14/05/2026
The UK election results have deeply disappointed me — though they have not surprised me. In Wales, I expected the logic of the situation to result in fewer votes for Reform. I was wrong.
I fled Ukraine over ten years ago. I was persecuted by state and far-right organisations — both Ukrainian and Russian — for my activism: for women’s rights, workers’ rights, q***r rights, against fascism and clericalism. As an autistic person with C-PTSD, the psychological impact was devastating. Attacks on the street. A police search of my home. Attempts to destroy my music career. Constant hacking of my social media. Death threats by phone. The final moment came when someone fired a pneumatic pistol through the window of a train I was sitting in. If I hadn’t leaned forward, the bullet would have hit my head. Instead, I was covered in broken glass.
I am now a British citizen. And I am bewildered that my fellow citizens are choosing the very thing I fled — and worse. They are choosing to strip rights from q***r people, women, disabled people. They are choosing to scapegoat entire groups of people — people who are their friends, their family, their neighbours. They are choosing police harassment of people on the streets for the colour of their skin, their language, their accent. They are choosing to send people to detention camps. They are choosing corruption and oligarchy over the prosperity of working people. They are choosing fascism, division, war, feudal technocracy, and the destruction of the natural world. They are choosing to resemble the grumpy Ukrainian and Russian nationalists I ran from.
It is not new that those in power do everything they can to keep people politically uneducated and far from critical thinking. But if we want to change anything, we will need patience — and we will need to do the work of education. Most of all, we need to become the example of the world we want to build. Every single day. Because right now, everything we love is in danger. This is serious.
I feel in danger too — even more so for writing this. Because every day I receive comments like: “go back home,” “go back to where you came from,” “we don’t want you here”, “you are not British”.
But choosing to resist fascism in my country, my home — this is my choice.
I hope yours will be too.
📸 Natalie La. Live at Die Stadtmitte, Karlsruhe, Germany
