The Dystopia Deepens: Why “2030” Underestimates the Slide Toward Technocracy, By Brian Simpson

Mike Fairclough's 2030 (2025), a dystopian novel aimed at teenagers, paints a chilling picture of a future where freedom is smothered by a technocratic World Safety Council, heritage is vilified, and individuality is erased under the guise of safety and inclusion. Its introduction, penned with the urgency of a former headmaster who dared question Covid vaccine rollouts for children, warns young readers of a world stripped of grit, resilience, and truth. Fairclough's vision is a clarion call, urging the young to recognize the dystopia being built around them. Yet, as prescient as 2030 is, the reality may be even bleaker than he imagines. The mechanisms of control, surveillance, cultural erasure, and engineered compliance, are not just looming threats but active forces already reshaping our world, often with a velocity and subtlety that outpaces his prophecy.

The Digital Prison Is Already Here

Fairclough's 2030 opens with George waking in a "digital prison," a world of engineered silence where even birdsong is absent, and time is measured in "doses and data." It's a vivid metaphor, but the reality is more insidious. By 2025, digital surveillance has already woven itself into daily life. Smartphones track our every move, with location data harvested by apps even when "off." Governments and corporations alike mine social media for behavioural patterns, using AI to predict and nudge our choices. The UK, Fairclough's home, boasts one of the highest densities of CCTV cameras globally, over 7 million, or one per 11 people. China's social credit system, while extreme, is merely the most overt example; Western nations achieve similar control through softer means, like algorithmic content curation that shapes what we see and think.

This isn't a future threat, it's now. The "spikes" George hides, those fragments of unapproved memory, mirror how dissent is already policed. Cancel culture, deplatforming, and algorithmic shadow banning silence voices that stray from approved narratives. Fairclough's World Safety Council feels like a fictional flourish but consider the World Health Organization's push for global health governance or the EU's Digital Services Act, which polices online speech. These are real frameworks, cloaked in benevolence, that erode autonomy faster than 2030 predicts.

Cultural Erasure: Beyond Shame to Obliteration

Fairclough laments a world where children are taught to see their British heritage as a "catalogue of guilt," their flag a symbol of shame. He's right, but the assault on cultural identity is more advanced than his novel suggests. By 2025, educational curricula across the West increasingly frame national histories as oppressive legacies. In the UK, some schools have removed historical figures like Winston Churchill from study, citing "problematic" views. Statues topple, books are rewritten, and symbols like the Union Jack are debated as relics of empire. This isn't just guilt, it's erasure, a deliberate rewriting of the past to sever ties to collective identity.

Fairclough's 2030 envisions a future where pride in heritage is replaced by slogans of inclusion. But today, inclusion often means exclusion of the majority culture. Diversity initiativesmarginalise native traditions under the guise of equity. For example, corporate and academic DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies frequently prioritise minority narratives while sidelining or vilifying majority ones, creating a zero-sum cultural game. The result? A fragmented society where no one feels rooted, exactly as 2030 warns, but it's happening now, not in five years.

Compliance Through Fear and Division

The novel's World Safety Council uses "injections and lessons" to enforce compliance, a nod to Fairclough's real-world scepticism of Covid vaccine mandates for children. But the mechanisms of control in 2025 are more sophisticated and pervasive. Fear is weaponised not just through health crises but via climate alarmism, economic insecurity, and social ostracism. Children are taught to fear carbon footprints, to question their gender, to dread being labelled "problematic." Schools, as Fairclough notes, are becoming "indoctrination centres," but it's worse: they're labs for social engineering. Gender ideology, for instance, isn't just taught, it's enforced, with dissenters facing social or even legal consequences. In Scotland, misgendering can lead to fines under hate speech laws.

Division is another tool. 2030's dystopia pits individuals against their own instincts, but today's reality pits groups against each other: men vs. women, native vs. immigrant, young vs. old. The narrative of "toxic masculinity" Fairclough critiques is just one thread in a tapestry of engineered conflict, designed to keep societies too fractured to resist overarching control. Social media amplifies this, with algorithms rewarding outrage over unity. The result is a population too busy fighting itself to notice the tightening noose.

The Elites' Endgame: Power, Not Progress

Fairclough's call to action hinges on the young recognizing their role in resisting this slide. But the elites driving it, governments, tech giants, global institutions, are more entrenched than 2030 suggests. Their endgame isn't just cultural or ideological; it's about power consolidation. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), piloted in multiple countries by 2025, promise financial control down to the transaction. Digital IDs, touted for convenience, enable tracking and compliance enforcement. These aren't sci-fi; they're in development, often sold as solutions to manufactured crises like climate change or pandemics.

The novel's strength is its plea for resilience, but it underestimates how deeply apathy has already set in. Teenagers, raised on instant gratification and filtered realities, are less equipped to resist than Fairclough hopes. The dopamine hits of TikTok he scorns are not just distractions, they're pacifiers, numbing the young to the erosion of their freedoms.

2030 is a vital wake-up call, urging teenagers to see the dystopia being built. But Fairclough's vision, grim as it is, may be too optimistic. The digital prison is already constructed, cultural erasure is in overdrive, and compliance is woven into the fabric of daily life. The task of resistance isn't just for the young, it's for anyone who values truth over slogans, heritage over guilt, and freedom over control. If we don't act now, 2030 won't be a story, it'll be a documentary.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/teenagers-must-be-warned-about-dystopia-being-built-around-them