Phoebe O'Brien

Phoebe O Brien is an active contributor on TikTok , the app which is currently the subject of heated debate around the world. Several governments, including the US, are attempting to censor or even ban it altogether. Phoebe addresses social and economic issues in her videos and specifically highlighting the capitalist system as the underlying cause of these problems. It is interesting to note that her ancestors were part of the Irish resistance against the English, which adds to her inspiring personal history. We found her perspectives to be unique and selfless , indicating that she possesses the qualities of a good leader. We are pleased to have had the opportunity to interview her for our latest issue.

Hi Phoebe, Tell us about yourself , what inspired you to talk about people struggles and Politics?

I grew up in the UK . You grow up quite class conscious and this is something which I think comes from my background . My forefathers were irish involved with the rebellion against the English and he was also a landed Gentry. So it's quite unusual that you would have someone from a bourgeoisie background to be involved with this kind of movement . I always thought that was sort of weird but I didn't really put much time and effort into thinking about it because my family comes from this like well off background . I would say but not my personal family that I live in now , we're very much working class financially . I always existed on this periphery between what I would say is the capital class the bourgeoisie and  the proletariat which is where I exist because I have no money my parents have no money like we don't own the house that's like my family home so it's always been very jarring to me , the difference between the two . Things often people say to me is why are you talking about this and like doesn't involve you . I'm like yes it does I am working class . I sort of wanting to understand this animosity which people feel towards me personally just because of the way I sound or the way I present myself . When you start looking at the historical context that's when you start to understand like all people have extreme generational trauma against people who sound like me. And then you start to read books that are written in the 1900s , I'm talking Orwell - the road to Wigan pier down 

and you start to see these intensely stark sort of class differences and then from there you end up reading a bit of some Marxist and communist literature and then you sort of start to clarify these ideas in your head even more and then you start searching for everything and then you look at the world that we live in today and suddenly it's contextualized and suddenly you understand why people find it so difficult to exist in the world that we live in today . That's something I've also noticed from social media that there seems to be this very intense dissatisfaction , a very intense sort of disenfranchisement from the community around people and that's always felt very wrong to me . I know that I always feel best when I have a community around me but feeling myself becoming increasingly isolated by my socioeconomic conditions is sort of what led me to the Internet to talk about this . I'm trying to get other people to give a name to that feeling and then to try to work towards getting rid of it and work towards doing what we need to do to actually make everybody's lives more fulfilling and get communities to help everybody and stop this kind of feeling of disenfranchisement and like depoliticization because we should have more control over our own lives , everybody should and we don't live in democracies in most countries when you look at the actual definition of democracy it's astounding to me that there's so much resistance so this way of thinking and it's purely indoctrination at this point but you just gotta keep fighting against it.

You were talking about democracies . We vote our leaders to power but it doesn't change anything . The policies and outcome don't change , it remains the same in fact it's even against the working class most of the time . I want to understand from your perspective as an young person what would you expect a government institution ?

What I expect from a government is to represent the people. I expect a government to be making decisions which are in the best interest of the majority of the people and there is infinite evidence out there to suggest that they are no longer working in the interests of the people . They are instead working in the interests of only the ruling class , the capital class because the government that we exist under today and most countries grew from the desire to protect private property that is why the state exists in most countries. In fact it exists to protect the private property of the ruling elite because private property itself is sort of an affront to human nature it's a perversion of the social contract that humans should have with each other and with the earth and this goes into a lot of spiritual beliefs as well . Lot of cultures have already knew this thousands of years ago they understood that humans were part of nature we are like collectively linked , we all should be working symbiotically with the environment and with each other and it's so sad to see this massive diversion from the way which we should be progressing and it all stems back to the ownership of private property and the idea that debt can exist because if you look back at previous civilizations they didn't function like this they functioned much more on this kind of connection between human beings  like gift giving , and trust . All of these things which have been completely removed from society by the state which exists only to protect private property which shouldn't exist . 

you're right but that is not the case anymore it's always we vote once in five years or so four years but we end up getting the same thing over and over again so some nothing changes 

it always benefits the people at the top every decision which is they makes is always to grow or increase GDP but does that increase the standard of living of most people. No there's very little relationship at this point in late stage capitalism with the GDP of a country increasing and the living standards of a majority of the population increasing . How can we continue to grow our economies in a finite world because everybody knows that capitalism you need to have this sort of infinite growth but how are we going to infinitely grow or we don't have infinite resources and hence a manufactured scarcity. 

the conservatives/right wing talk about the family values as we call it and that is also something that is underlyingly socialist in sense because , the family system is always strengthened if the economy and the people in power are righteous. Given this how reliable do you think is the left ideologies now . what do you think changed from the past ?

I think the one thing about what you just said that I would like to go back to is this concentration on family values which I think is a propaganda . I do not think that the family values which are sold by sort of right wing or conservative ideology is the true natural state of human beings I don't think that we exist in these individual family units and I think we exist within a wider community . This can be observed in many different indigenous cultures and also historically cultures all over the world but humans actually need to exist within a wider community than just our family and I think that is the difference between what I hate to call it the left because I really think that it's like a completely different scale than it's kind of divisive to be calling it left and right I know that you've sort of probably think the same by the way you phrased that question but basically just for simplicity are referred to as right and left actually advocating for a wider community , we're advocating for people to care about and to give to and to be within a wider community than just the nuclear family which I think is actually sort of a device which has been used historically by capitalists for one of the better term to divide people into smaller and smaller units so they're more vulnerable because they know that the working class or the people of any nation state are stronger when they are connected and when they form community .So by separating people into individual - like family units and then separating it down even further when you can't afford to have children anymore so you become an individual , maybe you have a partner but then it becomes more increasingly difficult to form the necessary social ties to actually have some kind of weighted power within society to be able to make changes and decisions on your own behalf.

I actually don't know perhaps I actually don't think the message which socialists and communists have been trying to disseminate throughout the population has changed I think that it always goes back to the same principles of we should exist within a much wider community than we do and we should feel the social obligation social responsibility and whatever towards a much larger number of people than just our immediate family and I fully 100% back that because I know that I'm happiest when I'm surrounded by a lot of people that I feel love and affection for but I understand that they are humans they're going through the same ups and downs and their life that I am . They're in a lot of cases struggling far more than I could even imagine and I'm incredibly empathetic towards that because I don't know how some people cope genuinely and I just I think it comes at some from of admiration more than anything else I can't believe that especially the west where I have obviously grown up and spent most of my life is so complicit and so engaged in the exploitation of the global and I hate knowing that I exist as a beneficiary of that and want it to stop.

What do you think has happened to the relationships between labor and capital. To give context we seeing mass layoffs due to rate hikes of the central banks across the world. They cite inflation as the reason why the rates are being raised but the rates hike actually is causing a lot of economic turmoil among the working class . I wanted to understand from you on what do you think has happened now with the younger generation of working class. The younger generation now are being called lethargic and that they're not doing as much as work as the older generations did before. I wanted to get your perspective with how the new generation perceive work now . has anything changed ?

The exploitation has increased and I think really what this comes down to is not seeing any progression to yourself not seeing any safety in your future not having anywhere to go and this is something which I spoke quite extensively about with especially my family it's very difficult to get this kind of point across but the way that this kind of came up in conversation with them was more about poverty and like why do the children of poor people often also end up being poor when they might have the same access to education . I had to try and explain this and it's something which people really for some reason find it difficult to understand is that and everyone around you in your environment does not see any progression for themselves does not see any future , does not see any reprise in their conditions .You become disenfranchised you become disengaged and you will accept whatever conditions seen established in the community around .So that has happened but on a much wider scale kind of fueled by the fact that we have social media and things now so it's very easy to pick up on the way that other people within your demographic are feeling and acting in the world so that that net has sort of widened out from what you experienced in your immediate surroundings the people in your personal community . The people in the global community and especially young people now are sort of looking at our future and being like ‘what the hell is this?’, what do I have to look forward to? like I'm never going to retire , I'm never gonna be able to own my own home which is almost like completely essential in today's private property owning world where the only way to really have like a sound investment is for some reason to leverage your shelter the place you live that's the only secure way that we have of being able to like look after ourselves in our old age which is insane! . Is Shelter is not a human right ? why are we having to leverage our shelter on our old age being paid for I think everyone just looks forward and just sees like disaster like climate collapse like I'm a climate scientist and it's depressing and what's even more depressing is going out into the world talking to my grandparents for example posting on social media about these very established scientific theories and when I say theory I mean a hypothesis which is backed up by evidence . it's crazy that we can't even convince enough people to actually make some serious change which is necessary . I hate to be like the bearer of doom here but especially in Equatorial regions where they experience like much more extreme conditions than you will in like higher latitudes and more like temperate environments. 

and it's going to be almost unlivable and the working class people in society who have less financial stability are going to be the ones who are  primarily affected by this .I think we all have agreed that it's sort of time we make some changes otherwise things are going to get really bad and that's why people are not bothering at work because everyone understands their jobs are these menial unnecessary things which are making only money for people at the top who don't need any more money they have enough and nobody wants to do it anymore . I certainly don't wanna do it that's why I went into academia because I worked in Retail for big companies and the amount of goods that I was selling per day could have kept me going for a month or two you know . I was just thinking how you just got paid £9 for this hour that I spent making £700 for this company . what really annoyed me about that was I then went to I was when I was working at one of the companies they got quite extensive jeans collection and every two years or so there's this thing called a sample sale and you have to go to one of the warehouses one of the distribution centers you go into this big warehouse hangout , run around all these are boxes of all these samples of the clothing and you buy them off the company because they can't sell them . You buy them at manufacture cost . Guess how much the jeans are how much how much do you think . It was £5 five pounds or so and we were selling the same in the retail shops for 110 pounds or so. The people who are producing these , what are they getting paid what are the people who are like picking the cotton to make the jeans getting paid . It is insane and I just I had no desire to be involved in that industry at all so I was like I'm gonna be an academic so I can't exploit anyone. 

Wanted to understand your perspective on climate change . do you think it's beneficial for the normal people and for the upcoming generation . what do you think is it going to change .we are moving away from them they're going to different reasons like let's say we're going to an electric in the future as they call it . Do you think It's just gonna change the resource mixer of the future .what do you think about it ?

that's a difficult one that is a very difficult perspective . Well I think well realistically we have to transition to renewables like immediately there is no time we can't be trying to use fossil fuels anymore in any capacity . All of the all of the structures which have sort of propped up the geopolitics of the world which we experienced today are based off like resource management they're based off fossil fuels they're based off how do we distribute energy resources . So it's a very interesting one and I really feel like we have countries which have the means like right now to be transitioning away from fossil fuels have the responsibility to do so immediately and the countries which make most of their money from selling fossil fuels have to have to diversify away from that also immediately because there's hope that late I would say hopefully there is not going to be a market for that anymore.

If you come to Eastern Europe where I live , we can see a lot of these communist you know relics . I've been to a couple of places in Europe - I've been to Berlin and you can see similar structures . There are memorials remembering peoples sacrifice . I wanted to get your perspective on this what do you think about about the past about what happened in terms of Communist politics and how is it relevant now in your perspective 

it's like extremely relevant but also at the same time you have to remember the lens with which a lot of history is presented to us but when you're reading history about communist countries well no countries technically achieved communism let's just put that point out there straight away it's never been achieved . it would probably take more than more than a few generations in order to get the social mindset that would be necessary in order to enact like real communism and it also has to be a global thing that's what I think people a lot of people don't understand about sort of the Soviet Union and why they were trying to include some of different countries into the Soviet Union because a socialist revolution realistically has to be global . it has to be global because what we have seen in a lot of countries which have tried to enact socialism or something akin to socialism and have been economically isolated by the rest of the world or economically isolated by the rest of the capitalist world as well specifically led by nations like the US not just isolated in a lot of cases the militias were funded within the country in order to overthrow the government there was a lot of puppet leaders installed which were favorable to the capitalist ideals of the US so this has been a constant thread throughout history of socialist countries arising . people trying to take back power for themselves and then other countries where this system is not established meddling in it and what always gets me is when people talk about like the failures of past socialist countries well if they were so destined to fail then why didn't the capitalist countries just let them fail instead of having to get involved with it. 

They're going all over the world saying like oh there was like starvation this country ,there's starvation in your own country , there's people in your country that can't access food why are you concentrating on this other country and you're also sanctioning them and you're also preventing them from being able to trade with the surrounding countries like obviously it's gonna be hard for them . you're not sharing any kind of like intellectual property , you're not aiding them in fact you're abetting them and what they're trying to achieve and it's been completely intentional and when you read about the history of communist movements or socialist movements you also have to always consider the source . this comes from both sides like you have to be aware of the potential buyers or the person who's writing the history and also just the that points of history which are discussed because without this holistic understanding then you can focus on any event and like twist it to whatever narrative you want to make it using different factors . Like for example if you actually look at a lot of the metrics which are used to decide whether a country is good or not like whether the lives of the people are good or not like what how many calories are they consuming per day and like all of these things , the USSR was literally actually above America and in a lot of these metrics because the wealth inequality was lower especially like in the in the initial years unfortunately with all of the all of the straight up attacks from the capitalist world onto these socialist nations the only way to sort of like continue trying to achieve their goal was to essentially fight fire with fire and they ended up going totalitarian and really the issue that people have with the Soviet Union specifically is its totalitarian leadership . I also don't support totalitarian leadership like I also think that if you actually adhere to the to the ideology of socialism and communism you wouldn't be able to have a totalitarian leadership because the whole point is actually to enact real democracy within the people so the people are able to have real control and real governance over themselves so it doesn't really like compute with this totalitarian style leadership . I'm hoping that the younger generations now are less affected by that kind of mindset because we have lived under this facade of democracy where apparently everybody is like an individual and everybody like has the ability to do anything they put their mind to and so hopefully this is sort of working against that and empowering people but it's not functionally empowering people but it may be like morally empowering people to not have this idea we need this one strong figure to lead us to this goal . maybe we can all lead ourselves to this goal and that's what I would hope people would learn from reading history most people who are very involved in like socialist and communist movements as well are very like well versed in its literature always try to discuss how we would accomplish this kind of thing there is a very big emphasis on not repeating past mistakes and not allowing these times when we would say the leadership of these socialist or communist movements basically  betrayed the working class and there's a very big emphasis on these moments in history and how to avoid that happening again.

Now about Nutrition In one your TikTok’s we were talking about the number of calories consumed per person . I feel like there is a big misconception across about calories basically so if you if you noticed the prices of products of day-to-day consumption are going high at the same time there is also a huge set of advice mostly if you look at the American population most of them are obese because people consume a lot which is actually not true from what you're telling me in terms of the consumed calories . Could you explain further on this.

I was talking about more like historical but like more recently when we when we talk about calories there's a lot of there's a lot of historical context there and what they from the time that I was sort of talking about was more in the mid 1900s where actually obtaining enough calories to be able to like do a day of work to be able to subsist your family was difficult whereas now the issue that we're seeing like especially in the US there is a divide between people who are able to obtain like fresh fruits , Whole Foods things which you know are which are good for you and keep you healthy and stop you from having to spend loads of money on healthcare because you're naturally you're like actually feeling your body and things which are natural and things which your body can easily sort of metabolize and the things your body really needs and then all of the processed , cheap , long shelf life foods which unfortunately only people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged can afford and it's creating this disparity within Society of like you're more likely actually to be like overweight if you are poor in America now because it's much easier to obtain these very processed foods full of all of these like chemicals and preservatives that's something which is kind of happening in in a lot of capitalist countries because this is the way which is easier to like get profit out of the population especially in America where Healthcare is a is built on a profit motive you want to keep as many people as sick as possible for as long as possible in order to be able to extract as much money from them as possible . it's historically definitely been used as like a means to control and exploit a population.

there is in this kind of clarity is something that I really liked in your conversations in your ticktoks that's really a great viewpoint which most people don't adhere to because they have this narrative that if you are obsese that means you're consuming a lot which is not exactly true 

you're consuming what you can afford exactly what you can afford and that's causing the problems mostly most of the capitalist world .it also relates to under education just saying not having the necessary information what is that you should be feeding yourself the necessary information about how to produce meals from Whole Foods and from things which are not processed . I think there's so many compounding factors into this but it all creates this like very obvious social divide between the rich and the poor the haves and the have nots and I think that's also being used as a tool like oppression especially for the people in America.

So to conclude our interview , What do you think is the solution ? Most of the socialist and communist viewpoints always end up in a point where there's some kind of revolution  that will take place and one that will change everything they've had a revolutions before over the years but none that overthrew the capitalist system as a whole till now.

When it comes to like my understanding of revolution I do tend to draw from like Marx and his full thought like forebearer . The whole premise of Marxism is sort of describing this process it's sort of describing this inevitable transition from capitalism and then into socialism or communism because capitalism produces so many internal contradictions that eventually people will become aware of these internal contradictions and revolt against the regime but what the difficulty is now more so than has been in the past when these kind of things have taken place is the complexity of the financial structures which are propping up the system and that's something which I feel like a lot of the like socialist , communist and anarcho communist like groups which are still working to this day towards this end goal of like a socialist communist revolution sometimes don't even like to use those words because I feel like they're almost divisive now like they have been so heavily anti propagandized from like capitalists that it's almost not even worth using them and just using the ideology without the words attached because if you just explain the ideology itself like rationally and then you just include everything minus those two words you'll find that most people agree that's what I've found personally from talking to people about this kind of stuff and they have such an affront against these words because these words have been made synonymous with like control with totalitarianism with dictatorships with autocracy like all of the things which it is not in reality. The direct opposite of the thing that it what people believe it to be so sometimes Marxist is coming up more frequently now because I think it doesn't really have the same connotations like people aren't really adverse to it like initially when they hear the word so a lot of people calling themselves Marxist but then you get the people saying like oh you're like treating him like a Messiah. 

Insta account : https://www.instagram.com/tenshioppai/?hl=en-gb

Tiktok : https://www.tiktok.com/@lilla_flicka?_t=8bh9olMdqzy&_r=1