Thatcher, Reagan and the beacons of a twilight

The death of Thatcher "the milk snatcher" has drawn considerable responses, and that is not at all surprising  Leaders of country after country have risen to say how great she was and the turn around she foisted on British, nay, global politics (and economics). "Thatcherism", is how the right wing "conviction politics" she stood for, which declared the death of the of "community"....long live the individual ego, get described. Along the pathway of this "death" and "long live" of community and the individualism of course we find strewn the corpses of hunger strikers, children of miners, and Malvinas (Falklands). If you were in Africa like I am and witnessed the SAPs that sapped out the livesand livelihoods of millions, and realize this was  part of the neoliberal order she helped to create, you would wonder at what "great" could be said to mean, when it has the face of this so-called Iron Lady, with a ferrous heart....well, except where the persons concerned are close friends or even coup-mongering sons of hers.

But anyway, what kept coming to my mind was the relationship/joint place of this "Attila the hen", and Ronnie the cowboy (of course Ronald Wilson Reagan...who else would I be talking of?) Related closely to that somewhat is why there might not have been as much hue and cry at Reagan's death as we have now...since the one is as culpable as the other. "Reaganomics" and "Thatcherism" of course were just like bread and butter....if not bread and bread.

Permit me to note that, while the leaders of the capitalist world have hailed her, the working class has been resounding in its condemnation of what she stood for. This is so, even where, like Cosatu, they still wish she rests in "peace" and not "pieces". I'm not here talking of such social liberals as Ralph Miliband's son who now steers new, new labour. He did mumble some sort of "not agreeing with her views, but respecting her" bit, not unlike those who respected Herman Goering for being a gentleman in dogfights, despite the horrors of Auschwitz. From Nigeria to the Americas and loudly so in the UK, the views of working class activists have been best captured by an sms I got from Leicester yesterday "Heard the good news?  Thatcher is dead!! ....Ding dong the witch is dead!" 

Well, the Wizard of California died nine years back. Thatcher then had this to say:

"We here still move in twilight. But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. We have his example. Let us give thanks today for a life that achieved so much for all of God's children."

In 2004, the neoliberal world they built together (of course as part of a broader class project, not even the strongest witch and wizard added up together could turn the world around alone), did still seem secured. But  alas! it now seems to be coming apart at the seams.

Unfortunately, there twilight does not seem to mark the final conflict, and today at least in Naija, much more people sing the solidarity song than ever even know there is the Internationale. Thatcher dies at a moment of capitalism's severest crises in generations. The cries that condemn her feed from the strength of the anger of revolts that confront the system she and Reagan represented. But these more profane children, who constitute the immense majority of the human population still have to find their own thanks in their self-emancipation. Fires, arising from the embers that here and there have thus erupted have to be fanned the more; we can break their haughty power and gain our freedom.

It is morning yet on creation day, and yes....ding dong, the witch and the wizard are both dead. AND ONE DAY, SO WILL BE THEIR ZOMBIE SYSTEM!



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