“Boom, boom, boom!”
“Don’t quote the Outhere Brothers at me, I know that song, it’s very rude.”
Lindleman laughed, “you sound like you still have PTSD after hearing the radio edit, buying the cassingle and playing it unedited in your mum’s car, closely followed by the massive bollocking you got.”
Grayling stared at him, before conceding, “Yes. That is exactly what happened. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to try and take some interviews without breaking out into evil scientist laughter at what’s coming.”
“This is how people who rig football matches feel,” Lindleman replied.
Dan Dobbs was having a council of war. He knew in Britain the government could retire to, what was effectively, a bunker, connected to the outside world with vast display capacity, but he was a mayor not a prime minister, so he was sat with a bottle of brandy and eyes which stared into the distance more frighteningly than a Vietnamese vet from a Norman Mailer cover.
What did he know?
Someone knew what he’d been up to.
The Patriot Party knew what he’d been up to.
His rivals for the election knew…
…and were trying to force him out.
Yes, there was a part of his heart which thought it’s time to bow out, you’ve had a good run, but someone’s found out and it’s time to F. O. and holiday. Tempting, factual, totally problematic.
But he wasn’t a career politician without some sense, and there was a flip side wasn’t there. Firstly, the Patriot Party had hacked him, which wasn’t exactly illegal. Secondly, the PI had downloaded a chunk of their data and he now knew some of what they were up to. This had become a Cold War. ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’, the most coldly, horribly pragmatic thing humanity had ever done, setting two people with the ability to totally destroy each other against each other, so no one would ever dare attack and peace would continue. The Patriot Party wouldn’t release what Dobbs had been up to, because he could do the same. He just had to tell them, and then…
A state of both peace and war, aka continuing as normal.
So, that problem was over, but maybe there was an opportunity. He had to warn the P.P. off attacking him, but why not try a move of his own.
What did politicians normally do?
He would offer them a bribe. A vast sum of money so they could continue in the luxury to which they had secretly become accustomed, the most he could afford. So how much could he afford?
He’d been a mayor for many years, on a mayoral salary… the latter didn’t bring in much, but the former certainly did.
Dobbs then considered the best way to get a message to the P.P. He wasn’t going to fuck about with typewriters, the whole point was both knew the other, so he would get a message delivered to Hume’s house. In it he would offer a cool quarter of a million pounds to Hume to clear off and leave the path clear for Dobbs to fight off Stremp, a battle that would be a lot easier without a three-way vote split.
Actually, would it, he wondered.
No, it was better to get Hume out of this race and his blackmail attempts off the grid. Who knows what that fascist would be capable of if he was just a few points within winning distance! Let’s offer him a wedge of cash and see what happens. Not like he’ll complain to the press.
Rupert Hume was reading his own press. People would tell you they didn’t read their reviews, and those people would be lying. Everyone did, without fail, it was just the approach which differed. Some would see what people were saying and laugh, invite their mate’s round and have a massive giggle. Others would take it all to heart, and a heroin addiction and suicide beckoned. Hume liked to think he was in the first camp, as he absolutely loved finding someone whom he considered a whining SJW snowflake and any other right-wing terms he could think of; people who complained and got annoyed at him. He loved to piss people off, he would do it all day and all night, and here was the great thing; for every person he pissed off, he benefited double. He got a click from the person who saw him spitting feathers, and he got a click from the person who agreed with him and loved that the ‘soyboys’ were getting pissed off. He didn’t even have to advertise much because the offended would rant about him endlessly and everyone who came into contact with them saw it. Some got it while others howled, and everyone fucking clicked, and the revenue rolled in as hate culture was normalised. Could you have designed a more perfect system if you were God in the heavens? Or if you were Tim Berners-Lee in the fucking lack of forethought. The world’s greatest step forward in communications since moveable type printing presses, a device which had enabled more long wars of religion and murder. Of course, they fucking did, and now the hate was building up all the more too. Murder through which people benefitted, because those ready to exploit always did. Humanity.
So, what was he looking at today? It turned out that there was a blogger commenting on, what he deemed the rise of fascism, and how it was happening in Morthern. It was simply called ‘For Our Kids’, and he spent a lot of time talking about, well, every single thing. Hume had to laugh. Hume had given a two-minute speech; For Our Kids spent five thousand words breaking the whole thing down in a manner better associated with PhD students who forgot they were supposed to be better benefiting humanity and not just the tiny clique of people who could understand those terms. It made Hume chuckle as he read it and saw they banged out complaint after complaint about him. This guy seriously loved immigrants, homosexuals, pretty much anyone except white male Britons. To St. George, he was the enemy, but he was a total example of everyone George would like to put in a correction camp and never let out until he goose-stepped to the fucking national anthem. Although, Hume supposed, there was no profit in that unless you could charge the government for the running of the camps, which he needed to make a note about because you never actually knew your fucking luck.
Hume kept reading, and then paused. In one article, the man behind For Our Kids went personal. He said Hume was a ‘Roman emperor who bathed in luxury while sending thugs out to conquer’ and referred to Hume as ‘a small dicked threat to children’.
Rupert Hume rubbed his eyes and read it again. Then he picked up his phone.
People were funny weren’t they. The legal system would cause serious problems if Hume had tweeted out ‘will someone beat the shit out of the writer behind For Our Kids so he can’t ever walk straight again’, but he didn’t have to. People were desperate for acceptance, and they were pleased to seem keen and obedient. Hume didn’t need to order his flunkies, he could simply text a link to the blog and add a vague comment echoing the sentiments of the quote “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest”, and the magic would happen. This was the dog-whistle. A seemingly innocent comment you couldn’t pin down in law that the recipients understood all the well.
Which was why two men in a pub looked at the message they both just got and started googling. For Our Kids was the work of protesting journalist Harry Scott, and this was well known. So, they looked up Scott’s address and walked to one of their houses, where they took two baseball bats from the section of the garage their kids used, and then got into a car and drove semi-drunk to Scott’s house. They took the bats, walked to the door, and rang the bell. A few seconds later a slim man with a slight beard opened the door, his five-year-old son looking from round a doorway, at which point he was struck with a bat. The blows rained down, knocking Scott to the floor, tearing his face and breaking an arm with a terrible snap, and leading one of the attackers to lean in and shout ‘stop your fucking blog’, before they turned, ran to the car and sped off.
An old man who adored the speeches of St. George was listening to an amateur radio that evening when he heard a call go out for a police car to attend an assault at the house of one Harry Scott, and he sent a message straight to Hume to report what he’d found. Hume received it in a text and laughed long and hard at how wonderful human nature was and how perfect a system for intimidation and destruction it could be turned into. An h
our after opening a website, with just an innocent tweet, he had caused a political enemy to be smashed into extra pieces in front of his wife and kids. Perfect. Fucking perfect. Let’s see the police deal with this. Let’s see the police deal with any of his calculated campaign to escalate racial violence in Morthern to the point he would thrive in the utter chaos.
Howard Welb had just had an idea, and that meant Monty T was about to go into action. Morthern.Info had always done what it did very well, and that was rewrite other people’s text with its own slant. From the police news feeds to the council to mum’s groups moaning, Monty T aggregated everything Morthern and turned it into click-hate. But was that really enough?
No… no it wasn’t. He had no journalists, no reporters, no one on the streets. But there was an election happening so maybe he could get interviews with all the candidates? He could talk, ask questions, get the scoop. It wasn’t like the Morthern Star was doing anything else other than provide a mouthpiece for its editor, so could M.I. step in…
Of course, it could, Welb thought grinning; this was perfect, so he snatched up a phone.
“Hello there, who’s this?”
“This is the office of St. George, English champion.”
“Ah, excellent, I am the editor of Morthern.Info, we’re a web…”
But he was cut off in the best way, “yes, I know you, we all read you every day.”
“Well that’s very pleasing to hear. I’d like to speak to whoever books St. George.”
“He doesn’t have a booker, he takes the lead,” said with full snobbery.
“Very well, I’d like to make an offer. Morthern.Info wants to run an interview series with all the candidates for the election. We’d like to make St. George our first one and lead with him.”
“You want our man on the Info?”
“Indeed, I do.”
“Let me go and speak to him.” Welb waited. There was no music on the phone, no one paid that sort of money, until “hello there. I’ve spoken to St. George and he will do the interview on two conditions.”
“Name them.”
“We want to go last in this series.”
“Perfectly doable.”
“And we want to see the questions first.”
Welb pondered. He wasn’t exactly a journalist was he, there were no ethical considerations here. “That’s good. I agree to all that.”
“Excellent.”
After some chat and booking, Welb rang another number.
“Hello, Mayor Dobbs’ office.”
“Hello there, I’m, Monty T…”
“Morthern.Info!”
“Yes. We’d like to book the mayor for an interview about the election, and we’d like to start the series with him. How does that sound?”
“Perfect, he’d love to do it, would it be via telephone, email or in person?”
“Oh, there’s no need to meet up, we can do it all by email I’m sure.” No need to stray far away from the champagne eh, he thought to himself.
“In that case we definitely agree. Let me book some reply time into his schedule.”
Welb smiled and nodded to himself. That was two of the big three done, and he knew all the minor candidates would accept now. So that just left one; Editor Stremp of the Morthern Star, a man who really didn’t need a different periodical for their promo. Getting him would be a coup.
“What do you mean he said no?” Stremp half spat at a journalist who actually took a step back.
“We asked all the leading candidates to be interviewed for the Morthern Star, and the current mayor refused to take any questions.”
“That is preposterous!” Stremp was still spitting. “We are the main source of information in this region, we have hundreds of thousands of weekly readers, we are the news! How can he not want to appear in our hallowed pages!”
Sensing a table thump coming, the journalist replied “they… said they don’t trust us not to be bias. That you still run the place.”
“As if I…” a sudden moment of self-awareness, “okay yes I do. Well if he won’t appear, we will use that to our advantage, and what the fuck do you want?”
A woman had appeared at the door, waving and explaining “there is a very important call for you.”
“And who is that?”
“The owner of Morthern Info.”
“A useless hack, tell him to fuck off.”
“Actually, you’re going to want to hear this.”
Putting a tiny bit of faith into his staff, Stremp nodded and picked up the phone.
“Stremp!” he announced.
“Hello there, this is Monty T of Morthern.Info.”
“That’s not your real name.”
“Nonetheless, I am inviting you to appear in our interview series of the mayoral candidates, all of which are published on our website and shared on our socials.”
“Your website?” Stremp sneered. “Your socials,” he almost rasped. “What a load of millennial nonsense…” Well, the editor thought, if Mayor Dobbs won’t appear in the Star, he won’t be on that shitshow.
“We already have the agreement of all the candidates except you.”
“What!”
“You are the only person not scheduled for an interview. I am ringing to arrange it.”
Stremp couldn’t speak. He was utterly dumbfounded. The world had just pulled the carpet from beneath him. This fucking website had scooped him, and not only could the Star not lambast Dobbs for not appearing, the opposite could happen.
Stremp knew he had to be on the Info site. He felt the truth burning in him even as he hated it utterly, so he gritted his teeth and forced out a “yes, I will do it,” in the manner of someone who wishes to commit a murder.
“That’s excellent,” Welb replied with complete and naked glee, “we can do it over the phone if you wish…”
Stremp pressed a button on the phone which muted his own speech and screamed “doesn’t he have any idea, any fucking idea at all, he’s a fucking imbecile…,” then finger off, “yes, that will be a good idea.” It will remove the temptation to beat you to death with your own, no doubt over-priced, laptop.
“Perfect. Dobbs is opening the series and St. George is closing. You can be the meat in the middle.”
Stremp knew he was being teased and that his shoes were very much on other people’s feet now.
It was later in the day. Stremp had left the office he now unofficially ran and had taken up residence in his local pub. When he’d started out as a journalist many years ago, he’d come to this pub to hear gossip and take people’s temperatures on issues. Despite the fact he was now in the business of making people think the way he wanted rather than playing up to them, he still liked to come here and relax. It wasn’t a trendy pub, there weren’t ten tv screens blaring football, there weren’t crowds of young people enjoying themselves, there was just a regular clientele of people who all knew the others wanted to get on with their own thing.
So Stremp sat at his usual table, in a dark corner, and worked his way through a series of quality pints. He had his laptop on the table, because electronics weren’t frowned upon unless they made noise, and he was thinking.
The opinion polls showed all three main candidates on a third of the votes. Given the variations any poll had to allow for, basically no one could predict which of Stremp, Dobbs and Hume would win. But Stremp knew this might be his only chance. That something would have to be done. Hume was benefitting from a considerable new media income, and Dobbs seemed to be tapping into funds, although his team couldn’t prove it. Yet. Which meant Stremp’s limited spending was a problem and might be an area he should increase.
He opened up his bank accounts. Despite the fact he ran the Morthern Star, he genuinely hadn’t allied with any rich backers. He was truly independent, and that wasn’t enough. So, either he had to find someone to back him up and cut deals, or he had to spend some more of his own money. He had plenty, of course, all tied up in investments, so maybe if he sold a
few things he could inject some cash and boost his vote share.
An email was sent to his accountant ordering two sets of holdings to be sold.
The accountant replied back in seconds that it wasn’t the right time to move those, they were on a curve and would be worth much more soon.
Stremp wrote back ordering it anyway. While many investments should be looked at long-term, Stremp didn’t have time. He had a few short weeks until the elections happened, and he either achieved his long-term dream or failed.
It was time to throw everything at becoming mayor. He would not fail. He would blow the doors off if he had too. Morthern.Info wanted an interview, then they would have one! Stremp would ace it.
Stremp would also record the whole thing and if one single quote was wrong, he’d have him nailed to a door over it. Old media wasn’t dead.
Rob threw open the door to his house and was overjoyed to see a pair of shoes in the hall.
“Hello darling!” he called out with all the theatrics he could muster, kicked his own shoes off and went into the house. Joseph appeared, but… “You look guilty,” Rob said laughing, “have you got a man in the bedroom?”
“No!”
“Oh no, not a woman!”
“There is no one else in the house.”
“Good. So why do you look furtive?”
“I, err, wasn’t expecting you back.”
“Right, that doesn’t explain anything…”
“So, I started doing something and I might be kinda busy.”
“Unless you’re now a cam-girl that doesn’t explain anything either.”
“Well…I’m a game streamer.”
Rob nodded. “What’s bad about that?”
“I feel I should keep going for my audience and not break off to spend the evening with you…”
Rob broke out into laughter and gave his husband a big bear hug. “Don’t be silly, show me what you’re streaming. There’s a chat yes? I’ll get my laptop and get in the chat too.”
Gilded Hate Machine Page 17