The link between psychology and ideology is something that cannot be underestimated in terms of its human impact, as politics is about human decisions; flawed psychology leads to flawed decision-making.
This author has written before about the disturbing links between sociopathy and political advancement. The world of politics attracts those who seek either amoral self-advancement, or those who wish to expunge their own psychological insecurities by imposing their own twisted world-view on the rest of society.
In the UK, the issue of Britain's membership of the EU was at one time something of an obsession with "cranks". Nowadays, those one-time "cranks" are in the position of holding the government "hostage", ensuring that their vision of Britain outside the EU is enacted in full.
Who are these people? What are their backgrounds and motivations? Looking at some of the more high-profile of the "Brexiteers" in more detail, a few common themes appear.
First of all, there is the fairly obvious issue that the large majority of those in favour "Hard Brexit" are Libertarians. Brexit has always been a Libertarian project at its heart, going back thirty years. It should be asked how many of the electorate would call themselves "Libertarians": 20%, if not even less than that?
The Libertarian mindset is one of strongly individualistic, anti-government (and psychologically anti-social) motivations. It is vigorously anti-Communist, against any use of government power outside of the bare minimum. This is the reason for the Libertarian sense of historic "betrayal" by the EU. As they thought in entering the EU they were entering the world's largest free trade zone, the resulting regulations and rules that then went with that, along with "ever closer union", they saw as a personal affront to Libertarian "freedom".
When a Libertarian talks of "freedom", they are talking about economic "laissez-faire" freedom: the freedom from government rules, and the freedom to trade and make money without rules. Thus the EU, in needing to have rules in order to create a "level playing field" within the single market, becomes the Libertarians' enemy. While to an objective observer, rules and regulations can be seen to have a common-sense application when dealing with a open border economy involving dozens of countries, to a Libertarian, these rules and regulations become something more sinister: a threat to the Libertarian's "freedom".
In this way, Libertarians have a highly-concrete (and personal) sense of their own individuality and "freedom", where anything that reduces their ability to act as they wish is seen as a threat to themselves personally. This explains how "Brexiteers" respond to any attempt on compromise over Brexit as anathema: having invested so much of their own time and careers to it, they "internalize" their ideology, calling those who call for compromise as "appeasers" or "saboteurs".
This violent rhetoric partially may come from the psychology innate in Libertarian thought itself, which with its strongly individualist themes also encourages an inherently aggressive, masculine world-view. This testosterone-fueled culture that comes from Libertarian thought has pervaded Western thinking, particularly in the dog-eat-dog world of the "Anglo-sphere", where inequality is seen not only as inevitable but actually a positive thing for society, and where personal "drive" is what matters in life, rather than your social background. In this way, poverty is seen as the result of personal failings rather than the result of wider injustice in society. Such a stark, unforgiving moral universe has uncomfortable parallels with even more extreme right-wing ideologies.
Where the "military" and the "diaspora" meet
A closer break-down of the people advocating Brexit reveals yet more curiosities.
Apart from the shared ideology of Libertarianism, a disproportionate number of "Brexiteers" come from military backgrounds: people like (former ministers) Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis and Steve Baker have all had military careers of one sort or another, while some other "Brexiteers" (such as current minister Penny Mordaunt) have military connections through their parents.
A disproportionate number of "Brexiteers" are also what might be called part of the historic white British "diaspora": people who were either born and raised outside the UK (but also outside Europe), or have spent part of their time growing up abroad, or spent a significant part of their adult life abroad. Prominent examples include Boris Johnson (born in New York), Douglas Carswell (born and raised in Africa), Daniel Hannan (born in Peru), Arron Banks (who has significant interests in South Africa), and others.
Lastly, there is yet another disproportionately-represented segment within the "Brexiteers": those of non-white background who are also "products of empire" like some of the white British "diaspora" already mentioned. The significant trio of Sajid Javid, Priti Patel and Suella Fernandes stand out here: all three are Libertarians, of South Asian heritage, and from different parts of the former colonies - Pakistan, Uganda, and Kenya-India respectively. These people are either ministers, former ministers, or powerful personages within the "Brexiteer" side of the Conservative Party.
What this all adds up to is a revealing character portrait of the motivations and backgrounds behind "Brexit". In short, what it tells us is that disproportionate numbers of Libertarians are former-military and/or legacy products (i.e. children) of the "empire".
Should this be surprising? Probably not, but being able to look at the cold, hard facts in this way certainly brings a fresh perspective on the whole "Brexit Agenda". It has been said that "Brexit" is really about creating "Empire 2.0": the "colonial" background of some of the key people involved lends itself to the view that they indeed wish to leave the EU in order to establish a kind of "Commonwealth-with-bells-on". Theresa May's current traipsing around Africa seems to support that viewpoint.
More generally, it might also be guessed that the "colonial" and military background to many of these people would skew their own view of how they see the world and Britain itself. Military people always have tended to be more nationalistic, arguably seeing their nation in a far more emotional (and personal) way than the ordinary person. Equally, those with a "colonial" background may well tend to see Britain through the eyes of mythology: their own distant upbringing taking the rhetoric of Britain as a "sceptred isle", a bastion of civilisation, all too literally, lacking the perspective that close experience of a country creates. In this way, in having a narrow (even disconnected) experience of "real" Britain, they have fallen for their own propaganda.
From a psychological point of view, they therefore invest personally in believing in Britain's unique status, becoming staunch defenders of its freedoms while ignoring its many flaws; and when they see the EU, they see an institution that threatens their own sense of Britain's mythology. As a result, they lash out at anything and anyone that threatens to destroy their own carefully-formed (and insecure) version of the world. "Brexit" therefore is about creating the Britain of Libertarians' own mythology.
The end result is that their view of Britain's place in the world is through the lens of its former imperial status and its status as a military power; by contrast, Britain's physical proximity to Europe they see more as a threat than an opportunity, skewed through the prejudice of two World Wars.
This mythology of Britain is what Libertarians are obsessed with; their own prejudice against Europe comes from their own personal background, equating EU bureaucracy with the slippery slope to Communist oppression and/or dictatorial autocracy that they may have heard about or experienced abroad. Thus they react to EU regulations as though they were the same as Soviet oppression or totalitarian methods of control. The rose-tinted perspective that many Libertarians have of the "colonies" from their parents' stories thus lead them into (masculine) fantasies about restoring British power and prestige, fueled by their own sense of having something to prove.
German parallels
This isn't the first time that ideology and a nation's fate has been guided by the fantasies and prejudice of an alliance of ex-military and "diaspora" ideologues.
Where there are "cranks" that are today Libertarians guiding Britain down an unknown and unstable path, a hundred years ago in Germany, "cranks" of a different kind were also fighting against the spread of Communism in Europe.
By 1919, Germany was in a state of institutional flux, with a weak centre of power in the aftermath of the First World War. Into the void stepped an alliance of ex-military "Freikorps"; right-wing nationalists who sought someone to blame for the mess. They then gained the trust of the German "diaspora" of the (former) Russian Empire, who began to flee from the Russian civil war to Germany: these were people of aristocratic stock (known as "Baltic Germans"), whose heritage went back centuries, to the time when Germans - then called the "Teutonic Knights" - ruled over vast tracts of the Eastern Baltic. These "Baltic Germans" were ardently anti-Communist, and had their own rose-tinted views of what Germany could look like if it were able to take advantage of the opportunity in the east and recapture its "lost lands" in the Baltic.
Into this mix was added their own prejudice. The "Baltic Germans" anti-Communism was also influenced by one of the most influential of their kin: Fyodor Vinberg. Under his tutelage, the Baltic Germans were able to influence a large part of the "Freikorps" into believing Communism was also part of a larger Jewish plot to take over the world. Thus Anti-Semitism became established in right-wing circles of German society thanks to the German "diaspora"; one of those listening was Adolf Hitler. The extreme views of those Baltic Germans went on to feature in "Mein Kampf".
Extremism can take many forms. A hundred years ago, it was the rise of Communism that led to the rise in Anti-Semitism. Today, what were once the fringe views of Libertarians have come to dominate political discourse in British politics. Their own prejudices - their irrational hatred of Europe, and their fantastical view of British exceptionalism - are leading Britain down a path where xenophobia has become normalized, and where casual violence goes unpunished.
This can't end well.
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Friday, August 24, 2018
Brexit: an inevitable "perfect storm"?
There's an interesting narrative that explains that "Brexit" was an inevitable event for Britain. This author looked at a couple of different perspectives on this narrative recently, but it's also worthwhile to look at how a confluence of events, political short-termism and an intellectual failure at Westminster led to making "Brexit", and even now a "no-deal Brexit", seem inevitable.
The author has been reading "All Out War", a political masterpiece that explains the narrative of Brexit within the context of the Conservative Party. What's striking about the decision of David Cameron to call for a referendum on EU membership was how it was made to seem like an inevitable decision due to a combination of events and political self-interest.
The problem started when, in order to become party leader in 2005, he indulged the whims of the Eurosceptic right in his party by saying he would withdraw the party from the wider EPP group in the European Parliament. In spite of his rhetoric of being a strong leader, he gradually surrendered more and more ground to the hard-right fringe in the party; and once they smelt blood, they kept coming back for larger and larger bites. It became impossible to stop feeding the crocodile.
After he had failed to win a majority in 2010, his decision to join a coalition with the LibDems had two main political effects: it angered the hard-right within his party (leading to Cameron's need to appease them further, even if only superficially), and it also led to UKIP becoming the third party in British politics. Cameron's decision to announce an EU referendum in his "Bloomberg" speech in early 2013 was a sign of a political leader only capable of reacting to events: he felt forced into doing it due to the double threat from both UKIP to the party, and to the ever more vocal hard-right within the party itself.
Some question whether the referendum decision was really inevitable. The answer seems to be that had Cameron not acted when he did (with UKIP on course to win the 2014 European elections), he would have been challenged for the leadership soon afterwards by someone with the support of the hard-right in the party; and his successor would have demanded a referendum in any case. So seen this way, the EU referendum would have happened regardless, only under slightly different circumstances. The referendum, given the confluence of circumstances, seems to have an inevitable outcome.
Another "alternate narrative" would be to question what would have happened if Cameron had decided after the 2010 election to rule as a minority government instead of a coalition. Would there have been a referendum in that case? The LibDems as outside government might have become stronger in parliament by being able to challenge the Tories on key issues, while Cameron himself would have been much more vulnerable to challenges from the hard-right in his own party as a minority government (i.e. somewhat like the situation that May faces now).
But this is doubtless what Cameron would have thought himself at the time, and makes it all the more unlikely; Cameron ideologically had more in common with the LibDem leader, Nick Clegg, than those in the far-right in his own party, making the coalition something that would have temperamentally suited Cameron, given what we know of his personality. That "what if?" situation was never a likely one. The idea of a "historic" coalition would also have appealed to his more vain sensibilities (of wanting a "legacy"), while it would keep the hard-right in his party at bay. As was reported later, whenever the hard-right complained of a coalition policy, Cameron always blamed the LibDems; while whenever the LibDems complained of a coalition policy, Cameron always blamed the hard right. It was a politically-convenient, if typically short-sighted, strategy.
Winning the 2015 election made the referendum a certainty, while wider events in Europe - the migration crisis of that summer - made the referendum an even more politically-charged event. Losing the referendum was never something that Cameron seems to have seriously considered until perhaps the day of the vote itself (when he wrote a speech for both outcomes). As said elsewhere, because the referendum was manipulated by the "Brexit Agenda" into representing a plebiscite on the whole "status quo" of modern Britain, anyone who felt let-down by the government in some way could use the vote to express their frustration. Meanwhile, the heartstrings of the older cohort of the electorate were being pulled by a combination of nostalgia and hysteria to "take back control". The referendum result was not inevitable, but the combination of those factors already mentioned skewed the likelihood of the result going the way of "leave" enough to make the difference.
As the result caught the political establishment completely by surprise, how would they react to it? Thus far, the political establishment - in the guise of David Cameron - had reacted to events by giving in to their whims at almost every juncture. In short, the establishment had shown itself to be weak and easily-swayed, more interested in short-term political survival than thinking of the longer game. The same was shown to be true of his successor, Theresa May.
However, May's personality and perspective couldn't seem more different from Cameron's. At a time of apparent "national crisis", Cameron had formed the coalition; this had been an act that, on the surface at least, seemed to stick it to the hard-right, and put "national interest" before party politicking. Time would soon show the error of this kind view of Cameron's essentially self-serving character.
May's political assessment of the situation after the referendum lacked any of Cameron's political subtleties. Seeing things through the narrow lens of Westminster politics, leave had "won" (regardless of by how modest the difference was); by the adversarial rationale of traditional British politics, therefore, she decided with her adviser, Nick Timothy, that Britain had to choose a path outside of the single market and customs union. Cameron had "lost", and with it so had the whole liberal, metropolitan part of British society. Seeming even more short-sighted in her thinking than Cameron, May decided to completely dismiss the wishes and rights of half of the population. In her eyes, it seems they no longer existed as people.
This explained how May's first party conference as Prime Minister felt like a complete embrace (if not theft) of the cultural world-view of UKIP, with her government now transformed into a UKIP government in all but name. Given the adversarial nature of British politics, it seems inevitable that Cameron's successor would have been either a supporter of "leave", or someone (like May) who felt obliged to follow this course of action to the bitter end, regardless. May's character has since shown that her stubborn personality, and her intellectual rigidity, is what has marked how her key decisions (and missteps) have been made.
Given the unique circumstances posed by the referendum, the formation of a "national government" would have been a more sensible act afterwards. But as the "coalition" of 2010 was formed out of Cameron's opportunism rather than genuine bipartisanship, this only demonstrated that there was simply no real culture for such a thing in Westminster. Politics had become too adversarial and those in power lacked any intellectual flexibility. They had simply become good at finding the faults in others and someone else to blame for their own failings. It was simply the way things had always been done; to survive till the next electoral cycle, whichever way you can.
It is also this poisonous culture that has shown the deficiencies of Westminster when brought up against a genuine national crisis in "Brexit". Theresa May's manner of dealing with "Brexit" and the EU negotiations has been all about short-term survival.
Her early decision to leave the single market and customs union was to show she was "serious" about understanding Brexit, regardless of the longer-term consequences. Her decision to invoke Article 50 used the same narrow logic; to appease those in the party who thought she would somehow go back on her word. Since the negotiations with the EU started, it has always been about trying to find an approach that somehow appeased both sides of her party, with the EU as an afterthought. In the end, this has meant that, since invoking Article 50, every time she has prevented the party from self-destructing by finding some nonsensical stop-gap, she has only reduced yet further the amount of time available to get a deal from the EU before the time runs out. Short-term politicking only works for so long in the outside world.
In this way, Brexit has shown to the world the limited skill-set available to the British political establishment. As no deal that would be acceptable to the EU would be able to get a majority in Westminster due to the level of bitter division, the inevitable consequence is Britain leaving the EU without a deal. Something which is meant to politically impossible becomes unavoidable in the face of political infighting and indecision. All the evidence is that the government are more interested in avoiding the short-term blame for any chaos that happens, saying that it was somehow all the EU's fault. They will fall back on the age-old excuses, even in the face of their political self-destruction.
In that sense, Brexit looks more like an inevitable "perfect storm": with a "house divided" and a political class completely out of their depth, it's hard to see what the state of British politics will look like a year from now.
The author has been reading "All Out War", a political masterpiece that explains the narrative of Brexit within the context of the Conservative Party. What's striking about the decision of David Cameron to call for a referendum on EU membership was how it was made to seem like an inevitable decision due to a combination of events and political self-interest.
The problem started when, in order to become party leader in 2005, he indulged the whims of the Eurosceptic right in his party by saying he would withdraw the party from the wider EPP group in the European Parliament. In spite of his rhetoric of being a strong leader, he gradually surrendered more and more ground to the hard-right fringe in the party; and once they smelt blood, they kept coming back for larger and larger bites. It became impossible to stop feeding the crocodile.
After he had failed to win a majority in 2010, his decision to join a coalition with the LibDems had two main political effects: it angered the hard-right within his party (leading to Cameron's need to appease them further, even if only superficially), and it also led to UKIP becoming the third party in British politics. Cameron's decision to announce an EU referendum in his "Bloomberg" speech in early 2013 was a sign of a political leader only capable of reacting to events: he felt forced into doing it due to the double threat from both UKIP to the party, and to the ever more vocal hard-right within the party itself.
Some question whether the referendum decision was really inevitable. The answer seems to be that had Cameron not acted when he did (with UKIP on course to win the 2014 European elections), he would have been challenged for the leadership soon afterwards by someone with the support of the hard-right in the party; and his successor would have demanded a referendum in any case. So seen this way, the EU referendum would have happened regardless, only under slightly different circumstances. The referendum, given the confluence of circumstances, seems to have an inevitable outcome.
Another "alternate narrative" would be to question what would have happened if Cameron had decided after the 2010 election to rule as a minority government instead of a coalition. Would there have been a referendum in that case? The LibDems as outside government might have become stronger in parliament by being able to challenge the Tories on key issues, while Cameron himself would have been much more vulnerable to challenges from the hard-right in his own party as a minority government (i.e. somewhat like the situation that May faces now).
But this is doubtless what Cameron would have thought himself at the time, and makes it all the more unlikely; Cameron ideologically had more in common with the LibDem leader, Nick Clegg, than those in the far-right in his own party, making the coalition something that would have temperamentally suited Cameron, given what we know of his personality. That "what if?" situation was never a likely one. The idea of a "historic" coalition would also have appealed to his more vain sensibilities (of wanting a "legacy"), while it would keep the hard-right in his party at bay. As was reported later, whenever the hard-right complained of a coalition policy, Cameron always blamed the LibDems; while whenever the LibDems complained of a coalition policy, Cameron always blamed the hard right. It was a politically-convenient, if typically short-sighted, strategy.
Winning the 2015 election made the referendum a certainty, while wider events in Europe - the migration crisis of that summer - made the referendum an even more politically-charged event. Losing the referendum was never something that Cameron seems to have seriously considered until perhaps the day of the vote itself (when he wrote a speech for both outcomes). As said elsewhere, because the referendum was manipulated by the "Brexit Agenda" into representing a plebiscite on the whole "status quo" of modern Britain, anyone who felt let-down by the government in some way could use the vote to express their frustration. Meanwhile, the heartstrings of the older cohort of the electorate were being pulled by a combination of nostalgia and hysteria to "take back control". The referendum result was not inevitable, but the combination of those factors already mentioned skewed the likelihood of the result going the way of "leave" enough to make the difference.
As the result caught the political establishment completely by surprise, how would they react to it? Thus far, the political establishment - in the guise of David Cameron - had reacted to events by giving in to their whims at almost every juncture. In short, the establishment had shown itself to be weak and easily-swayed, more interested in short-term political survival than thinking of the longer game. The same was shown to be true of his successor, Theresa May.
However, May's personality and perspective couldn't seem more different from Cameron's. At a time of apparent "national crisis", Cameron had formed the coalition; this had been an act that, on the surface at least, seemed to stick it to the hard-right, and put "national interest" before party politicking. Time would soon show the error of this kind view of Cameron's essentially self-serving character.
May's political assessment of the situation after the referendum lacked any of Cameron's political subtleties. Seeing things through the narrow lens of Westminster politics, leave had "won" (regardless of by how modest the difference was); by the adversarial rationale of traditional British politics, therefore, she decided with her adviser, Nick Timothy, that Britain had to choose a path outside of the single market and customs union. Cameron had "lost", and with it so had the whole liberal, metropolitan part of British society. Seeming even more short-sighted in her thinking than Cameron, May decided to completely dismiss the wishes and rights of half of the population. In her eyes, it seems they no longer existed as people.
This explained how May's first party conference as Prime Minister felt like a complete embrace (if not theft) of the cultural world-view of UKIP, with her government now transformed into a UKIP government in all but name. Given the adversarial nature of British politics, it seems inevitable that Cameron's successor would have been either a supporter of "leave", or someone (like May) who felt obliged to follow this course of action to the bitter end, regardless. May's character has since shown that her stubborn personality, and her intellectual rigidity, is what has marked how her key decisions (and missteps) have been made.
Given the unique circumstances posed by the referendum, the formation of a "national government" would have been a more sensible act afterwards. But as the "coalition" of 2010 was formed out of Cameron's opportunism rather than genuine bipartisanship, this only demonstrated that there was simply no real culture for such a thing in Westminster. Politics had become too adversarial and those in power lacked any intellectual flexibility. They had simply become good at finding the faults in others and someone else to blame for their own failings. It was simply the way things had always been done; to survive till the next electoral cycle, whichever way you can.
It is also this poisonous culture that has shown the deficiencies of Westminster when brought up against a genuine national crisis in "Brexit". Theresa May's manner of dealing with "Brexit" and the EU negotiations has been all about short-term survival.
Her early decision to leave the single market and customs union was to show she was "serious" about understanding Brexit, regardless of the longer-term consequences. Her decision to invoke Article 50 used the same narrow logic; to appease those in the party who thought she would somehow go back on her word. Since the negotiations with the EU started, it has always been about trying to find an approach that somehow appeased both sides of her party, with the EU as an afterthought. In the end, this has meant that, since invoking Article 50, every time she has prevented the party from self-destructing by finding some nonsensical stop-gap, she has only reduced yet further the amount of time available to get a deal from the EU before the time runs out. Short-term politicking only works for so long in the outside world.
In this way, Brexit has shown to the world the limited skill-set available to the British political establishment. As no deal that would be acceptable to the EU would be able to get a majority in Westminster due to the level of bitter division, the inevitable consequence is Britain leaving the EU without a deal. Something which is meant to politically impossible becomes unavoidable in the face of political infighting and indecision. All the evidence is that the government are more interested in avoiding the short-term blame for any chaos that happens, saying that it was somehow all the EU's fault. They will fall back on the age-old excuses, even in the face of their political self-destruction.
In that sense, Brexit looks more like an inevitable "perfect storm": with a "house divided" and a political class completely out of their depth, it's hard to see what the state of British politics will look like a year from now.
Monday, August 20, 2018
Brexit: a monumental "cock-up", or a "project" designed to destroy Britain? Historical parallels with Russia
There exist two competing schools of thought that try to explain how "Brexit" has been allowed to happen in the uniquely-disruptive way that it has.
On one hand, there's the thinking that the referendum and the government's slide into anarchic paralysis is the result of a gradual accumulation of amassed incompetence over the years, matched with a complacency of their vaunted position: in other words, a chaotic "Brexit" was made inevitable by the mismanagement and dysfunction at the heart of British politics. In this sense, for the ideological supporters of this (delusional) thinking, "Brexit" is a "coup de grace" that sees the final self-destruction of the "elite", to replaced by something "better".
One the other, there's the argument that "Brexit" is the result of malevolent design: the "disaster capitalism" theory, that sees a group of vested interests take advantage of the opportunities presented in the unique circumstances in British politics after the financial crisis. Put in those terms, "Brexit" is an idea that has been introduced from outside the political sphere, like a bacillus uniquely-designed to poison and divide British society, ripping apart its political class in a way that no other issue could. A hundred years ago, a small group of Russian extremists were able to take control of a weak and paralyzed Russian state, turning society against itself in a civil war, and completely re-shape the country in its own image. That same merciless "Marxist" zeal of ideology seems to guide many of those who support "Brexit" in government, where the only solution to any problem is the one that seems designed to cause the most disruption.
The more obvious analysis is that the truth is somewhere in between: the inherent weakness and disconnected elite of Britain, made clear from the financial crisis onward, are taken advantage of by the "Brexit agenda". Able to easily manipulate events due to this weakness and a society already fragmented by a weak economy and an indifferent government, the establishment falls into every trap set for it.
Russian parallels
Going back to Russia a hundred years ago, some of the parallels with Britain today are disconcerting. The "Brexiteers" take the place in contemporary Britain for the Bolsheviks of Russia; modern-day ideologues hell-bent with missionary zeal. The wider social effect that the financial crisis of 2008 had on Britain was not so dissimilar from that of the 1905 revolution in Russia. Granted, 2008 did not of course lead to "revolution" and anarchy in Britain as it did in Russia in 1905, but that was due Gordon Brown's government bailing-out the banks. If that had not happened, the financial sector would have totally collapsed resulting in unprecedented social disorder, like what really happened (under a different set of factors) in Russia 103 years earlier.
Russia's government action deferred unrest and revolt in 1905; in a similar manner, Brown's actions deferred Britain's social collapse in 2008. But deferring a problem doesn't solve it. This author has written before about how the 2011 riots in England brought to mind some uncomfortable parallels with the mass social unrest in Russia in 1905, but that article was written long before "Brexit" raised its head as an issue.
"Brexit" in this way feels like a social "reckoning" for Britain's government not dealing with the many social and economic issues in the country since the financial crisis; in the same way that the social shock of Russia entering the First World War created the circumstances that allowed the Bolsheviks to take advantage of a time of chaos. In the case of modern-day Britain, however, it is the ideological hard-right of the Libertarians that is taking control of events, shaping them to their own ends.
It took twelve years - 1905 to 1917 - for the Russian central apparatus to collapse under the strain of events; in Britain, it is a period of eleven years from the time from the financial crisis to the Brexit "year zero" to come in 2019. All the signs are that the British government has no idea what it is doing when it comes to Brexit, and leaving the EU without any plan in place next year will bring the structural apparatus of the country to its knees. It is this calamity that the Libertarian "Brexiteers" (read "Marxists") plan to take full advantage of.
The "cock-up" narrative of Brexit follows the same historical trends that happened to the creaking apparatus of Imperial Russia in the run-up to the Bolshevik Revolution. Britain's economy has given the phrase "false economy" a double meaning: the government and the private sector both cutting costs, through "austerity" and the "gig economy" respectively. These twin demons have been the result of a pathology of short-term thinking, cutting costs through an ideology that ends up costing far more to society in the long-run. Equally, the other sense of Britain's "false economy" is that the economy is running, effectively, on empty; it just hasn't become obviously apparent to everyone, as long as everyone keeps on pretending otherwise. The only visible sign of the malaise has been the retail casualties on the high street, which do feel like the first victims of this insidious "disease".
Britain's economy since the financial crisis has had the worst level of growth (i.e. the worst "recovery") of all major industrialized economies. On top of that, wages have stagnated relative to inflation, and jobs are less secure than in living memory. Nobody really has any money, while private debt has spiraled. In this way, there is nothing to hold up the British economy in the face of any national crisis. With those in power stuck in their complacency, Brexit is clearly the "crisis" that no-one in the establishment is remotely qualified to handle.
Imperial Russia's economy in the run-up to the First World War was in robust shape, at least on the surface. 1905 had been a shock, but the powers-that-be had been able to keep the economy going, and the social unrest had been effectively suppressed with the heavy hand of the Imperial secret police, the Okhrana. Thus, in spite of high levels of political violence, superficially the Russian state appeared strong. However, this masked the fact that Russia in 1914 was still a backwardly-ran country with a meagre industrial base compared to its rivals, with a highly-centralized state and enormous levels of deprivation for a "major" power. Much the same can be said of Britain even today.
The "cock-up" on Russia's part in the First World War was in having a policy of supporting a wildly-ambitious (and unruly) Serbian state, and when forced into war against Austrian aggression towards Serbia, Tsar Nicholas allowed his army to mobilize against (at the time, still technically neutral) Germany as well. In this way, Russia's muddled military strategy rapidly escalated a regional war into a continental war, leading to Russia's own eventual internal implosion.
The Bolsheviks have been called by historians as a German "bacillus", planted by the Kaiser into Russia to (successfully) knock them out of the war. The "Brexit Agenda" can be called less a grassroots movement than an "astro-turf" project, in many ways also implanted by "outside interests". In the modern, post-national age, those "interests" are corporate and disparate, faceless and yet omnipresent. In the past, such "revolutions" were the cause of mass movements; today they can be the cause of narrow, shadowy interest groups, able to manipulate events behind the scenes.
The Bolshevik Revolution was a shock to the rest of the world as Russia's highly-centralized state was seen as the last place that the Marxist menace could achieve power. In a similar manner, the way in which "Brexit" has come to transform Britain from a land of careful conservative dependability, to one consumed by irrational ideological zealotry, has blind-sided all foreign observers.
The highly-centralized and deeply-unequal nature of both Imperial Russia and the British state were one of the weak points in both powers, exploited by Bolsheviks and Brexiteers respectively. This allowed a deep well of social resentment outside the capital to fester; all that was required was for someone to find a scapegoat to channel that resentment into popular support. For the Bolsheviks the enemy was the "bourgoisie"; for the Brexiteers, it was the EU.
Equally, as stated elsewhere, the cause of the Bolsheviks and the cause of the Brexiteers was only ever, in reality, a marginal cause held by an insignificant minority. It was only a specific set of events that allowed them to come to prominence, and dominate the narrative. It was the weakness of the Russian state a hundred years ago, and the British state today, that allowed this to happen.
A "cock up" by the Tsar led to his downfall by the Bolsheviks; a "cock up" by Westminster has led to the path of its potential downfall by Brexit.
On one hand, there's the thinking that the referendum and the government's slide into anarchic paralysis is the result of a gradual accumulation of amassed incompetence over the years, matched with a complacency of their vaunted position: in other words, a chaotic "Brexit" was made inevitable by the mismanagement and dysfunction at the heart of British politics. In this sense, for the ideological supporters of this (delusional) thinking, "Brexit" is a "coup de grace" that sees the final self-destruction of the "elite", to replaced by something "better".
One the other, there's the argument that "Brexit" is the result of malevolent design: the "disaster capitalism" theory, that sees a group of vested interests take advantage of the opportunities presented in the unique circumstances in British politics after the financial crisis. Put in those terms, "Brexit" is an idea that has been introduced from outside the political sphere, like a bacillus uniquely-designed to poison and divide British society, ripping apart its political class in a way that no other issue could. A hundred years ago, a small group of Russian extremists were able to take control of a weak and paralyzed Russian state, turning society against itself in a civil war, and completely re-shape the country in its own image. That same merciless "Marxist" zeal of ideology seems to guide many of those who support "Brexit" in government, where the only solution to any problem is the one that seems designed to cause the most disruption.
The more obvious analysis is that the truth is somewhere in between: the inherent weakness and disconnected elite of Britain, made clear from the financial crisis onward, are taken advantage of by the "Brexit agenda". Able to easily manipulate events due to this weakness and a society already fragmented by a weak economy and an indifferent government, the establishment falls into every trap set for it.
Russian parallels
Going back to Russia a hundred years ago, some of the parallels with Britain today are disconcerting. The "Brexiteers" take the place in contemporary Britain for the Bolsheviks of Russia; modern-day ideologues hell-bent with missionary zeal. The wider social effect that the financial crisis of 2008 had on Britain was not so dissimilar from that of the 1905 revolution in Russia. Granted, 2008 did not of course lead to "revolution" and anarchy in Britain as it did in Russia in 1905, but that was due Gordon Brown's government bailing-out the banks. If that had not happened, the financial sector would have totally collapsed resulting in unprecedented social disorder, like what really happened (under a different set of factors) in Russia 103 years earlier.
Russia's government action deferred unrest and revolt in 1905; in a similar manner, Brown's actions deferred Britain's social collapse in 2008. But deferring a problem doesn't solve it. This author has written before about how the 2011 riots in England brought to mind some uncomfortable parallels with the mass social unrest in Russia in 1905, but that article was written long before "Brexit" raised its head as an issue.
"Brexit" in this way feels like a social "reckoning" for Britain's government not dealing with the many social and economic issues in the country since the financial crisis; in the same way that the social shock of Russia entering the First World War created the circumstances that allowed the Bolsheviks to take advantage of a time of chaos. In the case of modern-day Britain, however, it is the ideological hard-right of the Libertarians that is taking control of events, shaping them to their own ends.
It took twelve years - 1905 to 1917 - for the Russian central apparatus to collapse under the strain of events; in Britain, it is a period of eleven years from the time from the financial crisis to the Brexit "year zero" to come in 2019. All the signs are that the British government has no idea what it is doing when it comes to Brexit, and leaving the EU without any plan in place next year will bring the structural apparatus of the country to its knees. It is this calamity that the Libertarian "Brexiteers" (read "Marxists") plan to take full advantage of.
The "cock-up" narrative of Brexit follows the same historical trends that happened to the creaking apparatus of Imperial Russia in the run-up to the Bolshevik Revolution. Britain's economy has given the phrase "false economy" a double meaning: the government and the private sector both cutting costs, through "austerity" and the "gig economy" respectively. These twin demons have been the result of a pathology of short-term thinking, cutting costs through an ideology that ends up costing far more to society in the long-run. Equally, the other sense of Britain's "false economy" is that the economy is running, effectively, on empty; it just hasn't become obviously apparent to everyone, as long as everyone keeps on pretending otherwise. The only visible sign of the malaise has been the retail casualties on the high street, which do feel like the first victims of this insidious "disease".
Britain's economy since the financial crisis has had the worst level of growth (i.e. the worst "recovery") of all major industrialized economies. On top of that, wages have stagnated relative to inflation, and jobs are less secure than in living memory. Nobody really has any money, while private debt has spiraled. In this way, there is nothing to hold up the British economy in the face of any national crisis. With those in power stuck in their complacency, Brexit is clearly the "crisis" that no-one in the establishment is remotely qualified to handle.
Imperial Russia's economy in the run-up to the First World War was in robust shape, at least on the surface. 1905 had been a shock, but the powers-that-be had been able to keep the economy going, and the social unrest had been effectively suppressed with the heavy hand of the Imperial secret police, the Okhrana. Thus, in spite of high levels of political violence, superficially the Russian state appeared strong. However, this masked the fact that Russia in 1914 was still a backwardly-ran country with a meagre industrial base compared to its rivals, with a highly-centralized state and enormous levels of deprivation for a "major" power. Much the same can be said of Britain even today.
The "cock-up" on Russia's part in the First World War was in having a policy of supporting a wildly-ambitious (and unruly) Serbian state, and when forced into war against Austrian aggression towards Serbia, Tsar Nicholas allowed his army to mobilize against (at the time, still technically neutral) Germany as well. In this way, Russia's muddled military strategy rapidly escalated a regional war into a continental war, leading to Russia's own eventual internal implosion.
The Bolsheviks have been called by historians as a German "bacillus", planted by the Kaiser into Russia to (successfully) knock them out of the war. The "Brexit Agenda" can be called less a grassroots movement than an "astro-turf" project, in many ways also implanted by "outside interests". In the modern, post-national age, those "interests" are corporate and disparate, faceless and yet omnipresent. In the past, such "revolutions" were the cause of mass movements; today they can be the cause of narrow, shadowy interest groups, able to manipulate events behind the scenes.
The Bolshevik Revolution was a shock to the rest of the world as Russia's highly-centralized state was seen as the last place that the Marxist menace could achieve power. In a similar manner, the way in which "Brexit" has come to transform Britain from a land of careful conservative dependability, to one consumed by irrational ideological zealotry, has blind-sided all foreign observers.
The highly-centralized and deeply-unequal nature of both Imperial Russia and the British state were one of the weak points in both powers, exploited by Bolsheviks and Brexiteers respectively. This allowed a deep well of social resentment outside the capital to fester; all that was required was for someone to find a scapegoat to channel that resentment into popular support. For the Bolsheviks the enemy was the "bourgoisie"; for the Brexiteers, it was the EU.
Equally, as stated elsewhere, the cause of the Bolsheviks and the cause of the Brexiteers was only ever, in reality, a marginal cause held by an insignificant minority. It was only a specific set of events that allowed them to come to prominence, and dominate the narrative. It was the weakness of the Russian state a hundred years ago, and the British state today, that allowed this to happen.
A "cock up" by the Tsar led to his downfall by the Bolsheviks; a "cock up" by Westminster has led to the path of its potential downfall by Brexit.
Monday, August 13, 2018
Brexit: a historic blunder or a strategic realignment?
Watching a recent documentary about the events of 1066, I was reminded how pivotal the Norman Conquest was in changing the face of England.
Prior to William the Conqueror's victory over Harold (Godwinson), England had been ruled by an Anglo-Saxon nobility. For much of the previous two hundred years, England had been a victim to the privations of Viking raids, culminating in a thirty-year period of direct Viking rule, that had only ended around twenty years before the events of 1066.
The overall effect of this was that Anglo-Saxon England, prior to the Norman Conquest, had its geopolitical interests drawn from the influence of Scandinavia, with continental Europe to the south less of an immediate concern. This was evident even in the Battle Of Hastings, where the Anglo-Saxon army used battle tactics honed from centuries of fighting the Vikings, and the Norman army's use of cavalry in battle was something unfamiliar to the English; yet equally, the Normans were unfamiliar with the Anglo-Saxons' battle tactics as well. In this way, 1066 really was a clash of cultures: Anglo-Saxon England and Norman France.
The Norman Conquest thus totally reshaped England, both in terms of its society (where the Normans completely replaced the Anglo-Saxon nobility) and in terms of geopolitics, where Norman England's interests lay on consolidating on its holdings in France as well as in Britain. In this way, Norman England was a "continental power" in a way that Anglo-Saxon England never could be.
This historic link that the Normans had created between England and the continent became something that was built on over the centuries. The successors to the Normans, the "Angevins" (later called the "Plantagenets"), had even more extensive French lands, effectively creating a a joint "empire" across both sides of the channel. While these French lands declined in scope over time (with John "Lackland" being the most at fault), the existence of a still-residual English foothold in France by the time of Henry VIII's coming to power had a strong effect on Henry's perception of the country's strategic interests and alliances in Europe.
The Norman and Angevin legacy of English lands in France meant that an alliance against the French king was essential. This had resulted in alliances through marriage to the rising power of Spain to the south, and an accord with the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire to France's east. However, by the time of Elizabeth's reign, the Reformation and England's break from Rome had seen both of those alliances collapse, leaving England diplomatically-isolated from all of the major European powers. By the 17th century, the reign of the Stuarts saw a change of tack, and England sought an "understanding" with both Spain and France. As time progressed, some in England saw the Stuarts as seeming more inspired by the autocratic rulers of France and Spain, resulting the bloody interregnum of the "Commonwealth". While England's French domains were now a memory, its interests in European affairs didn't prevent it from intervening with mutual allies like the Germans to limit French designs, like during the War Of Spanish Succession. Outside of Europe, such as in North America and India, England's interests began to prosper, and when the Stuart dynasty was replaced by the House Of Hanover in the early 18th century, England's continental interests re-emerged once more in a different guise.
Like with the early Norman rulers of England, the first Hanoverians seemed at times more interested in their German lands than in Britain. These new "English" monarchs now having a sizable tract of territory in the heart of Europe also gave them a different perspective. While the later generations of the House of Hanover became increasingly "British", they all took German wives, with Victoria taking a German prince as her husband. Thus up to the last decade of the nineteenth century, England and Germany were closely-linked, with Victoria's daughter married to the German Emperor Frederick, and - for different reasons - both powers had a mutual antagonist in France. By contrast, Britain's alliance with France against Russia that existed during the Crimean War had been a rare piece of strategic joint-interest; an example of Britain's alignments with the different European powers to achieve its interests at any one moment in time. During that conflict with Russia, Britain's and France's aims had been temporarily aligned to protect Turkey. Afterwards, the former rivalry resumed.
The fact that, by 1914, Britain had been in alliance with both France and Russia - hitherto its two historic rivals - was a quirk of fate that was largely the fault of German Emperor Wilhelm II, Frederick's son (and Victoria's nephew), which has been expanded on elsewhere. In part, this was just another chapter in the merry-go-round of England's relations with Europe, that had ensured that, since 1066, England had rarely been without one ally or another on the continent.
And yet, it was true to say that by 1914, Britain's relations with Europe had become more semi-detached; its involvement in the Crimean War was Britain's last major European involvement, while its later alliance with France and Russia was more of global than European interest to them (and in fact, calling it an "alliance" on Britain's part was overstating the country's own view of its obligations to European affairs; Britain saw it more as an "understanding" that allowed it to feign a more ambiguous approach). Britain's strategic imperative was to its empire rather than continental allegiances. The physical barrier of the channel was still a strong psychological barrier, too. Today, the same "moral ambiguity" about its commitments has been seen in the current government's Brexit negotiations.
The system of European alliances collapsed with the fall of the different European monarchies at the end of the First World War. Henceforth, it would be "ideology" (either economic or political) that would be the main drive for strategic alliances. As the two main "victors" of the war, Britain and France sought to emasculate Germany (which planted the seeds for the next war) and also (failing) to destroy Bolshevik Russia. In doing so, both these strategic blunders set up the eventual collapse of both their empires in the future.
France and Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. With France overrun the following year, by 1941 Britain was forced into being kept alive by convoys from the USA. In this way, Britain effectively surrendered it strategic independence to the USA in 1941 to prevent it being starved into submission by Germany. The price of American vassalage was the dismantling of the empire after the war. And with the gradual dismantling of the empire after the war, there came a realization that Britain needed to reacquire its historic bonds with Europe. It was this that led to the eventual accession of the UK in the EEC.
Blunder or realignment?
This is the lengthy context that places "Brexit". As we have seen, Britain has almost always had some kind of relationship with Europe that has involved allegiances, often to defend strategic interests if not physical territory. It is true that for much of the nineteenth century, Britain's involvement with European affairs was often at arm's length. After the Treaty of Vienna after the war with Napoleon, Britain took little interest in the continent - the notable exception being the Crimean War. Before 1870, Germany didn't exist, and Britain's concern about France and Russia was about their global spheres of influence rather than in Europe.
But Britain today in 2018 has no empire, and, on leaving the EU in the antagonistic manner it is taking, can rely on no European powers to back up its strategic interests. In short, everything that it could do wrong, it is doing wrong. This leaves Britain in arguably the weakest strategic position it has known in living memory, a potential blunder of historic proportions. Parts of the government who pursue "Brexit" from an ideological position see it as taking Britain out of alignment with Europe, and into an alignment with the USA, both economically and politically. Seen in this light, these ideologues pursue their path as "righting a wrong" of Britain's accession to the EU, and putting Britain back into a position of virtual vassalage to the USA, like in 1941. The "empire" might be long gone, but there are those that still have a nostalgia for the days when totalitarian Europe was seen as the antagonist and the USA was seen as holding Britain together in the face of enemy attacks.
The Conservative Party can in many ways be called the "aristocratic party", as it was created (as the "Tories") in the late 17th century to defend aristocratic and monarchical interests. This deference towards the establishment is matched with a deference for wealth and power. Looking at England's history, we see that it was the Normans who became the establishment in 1066, and their successors have remained in place ever since. Indeed, many aristocratic families can trace their roots back nearly a thousand years for that very reason. This also may explain why some of them behave like an occupying power and treat their fellow citizens as "serfs".
They have remained in place thanks to a combination of guile and adaptability. War in 1914 came close to bringing down the whole show, while after declaring war on Germany in 1939 led by 1941 to Churchill having to accept American vassalage to keep Britain alive, at the price of the empire. With the collapse of the empire after the Second World War, a broken and defeated Europe saw in the USA a strong power, stronger than the doddering empires had even been at the height of their power. It would seem that the British establishment then became seduced by the power and wealth across the Atlantic, and many of them became "Libertarians".
It is this ideological postwar movement that explains "Brexit": a historic realignment of Britain away from the European "social democratic" model that had been adapted to Britain as the "postwar consensus. The ideological movements that first swept through Europe in the aftermath of the First World War are now reaching their evolutionary next phase; where once ideology was about dismantling empire, now Libertarian ideologues seek to dismantle the apparatus of the state itself. "Brexit" can be seen in this light as a "fire-sale" of the British nation-state, its assets prepared for dissolution to the highest bidder after a period of post-Brexit "national renewal".
The antagonistic approach of the government's relations with Europe today may well be part of that Libertarian agenda: to isolate Britain from Europe by making Europe seem as the enemy. That way, there will seem no other choice to the British people than to go along with the realignment to American vassalage (e.g. by eventual entrance into NAFTA).
Such a strategy can only see Britain's emasculation. As with what happened to Germany after the First World War, the same - in a contemporary manner - could happen to Britain.
Prior to William the Conqueror's victory over Harold (Godwinson), England had been ruled by an Anglo-Saxon nobility. For much of the previous two hundred years, England had been a victim to the privations of Viking raids, culminating in a thirty-year period of direct Viking rule, that had only ended around twenty years before the events of 1066.
The overall effect of this was that Anglo-Saxon England, prior to the Norman Conquest, had its geopolitical interests drawn from the influence of Scandinavia, with continental Europe to the south less of an immediate concern. This was evident even in the Battle Of Hastings, where the Anglo-Saxon army used battle tactics honed from centuries of fighting the Vikings, and the Norman army's use of cavalry in battle was something unfamiliar to the English; yet equally, the Normans were unfamiliar with the Anglo-Saxons' battle tactics as well. In this way, 1066 really was a clash of cultures: Anglo-Saxon England and Norman France.
The Norman Conquest thus totally reshaped England, both in terms of its society (where the Normans completely replaced the Anglo-Saxon nobility) and in terms of geopolitics, where Norman England's interests lay on consolidating on its holdings in France as well as in Britain. In this way, Norman England was a "continental power" in a way that Anglo-Saxon England never could be.
This historic link that the Normans had created between England and the continent became something that was built on over the centuries. The successors to the Normans, the "Angevins" (later called the "Plantagenets"), had even more extensive French lands, effectively creating a a joint "empire" across both sides of the channel. While these French lands declined in scope over time (with John "Lackland" being the most at fault), the existence of a still-residual English foothold in France by the time of Henry VIII's coming to power had a strong effect on Henry's perception of the country's strategic interests and alliances in Europe.
The Norman and Angevin legacy of English lands in France meant that an alliance against the French king was essential. This had resulted in alliances through marriage to the rising power of Spain to the south, and an accord with the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire to France's east. However, by the time of Elizabeth's reign, the Reformation and England's break from Rome had seen both of those alliances collapse, leaving England diplomatically-isolated from all of the major European powers. By the 17th century, the reign of the Stuarts saw a change of tack, and England sought an "understanding" with both Spain and France. As time progressed, some in England saw the Stuarts as seeming more inspired by the autocratic rulers of France and Spain, resulting the bloody interregnum of the "Commonwealth". While England's French domains were now a memory, its interests in European affairs didn't prevent it from intervening with mutual allies like the Germans to limit French designs, like during the War Of Spanish Succession. Outside of Europe, such as in North America and India, England's interests began to prosper, and when the Stuart dynasty was replaced by the House Of Hanover in the early 18th century, England's continental interests re-emerged once more in a different guise.
Like with the early Norman rulers of England, the first Hanoverians seemed at times more interested in their German lands than in Britain. These new "English" monarchs now having a sizable tract of territory in the heart of Europe also gave them a different perspective. While the later generations of the House of Hanover became increasingly "British", they all took German wives, with Victoria taking a German prince as her husband. Thus up to the last decade of the nineteenth century, England and Germany were closely-linked, with Victoria's daughter married to the German Emperor Frederick, and - for different reasons - both powers had a mutual antagonist in France. By contrast, Britain's alliance with France against Russia that existed during the Crimean War had been a rare piece of strategic joint-interest; an example of Britain's alignments with the different European powers to achieve its interests at any one moment in time. During that conflict with Russia, Britain's and France's aims had been temporarily aligned to protect Turkey. Afterwards, the former rivalry resumed.
The fact that, by 1914, Britain had been in alliance with both France and Russia - hitherto its two historic rivals - was a quirk of fate that was largely the fault of German Emperor Wilhelm II, Frederick's son (and Victoria's nephew), which has been expanded on elsewhere. In part, this was just another chapter in the merry-go-round of England's relations with Europe, that had ensured that, since 1066, England had rarely been without one ally or another on the continent.
And yet, it was true to say that by 1914, Britain's relations with Europe had become more semi-detached; its involvement in the Crimean War was Britain's last major European involvement, while its later alliance with France and Russia was more of global than European interest to them (and in fact, calling it an "alliance" on Britain's part was overstating the country's own view of its obligations to European affairs; Britain saw it more as an "understanding" that allowed it to feign a more ambiguous approach). Britain's strategic imperative was to its empire rather than continental allegiances. The physical barrier of the channel was still a strong psychological barrier, too. Today, the same "moral ambiguity" about its commitments has been seen in the current government's Brexit negotiations.
The system of European alliances collapsed with the fall of the different European monarchies at the end of the First World War. Henceforth, it would be "ideology" (either economic or political) that would be the main drive for strategic alliances. As the two main "victors" of the war, Britain and France sought to emasculate Germany (which planted the seeds for the next war) and also (failing) to destroy Bolshevik Russia. In doing so, both these strategic blunders set up the eventual collapse of both their empires in the future.
France and Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. With France overrun the following year, by 1941 Britain was forced into being kept alive by convoys from the USA. In this way, Britain effectively surrendered it strategic independence to the USA in 1941 to prevent it being starved into submission by Germany. The price of American vassalage was the dismantling of the empire after the war. And with the gradual dismantling of the empire after the war, there came a realization that Britain needed to reacquire its historic bonds with Europe. It was this that led to the eventual accession of the UK in the EEC.
Blunder or realignment?
This is the lengthy context that places "Brexit". As we have seen, Britain has almost always had some kind of relationship with Europe that has involved allegiances, often to defend strategic interests if not physical territory. It is true that for much of the nineteenth century, Britain's involvement with European affairs was often at arm's length. After the Treaty of Vienna after the war with Napoleon, Britain took little interest in the continent - the notable exception being the Crimean War. Before 1870, Germany didn't exist, and Britain's concern about France and Russia was about their global spheres of influence rather than in Europe.
But Britain today in 2018 has no empire, and, on leaving the EU in the antagonistic manner it is taking, can rely on no European powers to back up its strategic interests. In short, everything that it could do wrong, it is doing wrong. This leaves Britain in arguably the weakest strategic position it has known in living memory, a potential blunder of historic proportions. Parts of the government who pursue "Brexit" from an ideological position see it as taking Britain out of alignment with Europe, and into an alignment with the USA, both economically and politically. Seen in this light, these ideologues pursue their path as "righting a wrong" of Britain's accession to the EU, and putting Britain back into a position of virtual vassalage to the USA, like in 1941. The "empire" might be long gone, but there are those that still have a nostalgia for the days when totalitarian Europe was seen as the antagonist and the USA was seen as holding Britain together in the face of enemy attacks.
The Conservative Party can in many ways be called the "aristocratic party", as it was created (as the "Tories") in the late 17th century to defend aristocratic and monarchical interests. This deference towards the establishment is matched with a deference for wealth and power. Looking at England's history, we see that it was the Normans who became the establishment in 1066, and their successors have remained in place ever since. Indeed, many aristocratic families can trace their roots back nearly a thousand years for that very reason. This also may explain why some of them behave like an occupying power and treat their fellow citizens as "serfs".
They have remained in place thanks to a combination of guile and adaptability. War in 1914 came close to bringing down the whole show, while after declaring war on Germany in 1939 led by 1941 to Churchill having to accept American vassalage to keep Britain alive, at the price of the empire. With the collapse of the empire after the Second World War, a broken and defeated Europe saw in the USA a strong power, stronger than the doddering empires had even been at the height of their power. It would seem that the British establishment then became seduced by the power and wealth across the Atlantic, and many of them became "Libertarians".
It is this ideological postwar movement that explains "Brexit": a historic realignment of Britain away from the European "social democratic" model that had been adapted to Britain as the "postwar consensus. The ideological movements that first swept through Europe in the aftermath of the First World War are now reaching their evolutionary next phase; where once ideology was about dismantling empire, now Libertarian ideologues seek to dismantle the apparatus of the state itself. "Brexit" can be seen in this light as a "fire-sale" of the British nation-state, its assets prepared for dissolution to the highest bidder after a period of post-Brexit "national renewal".
The antagonistic approach of the government's relations with Europe today may well be part of that Libertarian agenda: to isolate Britain from Europe by making Europe seem as the enemy. That way, there will seem no other choice to the British people than to go along with the realignment to American vassalage (e.g. by eventual entrance into NAFTA).
Such a strategy can only see Britain's emasculation. As with what happened to Germany after the First World War, the same - in a contemporary manner - could happen to Britain.
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Pornography, narcissism and society
Like it or not, pornography is part of human society. As long as there has been a demand for it, it has existed in human society. The "morality" of this is always up for question, and is an ongoing argument.
An article about the recent surge in sexual violence in India talked about the role that pornography has in seeming to encourage sexual violence against women. In the case of India, its highly patriarchal, male-dominated society is far more conservative in behaviour and perspective than in the West; in some ways, shockingly so. Indian society - and other highly-traditional societies like it - seem to give free rein to male urges and behaviour. In a culture where arranged (as well as underage) marriage is the norm, and where many women are expected to follow a man's wishes almost without question, we see the attributes of a highly-narcissistic male-led society. On the one hand, sex before marriage is illegal in their traditional culture and interaction between genders can be highly-ritualized; on the other, women are expected to give in to men's personal whim. The result is what the psychologist Oliver James once called "Gender Rancour", leading to a male frustration at the contradictory messages - of both omnipotence and impotence - from their culture.
Then comes the question of pornography. In a culture where men are, in many cases, treated as a "superior being" to woman, the injection of modern pornography is, as the writer in the article says, a recipe for disaster. However, the issue is not necessarily with the pornography in itself, but with the already inherent malignant male narcissism in society.
Is pornography "immoral" and therefore a malign influence on society? To some extent, it could be argued so, but if the logical conclusion of this thinking is to criminalize the depiction of "immoral" acts, then where is the line drawn? The judgement then becomes a highly-subjective (and prejudicial) act. If sexual imagery is banned, then why not all violent imagery?
The argument was once put that violent films generated violent behaviour in children (which was one reason for film classification). But it is a question of degree. The problem is that a logical argument could be made that films and books that enact criminal behaviour encourage that same behaviour, and therefore should be banned. The obvious difficulty with that is it would result in a large portion of all film, TV and literature being banned. Likewise, when "prohibition" of alcohol was put into force in the USA, it was quickly shown to be as ineffective as it was nonsensical.
The author of the article mentioned above seems to suggest that banning pornography in India could be a possible solution. But as seen from the highly-narcissistic male-dominated society that India already is, the accessing of pornography by men in India seems far more to be a result of the problem, not the cause. Indian men seem to react in such an anti-social way towards women because of the ingrained culture of impunity; accessing pornography is more likely to make them violent towards women because their impulse control is already very low, thanks to the male narcissism ingrained in their culture. The real solution is to re-educate male society so that it is less narcissistic and anti-social towards women, but that would require decades of work. And few people in authority are going to suggest that their own culture is really to blame; much easier to blame pornography.
That same culture of male narcissism exists in parts of the West, although to a lower degree. It is true that Western culture is more "sexualised" than it was in the past, and this is something which this author wrote about several years ago. But the real question is about instilling behavioral controls. Going back to the example of violent films, there have been cases of mass murderers who have been said to have been "inspired" by watching ultra-violent films. As a result, there are always periodic "moral panics" about banning them, or other "extreme content". The British government has already cynically caved-in to such "moral panics" in the past, for the sake of a few electoral votes. Besides, they might well rationalise, who would argue the case in favour of them in court?
But the purpose of these films, and others like it, is to titillate, and to make a "moral" judgement over this is to miss the point. All forms of art are subjective, and some are bound to be "offensive" - with some being intentionally "offensive" for the purpose of titillation. The real issue, as said earlier is about behavioural controls. Any rational person should be able to look at a sexual or violent image without instantly wanting to imitate it. The problem is that if society itself makes people (or men in particular) more narcissistic, then those behavioural controls become less effective.
As we have seen, many highly-traditional cultures - such as in the example of India, above - create a society that instills malignant male narcissism. This is where behavioural controls among men are lower than in an "average" society. Likewise, there is good evidence that modern societies with high levels of both consumption and inequality (e.g. Russia, South Africa and in the "Anglosphere", in particular the USA, UK and Australia) also generate high levels of narcissistic behaviour. The correlation with this behaviour, violence towards women and pornography use is therefore not surprising.
While there may be calls to ban pornography in India in the light of the issues raised above, in traditional Islamic cultures, there seems to have long been an assumption that men are, by their nature, poorer at controlling their behavioural impulses than women. Going back to the issue of "Gender Rancour" talked about by Oliver James, it could be argued that the traditional form of highly-controlled gender separation seen in strict Islamic societies creates the same form of malignant male narcissism seemingly prevalent in India. On the one hand, men have more greater legal rights than women, but on the other, the many social boundaries that physically separate men from women are bound to create a form of sexual tension; the result is a vicious circle, where women feel obliged to cover their bodies from brooding male gaze, making male resentment even worse.
Given the sensitivity of the issue, there is alas little real data on hand to research this; the closest we have in the West is the (highly-sensitive) issue of the various "sex ring" scandals that have appeared in the UK, which implicate the highly-traditional (and often self-segregated) cultures of South Asian community. Unfortunately, the "malignant male narcissism" mentioned before is all too evident in the behaviour of the (usually Muslim) men involved in these cases. Given their limited ability to interact with women from their own community, it seems they have turned to more easily available (and persuadable) women from the "white working class", who they have then effectively used as sex slaves: acts of pathological narcissism.
To sum up, there is not enough clear evidence to say that pornography it itself causes narcissistic (and anti-social) behaviour. The above evidence shows that it is the malignant male narcissism that already exists in society - which may come from different sources - that plays a more important role in the anti-social behaviour shown by these men towards women. If men who use pornography are more likely to carry out anti-social behaviour towards women, it is much more likely because they already lack the behavioural controls, due to their culture, or other social factors. Their use of (or addiction to) pornography is more a result of their existing narcissism, not a cause of it.
An article about the recent surge in sexual violence in India talked about the role that pornography has in seeming to encourage sexual violence against women. In the case of India, its highly patriarchal, male-dominated society is far more conservative in behaviour and perspective than in the West; in some ways, shockingly so. Indian society - and other highly-traditional societies like it - seem to give free rein to male urges and behaviour. In a culture where arranged (as well as underage) marriage is the norm, and where many women are expected to follow a man's wishes almost without question, we see the attributes of a highly-narcissistic male-led society. On the one hand, sex before marriage is illegal in their traditional culture and interaction between genders can be highly-ritualized; on the other, women are expected to give in to men's personal whim. The result is what the psychologist Oliver James once called "Gender Rancour", leading to a male frustration at the contradictory messages - of both omnipotence and impotence - from their culture.
Then comes the question of pornography. In a culture where men are, in many cases, treated as a "superior being" to woman, the injection of modern pornography is, as the writer in the article says, a recipe for disaster. However, the issue is not necessarily with the pornography in itself, but with the already inherent malignant male narcissism in society.
Is pornography "immoral" and therefore a malign influence on society? To some extent, it could be argued so, but if the logical conclusion of this thinking is to criminalize the depiction of "immoral" acts, then where is the line drawn? The judgement then becomes a highly-subjective (and prejudicial) act. If sexual imagery is banned, then why not all violent imagery?
The argument was once put that violent films generated violent behaviour in children (which was one reason for film classification). But it is a question of degree. The problem is that a logical argument could be made that films and books that enact criminal behaviour encourage that same behaviour, and therefore should be banned. The obvious difficulty with that is it would result in a large portion of all film, TV and literature being banned. Likewise, when "prohibition" of alcohol was put into force in the USA, it was quickly shown to be as ineffective as it was nonsensical.
The author of the article mentioned above seems to suggest that banning pornography in India could be a possible solution. But as seen from the highly-narcissistic male-dominated society that India already is, the accessing of pornography by men in India seems far more to be a result of the problem, not the cause. Indian men seem to react in such an anti-social way towards women because of the ingrained culture of impunity; accessing pornography is more likely to make them violent towards women because their impulse control is already very low, thanks to the male narcissism ingrained in their culture. The real solution is to re-educate male society so that it is less narcissistic and anti-social towards women, but that would require decades of work. And few people in authority are going to suggest that their own culture is really to blame; much easier to blame pornography.
That same culture of male narcissism exists in parts of the West, although to a lower degree. It is true that Western culture is more "sexualised" than it was in the past, and this is something which this author wrote about several years ago. But the real question is about instilling behavioral controls. Going back to the example of violent films, there have been cases of mass murderers who have been said to have been "inspired" by watching ultra-violent films. As a result, there are always periodic "moral panics" about banning them, or other "extreme content". The British government has already cynically caved-in to such "moral panics" in the past, for the sake of a few electoral votes. Besides, they might well rationalise, who would argue the case in favour of them in court?
But the purpose of these films, and others like it, is to titillate, and to make a "moral" judgement over this is to miss the point. All forms of art are subjective, and some are bound to be "offensive" - with some being intentionally "offensive" for the purpose of titillation. The real issue, as said earlier is about behavioural controls. Any rational person should be able to look at a sexual or violent image without instantly wanting to imitate it. The problem is that if society itself makes people (or men in particular) more narcissistic, then those behavioural controls become less effective.
As we have seen, many highly-traditional cultures - such as in the example of India, above - create a society that instills malignant male narcissism. This is where behavioural controls among men are lower than in an "average" society. Likewise, there is good evidence that modern societies with high levels of both consumption and inequality (e.g. Russia, South Africa and in the "Anglosphere", in particular the USA, UK and Australia) also generate high levels of narcissistic behaviour. The correlation with this behaviour, violence towards women and pornography use is therefore not surprising.
While there may be calls to ban pornography in India in the light of the issues raised above, in traditional Islamic cultures, there seems to have long been an assumption that men are, by their nature, poorer at controlling their behavioural impulses than women. Going back to the issue of "Gender Rancour" talked about by Oliver James, it could be argued that the traditional form of highly-controlled gender separation seen in strict Islamic societies creates the same form of malignant male narcissism seemingly prevalent in India. On the one hand, men have more greater legal rights than women, but on the other, the many social boundaries that physically separate men from women are bound to create a form of sexual tension; the result is a vicious circle, where women feel obliged to cover their bodies from brooding male gaze, making male resentment even worse.
Given the sensitivity of the issue, there is alas little real data on hand to research this; the closest we have in the West is the (highly-sensitive) issue of the various "sex ring" scandals that have appeared in the UK, which implicate the highly-traditional (and often self-segregated) cultures of South Asian community. Unfortunately, the "malignant male narcissism" mentioned before is all too evident in the behaviour of the (usually Muslim) men involved in these cases. Given their limited ability to interact with women from their own community, it seems they have turned to more easily available (and persuadable) women from the "white working class", who they have then effectively used as sex slaves: acts of pathological narcissism.
To sum up, there is not enough clear evidence to say that pornography it itself causes narcissistic (and anti-social) behaviour. The above evidence shows that it is the malignant male narcissism that already exists in society - which may come from different sources - that plays a more important role in the anti-social behaviour shown by these men towards women. If men who use pornography are more likely to carry out anti-social behaviour towards women, it is much more likely because they already lack the behavioural controls, due to their culture, or other social factors. Their use of (or addiction to) pornography is more a result of their existing narcissism, not a cause of it.
Friday, August 3, 2018
Personality politics, the media and extremism: Brexit, Trump, and the rise of Populism in the 21st century
There have long been complaints that the world has been getting more superficial, and in the case of media (and its coverage of politics) the complaint seems to be well-deserved.
The problem boils down to issues like "ratings". In essence, its about making television "entertaining", and newspapers making their coverage popular. Political coverage therefore has to fit into the same lens in order to be accessible to the general public. Equally, however, the media operate in an environment shared by their political masters, meaning that overt criticism of some figures can lead to negative consequences for a media outlet (such as losing "access"); so a fine line is often taken by the fourth estate. Both these factors together explain how media coverage of politics has gradually become more superficial and less informative (and informed). The degree of that superficiality has only become truly clear with the rise of Trump in the USA and the cause of "Brexit" in the UK.
"Personality politics" has its roots in the political campaigns for people like Reagan in the USA, continued by the likes of Bill Clinton, which was then copied by Tony Blair. Following from Blair in the UK, we had David Cameron, who molded the Conservative Party in his own image.
The personality politics that these figures harnessed was about capturing the "centre ground". While much of Reagan's rhetoric was Libertarian in its outlook, in office he was often more pragmatic - and more "centrist" - than some people realized at the time. This explained why he won successive elections. Clinton and Blair achieved the same, using the same centrist platform, albeit coming from the other side of the political spectrum.
However, personality politics doesn't work in a vacuum, and it needs a media platform in order to thrive. That media platform has been intertwined with the political sphere for decades, as those in politics and the media often share the same background, educational ties and peer groups. In short, media coverage of politics occupied its own bubble: in the USA it was all about life inside "The Beltway", while in the UK it was all about Westminster gossip.
That superficial fascination with "gossip" was another facet of the entertainment factor in politics. As much of politics is dry and technical to the layman, it requires titillation and personality to bring it alive. This explains why the most famous politicians in Capitol Hill or Westminster were always the ones who were used acts of showmanship. In Ronald Reagan, a former actor, the USA had someone who understood this very well. Donald Trump today has his own exaggerated (but very successful) form of showmanship, clearly modeled on that of Reagan.
A wit might say that politics is the realm of the failed actor. The politicians that have been successful have all used these skills in order to gain the limelight; the politicians that naturally have these skills can rise all the more quickly, along with the movement attached to them.
In the UK, the rise of UKIP is matched with the rise of the politician, Nigel Farage. Here is a figure who has had far more media coverage over the years - going back twenty years - than has merited the popularity of his party. And yet, it was only after the financial crisis (more on that later) that he came to dominate the political sphere so disproportionately.
On one hand, politics became more "professional" during the tenure of Clinton and Blair, so that by the end of the 1990s, there seemed to exist a kind of "conventional wisdom" in society, supported by the media and the political class, that made some issues seem "taboo" to talk about. This was the flip side to centrism. The political class and the media seemed complicit to those on the ideological fringes in shutting-down debate, so that the number of issues that came to be reported on and discussed dwindled. Social issues like racism and homophobia were tackled by government for he first time in living memory, leaving those on the ideological fringe to claim that they themselves were becoming a "persecuted minority". Thus were sown the seeds of the far-right claiming that they were fighting for "free speech", against a complicit media and centrist agenda.
Changes in technology and the rise of internet media have also seen a hollowing-out of traditional news media, like local newspapers. National news agencies have also had to rethink their priorities in the face of falling revenues thanks to these structural shifts in the media industry. What this has meant is that the kind of in-depth reporting that was once common (think how "Watergate" became exposed) has become increasingly difficult to finance. This has meant tough choices, and the result is that the level of reportage and knowledge of issues is not as thorough or as deep as it used to be.
This explains, for example, how the media in the UK have been so poor at grasping the many issues surrounding the implications for Brexit for the country. Apart from how these issues are reported (i.e. the degree of superficiality already mentioned), and the issue of media slant (i.e. not wanting to go against "established opinion") is the issue of how well it is reported in the first place. Simply, the lack of technical knowledge apparent in those working for the media means that they often don't even know what are the right questions to ask to begin with, let alone whether they choose to ask them or not.
In this way, dissemination and lies by politicians pass by unchecked, assumed as fact by media figures who often simply don't know what they're talking about. There is the facade of media interrogation when politicians are interviewed or asked questions after their public appearances, but this lack of technical knowledge, along with the media's own reasons for not wanting to "upset" politicians (as this could damage future "access") means that the public only ever get a "version" of the truth. This is one reason why, if you want to understand a story in any real detail, you need to read it from several media sources, and find the balance somewhere between them all.
This is where "fake news" gets its fuel from, and why Donald Trump's press office talked of "alternative facts". In a time when the media has been under financial pressures due to the structural changes talked of earlier, this allows the more unscrupulous parts of the media (i.e. those with overt ideological agendas) to claim that there is no "real" truth, only many different forms of it. Because the media have been attacked as being too "establishment" for before seeming to favor "centrist" candidates, this leaves them vulnerable to attack from those who have an agenda against centrism i.e. Populists.
Populism and personality politics have found the perfect environment to gestate in since the financial crisis. While prior to the financial crisis, personality politics usually favored centrist politics (thanks to a like-minded media), since then it has been the Populists that have gone from strength to strength.
The rise of Populism
The media were as blindsided by the financial crisis as the politicians were. In some ways, the financial crisis saw the end of unchallenged rule of "centrism". With the ideological walls of the establishment being shook by the financial crisis (let's not forget that only government bailouts prevented a second "Great Depression"), it forced the media to reassess the fluid political landscape. In the USA, the rise of the "TEA Party", a hard-right faction of the Republicans, matched the concurrent rise of UKIP in the UK, itself effectively a hard-right faction of the Conservative Party.
While the TEA Party lacked one unifying, charismatic figure (with several personalities vying for preeminence), UKIP had Nigel Farage. In the years after the financial crisis, Farage's brand of British Populism (which like the TEA Party, had a Libertarian agenda) captured the media's attention. With Westminster seeming to represent all that was tired and out-of-touch since the financial crisis, most of the political "excitement" seemed to come from Farage.
The media superficiality during the long period of centrist dominance before the financial crisis, along with earlier accusations of bias of "political correctness", meant that the pendulum swung the other way: disproportionate (and flattering) coverage was then given to Farage, allowing him to be seen as someone on the side of "the people" against the "the establishment". His background in The City was something that was easily brushed under the carpet. Meanwhile, those media outlets that did criticize his agenda were labelled as part of "the establishment" themselves, and so in the now-antagonistic atmosphere after the financial crisis, they couldn't win either way.
The only person in the political establishment in the UK that matched this new form of "personality politics" was Boris Johnson. After being Mayor of London for eight years, he had become the "king across the water" as far as David Cameron was concerned. Conveniently entering parliament in 2015 during his last year of tenure as London Mayor, he was able to use his position in Westminster as well as his media coverage to great effect during the EU referendum in 2016. Along with Farage, these two figures were largely responsible for the success of the "leave" campaign - the most obvious indication of the success of Populist "personality politics" over a centrist establishment.
And of course, at the same time across in the USA, we had the rise of Donald Trump. While the EU referendum was in full flow in the UK, the USA was in the presidential primaries, which allowed Trump to take advantage of the same anti-establishment agenda. Using the same skepticism that the "leave" campaign had towards "experts", Trump attacked "fake news" by the established media. And now with both "Brexit" as an unstoppable force, and Trump as an immovable object, we've entered an age when media outlets can be called "enemies of the people", and it all seem completely normal.
Populist "personality politics" could only have come to prominence due to the financial crisis, and the media's close connection with the political establishment. This allowed the media to be tarnished with the label of complicity. The superficiality of the media that gradually seeped into its culture led to its own decline, leaving it completely exposed, as the political establishment was, when the financial crisis came along. Since then, the political culture had become dominated by the rhetoric of Populism, supported by a media culture that has either lost its way, or is part of the same corrupt bargain.
As Populists generate greater "ratings", this means they get more coverage. It might make for good entertainment, but it leaves the media destroying its own integrity, to help the agenda of people who only see them as their puppets.
The problem boils down to issues like "ratings". In essence, its about making television "entertaining", and newspapers making their coverage popular. Political coverage therefore has to fit into the same lens in order to be accessible to the general public. Equally, however, the media operate in an environment shared by their political masters, meaning that overt criticism of some figures can lead to negative consequences for a media outlet (such as losing "access"); so a fine line is often taken by the fourth estate. Both these factors together explain how media coverage of politics has gradually become more superficial and less informative (and informed). The degree of that superficiality has only become truly clear with the rise of Trump in the USA and the cause of "Brexit" in the UK.
"Personality politics" has its roots in the political campaigns for people like Reagan in the USA, continued by the likes of Bill Clinton, which was then copied by Tony Blair. Following from Blair in the UK, we had David Cameron, who molded the Conservative Party in his own image.
The personality politics that these figures harnessed was about capturing the "centre ground". While much of Reagan's rhetoric was Libertarian in its outlook, in office he was often more pragmatic - and more "centrist" - than some people realized at the time. This explained why he won successive elections. Clinton and Blair achieved the same, using the same centrist platform, albeit coming from the other side of the political spectrum.
However, personality politics doesn't work in a vacuum, and it needs a media platform in order to thrive. That media platform has been intertwined with the political sphere for decades, as those in politics and the media often share the same background, educational ties and peer groups. In short, media coverage of politics occupied its own bubble: in the USA it was all about life inside "The Beltway", while in the UK it was all about Westminster gossip.
That superficial fascination with "gossip" was another facet of the entertainment factor in politics. As much of politics is dry and technical to the layman, it requires titillation and personality to bring it alive. This explains why the most famous politicians in Capitol Hill or Westminster were always the ones who were used acts of showmanship. In Ronald Reagan, a former actor, the USA had someone who understood this very well. Donald Trump today has his own exaggerated (but very successful) form of showmanship, clearly modeled on that of Reagan.
A wit might say that politics is the realm of the failed actor. The politicians that have been successful have all used these skills in order to gain the limelight; the politicians that naturally have these skills can rise all the more quickly, along with the movement attached to them.
In the UK, the rise of UKIP is matched with the rise of the politician, Nigel Farage. Here is a figure who has had far more media coverage over the years - going back twenty years - than has merited the popularity of his party. And yet, it was only after the financial crisis (more on that later) that he came to dominate the political sphere so disproportionately.
On one hand, politics became more "professional" during the tenure of Clinton and Blair, so that by the end of the 1990s, there seemed to exist a kind of "conventional wisdom" in society, supported by the media and the political class, that made some issues seem "taboo" to talk about. This was the flip side to centrism. The political class and the media seemed complicit to those on the ideological fringes in shutting-down debate, so that the number of issues that came to be reported on and discussed dwindled. Social issues like racism and homophobia were tackled by government for he first time in living memory, leaving those on the ideological fringe to claim that they themselves were becoming a "persecuted minority". Thus were sown the seeds of the far-right claiming that they were fighting for "free speech", against a complicit media and centrist agenda.
Changes in technology and the rise of internet media have also seen a hollowing-out of traditional news media, like local newspapers. National news agencies have also had to rethink their priorities in the face of falling revenues thanks to these structural shifts in the media industry. What this has meant is that the kind of in-depth reporting that was once common (think how "Watergate" became exposed) has become increasingly difficult to finance. This has meant tough choices, and the result is that the level of reportage and knowledge of issues is not as thorough or as deep as it used to be.
This explains, for example, how the media in the UK have been so poor at grasping the many issues surrounding the implications for Brexit for the country. Apart from how these issues are reported (i.e. the degree of superficiality already mentioned), and the issue of media slant (i.e. not wanting to go against "established opinion") is the issue of how well it is reported in the first place. Simply, the lack of technical knowledge apparent in those working for the media means that they often don't even know what are the right questions to ask to begin with, let alone whether they choose to ask them or not.
In this way, dissemination and lies by politicians pass by unchecked, assumed as fact by media figures who often simply don't know what they're talking about. There is the facade of media interrogation when politicians are interviewed or asked questions after their public appearances, but this lack of technical knowledge, along with the media's own reasons for not wanting to "upset" politicians (as this could damage future "access") means that the public only ever get a "version" of the truth. This is one reason why, if you want to understand a story in any real detail, you need to read it from several media sources, and find the balance somewhere between them all.
This is where "fake news" gets its fuel from, and why Donald Trump's press office talked of "alternative facts". In a time when the media has been under financial pressures due to the structural changes talked of earlier, this allows the more unscrupulous parts of the media (i.e. those with overt ideological agendas) to claim that there is no "real" truth, only many different forms of it. Because the media have been attacked as being too "establishment" for before seeming to favor "centrist" candidates, this leaves them vulnerable to attack from those who have an agenda against centrism i.e. Populists.
Populism and personality politics have found the perfect environment to gestate in since the financial crisis. While prior to the financial crisis, personality politics usually favored centrist politics (thanks to a like-minded media), since then it has been the Populists that have gone from strength to strength.
The rise of Populism
The media were as blindsided by the financial crisis as the politicians were. In some ways, the financial crisis saw the end of unchallenged rule of "centrism". With the ideological walls of the establishment being shook by the financial crisis (let's not forget that only government bailouts prevented a second "Great Depression"), it forced the media to reassess the fluid political landscape. In the USA, the rise of the "TEA Party", a hard-right faction of the Republicans, matched the concurrent rise of UKIP in the UK, itself effectively a hard-right faction of the Conservative Party.
While the TEA Party lacked one unifying, charismatic figure (with several personalities vying for preeminence), UKIP had Nigel Farage. In the years after the financial crisis, Farage's brand of British Populism (which like the TEA Party, had a Libertarian agenda) captured the media's attention. With Westminster seeming to represent all that was tired and out-of-touch since the financial crisis, most of the political "excitement" seemed to come from Farage.
The media superficiality during the long period of centrist dominance before the financial crisis, along with earlier accusations of bias of "political correctness", meant that the pendulum swung the other way: disproportionate (and flattering) coverage was then given to Farage, allowing him to be seen as someone on the side of "the people" against the "the establishment". His background in The City was something that was easily brushed under the carpet. Meanwhile, those media outlets that did criticize his agenda were labelled as part of "the establishment" themselves, and so in the now-antagonistic atmosphere after the financial crisis, they couldn't win either way.
The only person in the political establishment in the UK that matched this new form of "personality politics" was Boris Johnson. After being Mayor of London for eight years, he had become the "king across the water" as far as David Cameron was concerned. Conveniently entering parliament in 2015 during his last year of tenure as London Mayor, he was able to use his position in Westminster as well as his media coverage to great effect during the EU referendum in 2016. Along with Farage, these two figures were largely responsible for the success of the "leave" campaign - the most obvious indication of the success of Populist "personality politics" over a centrist establishment.
And of course, at the same time across in the USA, we had the rise of Donald Trump. While the EU referendum was in full flow in the UK, the USA was in the presidential primaries, which allowed Trump to take advantage of the same anti-establishment agenda. Using the same skepticism that the "leave" campaign had towards "experts", Trump attacked "fake news" by the established media. And now with both "Brexit" as an unstoppable force, and Trump as an immovable object, we've entered an age when media outlets can be called "enemies of the people", and it all seem completely normal.
Populist "personality politics" could only have come to prominence due to the financial crisis, and the media's close connection with the political establishment. This allowed the media to be tarnished with the label of complicity. The superficiality of the media that gradually seeped into its culture led to its own decline, leaving it completely exposed, as the political establishment was, when the financial crisis came along. Since then, the political culture had become dominated by the rhetoric of Populism, supported by a media culture that has either lost its way, or is part of the same corrupt bargain.
As Populists generate greater "ratings", this means they get more coverage. It might make for good entertainment, but it leaves the media destroying its own integrity, to help the agenda of people who only see them as their puppets.
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Brexit Britain: the psychology (and pathology) of "Leavers" and "Remainers"
Brexit is one of those topics that people in Britain don't mention in polite conversation. Unless you know you're in safe, like-minded company it's better to avoid it for the sake of your sanity.
This observation makes for a worrying absence in the national discourse. While Brexit is reported in the media, the slant that comes with it is always dependent on which part of the media is reporting on it: those in the media that support Brexit; those against; and those (like the BBC) who painfully sit on the fence, which helps only the status quo i.e. the incumbent Brexit-supporting government. Much of the British media have long lost the ability to be considered a reliable source of information when in comes to matters on the EU (and much else), having their own agendas to plug.
As a result, many people switched off from this discourse a long time ago, tiring of hearing the same repeated mantras by both sides. And who can blame them? Brexit is "boring" for the average person who lacks the time and inclination to follow the technical details. The problem with this, though, is that this indifference from much of the population plays into the hands of those guiding events, leading to a discourse that becomes static, like a record player on repeat. All the evidence shows that Britain has become "stuck" in a frozen political discourse, where all other issues outside of Brexit have become either forgotten, or somehow shoehorned into that narrative.
This "Year Zero" atmosphere of permanent revolution makes Britain seem an unreal place, where the natural laws of physics no longer seem to apply. "Magical thinking" abounds in government on one hand, while blinkered, autocratic talk of "the will of the people" answers any talk of compromise on the other.
Meanwhile, those "remainers" trying to make others see the folly of what the government is doing, and making people change their minds before it's too late, are in a pathology of their own (this author included...?); there are those (mostly younger voters) who are trying to channel their anger at what is happening into something productive, while others seem to have fallen into a kind of forlorn despair about it all. Then there are the those who seem to have given up completely on Britain - stuck in a fog of fatalism - and are either making plans to escape (for the sake of their sanity), or those incapable to doing so, and have psychologically surrendered to the futility of it all, ready to embrace (and prepare for) whatever comes. It has been said that the rates of depression and PTSD in the general population have increased noticeably since the referendum; one can see where the evidence for this comes from if we look at the psychology of "remainers".
Let's look closer at the pathology of both these sides.
Cheery ignorance/ Defensive hostility
"Leavers" seem to have a psychology of their own.
The phrase "swivel-eyed loons" was a famous moniker attached to UKIP voters several years ago, but this "wilder" right-wing segment of the electorate was always around, long before UKIP came to prominence.
Those of the (typically) older generation who adhere to this perspective usually can be described as "nostalgia" obsessives. The nostalgia they have is, at its base level, one for the era of the British Empire. In other words, these people are misty-eyed nationalists who secretly despise how Britain has become "stained" with the races from the former colonies, how women have become full-time workers and have muddled once-clear gender roles, and how homosexuality has become legitimized in wider society. Their distrust for the EU comes from their historical and cultural antipathy to all things "foreign" and all things continental. And, of course, there is "the war".
Their desire to leave the EU comes with a nostalgia for the days when things were simpler, thus leading to a pithy dismissing of the very practical dangers of leaving the EU with "no deal". As they see it, Britain would be more than capable of managing (even thriving) on its own, because that's what happened during the Second World War and so on. The willful ignorance of how completely different Britain is today compared to 1940 is necessary for this astonishing state of delusion. In short, to have this state of mind is to be completely in denial about the reality of Britain and the world in the 21st century.
Meanwhile, apart from those old-fashioned "imperialists" in a pathological state of nostalgia, there are those who are closer to the Libertarian school of thought. These are ideologues who see Brexit not through the lens of nostalgia for the British Empire, but as a method to radically reshape Britain into something unrecognizable. While "imperialists" look back regressively to the past glories of empire, the Libertarian vision is more revolutionary and - superficially, at least - forward-thinking. The problem is that this "vision" is as fantastical as that of the "nostalgics", just in a different way. While some mock the Libertarian post-Brexit vision as "Empire 2.0", a more accurate description would be to to mock it as simply wanting to turn Britain into a US economic satellite; from EU "vassalage" to American "vassalage".
The government's strategy is heavily influenced by outside actors like the IEA and the Legatum Institute, and held hostage by the same hard-right economic agenda of Jacob Rees-Mogg's ERG grouping in parliament. The Libertarian vision they all share is to remake Britain as an socio-economic clone of the USA, and while they claim this would make the country freer than ever before, the reality would be very different: it is about removing wholesale the human rights that many Britons take for granted.
Apart from a hidden desire by many of these people to align Britain with NAFTA, all their talk of "five-star" FTAs outside of the EU is pure fantasy, given the plethora of economic and legal reasons other countries would have against going along with this. At the same time, more "magical thinking" is required to understand how the logistics with more far-flung countries across the ocean are meant to make it more economic than trading freely with the EU as Britain does currently as a member-state. Outside the EU, Britain's only strategic option would then to be closely economically-aligned with the USA, as many of the Libertarians secretly desire.
The authoritarian "defensive hostility" raises its head when their world-view is challenged in the calm light of reason. The nostalgic "imperialists" ignorance stems from being out-of-touch and living in their own historical fantasy world; the Libertarians' ignorance stems from a zealot's ideology blinding them the reality of how the world works, coupled with an arrogance in their own ideas.
Those then raising perfectly reasonable objections to this are seen in the light of Brexiters' own skewed interpretation of the world. Doubters are "doing down the country" while equally, in the minds of Brexiters, they are also siding with the "other side"(i.e. the EU). This hostility and divisiveness in the face of opposition is the talk of those who are unable to defend their ideas rationally, and have to resort to emotion and belief as the core tenets to hold their world-view together. The desire to then close down and ignore talk that contradicts their world-view betrays their innate insecurity, from which their desire to believe in a fantastical vision, unmolested from reality, may come.
In short, the psychology of "leavers" is the one of pathological insecurity. Their desire to either a) recreate the British Empire, or b) transform Britain through ideological revolution, mirrors the pathology of the perpetual "loser" who needs to prove his manhood through actions of bravado: the archetypal "power fantasy". This explains the nostalgia for the glories of the past by some, and the ideological obsession by others with copying the economic model of the American giant across the sea. At the same time, that chronic insecurity manifests itself as autocratic desires and hostile designs on those perceived as being a threat to that "vision". It is this unpleasant pathology that can be seen from Britain's government.
Anger/ Despair/ Fatalism - Remainers' "five stages of grief"
Turning to "remainers", the psychology of this portion of the electorate seems to be in various stages of trauma. As will be expanded on below, this trauma could be seen as a variation on the "five stages of grief".
As mentioned earlier, there is a mixture of anger, despair and fatalism evident. Given that for those "remainers" under fifty, they have no living memory of Britain outside of the EU (or EEC), having rights they have always taken for granted (e.g. the right to freely travel, live and work across Europe) removed from them is bound to be difficult to accept. Especially, given that this comes with all the other uncertainty yet to come thanks to government mismanagement of the whole process (and as Britain has not yet even left!), the sense of bewilderment and disorientation is unsurprising.
The sense of anger is not hard to fathom. The circumstances surrounding the EU referendum were complex, where the plebiscite only came about due to a conflation of David Cameron's whim to decide an internal party issue (Europe) and the exploitation by UKIP of the political landscape after 2010. Europe was a peripheral issue, until it was used as an excuse for the various problems that Britain's governments have inflicted on the country over the years.
The anger since the referendum seems to stems from a combination of loss (of rights, of control), and a feeling of injustice. The injustice many "remainers" seem to feel now appears a role-reversal of the "injustice" that many "leavers" felt prior to the referendum. If the sense of injustice felt by "leavers" was well-placed (or misdirected) is a moot point now; the sense of injustice felt by "remainers" now is real and is based on how the referendum was hijacked by narrow partisan interests (such as the Libertarians), to the detriment of social cohesion. The country is divided into two "cultures", with the opinions of "remainers" feeling ignored and belittled.
The anger has been channeled by some into campaigns, such as by political parties and wider social movements. The problem is that it all seems for nothing. There is no chance of the result being reversed or, even, of some sort of compromise (i.e. a "soft" Brexit). That creates the sense that the country is heading for "no deal", regardless of the cost to the country.
In this situation, if the futility of channeling that anger into campaigning becomes overwhelming, what is the psychological response likely to be? Mirroring the "five stages of grief" mentioned before, some have moved on from anger to "bargaining": after trying initially to turn over the result of the referendum, they have turned to seeking a compromise, where they have tried to work with those ideologues in charge to find a form of "Brexit" that at least takes into account the close nature of the result.
Alas, those attempts at finding a reasonable solution have equally been dashed at every turn, as the hard-right has been able to hijack events in government and the votes in parliament. Those seeking a compromise, after seeing that their anger has been unproductive, sought a rational answer, forgetting that they are against forces that are inherently unreasonable and irrational. So those efforts have equally been in vain.
After anger and "bargaining", we can see the onset of despair and depression in many "remainers". All their efforts are futile; nothing can be done to reverse the referendum, and nothing can be done to lessen the blow. They can see that the country is being led into a path of seeming self-destruction, with the days counting down to "Brexit day" seeming more like the countdown to an oncoming apocalypse.
What can they do? Nothing it seems. Eventually, the fatalism of this leads to one conclusion: to prepare as best they can. If the possibility is there, "remainers" would be wise to make plans to emigrate, at least until things become clearer, and wait for the time when the political situation is more favorable to rational thought. If that option is unavailable, then the best thing would be to prepare as best they can: acceptance of events being out of their hands.
The difficulty here is the sheer uncertainty; no-one as yet knows what the situation will be like, as things are still undecided. While a "no deal" Brexit seems very likely - and many companies are trying to make some kind of plan for this eventuality - the fact that they hope for some kind of more practical outcome tempers those preparations with hope as well as distraction. Also, how can one sensibly prepare for an unknown outcome? It is the uncertainty that breeds yet more anger, daresay leading some back into the whole cycle of "trauma" yet again.
Therefore, we see that on one hand we have events being controlled by "leavers" who are irrational and delusional; and on the other hand we have "remainers", who are at the mercy of events, psychologically traumatized and trying vainly to understand and deal with an unknowable and destructive situation.
This observation makes for a worrying absence in the national discourse. While Brexit is reported in the media, the slant that comes with it is always dependent on which part of the media is reporting on it: those in the media that support Brexit; those against; and those (like the BBC) who painfully sit on the fence, which helps only the status quo i.e. the incumbent Brexit-supporting government. Much of the British media have long lost the ability to be considered a reliable source of information when in comes to matters on the EU (and much else), having their own agendas to plug.
As a result, many people switched off from this discourse a long time ago, tiring of hearing the same repeated mantras by both sides. And who can blame them? Brexit is "boring" for the average person who lacks the time and inclination to follow the technical details. The problem with this, though, is that this indifference from much of the population plays into the hands of those guiding events, leading to a discourse that becomes static, like a record player on repeat. All the evidence shows that Britain has become "stuck" in a frozen political discourse, where all other issues outside of Brexit have become either forgotten, or somehow shoehorned into that narrative.
This "Year Zero" atmosphere of permanent revolution makes Britain seem an unreal place, where the natural laws of physics no longer seem to apply. "Magical thinking" abounds in government on one hand, while blinkered, autocratic talk of "the will of the people" answers any talk of compromise on the other.
Meanwhile, those "remainers" trying to make others see the folly of what the government is doing, and making people change their minds before it's too late, are in a pathology of their own (this author included...?); there are those (mostly younger voters) who are trying to channel their anger at what is happening into something productive, while others seem to have fallen into a kind of forlorn despair about it all. Then there are the those who seem to have given up completely on Britain - stuck in a fog of fatalism - and are either making plans to escape (for the sake of their sanity), or those incapable to doing so, and have psychologically surrendered to the futility of it all, ready to embrace (and prepare for) whatever comes. It has been said that the rates of depression and PTSD in the general population have increased noticeably since the referendum; one can see where the evidence for this comes from if we look at the psychology of "remainers".
Let's look closer at the pathology of both these sides.
Cheery ignorance/ Defensive hostility
"Leavers" seem to have a psychology of their own.
The phrase "swivel-eyed loons" was a famous moniker attached to UKIP voters several years ago, but this "wilder" right-wing segment of the electorate was always around, long before UKIP came to prominence.
Those of the (typically) older generation who adhere to this perspective usually can be described as "nostalgia" obsessives. The nostalgia they have is, at its base level, one for the era of the British Empire. In other words, these people are misty-eyed nationalists who secretly despise how Britain has become "stained" with the races from the former colonies, how women have become full-time workers and have muddled once-clear gender roles, and how homosexuality has become legitimized in wider society. Their distrust for the EU comes from their historical and cultural antipathy to all things "foreign" and all things continental. And, of course, there is "the war".
Their desire to leave the EU comes with a nostalgia for the days when things were simpler, thus leading to a pithy dismissing of the very practical dangers of leaving the EU with "no deal". As they see it, Britain would be more than capable of managing (even thriving) on its own, because that's what happened during the Second World War and so on. The willful ignorance of how completely different Britain is today compared to 1940 is necessary for this astonishing state of delusion. In short, to have this state of mind is to be completely in denial about the reality of Britain and the world in the 21st century.
Meanwhile, apart from those old-fashioned "imperialists" in a pathological state of nostalgia, there are those who are closer to the Libertarian school of thought. These are ideologues who see Brexit not through the lens of nostalgia for the British Empire, but as a method to radically reshape Britain into something unrecognizable. While "imperialists" look back regressively to the past glories of empire, the Libertarian vision is more revolutionary and - superficially, at least - forward-thinking. The problem is that this "vision" is as fantastical as that of the "nostalgics", just in a different way. While some mock the Libertarian post-Brexit vision as "Empire 2.0", a more accurate description would be to to mock it as simply wanting to turn Britain into a US economic satellite; from EU "vassalage" to American "vassalage".
The government's strategy is heavily influenced by outside actors like the IEA and the Legatum Institute, and held hostage by the same hard-right economic agenda of Jacob Rees-Mogg's ERG grouping in parliament. The Libertarian vision they all share is to remake Britain as an socio-economic clone of the USA, and while they claim this would make the country freer than ever before, the reality would be very different: it is about removing wholesale the human rights that many Britons take for granted.
Apart from a hidden desire by many of these people to align Britain with NAFTA, all their talk of "five-star" FTAs outside of the EU is pure fantasy, given the plethora of economic and legal reasons other countries would have against going along with this. At the same time, more "magical thinking" is required to understand how the logistics with more far-flung countries across the ocean are meant to make it more economic than trading freely with the EU as Britain does currently as a member-state. Outside the EU, Britain's only strategic option would then to be closely economically-aligned with the USA, as many of the Libertarians secretly desire.
The authoritarian "defensive hostility" raises its head when their world-view is challenged in the calm light of reason. The nostalgic "imperialists" ignorance stems from being out-of-touch and living in their own historical fantasy world; the Libertarians' ignorance stems from a zealot's ideology blinding them the reality of how the world works, coupled with an arrogance in their own ideas.
Those then raising perfectly reasonable objections to this are seen in the light of Brexiters' own skewed interpretation of the world. Doubters are "doing down the country" while equally, in the minds of Brexiters, they are also siding with the "other side"(i.e. the EU). This hostility and divisiveness in the face of opposition is the talk of those who are unable to defend their ideas rationally, and have to resort to emotion and belief as the core tenets to hold their world-view together. The desire to then close down and ignore talk that contradicts their world-view betrays their innate insecurity, from which their desire to believe in a fantastical vision, unmolested from reality, may come.
In short, the psychology of "leavers" is the one of pathological insecurity. Their desire to either a) recreate the British Empire, or b) transform Britain through ideological revolution, mirrors the pathology of the perpetual "loser" who needs to prove his manhood through actions of bravado: the archetypal "power fantasy". This explains the nostalgia for the glories of the past by some, and the ideological obsession by others with copying the economic model of the American giant across the sea. At the same time, that chronic insecurity manifests itself as autocratic desires and hostile designs on those perceived as being a threat to that "vision". It is this unpleasant pathology that can be seen from Britain's government.
Anger/ Despair/ Fatalism - Remainers' "five stages of grief"
Turning to "remainers", the psychology of this portion of the electorate seems to be in various stages of trauma. As will be expanded on below, this trauma could be seen as a variation on the "five stages of grief".
As mentioned earlier, there is a mixture of anger, despair and fatalism evident. Given that for those "remainers" under fifty, they have no living memory of Britain outside of the EU (or EEC), having rights they have always taken for granted (e.g. the right to freely travel, live and work across Europe) removed from them is bound to be difficult to accept. Especially, given that this comes with all the other uncertainty yet to come thanks to government mismanagement of the whole process (and as Britain has not yet even left!), the sense of bewilderment and disorientation is unsurprising.
The sense of anger is not hard to fathom. The circumstances surrounding the EU referendum were complex, where the plebiscite only came about due to a conflation of David Cameron's whim to decide an internal party issue (Europe) and the exploitation by UKIP of the political landscape after 2010. Europe was a peripheral issue, until it was used as an excuse for the various problems that Britain's governments have inflicted on the country over the years.
The anger since the referendum seems to stems from a combination of loss (of rights, of control), and a feeling of injustice. The injustice many "remainers" seem to feel now appears a role-reversal of the "injustice" that many "leavers" felt prior to the referendum. If the sense of injustice felt by "leavers" was well-placed (or misdirected) is a moot point now; the sense of injustice felt by "remainers" now is real and is based on how the referendum was hijacked by narrow partisan interests (such as the Libertarians), to the detriment of social cohesion. The country is divided into two "cultures", with the opinions of "remainers" feeling ignored and belittled.
The anger has been channeled by some into campaigns, such as by political parties and wider social movements. The problem is that it all seems for nothing. There is no chance of the result being reversed or, even, of some sort of compromise (i.e. a "soft" Brexit). That creates the sense that the country is heading for "no deal", regardless of the cost to the country.
In this situation, if the futility of channeling that anger into campaigning becomes overwhelming, what is the psychological response likely to be? Mirroring the "five stages of grief" mentioned before, some have moved on from anger to "bargaining": after trying initially to turn over the result of the referendum, they have turned to seeking a compromise, where they have tried to work with those ideologues in charge to find a form of "Brexit" that at least takes into account the close nature of the result.
Alas, those attempts at finding a reasonable solution have equally been dashed at every turn, as the hard-right has been able to hijack events in government and the votes in parliament. Those seeking a compromise, after seeing that their anger has been unproductive, sought a rational answer, forgetting that they are against forces that are inherently unreasonable and irrational. So those efforts have equally been in vain.
After anger and "bargaining", we can see the onset of despair and depression in many "remainers". All their efforts are futile; nothing can be done to reverse the referendum, and nothing can be done to lessen the blow. They can see that the country is being led into a path of seeming self-destruction, with the days counting down to "Brexit day" seeming more like the countdown to an oncoming apocalypse.
What can they do? Nothing it seems. Eventually, the fatalism of this leads to one conclusion: to prepare as best they can. If the possibility is there, "remainers" would be wise to make plans to emigrate, at least until things become clearer, and wait for the time when the political situation is more favorable to rational thought. If that option is unavailable, then the best thing would be to prepare as best they can: acceptance of events being out of their hands.
The difficulty here is the sheer uncertainty; no-one as yet knows what the situation will be like, as things are still undecided. While a "no deal" Brexit seems very likely - and many companies are trying to make some kind of plan for this eventuality - the fact that they hope for some kind of more practical outcome tempers those preparations with hope as well as distraction. Also, how can one sensibly prepare for an unknown outcome? It is the uncertainty that breeds yet more anger, daresay leading some back into the whole cycle of "trauma" yet again.
Therefore, we see that on one hand we have events being controlled by "leavers" who are irrational and delusional; and on the other hand we have "remainers", who are at the mercy of events, psychologically traumatized and trying vainly to understand and deal with an unknowable and destructive situation.
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