An American tennis player, John McEnroe, in his playing days was well known, before social media, for the verbal meme, ‘You cannot be serious!’ screamed at the umpire when a call in his games went against him.
The news of the last few days emanating from various sources that the Russians are coming and the UK population must be prepared, man, woman and child, to pick up their pitchforks and defend this sceptred isle to the death can only elicit a McEnoe response.
The main reaction on contemporary social media was the traditional British two fingered one to this call to arms by the British ruling class.
A good overview of ‘invasion literature’ can be found at Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_literature
In the late nineteenth centure/early twentieth century there was a plethora of fiction dealing with the invasion of the British Isles by foreign states. Germany appeared to be the state considered the main threat after 1903. Up to then, according to Wiki, France was seen as the most likely threat.
In William Le Queux’s 1894 The Great War in England in 1897 the adversaries were France and Russia with Germany eventually getting involved on the side of Britain.
Le Queux’s 1906 novel, The Invasion of 1910 was firmly of the opinion that the next threat would come from Germany and Britain was dangerously unprepared for it.
Jump seventy two years and a book purporting to have been written in 1987 describing the 1985 Third world war initiated by Russia came from the same mindset. The Third World War August 1985 by General Sir John Hackett and others was written in the Cold War period. Spoiler alert, NATO wins.
At the UN the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov apparently said. Russia does not want to enter into a “big war” and has no intention of attacking other countries. “No one wants a big war,” including Russia. “We have lived through ‘big wars’ many times in our history,”
Russia maintains that, ‘In recent weeks, senior officials in several European nations have been urging their citizens to prepare for a potential military confrontation with Russia. Moscow, however, has insisted that it has no interest in waging war against NATO.’
Mandy Rice Davis , friend of Christine Keeler involved in the 1963 Profumo Affair said in court when told that a Lord denied knowing her or having had an affair with her, ‘Well he would, wouldn't he?’ Miss Rice Davis’s riposte would seem to be still apposite to doubts about intentions, or non intentions, of the Russian state articulated by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock remains at ninety seconds to midnight but it’s obvious that the world is still a very dangerous place. No one needs to join the military to see Armageddon at first hand because each and everyone of us is directly in the firing, or missile, line. In current, and previous, conflicts civilians are/have suffered.
States may claim that the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is no longer an option but given the forces at play within capitalism this cannot be assured.(no pun intended).
Humankind cannot continue to leave its fate to the MAD capitalist system and those running it. William S Burroughs said that no one owns life but anyone who can pick up a frying pan holds death. Some frying pan. How much nearer to Armageddon does the world have to get before it decides, enough is enough and implements Socialism, the only sane alternative for us all?
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