MICHAEL WALSH SPECIAL REPORT: In my lifetime there have been many populist revolutions the outcome of which have replaced wrong with right. To me, the most successful were the multiple uprisings against the 1980s totalitarian Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact nations the Soviet Bloc.

Treachery by usurpers is to be expected. By nature, politicians are corrupt, susceptible to dishonesty, easily compromised, vain, immoral, decadent and self-serving. Politicians who replaced Soviet despots have been totally corrupted by power becoming even more corrupt than their totalitarian predecessors.

We recall the Soviet apparatchiks of Ukraine, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Baltic States, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. But who can say that with the one exception being Hungary, the national leaders of these European Union nations are better that their Soviet counterparts?

In fact, most are far worse. Soviet Ukraine was arguably the happiest most prosperous country imaginable: Today, the peoples of the Baltic States and East Germany dream of their young lives as Soviet Citizens: look at these American colonies now! The happiest Britons were those who experienced the 60s, 70s and 1980s. How today’s youth year for their lost past. 

The people of these nations and others like Britain, France, the Low Countries, and Portugal are today far worse off than the people of the Soviet States. But why aren’t the betrayed people showing the same revolutionary fervor as their predecessors? Because social media came to the rescue of scoundrels who betrayed and stole the people’s revolutions of the glorious 1980s of Europe.

The question is; would corrupt totalitarian regimes of the past have been overthrown and replaced had social media existed in the 1980s? Likely not for instead of attending pro-democracy or anti-war demonstrations those with a dying ember of revolutionary spirit would have satisfied themselves with liking social media memes and posts.

In the Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc, the Weimar Republic, in Spain, Bolshevik rule, would still be firmly in place. Why? Because social media would have provided the distressed and betrayed people with a safety valve.

Instead of joining nationalist parties and becoming involved, instead of enjoying comradeship, shared adventures and misadventures, as an alternative to enjoying a post-campaign beer, today’s keyboard commandos sit at their laptops liking posts and memes whilst waiting hopefully for someone else to bring about change through revolution.

In the past, I have done it all through good and bad times but I wouldn’t change a thing, not even spells in prison cells to sit idly at home reading, nodding my head, finding fault, making and liking social media memes and posts.

Far more satisfying to hold a crowd’s attention, to applaud a fiery speaker, enjoy camps, push leaflets through letterboxes, attend rallies, marches, and protests, self-sacrifice, and share a lively comradeship. As a consequence, I have a lifetime of memories, not one of which I would replace with a single meme. I achieved much and others achieved much more than I did because we were not distracted by social media as a convenient valve to let off steam.