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The enemy within: Superhero comic Daredevil dishes out a warning that we, in Britain, need to heed – beware the ‘friend’ telling us what we want to hear in order to set us against each other. A Conservative friend? A Liberal Democrat friend?
Tell me this doesn’t describe the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition government:
“A group of ideologically-motivated power-seekers has infiltrated society, hiding inside the political system and behind ambiguous words to increase their fellow citizens’ bigotry and hatred against each other and thereby increase their own power and influence while everybody else is looking the other way.”
If you agree that it does, well, you’re mistaken. It’s actually about a group of villains in the superhero comic Daredevil, released by US publisher Marvel.
In the latest issue, a friend of the eponymous hero broadcasts to the city of New York, warning the population to beware of the infiltrators who say they are friends but are in fact the worst kind of enemy. Her words (by scriptwriter Mark Waid) are chillingly relevant to today’s United Kingdom. Here’s what she has to say:
“If we… are going to take our home back from a band of manipulative bigots, we have to rise above our anger.
“They want you angry at the world.
“They need us all to feel like victims. [bolding mine]
“And it’s an easy get, because times suck. Every day is a battle. We all feel like we’re on the wrong end of the wrecking ball.
“We feel at the mercy of forces beyond our control, and that makes us scared. And that’s rocket fuel for S.O.B.s like [these].
“They prey on us when we’re frightened. They tell us our enemies are the immigrants down the street, or the food [bank] family next door.
“They encourage us to turn our fear into rage, and we fall for it because it’s ’empowering’.
“Except it’s not.
“We don’t become ’empowered’. We become weaponised.
“So that while we lash out at one another, they can take from all of us.”
In America, it seems, they can see what’s happening here and turn it into part of their artistic culture.
In Britain, it should be on the news.
Why isn’t it?
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