Scene: The Earth has been hit by solar flares. In the UK, for want of enough replacement super-generators, Northumberland is a 'Red Zone' without power. Cobra is sitting permanently. Some foreign criminals escape from an Immigration centre and one rapes some students. Locals attempt a lynching of the wrong man (who happens to be of Asian heritage but with a similar facial blemish to the rapist).
Reporter (of Asian heritage) near Newcastle: So who are People's Justice?
Geordie Afghan veteran, Scott Minette: Just a collection of ordinary citizens organising to support our communities, protect our vulnerable people and stop the looting.
Reporter: Some people have accused you of being nothing more than vigilantes with an ugly undercurrent of racism.
Scott: Some people. That’s obvious. It’s how the media wants people to see things, aye.
Reporter: How do you see it?
Scott: Well look around you. Nobody cares about us unless there is an election and they’re after our votes. And you lot call me and my friends and my family racists. We hardly spend any time at all talking about immigration. The way youse lot go on you’d think it was the only thing we thought about. I mean, you’re asking us what I think about what happened to that bloke who got lynched, well I think that was wrong, of course I do. We think that our kids should speak English at school in England and that we should be able to put up were own flags during the World Cup. That doesn’t make us racist does it? Black people are proud of their culture. Black is beautiful, that’s what they say. Now why should we not say the same about white people? Why should white be an insult? You people you talk about diversity and you talk about respect and then you apply it to everyone except us. The people who own the media, people who run things in this country, they want to make us out to be scum even though it was my grandad built the ships that made this country great and I actually fought for this country. I’ll tell you what it is right. Family comes first, that’s obvious. Then after that it’s country, culture and community, and then, if I’ve got anything left after them three I’m happy to stick my hand in my pocket. And if you don’t like that take a look at 90% of the people in this country and that includes the immigrants...
All sounds fairly reasonable. Then, in Episode 4 of the new SKY series, Cobra, the camera pans out to the real framing - the screen of a female SPAD in Downing Street. She works for the PM, Robert Sutherland, the usual Teflon technocrat in the Cameron/Blair mould played by Robert Carlyle and a lot of hair gel. Suddenly a common sense bloke becomes a proto-fascist (People's Justice have a "salute" and when Minette is being interviewed his mates, geezers looking like Tommy Robinson's mates, video the interview on their mobiles). For it is not long before Sutherland brands Minette as a 'fascist' and reveals that the innocuous interview above was merely an incriminating prelude to his real characterisation. Nothing changes. The luvvies and the screenwriters are still stuck in stage 1 of the stages of grief - Shock and denial, and so, ordinary people are still thick racists and xenophobes. And, of course, Sutherland is an heroic anti-populist fighting, as well as the consequences of the solar flares, a rearguard action against a nasty Home Secretary out for his job and not averse to exploiting the wicked populists (he invents the name People's Justice). It's the usual ideology by numbers for us dummies. The semiotics are fascinating though. Place the rape in Northumberland against the background of the 19,000 white girls sexually by men of Asian background assaulted mainly in the North last year (according to the left wing Independent newspaper) and things take on a different complexion. The liberal dramatists are getting into a mess with the subjects they touch on and advertising their own confusion. Picture credit: By <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/people/22017657@N05">vagueonthehow</a> from Tadcaster, York, England - <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/vagueonthehow/14961787035/">Emilie de Ravin & Robert Carlyle</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution 2.0">CC BY 2.0</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34840830">Link</a>