White riot—Brexit, Trump, and post‐factual politics

Abstract

The term "post-factual politics" (or "post-truth politics"), which Wikipedia usefully defines as "a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored," has been widely employed in relation to Britain's EU referendum and the 2016 US presidential election. At issue here are not just particular lies, like the £350 million per week Leave campaigners in the UK falsely claimed went to the EU, but the whole spirit in which the debates were conducted. Warnings of negative economic consequences of a pro-Brexit vote were routinely dismissed as "Project Fear"-the implication being that is was unpatriotic even to question Britain's ability to prosper outside the EU. A willingness to ignore facts came close to being presented as a moral virtue. Michael Gove encapsulated this spirit in his claim that "people in this country have had enough of experts"-a remarkable statement to come from a former Secretary of State for Education. 1 On the other side of the Atlantic Donald Trump's contempt for facts scarcely needs documenting, but those interested might consult the Toronto Star's list of 560 falsehoods he uttered during the campaign on every conceivable topic from youth unemployment rates among African-Americans to the numbers of Syrian refugees admitted to the USA by the Obama administration. 2 On Trump's first day in office White House press secretary Sean Spicer berated the press for understating the size of the crowds at the inauguration, insisting that this was "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period." 3 When challenged with evidence that clearly showed the contrary, presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway described Spicer's falsehoods as "alternative facts." 4 Such abuses of truth by the powerful do not augur well for the future of democracy, which depends on an informed electorate. My concern here, however, is not primarily with Westminster and the White House. It is with the extent to which leftwing analysis of the Brexit and Trump victories has become clouded by the same post-factual fog.Perception of these victories as "upsets" or "shocks" is arguably itself a symptom of a political culture in which feeling and belief count for more than evidence or argument. No rational observer should have been surprised by these outcomes. In the British case, though most polls published during the last week of the campaign predicted a slender win for Remain, over the previous three weeks 17 out of 26 polls had predicted a Leave victory. 5 In the US, where most polls had shown a majority for Clinton for months, the gap sharply narrowed in the week before the election, leaving her with a bare 3.1% lead on election day. 6 The US polls proved remarkably accurate, since in the event Clinton topped Trump by 2.1% in the nationwide popular vote while Trump outperformed his national poll totals by only 1-2 percentage points. As Nate Silver has commented, "the result was...

Racial nationalisms: Brexit, borders and Little Englander contradictions

“…The precise class composition of the referendum vote, despite the simplifications of tabloid punditry, remains hotly contested. For an instructive reading, see Dorling, Stuart, and Stubbs (2016) and Sayer (2017).…”

Liberal internationalism: historical trajectory and current prospects

“…They make nationalism, racism, misogynism and the attack on other minorities respectable again. 21 Moreover, these policies cannot be attributed to a crisis of American authority alone. While American high-handedness may indeed have played a role in the current crisis, the distribution of these populist movements suggests a deeper problem.…”

White riot—Brexit, Trump, and post‐factual politics

“…As Paul Gilroy long ago said, there ain't no black in the Union Jack. 86 Though the circumstances are different, this contemporary populist agenda has much in common with the fascism of the 1930s in its ideological amalgam of racism, nostalgic nationalism, and social conservatism, as well as in its social base. Its base is not "the white working class" per se, though a shift in the political loyalties of white workers in the American rust belt and England's former mining and manufacturing districts may have had a disproportionate effect on the electoral outcomes.…”