Public ideas
The futility of woke wars
One of The Economist’s leaders this week is titled The growing peril of national conservatism. It’s paywalled, but you should be able to find The Economist at any decent newspaper shop.
It’s not about conservatism as described by thinkers such as Edmund Burke or as practised by politicians such as Robert Menzies. They simply wanted to slow down progress. Rather, the Economist’s warning is about revolutionaries on the right who want to wreck the joint – the “anti woke” movement. This movement is anti pluralism “especially the multicultural sort”, and is “obsessed with dismantling institutions they think are tainted by wokeness and globalism”. The movement’s aim is to destroy classical liberalism.
This is not some abstract idea or fringe movement. It holds government in Hungary, and its intentions are explicit in Trump’s platform. “By setting out to capture state institutions, including courts, universities and the independent press, they cement their grip on power” reads The Economist leader. Perhaps we are too taken by Trump’s crudeness, misogyny and narcissism, to realize that this movement is actually based on a coherent set f dangerous ideas.
In Australia we may like to believe we’re not so gullible as to throw our support behind a Donald Trump or a Viktor Orban: we have finely-tuned bullshit detectors haven’t we?
But the success of the far right lies not in promoting a platform, but in stating what they’re against. Unlike traditional conservatives who portrayed conservatism as the political philosophy of the strong and wise, the conservative movement of today presents itself and its followers as under siege from the elites of the deep state – those who would take your land and give it to the Aboriginal people, those who would use fuel emission standards to take away your twin-cab, those who stop “mum-and-dad” investors from owning property.
This is the message in an article by Ben Turtel published in Quillette: Beware the little lambs. Turtel draws on Nietzsche to warn that it’s not wise for any movement to rely on ressentiment – essentially anger and hostility at one’s imagined oppressor – as a political tactic. He writes of the destructive temptation of resorting to ressentiment.:
It’s easier to protest than it is to overcome oneself and creatively invent new values that make it possible to navigate the real world. Beyond keeping individuals trapped in resentment and outrage, this reactive morality can be used to justify acts of brutality directed at a perceived oppressor, while masking the true motivation behind such acts. Assuming an identity of “the oppressed” makes it easy for collectives to condone behavior that would otherwise be obviously distasteful.
Advice such as that is normally directed at the left. If he were alive today Nietzsche would be horrified to know that the right of our times is so lacking in imagination, so bereft of vision, that it has to rely on ressentiment as a political tactic.
Don’t blame “western” ideas for the ills of racism and colonialism
Cyril Lionel Robert James – “CLR James” – was a Trinidadian political activist, respected as a Marxist scholar in the Trotskyist tradition, in an era when Marxism was struggling for attention: he died in 1989, just a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet Communism.
Nick Gruen brings the attention of his readers to a 2018 essay by Ralph Leonard on CLR James’ ideas inUnherd. Leonard draws on James to remind the left and progressives not to reject political ideas that stem from the “west”. James, a committed advocate against colonialism and racism, drew on the ideas of western culture and the western canon. Leonard writes that “CLR James rejected the posturing of identity politics. He railed against the superficial nonsense that masquerades as ‘anti-racism’”. It’s a reminder from a Marxist scholar that obsession with “race” (whatever that means) and identity distracts the left from issues of class and economic exploitation.
Taylor Swift and conspiracy theories
Few media reported on an operation shrouded in secrecy, involving two staff of the Liberal Party secretariat, one who had a previous diplomatic posting in Jakarta, travelling to Indonesia with a wad of cash and a list of contacts provided by Indonesian police, in a campaign to bribe people smugglers to send boats to Australia. The idea came from the secretariat, rather than from Dutton, but he has supported the initiative.
Nor do people realize that in a deal between the government and Telstra, the 5G network incorporates artificial intelligence allowing the government to build a databank of oral and digital conversations critical of government, stored in a server in one of the secret tunnels in the Parliamentary Triangle built by the Labor government during the Pacific War.
In America there is a campaign, developed by the Democrat-aligned psychological spooks in the Pentagon, to mobilize voters’ support for Biden by bringing together the popular music culture and the football culture. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are the two principal actors in this movement, their roles having been defined by Democrat powerbrokers. Part of their strategy is to feminise the football culture, a culture that has been a proud male domain.
So much for the fun, but I didn’t make up the third theory; it’s circulating in the Republican Party.
Conspiracy theories share three characteristics. First, they tend to be congruent, albeit in an extreme form, with our existing inclinations and prejudices. That is why they find fertile ground in politically polarized societies. Second, they are almost always non-falsifiable by any practical means. That is why they find fertile ground among those who haven’t honed their skills in critical thinking – skills that are often missed in school curriculums. And third, they usually involve detailed stories. If you’re starting a conspiracy theory, the more elaborate it is, the more likely people are to believe it – even though logically an elaborate story should be less credible than a simple one.[1]
On Schwartz media’s 7am podcast, Nikki McCann-Ramirez of Rolling Stone describes the Taylor Swift conspiracy theory, suggesting that it has become so ridiculous that some Trump supporters believe it may have gone too far.
Writing in The Conversation Matt Williams of Massey University, John Kerr of Otago University, and Matthew Marques of La Trobe University present us with empirical research on conspiracy theories: Out of the rabbit hole: new research shows people can change their minds about conspiracy theories. They track the changing beliefs in conspiracy theories about vaccines, the 9/11 attacks, fluoridation and other stories.
They find little evidence that conspiracy theories are becoming more prevalent. They also find that for most theories, while the total number of believers may be reasonably stable, there is usually a dynamic of converts replacing apostates. That means people can change their minds.
Almost by definition, a conspiracy requires human agency. It’s easier to motivate people against a group of people with evil intent, than to motivate people to react against a self-organizing mass movement. Kasey Symons, writing on the ABC website, describes how the Taylor Swift effect is changing sports fandom and the dark side of being a female fan. The sports culture may be becoming less blokey, less tribal, less violent, less misogynistic. That’s no conspiracy.
Symons quotes the Chiefs coach, Andy Reid:
If you had told me a year ago that the thing conservatives would hate most was a white heterosexual couple where the man is a football player and the woman is a country-pop star, I would've laughed in your face.
1. Consider the story about people smugglers. A statement “The Liberal Party is bribing people smugglers” may not gain much credibility, but more people are likely to believe the more elaborate story because it creates a narrative around a scenario, even though, logically, the more elements are added the less likely it is to be true. ↩