Photo credit: AP/LM Otero
I hate to be one of those people who says I told you so, but, back in 2008, in a series of essays on myth, history and cultural despair, I did suggest that - thanks to globalization - we in the West find ourselves today in very similar position to the people of Austria during the 19th century and that the potential for a new type of pessimistic and reactionary politics, based on notions of race, religion, and national identity, was thus a very real danger.
Such a desperate response, I noted, might not be very desirable, but was perfectly understandable when mass immigration had resulted in the internal exile of indigenous populations in their own societies and concern over their future survival as ethnically and culturally distinct groups was increasingly widespread.
In order to provide some theoretical support for this argument, I referred to an essay by Jean Baudrillard in which he offered a painfully revisionist explanation for why it is that only figures on the far-right seem to possess the last remnants of political interest. This passage in particular seemed at the time - and still seems - absolutely spot on:
"The right once embodied moral values and the left, in opposition, embodied a certain historical and political urgency. Today, however, stripped of its political energy, the left has become a pure moral injunction, the embodiment of universal values, the champion of the reign of virtue and the keeper of the antiquated values of the Good and the True ..."
In short, the left has become boring and this results not only in their abject surrender, but in a situation where it’s only neo-fascist and populist politicians who have anything interesting left to say: "All the other discourses are moral or pedagogical," writes Baudrillard, "made by school teachers and lesson-givers, managers and programmers".
In daring to embrace evil and reject political correctness, I concluded, the far-right looks set to scoop the political jackpot ...
Now - just to be clear - this didn't mean back in 2008 and it doesn't mean now that I support or necessarily share the views of Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, or Donald Trump. But it does mean I can understand the attraction of these figures to voters who are sick to death of being spoken down to by those in power who think they know better than the people who have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
And it does mean I'm conscious of the more prosaic reasons why the above seem to speak to and for an angry white working-class who feel increasingly marginalized by high-tech industries and the enforced integration of ethnic minorities into their communities.
For, unfortunately, globalization doesn't only unleash flows of capital, information, and talent across national borders, it also brings with it crime, disease, and barbarism (by which I mean unfamiliar and often antithetical customs, norms, values and beliefs). And so, unsurprisingly, defensive ideologies arise that promise to counter threats to national and cultural identity and restore order.
And so Brexit and the triumph of Donald Trump ...
Notes
Stephen Alexander, 'Reflections beneath a Black Sun', The Treadwell's Papers, Vol. IV, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010).
Jean Baudrillard, ‘A Conjuration of Imbeciles’, in The Conspiracy of Art, trans. Ames Hodges, (Semiotext[e], 2005).
Stephen Alexander, 'Reflections beneath a Black Sun', The Treadwell's Papers, Vol. IV, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010).
Jean Baudrillard, ‘A Conjuration of Imbeciles’, in The Conspiracy of Art, trans. Ames Hodges, (Semiotext[e], 2005).
Brilliant analysis, Stephen ...
ReplyDeleteThe grim explanatory text (that of an all-American 'whitelash') governing Trump's still grimmer succession - viz., the disenfranchisement of the blue collar white working class US 'Rust Belt' - holds, I presume, some widely-reported water. Clearly, not everyone lives in cosmopolitan New York, bookish New England, or sun-stupefied, chilled-out California, and, as Stephen points out, the felt benefits of globalisation are by no means felt by all. Join this with the opportunistic and toxic reactivity sadistically prosecuted by Trump's team against Hillary Clinton's claimed (though legally unactioned) corruption, and her and her husband's perceived collusion with an elite Washington political class - this coming, incidentally, from a man with 3,500 historic lawsuits against him, including a discredited 'university', and a clutch of bankruptcies - and Obama's nuanced liberal ground was surely pre-programmed to shift.
ReplyDeleteIt hardly needs re-stating that Trump himself has no operable political solutions, or even political ideas, whatsoever - his 'campaign' was utterly void of serious politics, unless one ludicrously regards pitiful grandstanding like his risible, racist Mexican wall as contributing to some kind of credible manifesto. It goes without saying that the already ailing US economy depends massively on its immigrant workforce (both legal and illegal) in the same way that Soho's Chinatown would close tomorrow if its shadow labour force of paperless kitchen staff were ousted from beneath its restaurants. A reactionary American protectionism based around cutting free trade deals, while lowering taxation and deporting undesirables, has a similar likelihood of re-booting the American economy and enriching the working classes (with whom Trump, as a mean, reactionary billionaire property magnate, has as much sympathy with as a Great White shark for a surfer's leg) to David Bowie making another album.
When you have the US President-elect showing up at a steak house with security staff this week to tell diners 'we'll get your taxes down', it's fairly clear politics has degenerated (or perhaps regenerated) into surreal theatre. In this context, it seems entirely plausible that many voted for him mainly because he represented better value pantomime than the terminally tedious Hillary. One can at least take comfort from Baudrillard's tragicomic reminder that all politicians are engaged in spontaneous acts of self-destruction - all that matters is not to come to their aid. Hopefully, sooner than later, Trumplestiltskin - whom it's hard to credit even wanted or expected to be elected - will find a way to sabotage himself, George Michael style, perhaps by being caught conducting an incestuous sexual assault against his daughter Ivanka (in whom he has publicly expressed interest), if a merciful assassination doesn't put the rest of us out of our misery first.
None of this is subversion, or a political paradigm shift, or anything like it. It's a vulgar, trashy implosion of the status quo, drawn out by a brash and bullish opportunist playing on the hoariest trick in the book: 'I'm the 'real thing, trust me' - about as convincingly and sincerely as the Coke slogan. As the late George Carlin tirelessly declared, democracy is not just a farce, it's now a pretence, in which the fabricated and calculated illusion of 'real change' is the last sleazily seductive package. Andrew Rawnsley's recent piece in the Observer (13.11.16) puts matters into some kind of statistical context that may provide some limited comfort, albeit the cold kind.
'He lost the popular vote, only gaining the White House thanks to the eccentricities of the American electoral system. Just one in four Americans voted to put him there, which is worth bearing in mind whenever you hear anyone calling this a "revolution" or a "popular insurgency".'
1 in 4? That statistic is not at all accurate. Yes, President Elect Trump lost the popular vote, but by a few million votes, not 40 million. I guess this sort of misinformation explains why you speak more in buzzwords than content.
ReplyDelete