There is something deeply unsettling about the attitude
of many right-wingers to their recent democratic victories in Britain. I have
heard or seen things like:
“You’ve lost, get over it!”
Or
“There’s nothing quite like salty liberal tears”
Victory,
for them, seems to mean gloating and triumphalism. The joy of winning is in
their enemies’ pain, not in getting something else that they wanted, such as
prosperity, health, freedom and other trappings of civilisation. For the Right,
these weren’t conflicts of ideas, but of tribes. When a Conservative politician
lied on national television in support of the cause, it wasn’t a disgrace; it
was a moment to be celebrated because the Right won a victory in getting away
with it. The all-out war is no longer with hostile foreign powers such as
Russia. They are now allies in undermining the rules and culture of our
country. The war is with the well-meaning people who actually care about what
happens to the country.
I
have seen this sort of devil-may-care attitude before. We will all, nowadays,
have seen it online. Trolls excuse every offensive or inaccurate statement they
make by claiming that they’re just playing devil’s advocate. But after a few
occasions, that word ‘playing’ no longer seems appropriate. They are the devil’s
advocate, play or not. Whatever the intention, the effect is to sow dissent and
mistrust, and waste the time of people foolish and anxious enough about
whatever they’re saying to bother to rebut it.
To ‘play’ devil’s
advocate is to abdicate from the responsibility of thinking for yourself;
putting forward abusive, ignorant or fallacious opinions is excusable to an
extent because everyone is only human and we can all make mistakes or miss some
vital bit of information. But adopting it as a habit is (yes, I’m going to say
the p-word) a privilege only people who are already safe and secure can afford.
Other people are already forced to think through the rights and wrongs of a
situation, and if you have a say in how the country is run, you should already
have thought those things through as well.
But even in a past
life, not quite pre-internet, I’ve seen this behaviour before. It’s how the
bullies at school behaved. Bullying was about engendering misery in others to
make up for weakness of character in oneself. Bullies were tribal: children had
to show fealty to the group by providing entertainment, which meant abasing
themselves or others. Most chose to try to humiliate the ‘easy’ targets. That
was people like me: academically able and socially awkward. The more able, the
bigger the victory; the more socially awkward, the easier the victory.
That is echoed in our
politics. The more well-argued and logically sound the left-wing argument (i.e
the non-Conservative, non-quitling side of debate), the greater their joy in ‘winning’
whatever discussion is taking place. The more right your opponent, the greater
your victory when you win. It’s about your strength, not truth. And that’s the
repetitive refrain throughout all of this: it’s people feeling weak and
insecure compensating through belonging to a strong group. It’s an entirely
different axis of human interaction from the one that many left-wingers are
trying to engage in, which is a conflict of ideas in which correct vanquishes
incorrect. And when the two axes are both on display, one intellectual and the
other emotional and anti-intellectual, viewers can respond to the right-wing
victory in a conflict the left wasn’t even trying to fight.
That’s how bullying, or
the Right, works. It’s not about winning an intellectual argument; it’s about
being strong enough to get away with not winning. The transgression, of being
wrong in some way, is essential for the show of strength. You’re not getting
away with anything if you’ve followed the rules: there’s nothing pleasingly
subversive that gives a feeling of reversing the usual order if the rules are
followed, whether those rules are those of logic, decency or of the school. And
the supporters of this proto-fascism do feel insecure: the established way of
doing things seems not to have served them well, so they crave subversion and
the feeling of throwing off those mental shackles.
Of course the Left
wants change too. That’s why the Conservatives have their name: they want to
conserve the old order and the socialists want to change it to be more pro-social.
This is only for objective reality: the Left has been too focussed on wealth and
equality, assuming that people will be proud of a well-run country. The Conservatives
have realized that people can be proud and feel like they have all they need without
any expense or change at all; they just need to feel like they’re part of
something that’s doing well, even if that feeling is a lie and they themselves
are doing badly too. Their new strategy is to focus again on community: to give
people a sense of belonging, to feel like they’re part of something bigger.
Maslow’s infamous
hierarchy of needs is a helpful reminder that people want lots of things in
life. At the bottom of the pyramid are basic needs such as food and shelter;
then as we get higher we get prosperity, social interaction like friendship,
family and community, and finally the broad concept of self-actualization. This
final need is the need to be something bigger; to have achieved something
important. Belonging to the Brexit/Conservative group gives people these upper
parts of the pyramid. Yes, at the expense of both the layers below and their
own future, but for a time they can feel good.
That’s what people do
when desperate; they take short-term decisions that from an outside perspective
seem unwise. Some people become addicts; others start fights or act out.
Conservative propaganda is a drug to dull the pain of life under the
Conservatives; leaving the EU is the temper tantrum of a disturbed child. People
used to use religion as the opiate of the masses, to give them something to hope
for. Now something more blatantly political is taking the place that fading
religions have left.
It is this need for
belonging that is driving the lunatic ideas of tolling Big Ben or holding a
national festival on ‘Brexit Day’ (the day we move from Article 50 transition
period to negotiated transition period). With other political decisions we would
never consider a national festival: imagine a national festival of the bedroom
tax or the Iraq war. Or a festival celebrating the Suez crisis when Britain
proved itself no longer a world power. The idea that this will promote national
unity and happiness is ludicrous: you stoke resentment by co-opting something
people might love and using it to represent something awful. Remainers aren’t
going to be miraculously won over by this display of power over their British
symbols.
These ideas aren’t
really intended to win over sensible remainers. They are intended to reinforce
wavering leavers. If given a chance they will start to have doubts; the passions
aroused in them will run dry, leaving only thoughts behind. Those thoughts are
scary for the Conservatives: they don’t want their supporters thinking. They
must feed the fire of emotion at all times, stoking it continuously. As with the
most vocal homophobes, who then turn out to be closet homosexuals, the loud shouting
isn’t really for everyone outside: it’s to persuade themselves. If they shout
loudly enough, they will drown out their own thoughts; if they shout loudly
enough, they can pretend that the rage and hatred they feel at their own
inadequacy is actually for someone else: other races, other religions, experts
who make them feel inadequate… anything but the pain of reality.
As with bullies, we can
be very sympathetic about the gross inadequacy that has some leavers groping
for anything that gives them a sense of pride, and at the same time rightly
angry about the awful decision that leavers have made that hurts other people.
And, as with many bullies, there are ringleaders who are far worse: insidious
worms of people, spreading lies about immigrants, stoking resentment,
encouraging misbehaviour whilst always not being close enough to it to be
punishable themselves, and revelling in the chaos they cause.
These people: the
Dacres, Farages, Bankses and Murdochs of the world, who have genuinely carved a
bit of power out for themselves - carved it out of the foundations of our
civilised society so that it’s falling down around them – and are proud of it;
these are the people for whom we should have no sympathy. Anyone can be
deceived by a lie from those they (misguidedly) trust. Everyone has anxieties
that can be preyed upon. Normal bullies can become friends when treated well. Only
the proud manipulators of human lives are beyond redemption.
