Ding Dong

I’m not having a good day. Margaret Thatcher has just died and all the right-wing, people-hating mainstream media, as well as a lot of very ignorant people who know nothing about it, are eulogising her.

I lived in the UK through the Thatcher years. I come from a poor town in the North of England. Thatcher was a scourge to working people. She was a monster. A blight. She imposed her right-wing, monetarist, free-market, corporation-loving, exploitative, soul-crushing, stupid, destructive ideology on my people, my family, and my friends. In the last great battle of the class war, she destroyed the trade union movement in Britain and left us all at the mercy of the corporations and their greedy, uncaring owners.

By the time Thatcher left office, my home town had 20% unemployment and the idea of “disenfranchised youth” was firmly entrenched in our vocabulary.

I can’t blame anyone for throwing impromptu parties in the streets of Britain today. And anyone who is surprised that it’s happening wasn’t on the receiving end of her “reforms”. She was a poisonous woman with poisonous ideologies. The whole world became infected with her cruel and vicious ideas and the Global Financial Crisis and the millions it has harmed is just the most recent manifestation of the sickness she bequeathed us.

I wish everyone would shut up about what a “strong” leader she was (Stalin was a strong leader, so was Idi Amin, it’s not a recommendation) and what a role model she was for women (it’s like saying George W. Bush was a role model for men!) The more I hear the mindless praise of this awful person, the more I remember the bitter hopelessness of those years, the more I think about how much her existence has damaged the world, and the angrier I get.