your own political views, I would like to request that you at least engage with democracy. Use your vote. Over a third of people wasted theirs, last election. The government has half the seats with the backing of just a quarter of the electorate. Don’t let that happen ever again.
- Read the news. Know what’s going on in the world. Escape your social media bubble or your outdated partisan beliefs and ideologies. Five media companies control over 80% of the press, and most of it is right-wing — try experimenting with different sources and see if it challenges your views.
- Look up statistics and trust experts that reliably quote facts and don’t have vested interests. They have spent their whole careers working towards informing the public, but their advice is often lost in translation, distorted or ignored. Know the facts.
- Please read the manifestos, or at least the parties’ own summaries of them — don’t rely on the newspapers to tell you what what to think. Vote based on policies, not personalities. Also consider history. The Tories are notorious for u-turning on a huge proportion of their manifesto pledges. They have even had to u-turn on the “dementia tax” policy and withdraw their manifesto, a week after first publishing it. Can you really trust the party you are considering voting for? How have they performed in the past? Labour took a wrong turn under Blair, especially with regard to Iraq, but they still achieved many positive things. Corbyn has taken the party in a positive direction. The Tories have always been a harmful party that works in the interests of the richest 1%.
- If, like me, you think the Tories are damaging pretty much every aspect of society, please do everything you can to prevent them from getting into power again. Vote tactically. In most cases, this will mean voting for Labour. In some constituencies it will mean Lib Dems, Greens or other smaller parties. It doesn’t matter whether you think Corbyn is a strong enough leader. We need to do everything in our power to limit the damage that a Tory government will do. Avoid the rhetoric. And again, read the manifestos — Labour’s is very progressive and fully costed, whilst the Conservative’s is an assault on almost every social and age group and has no costings. We have to invest in society for people to be able to spend money in the economy — attacking the average person through austerity is harming the economy.
If you enjoy reading FuturePolitics…
I recently started FuturePolitics with the aim of getting my message across to more people outside my own social media bubble. If you find my articles interesting, it would really help if you could please follow FuturePolitics on Facebook and here on Medium. Please also “like” and “share” them on Facebook and “recommend” them on Medium. I ask this not for self gratification, but because I want to inform the public and reach a wider audience. It’s time-consuming to build up a follower base, so in order to reach others, I need your help.
Thanks for reading! I hope you understand now why I am who I am, and why I do what I do.
