IT’S hard to think about the future, never mind culture, when fascism is on the rise in the modern world. In my opinion, the combined influence of Elon Musk and Donald Trump could have a disastrous impact on Scottish culture.
Like a lot of people who are versed in 20th-century history, I’ve been thinking about Weimar Germany a lot – that is the Germany that existed just before the Second World War. When I was in school, I remember seeing a picture of a man with a barrel full of money as he struggled to trade it for some bread. It was to illustrate inflation.
When people have less and less, they turn to extreme political solutions, especially when they align with their views in some way. Musk might support Scottish independence, but a similar dominance of the far-right in the UK would be a cultural disaster for our wee country.
Just last week, I was censored almost immediately after Trump’s second term began. I had made a TikTok video about censorship after he promised that America will only recognise the existence of biological men and women. I likened this to the lack of recognition the Scots leid has faced for centuries. Like gender variant people, Scots is in the minority linguistically, and fascist states typically do not have a place for anything that challenges the status quo.
The video was immediately flagged for review and ultimately shown to a limited audience.
Elon Musk might claim to support free speech, but the dominance of American social media platforms are allowing anything but. Even outside of TikTok, Musk is shutting down Twitter/X accounts that disagree with his views, especially on immigration. But perhaps worst of all, it is on social media that some Scots are saying that we need Trump to sort out some of the many issues the UK currently faces.
The censorship we are now seeing goes beyond social media and lists of books reportedly set to be banned in America are circulating online. One of the books at risk of a ban is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It got me thinking about the steps Scotland has made in recent years to show that women can reach the highest positions in society.
Nicola Sturgeon, our first female first minister, arguably did a lot for the country, both culturally and politically, in a role she may have previously been denied because of her gender.
The banning of books that do not align with the Maga agenda also got me thinking about the historic censorship of the Scots leid. It was beaten out of past generations and, until recently, was not even taught in Scottish schools. We have seen similar violence now condoned after Trump pardoned the Capitol rioters.
While it’s unlikely that we will return to the days of children being physically beaten for speaking the wrong language, many languages are now spoken in modern Scotland, not just native ones, and it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that the right-wing, which is typically Unionist in Scotland, would only allow for one tongue.
Trump and Musk are businessmen and business principles do not make for a culturally rich nation. In Scotland, our culture itself is wrongfully blamed, often by Unionists, for our problems.
Legislation like the Scottish Languages Bill, despite having the potential to increase people’s confidence in speaking Scots and Gaelic, is seen to be a waste of money because it is not directly contributing to the economy. This wrongful conflation of cultural markers with political and economic problems can only ever be a bad thing – it disconnects communities and contributes to a society with less art, freedom of speech and general individual autonomy.
Then there’s the issue of multiculturalism, which is quite literally being stamped out in America.
We are seeing that through the mass deportation of refugees from the US and the demonisation of minority groups perpetuated in the UK by figures like Tommy Robinson. But we live in a modern, interconnected world, and while national autonomy is important, so too is multiculturalism.
It’s embraced in Scotland too, with protesters in Glasgow famously surrounding a Home Office deportation van in 2021 to save their Indian neighbours. It’s a silly example, but the infamous munchy box would likely never exist if we Scots didn’t embrace other cultures.
I can only hope that despite the problems the UK and Scotland currently face, we remember that it is people, their values and their history that make a country culturally great. The dominance of the close-minded, isolationist values and culture that characterise fascism have been historically proven to be a bad thing. It’s a history lesson that should not need to be repeated.
