Just before the Easter weekend a strange occurrence happened to me. “What was that?”, I hear you cry.

Well, it was like this. I suddenly stopped listening to the news, choosing instead, music only. I have always been big on current affairs but I just couldn’t do it any longer. My brain was like a hard drive that had run out of disc space.

I think this started when all the politicians of various parties decided they had had enough of fucking up Brexit, so they just went on holiday. It was quite remarkable stuff that went on. They just kicked the whole thing down the road until the 31st of October (a cracking date for metaphors) and fucked off on walking holidays.

So I just gave up. I felt like Winston Smith in George Orwell’s ‘1984’. My personal vendetta against the madness of Brexit and the shit show trying to get it negotiated had finished me off and I longer cared. It seemed everyone in parliament was as mad as a box frogs, so why should I bother? It appeared the best thing to do was metaphorically stick Brexit under the clock under the mantlepiece. It was like a post Christmas Visa bill that didn’t need to be seen yet.

After a couple of weeks of this, it dawned on me what it must be like for all those millions of people who never ever listen to the news or current affairs. A life of perpetual blissful ignorance, with heads filled with X-Factor, articles and pictures of pop star’s dream homes featured in OK Magazine and adverts for polyester slacks or limited edition Elvis Presley cuckoo clocks in The Express ‘Sunday Supplement’.

I then realised how easy it must have been to mug those people off. It doesn’t take many ‘tricks of the trade’ acts of journalism to incite blissfully ignorant people into hating something. They are easy prey for a well paid and skilled journalist to create a crusade against liberal thinking, as if it were some sort of crime. If not a crime, a deeply unpatriotic act that should not be tolerated. The Daily Mail, in fairness to them, are absolute masters at the hate game.

To then throw these people a vote on something they know nothing about, is bordering on cruelty. It is cruelty because those like Jacob Rees-Mogg who are playing on their ignorance, actually depise them. They won’t say they despise them just yet, because they need their ideology to get over the line. Rees-Mogg makes millions out of economic chaos. His family have been at it for decades; his dad even wrote books about it.

Bizarrely, as we see with Trump in America, the more exposed as awful human beings these people become, the more they are adored. For Trump in America, see Boris Johnson in the UK. A loathsome individual who will lie, steal and cheat, yet still receive adoration from the “Say what you like about Boris, but…“, brigade of morons.

Populism, fascism or whatever you want to call it, is a strange thing. Many people thought it was consigned to 1930’s and 1940’s history books but it never goes away and has risen again across the globe. It seems that having ignorance of current affairs and modern history makes you susceptible to it. I predicted populism at the start of Brexit and I have, along with many others, been proved right. It was fucking obvious, so I am not claiming outrageous intellect here.

Fascism is no longer a word that is deemed acceptable as an ideology but it is still there under what are deemed more palatable banners. If UKIP called themselves ‘The British Fascist Movement’ they would barely get a vote, but that is what they are. Fascism in its 21st Century guise is still there. Why? Because there is a hardcore of exceptionally wealthy people who know that fascism can allow them authoritarianism and control of economies, regulation, civil & workers rights as well as being absolved from taxation responsibility.

People who choose not to read history or follow current affairs feel protected by it. They believe patriotic politics is there to stop foreign invaders stealing jobs and mugging their grandparents. It is there to put them and their country first. That’s where it all starts, with songs about ‘this land belonging to me’. It normally ends in a death camp.

The blissful ignorance I have enjoyed over the last two weeks has actually been quite relaxing. I can understand why people choose a more simplistic path in life. An attitude of what you don’t know about, is nothing to worry about. The problems only arise when you have to tick a box that decides your fate.

That’s when people do not have enough education to perform.