It’s hard to know what to write or think these days. I once had the naive belief that gradually things would get better, that we would make a gradual progress towards a more sensitive and caring socety; that the political far right would be confronted and would eventually give way and not so much be defeated as change its mind.
All of that seems to have been stood on its head, not just in the last election in the UK but over recent years. In the US with the election of Trump we have seen the far right become much more brazen in its use of language and persuasion or perhaps better to say abuse of language and manipulation.
Trump seems to be able to say or do whatever he wants and while there are many who will oppose him, there is also a very large number that see him as their hero. That includes those for whom ethical questions mean nothing; who are overtly racist or supremacist in one way or another and more chillingly, those who’s moral sense is real but which can be played with and who can persuaded that he is the guardian of truth being abused by lies. Moral compasses are being so confused that we see a repeat of 1930s Germany when essentially good people were persuaded that evil ideas and actions were not evil at all but in fact were right and good and Christian. Once residual doubts about some new position or policy have disappeared it becomes possible to move on to the next position, more extreme than the last. In the 1930s that eventually led to the cheering crowds of Munich and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
It is, of course deeply unpopular to say that the politics of Trump or the UK Conservative government are remotely like the policies and politics of Nazi Germany but to compare them in terms of what is being done at a particular time is not the point, it’s about the trajectory. Too many of the same techniques that led to Nazism are being used. Disinformation and media manipulation are used rather than an attempt to present people with properly balanced information in order to allow them to make balanced judgments. We might hope that people would be encouraged to question such things as prejudice but instead appeals have been constantly and often subtley made to prejudice in order to achieve desired results. In the UK we have seen these things happen both in the EU referendum and in the 2019 election. The appeal to prejudice is of course hotly denied when it is called out but it is real. It encourages fear and builds it up, as it has done with regard to immigration and then feigns dismay when racist attacks increase. Certain sections of the media have employed this technique for years so it has become accepted as a valid form of communication. In this way it walks the same path that was followed in the 1930s without recognising that a civilised society in the 21st century has to find a different and better way that serves the needs of one whole closely interconnected planet; all its inhabitants and ecosystem and not simply the narrow interests of one nation or group.
There is a poison in any nationalism that believes in philosophies such as ‘my country right or wrong’. If the climate change crisis can teach us one thing it is surely that such attitudes will be the death of us all. We need honest, open and humble communication. It is time that we grew up and disavowed the use of such techniques in public discourse and political argument. The problem is, however, that there are those who know perfectly well what is happening because they are making it happen and would not wish it any other way. That is where the problem and also the necessary confrontation lays.
Thinking Aloud 