This past Saturday was November the 5th, and as an annual (or nearly annual) ritual, I re-watched one of my favorite movies from my youth, V for Vendetta.
The movie, made by the Wachowskis, was intended to be released on November 5th, 2005, the 400th anniversary of the original attempted attack on Parliament by Guy Fawkes. The actual historical event is hard to easily parse into goodguys-and-badguys. Fawkes was a Catholic, who had spent time in Spain, and joined a radical anti-Protestant group in the waning days of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign. Early in the tenure of King James I, Fawkes and his co-conspirators sought to blow up Parliament to protest the continued oppression of Catholics. They failed, and the British have mockingly celebrated that failure ever since on “Guy Fawkes Day.”
Were the Catholics being oppressed? Yes. Queen Elizabeth, after all, was born (to Anne Boleyn) within a marriage sanctioned by the Church of England, and not by the Catholic Church, so she needed to keep the country Protestant in order not to be considered a bastard. Catholicism was effectively illegal in England, and heretics could be executed, even to the point of having their heads mounted on sticks outside the gates of London (yes, really). James, her successor, was a Catholic from Scotland, and as such he was expected by many to reverse course. However, the entrenched power of Proestant Parliament was too great to challenge, and so he kept the Anglican power structure in place (when his son, Charles, became King, he tried to go back to Catholicism; Parliament revolted against him and ended up beheading him, so the evidence is that James was right to be wary). So, Fawkes’s Catholic fear and anger was real and valid.
Was Fawkes a goodguy? I mean, no, nor was much of the pro-Catholic movement at the time. An international cabal led by Austria and Spain was, at this time in history, arguably the most evil force in existence, and they wanted nothing more than to force England back into their sphere of influence. Fawkes and his co-conspirators were clearly pawns in this great game, and as real as their grievances were, it’s a bit awkward to celebrate an attempted terrorist attack by allies of the mighty Hapsburgs.
Is Guy Fawkes Day a fun tradition? Historically, and especially as Ireland became such a major factor in British politics, it’s been really closely tied to anti-Catholic sentiment, in a pretty ugly way. The graphic novel V for Vendetta thus rightly appropriates Guy Fawkes as a hero for the oppressed. Although this is not entirely fair about Fawkes the historical character, symbolically it makes a lot of sense: The existing power structure in England enjoys using Fawkes as a Halloween-style cartoon foe, a foil against which the State can show how right It is, and make light of the ongoing persecution of Catholics (mainly in Northern Ireland) right up through the end of the 20th Century.
Alan Moore wrote the original novel as a kind of 1984 for the Thatcher era. It took all of the neo-imperialism, anti-Catholicism, homophobia, and worship-at-the-altar-of-Capitalism that defined the mainstream UK (and USA) in the 80s, and projected that to its logical conclusion: A right-wing fascist state that can only be challenged by a noir superhero of sorts, anonymous except for his Guy Fawkes mask. And yes, this time he does succeed in blowing up Parliament, in protest of this new and evil regime.
The movie, which makes a number of changes to the original source material (not all of them wise changes), updates this story to the Bush era. References are made to “America’s wars” and “Kurdistan” and “Muslim terrorists,” and so Islamophobia joins homophobia as a major inspiration for the fascist regime at the heart of the book. The film also doubles down on a number of the obvious literary allusions, from Phantom of the Opera to Batman to A Clockwork Orange to The Count of Monte Cristo, and for an added touch casts John Hurt (who played WInston Smith in the film version of 1984) as the Hitler-like dictator, Adam Sutler. The themes are fairly obvious, but in a lot of ways still powerful. Many people dislike the movie, but I unabashedly loved it when it came out. I was 21, the war in Iraq was raging, and most Americans supported the war and the military and the President (as Senators in 2002, both Biden and Clinton voted in favor of the war unnecesary murder of millions of innocent people in what can only be described as pure and disgusting evil). The movie still gets to me now, but watching it has become a somewhat different experience.
One element of the movie that remains powerful is the brutality of the homophobia depicted. One character, described as having been “born in 1985,” which makes her story seem quite visceral to anyone from my generation, wonders aloud: “I never understood why they hate us.” This line is delivered over a montage of secret police beating and arresting (“black-bagging,” as in, placing a hood over the target’s head) gay men and women, then carting them off to implied concentration camps or something similar. When the movie was made, homophobia was actually taking a brief backseat to Islamophobia. If you made it now, the “Muslim terrorist” trope might be toned down, but the anti-gay sentiment would be dialed up even further, with an additional anti-trans dimension, and some good old-fashioned anti-black and anti-Latine sentiment for good measure. That is to say, the perverse fixations of the villains in the film seem still all too real, now a generation later. This is to say nothing of the thinly-veiled caricature of a FoxNews pundit who blathers on about how America fell because of “Godlessness” and brags that he would have personally beaten up the terrorist if given the chance. Is it funny, or sad, that when the movie came out, it was a clear parody of Bill O’Reilly, but now it would have to be Sean Hannity or Fucker Carlson?
But what is really strange about the movie, and about how 2022 feels so different from 2005, is the knowledge that today’s right-wing zealots in fact see themselves in the heroes of this story. In essence, the plot of the movie (minor spoilers, if you haven’t read or seen it) is this: The evil government creates a plague, killing tens of thousands, and scaring the population into accepting a dictatorship. Having achieved power thusly, they brutally crack down on all opposition with total surveillance and control of the media and so on. Then, our brave heroes defy the laws and blow up the seat of the government in protest, leading to a New Day of Freedom (the book is actually not quite so facile, but that’s a conversation for another essay).
If you’ve been paying any attention to conservative media over the past few years (and, for your sanity’s sake, I hope you haven’t), this is more or less exactly their narrative of what’s going on now. Every time the government imposes a Covid-related mandate, it’s seen as an example of creeping fascism. Every time conservatives think they perceive a double-standard, as in the celebration of the 2020 BLM riots and the condemnation of the Jan. 6th Insurrection, they are reminded of the partisanship of the State and media alike. Every time Republicans turn against Trump, it’s evidence not of Trump’s genuine culpability, but of the power of those entrenched in the State, regardless of party, to close ranks. Every time a comedian or actor or other public figure is banned from social media for saying something offensive, it’s evidence of censorship and oppression. Every time a teacher is fired for refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns, it’s spun as “religious freedom” being oppressed by a kind of “forced conformity.” Conservatives bristle at the thought that everyone has to toe the modern line on gender identity — even if these social norms are still in flux, and mostly came to prominence long after most of us reached adulthood and thought we already understood the norms — or else they’ll be “canceled.” The solution to this, from the conservative perspective? Well, it starts with exercising their Second Amendment rights to arm themselves, and then, if necessary, it involves fighting back against the evil government that is oppressing their religious freedom — much like, well, Guy Fawkes, or the eponymous V.
When I was 20, and America was in the process of re-electing a war criminal and murdering a million Arabs just for the fun of it (and the profit of Haliburton), it was easy to fantasize about blowing up Congress. Watching this movie embraced that fantasy, even as the movie itself was willing to interrogate that as something of a problem. Yes, V delivers that easily-quotable line: “People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.” But there is more than a little pushback. When he goes on to say “Violence can be used for good,” we’re meant to be more than a little put off by his callousness. It’s even better expressed in a later conversation with Evey, the eyes-of-the-audience, played by Natalie Portman, where he is discussing having been tortured in prison, right after he’s intentionally delivered the same experience to her, in order to “free her from fear,” or something. The exchange goes:
“What was done to me created me. It’s a basic principle of the universe that every action will create an equal and opposing reaction.”
“Is that how you see it? Like an equation?”
“What was done to me was monstrous!”
“And they created a monster.”
And, in the final moments of the movie, V dies, and acknowledges that he has to die, saying to Evey, “I was wrong; the choice to [blow up Parliament] is not mine to make. Because this world, the world that I was a part of and helped to shape, will end tonight. And tomorrow a different world will begin that different people will shape. And this choice belongs to them.”
The movie, after all, is about revenge, as its title indicates. The book is even more so, with layers of revenge-seeking by other characters, including the inspector who, while sympathetic, is working for the government throughout the story to stop V, and harbors his own vengeful reasons for doing so. Revenge is always an ugly emotion, and in this story it is given a very violent and visceral reality, one that we are meant to understand, but not quite celebrate.
I still recall, from when the movie was released, the review by David Denby in the New Yorker, who seemed particularly miffed that they dared to blow up Parliament as an on-screen celebratory climax. As he put it, the movie erred by “celebrating an attack against an icon of liberal democracy.” I remember screaming in my own head as I read this. Why should Parliament or Congress be defended, be held as sacrosanct, in the midst of this horrific and vile war? It’s worth remembering just how fucked up the Iraq War was; it was perpetrated with absolutely no legitimate justification, in overt violation of international law, and backed by a series of transparent lies put forth by the US and UK governments. Only in his wildest dreams could Putin imagine being as psychotically evil as Bush, Blair, Cheney, and a series of other psychotic terrorists and war criminals. For all the handwringing about bad people like Donald Trump or Osama bin Laden, only Bush can say he murdered a million innocent people just for shits and giggles. There is no living human being who is more evil than Geoge W. Bush, and the 59 million Americans who voted for him in 2004 are all close behind.
So, in that context, Denby’s whiny and conservative defense of “an icon of liberal democracy” seemed, and still seems, really childish. And yet, during the Trump era, a lot of us who had been quite radical during the Bush era found ourselves on the side of the system, of its procedures and its bureaucracy and its icons. We find ourselves defending a multibillion-dollar corporation that removes content from the political side we dislike; we find ourselves singing the praises of Liz Cheney (whose dad is a vile disgusting war criminal who should be executed) and of the importance of the same law-and-order that we railed against during the Occupy Wall Street movement; we find ourselves crying at the site of the U.S. Capitol building — the building that has been directly responsible for many millions of murders, from Cherokee Nation to the Philippines to Vietnam to Iraq and all that lay in between — being overrun by armed and angry civilians.
And the reversal goes deeper than politics. There is a reason that a lot of older entertainers, like John Cleese for example, find themselves turning to the right, in protest of what they call “cancel culture”. I don’t agree with this turn, but I do understand where it comes from. Back in the 80s, we were the ones pissing off the censors. Tipper Gore got her panties all in a twist over music lyrics, remember? And the police didn’t want to provide security for N.W.A. who were singing “Fuck tha police,” remember that? Remember when the conservatives were the leaders of “cancel culture”, cracking down on Communists, on Lenny Bruce, on Madonna? So many of the entertainers who came to fame in that era, and not only in the Andrew Dice Clay mold, thought they were doing the right thing by being offensive, by being non-PC, by challenging the established norms of sexuality and decorum and puritanical shame. Howard Stern was an icon of my childhood, and the conservatives hated him. Bill Maher got fired from his aptly-named show “Politically Incorrect”, do you remember why? That’s right: It was saying of the 9/11 hijackers, who had been called “cowardly” by the President, that: “Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly. We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly.” I applauded these comments. They were, and are, correct. Maher then was a hero to the more radical left-wing; now, he’s quite evidently a reactionary anti-trans Boomer, and most of us (myself included) can’t stand the sight of him.
So what’s changed? Why are we now the ones who are policing what people can say, who are easily offended by offensive comments, who are wary of sexually inappropriate humor, and who don’t want to see an “icon of liberal democracy” attacked by the unwashed masses? Why are we lining up behind Liz Cheney and Charles Schumer to defend the institutions that, as youths, we fought to overthrow?
These questions are actually easily answered, on one level. There is a huge difference between speaking from a position of oppression — as with gay or black or anti-war voices, whether in the 60s or 80s or 00s — to the voices of hegemonic power, and speaking from a position of power down to those whom you’d wish to oppress. That is why white male reactionary hate is something we don’t and won’t tolerate. This is why it’s bad to censor sexually explicit lyrics in music, but not bad to kick Nazis off of Twitter. I’m not trying to defend Maher or Cleese for their unfortunate turn towards conservatism. But I’m watching V for Vendetta and trying to reconcile my feelings, and reconcile 20-year-old me with 40-year-old me, and wondering if times have changed, or if I have changed, or if really nothing has changed.
This much is simple, and it is a paradox: When I was young, I thought the image of destroying Parliament to protest fascism was deeply, overwhelmingly inspiring. That final scene of the movie, where thousands of protestors marched on a heavily-armed military, and the military blinks, stands down, lets the marchers in to Trafalgar Square … it’s as breathtaking as it is unrealistic, and it still brings a tear of hope to my eyes. And yet, I know now that it is my political enemies who most recently tried to pull off a stunt such as this, and in an eerily similar way; the armed guards largely stood aside and let them in, and they trashed the building, and they went into the offices of millionaire politicians who have only ever passed laws helping the super-rich rape the rest of us (like, really, do I have to like Nancy Pelosi, just because Trump is worse?), and they lived what we in 2005 had only fantasized about — they made the government afraid of its people. How did it happen that I switched sides on the optics of this?
Is it possible that it’s all tribal? That there aren’t really any overriding principles? I want a world with strong environmental protections, total acceptance of every variety of sexuality and gender identity that exists and even those that aren’t public yet, a world where police are loath to use force and are held accountable for murder, a world with no limitations on private drug use or cursing on TV, a world where Christianity’s influence is minimized and secularism dominates the public sphere, a world where obscene wealth is frowned upon and where no one is allowed to miss out on food, water, medicine, housing, or safety just because of money, a world where criminals are still treated like humans and where we try to rehabilitate rather than punish, and obviously a world in which women have access to fundamental human rights and reproductive healthcare. And, what’s more, I want a world in which, when a politician knowingly lies about weapons of mass destruction and a million people are murdered as a result, we chop that politician’s fucking head off. And those are the ends that I want, and as for the means, I don’t really care if it’s a Congressional hearing or a tech billionaire or a protest that burns down a Target, I’ll support it. I support the Supreme Court enforcing a right that isn’t exactly spelled out in the Constitution, because I know that abortion access is a moral requisite, but I’d really rather the Court look the other way regarding the pretty explicit Constitutional right to carry guns, because I know that mass gun ownership is a practical disaster. I want my side to win, and I don’t care about the means as much as I probably should.
And that’s one way we’re similar, isn’t it? My culture-war enemies want a world in which the “traditional” way of life (white, cis, hetero, male-dominated, Christian) is upheld, where they can get away with whatever they want and the people who are minorities (or gay, or trans, or women, or Jews, etc.) have to just deal with public ridicule and assimilate, a world where those who are successful are allowed to fully enjoy that success and the rest of us just have to admit we’re jealous instead of trying to tear them down or regulate their businesses, a world in which tough guys make it through and weaklings don’t, a world where punishment is swift and intellectualism is frowned upon and America is First and we can use our own guns to defend our own homes against Indians or Muslims or Trannies, and it’s a Libertarian paradise for some things and a totally controlling Chistofascist state for other things, and blah blah blah … that’s what they want, and again, they don’t care about the method. When Bush or Trump or Nikki Haley is President, they’ll insist that we must respect the Office of the President, and when it’s Obama or Biden or Buttigieg, they’ll mock them as derisively as possible.
“It’s all gone wrong, hasn’t it?” a character says near the end of the movie V for Vendetta, as the government realizes it’s lost control of its people. The culture wars that are raging right now are, from a Marxist perspective, a huge distraction. Most, if not all, of the social issues we face now would be better solved by greater economic equality. For instance, it’s clear that more affluent States are the ones less likely to ban abortion; if you had more widespread affluence in Mississippi, maybe you wouldn’t need Roe v Wade after all. Most actual acts of Congress have nothing to do with social issues, with gay rights or women’s rights or police brutality. Congress could effectively help balance the scales economically, as they did under Roosevelt and Roosevelt and Johnson, but instead they do nothing. We argue over these emotional issues, put the government in a deadlock, and allow a tiny caste of feudal lords to buy up all of the property and funnel all of their money into the stock market and slash wages and undermine social welfare programs and rape us over and over and over again. It’s a sick game, and we’ve all fallen for it.
So, tomorrow is Election Day. I’ve already voted — for Democrats — and I hope you have, or will, too (for Democrats). Whatever happens, however bad it goes over the next few years, we’re going to celebrate when our side is Occupying Wall Street or throwing shoes at the President, and we’re going to quake in fear when the other side is staging a truck protest in Ottawa or chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” or using Congress to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop. I see no end in sight for this bitter partisanship, always backed up by self-righteousness, rarely self-reflective, and never moving beyond a fruitless tug-of-war for power.
If I’m going to write this long a complaint, I feel like it needs to end with a solution. So, here it is: Regardless of how you feel about them, we all need to recognize that working-class Americans all share a common enemy, and it’s the tiny cabal of rich-and-powerful people. Our anger and hatred is misdirected all over the place, largely at each other. I’m particularly bad at this; I fucking hate Republicans, and I find it hard to keep quiet about that. But in hating them I, too, am being manipulated.
After this election season, I’m going to try to befriend and communicate with a right-winger in my local community. I’m not going to do so to “convince” them or be convinced by them; rather, I want to find common ground, and I want us to realize, one connection at a time, that we actually share enough to work together in a Republic. At some point, this back-and-forth violence has to stop. I would encourage anyone reading this to do the same. Bridge the gap. Find the common ground. End the partisanship. Make it work, please God, find a way to make it work. What we are doing now does not work.
Big Ben was built in 1843. At the time, Parliament was run entirely by rich white men. They controlled the world’s largest and most evil empire, by far. They murdered tens of millions of Africans and Indians and Irish, just for profit. Victoria oversaw the deaths of five times as many people as Hitler. The U.S. Capitol was built even earlier, in 1793, by black slave laborers, at a time when the President was a slaveowner, as was most of Congress. Only property-owning white men had any civil rights at the time. From that Capitol, the new nation conducted the most effective genocide on record, creating lebensraum for its white populace, succeeding where Hitler would later come up short.
Neither of these buildings is sacrosanct; nothing of their institutions is inherently worth preserving.
If you’re going to cry over January 6th, cry because a bunch of gullible, working-class fools were tricked into supporting a billionaire’s quest for fascism. Don’t cry for the sanctity of the building that voted for the Patriot Act, for the Chinese Exclusion Act, for the Indian Removal Act. Fuck that building and everyone in it. If you’re going to cry over the Dobbs decision, don’t cry over the Constitutionality of it. I don’t really care what a document written by slaveowners to defend slavery says or doesn’t say about human rights; it’s a piece of garbage and I’d be embarrassed for my asshole if I had to wipe myself with it. Cry for the intrusion of State power into the private lives of citizens, an intrusion that most conservative Americans also fear. And if you’re going to cry over the ending of V for Vendetta, don’t cry because they blew up the seat of government that once upon a time cut off the heads of Catholics and put them on sticks outside the gates of London. Cry because of the changes they made to the graphic novel, which is excellent, and still worth a read, if only to remember that we’ve been here before, when Reagan and Thatcher were the newest thing, and we made it through then, too.
Good luck, everyone. May God have mercy on us all.
