The rise of Amelia

Something strange, wonderful, and purple is stirring in the land of my ancestors.  This really is a good one -- a clumsy attempt at indoctrination by a stodgy, repressive, scolding government has backfired so perfectly as to create a powerful inspirational meme for the resistance.

(Note:  Some of the following video material is "AI"-generated.  I'm not endorsing that process -- it's included because it's part of the phenomenon this post is about.)

The UK government funded the creation of a video game called "Pathways" intended to help indoctrinate young people with what those now in power consider to be acceptable political and social opinions.  The villain of the game is a character called "Amelia" -- a young "goth" woman with purple hair and a short pink dress, often seen holding a Union Jack (British national flag).  Amelia expresses nativist, anti-Islam, anti-immigration views -- that is, thoroughly mainstream views that many (probably most) British people also hold, but which the current political establishment disapproves of.  The goal of the game, as set up by its creators, is to avoid being led astray by Amelia and her "wrong" opinions.

Yes, it really was that clumsy and pathetic.  The wonderful part is what happened next.  Young gamers adopted Amelia as a kind of mascot, a personification of the natural feelings and attitudes which she represents in the game and which the finger-wagging bureaucrats were trying to scold them for.  The meme rapidly spread across the nativist resistance more generally.  This video by eccentric culture critic "Doctor Disaster" tells the story well:


It's in the nature of humans that strong emotions like loyalty and passion are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an ideology or an institution.  Perhaps an imaginary person makes an even better focus than a real one, since she exists purely as a symbol for the movement, and can never fall prey to human failings like hypocrisy or scandal, or betray the movement, or try to dictate what individuals do, as a flesh-and-blood leader can.

Here are some more examples of how the resistance is making use of the character:




The meme even appears to have spread to Japan:

If you know anything about the suffocating miasma of political correctness and woketardia which has blanketed western Europe for what seems like forever, you can imagine what a breath of fresh air this is.  Unfortunately I don't think something similar could happen in the US.  We're too bogged down in left-vs-right political thinking, which keeps people going round and round in the same old useless circles and never getting it.  I just hope that someday we'll break free from that.