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Sorry to go all class war on you but fucking hell, class war!: Rupture Zine Lockdown Special is here

Our friends from Rupture Zine: a publication on squats, social centres, art, activism and free parties; have produced an online lockdown special and it is full of joys. Below, we publish a sample of what you are to expect from it. 

Sorry to go all class war on you but fucking hell, class war!

At the beginning of the lockdown, I had grand dreams of the fall of capitalism and visions of a burgeoning anarchist utopia like a baby deer stumbling to its feet. As time goes by the more foolish I feel about believing in that idealistic dream. I keep hearing the sentence “what should the world look like after this?”. At first, that seemed a positive wave of politicised thought throughout the country. But now I’ve started to wonder if sometimes all that is meant by it is that the people who are now furloughed from their middle-class jobs don’t have to go back to working five days a week! Really, there is nothing wrong with that desire…

But it seems to me there are two realities going on right now: 1. People in lockdown are isolated from their lives and support system and although I don’t want to undermine anyone’s struggle with this, especially those living in unsafe situations, I am frustrated by that being the prominent story line being told at the moment. Because reality 2. is the people holding together the situation (and I feel their voices are being lost) – the delivery people, postal service, the take-away places, the people working in the shops, the cleaners, and the bus and train drivers; there is still roadwork and construction work being done. We are in a situation where there are people feeling grateful for work that’s putting their lives at risk because keeping themselves and their family’s financially stable is more of an immediate worry.

At the beginning of the lockdown, whilst I was lost in my own wishful thinking, I felt sure that the government would have no choice but to bring in universal basic income. How naive I was – our government doesn’t need to keep everyone safe to stay in power, it just needs to avert attention away from the people it doesn’t care about; and they seem to be doing that depressingly effectively.

They encourage us to clap once a week for NHS but have made no comment on the fact they have been systematically destroying it since they came to power. NHS staff still aren’t being sourced enough PPE to keep themselves alive – ALIVE for fuck sake. But still, Boris gets glorified for catching the virus even though he wasn’t following his own distancing rules and most probably infected a multitude of others along the way.

I have now lost my hope that the current situation will make social change a necessity. Rees-Mogg’s been telling clients of his investment firm “History has shown us that super normal returns can be made during this type of environment”. At the same time as the fire service getting 15% cuts over the next year!

So back to the question – what should the world look like after this? If the narrative is to be based around looking at this time as a hiatus to imagine the society we want to build after we emerge I don’t think we stand a chance. If it’s based on making a society that wants to see an end to a class divide that became more vivid during a pandemic where millions of people weren’t privileged enough go on that hiatus, we might at least start by going in the right direction.

Lucy Hutson


Along with the above text, in the new Rupture you will find:

  • Lockdown special edition – editorial
  • Human rights are also for people I cannot fucking stand (rant)
  • Random Artists presents… Televised Autonomous Art
  • May Day 2020 – International Workers Day during a pandemic
  • TAA autumn 2019 writeup
  • What is TAA?
  • Guerillas in the Midst (guerilla gardening)
  • Loving Miss Daisy (story)
  • Rural Murals (article)
  • Squatdoku
  • Update from Disgraca, Lisbon (article)
  • Proton Art
  • Frontline magazine news
  • LOTS of artwork, poetry and prose
  • DIY or Die guide to making face masks

You can download the whole issue here.

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