I wrote in July 2014 this post about radicalism and extremism and that already seems a very long time ago indeed. Since then there has been a very visible (and audible) growth in extremism in two groups which, for all their apparent difference seem to me oddly similar: Trump supporters and Daesh.
Similar?!? I hear you ask. Well, I am certainly not claiming any sort of moral equivalence between a a conglomeration of brutally fanatical jihadists and a bunch of whooping American bigots but there is certainly one thing that they (and other groups) have in common. They are, it seems to me, fuelled by what they would regard as righteous anger.
So what do I mean by righteous anger?
Society has always distinguished between two different sorts of anger. First there is interpersonal anger of the sort that inevitably arises between people who live in close proximity to each other. Societies have generally regarded this as unfortunate and unproductive and have evolved more or less successful ways to contain it, from ritual and religious practices to systems of law and order. This sort of anger has been at the root of much of the crime and violence in human society from time immemorial (look at Cain and Abel) and civilisation has as much as anything been a means of keeping it in check.
The other sort of anger is what I have called righteous anger. This is anger not directed at someone one knows well and not generated by close contact but prompted by some larger cause or some more abstract concept. It is anger at a group of individuals, a nation, a system or even an idea. When I say 'righteous' I do not imply any sort of moral approval (anti-semitism falls firmly into this category), but am referring to how the anger is experienced by the people who feel it.
In the early days of human society this sort of righteous anger would have been a positive asset to a group or tribe, because its likeliest focus would have been members of an opposing neighbouring tribe so it would have had the effect of binding the group together with a common purpose. Indeed conflicts between neighbouring tribes have often become formalised and ritualised over time, presumably as a way of harnessing and making safe this sort of righteous anger.
Outward-focussed righteous anger became a major asset to national leaders with the rise of the nation state- it was the power-source for the sort of patriotic jingoism that had endless generations of young men sacrifice their lives in pursuit of glory in an a series of pointless European wars for instance. Probably it was the First World War that began its demise, not so much because of the mechanised slaughter (nothing like a few deaths in war to fuel righteous anger) but because soldiers in the trenches began to question the way they had been suckered by the concept of righteous anger into miring themselves (literally) in a futile battle against individual Germans they found it less and less easy to see as their personal enemies. Indeed the clearest focus of anger in soldiers' poetry seems not the German soldiers but rather the British generals and public at large:
"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye.
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know.
The hell where youth and laughter go."
This was far from the end of state-sanctioned righteous anger of course. It was Hitler's trump card, and the force that transformed 1930s Germany from a broken and demoralised failed state to a hyper-efficient blitzkrieg and genocide machine. Differently expressed it was the force behind the resolve Churchill saw in the British people after Dunkirk and articulated in the immortal lines, "we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
However the Twentieth Century saw a growth in a different sort of righteous anger too, directed this time by oppressed minorities against their own national leaders. There were the suffragettes in Britain, the civil rights movement in the US and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, to name but three. This is the sort of thing most of us would be happiest to call righteous anger- the struggle for justice in an iniquitous system- but is it really that different to the forms of righteous anger that preceded it? There was a coherence to the groups motivated by it and a clarity as to its target that calls to mind the anti-Bosch jingoism of Britons in the early years of the first World War, and if we now see the latter as lacking a moral justification that is to forget the stories of baby-massacring and the like that were used to whip up fury in 1914.
It is more recently that what one might call righteous anger has begun to morph again into something altogether less clear and immediately comprehensible, and this is where Daesh and Trump come in. Because it seems to me that both islamist jihadism and tea party republicanism are fuelled by a powerful but inchoate wave of anger against someone or something 'out there' that its supporters want to bring down by any means possible.
And to be clear about how this is different from either the anti-apartheid movement or even Nazi anti-semitism it is important to understand that we seem nowadays to be living in a post-nation state era and enemies are no longer so easy to define. Sure, both groups have their bogey-men- for the Trumpers Obama and for Daesh the Great Satan (ummm, Obama)- but their anger is, in both cases, more wide-ranging than that. The Trumpers can be whipped up into fury on a whole range of issues from Mexican fruit-pickers to muslim women in headscarves or from healthcare insurance to US foreign policy. Daesh direct anger not just against Western interventionists but almost as strongly against Arab Christians, muslim apostates or women without headscarves (what is it about head scarves that seems to prompt such fury?)
Yet for all the differences it seems to me that the fundamental motivation is exactly the same as when righteous anger was used as the justification either to smash windows in Kristallnacht or to march unarmed into the live ammunition of the South African police. Anger, it seems, operates almost independently of morality. Indeed if anger is powerful enough then it provides its own moral justification: if one feels that one's entire way of life- one's existence even- is threatened by some distant collection of unindividualised strangers then one's anger can seem to justify almost any actions against that 'other'.
It used to be that this powerful force was kept under control and directed (for good or ill) by even more powerful social structures- first tribal customs, then nation states and then idealistic movements or causes. But in the interconnected twenty-first century those sorts of social structures have less and less force. We have seen the little man who hides behind the Wizard of Oz's thunderclaps and we no longer care much what he says. Instead, people turn to self-selected groups of the like-minded and there their anger is not contained but amplified; not directed but inflamed.
So anger has (for me) emerged as the most dangerous threat to society today, leading to everything from the brutal death-cult of Daesh to the mainstreaming of neo-Nazi xenophobia on US TV. And the problem is that the populist media, and particularly the tabloids, seem hell-bent on whipping anger up further all the time. What else could be the intention of headlines like "One out of every five killers is an immigrant" (a genuine headline)?
Which is why I am becoming increasingly distrustful of any attempt to whip me up to anger, and that too is a problem. Because righteous anger, for all its dangers, has been an immensely powerful force for good and there are still plenty of issues that are easily iniquitous enough to prompt such anger- violence against women for instance. It is just that so long as Trump and Daesh make so free with it righteous anger no longer holds the attraction for me that it once had.
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
Thursday, 14 January 2016
Donald Trump. What's all that about?
I'm late to the party on this one too. For ages Trump's candidature was seen (at this side of the Atlantic at least) as simply a joke, with that stupid hair being the punchline. However if it is a joke then it is in very poor taste indeed. Here we have someone standing for the leadership of "the most powerful nation. Period" openly advocating religious and racial discrimination of a sort eerily reminiscent of early Nazi party policies while his supporters whoop and cheer with glee.
There have been many explanations put forward for his continuing popularity: that it is simply an expression of protest against the political classes and will soon dissipate; that his supporters are the 'angry white men' whose days in the sun are fast disappearing; that Trump's lack of any sort of vocal filter is a refreshing stimulant in the land of packaged politics; and even (astonishingly) that this billionaire property tycoon (who was set on his way as a lad with a small multi-million pound leg-up from his dad) speaks for the downtrodden and impoverished victims of corporate America.
For me the worrying thing though, potentially even more worrying than the statements he makes and policies he proposes, is the fact that his most endearing feature to his supporters appears to be his utter lack of expertise in or careful consideration of the issues he is commenting on. Foreign affairs in particular seem an unknown field to him (he once said that he gets his foreign policy ideas from Fox news, and see this account of his ignorance for instance) but he presents even this as an asset, saying once in an interview "But the voters want to see unpredictability. They're tired of a president that gets up and says every single thing."
And terrifyingly it is this sort of thing that wins him support, it seems. How? Why?
Part of the reason, clearly, is Trump's 'outsider' appeal. He feeds off a widespread American perception of a cosy consensus between politicians, big business, the media and special interest groups (the establishment) on approaches to every area of policy that ignores the desires of the general population. Even this is worrying of course as it implies a complete loss of faith in the democratic process in America. Politicians, far from being seen as representatives of the people, have come to be regarded (by some at least) as the Enemy. And indeed this study demonstrates that they may have a point.
However the real problem for me is that Trump has gone well beyond simply positioning himself as the anti-politician politician. His brand, and his obvious appeal to a vocal section of the US population, goes deeper than that. The message he gives, time and again, with his impromptu outbursts and his unscripted outrageousness is that he rejects not only the political establishment and all its codes and conventions but the very notion of intelligent, careful and well-informed policy making too.
The world is a complex place and government a difficult, demanding and subtle business to get right. But what Trump is saying to the American people is, forget all that! He doesn't do complexity and is uninterested in nuance. His answers to the most complex problems are simple: immigration, central american poverty and the awful legacy of the 'war on drugs'? Build a wall. The growth of a destructive, anti-western jihadist ideology across the world? "Bomb the hell outa them." A mass shooting (like all those other US mass shootings, only this time carried out by two muslims)? Ban muslims from entering the US.
And the thing is it is precisely that sort of simplicity that seems to be his appeal. It used to be possible in vast swathes of America to live insulated from the complexities of the modern world. For decades life was very good (people said 'have a nice day' as if they really meant it), until terrorist attacks took place on US soil and a generation began to grow up in the knowledge that they might be the first not to be more affluent than their parents. And the internet had come along- a baffling window into the chaotic alien world that existed outside Dullsville Tennessee- and it was all too much.
It's not just Trump who offers simplistic anti-intellectual answers to problems too complex for most Americans to have had to consider until recently. I happened to stumble on a bizarre phenomenon recently: the modern flat-earthers. Their discussion tool of choice is the meme- a perfect way to present a simplistic and anti-intellectual argument in an easily digestible form. Here are some examples (there are thousands). Climate change deniers work in much the same way, until it becomes as though reasoned argument is of itself to be distrusted. If you can't reduce your approach to a meme then it's some sort of establishment conspiracy.
Is this a legacy of too much affluence and too much insulation from the world outside for too long in the US? Quite possibly. Affluence and security build a sort of self-obsession that does not set you in good stead when that affluence and insulation dissolve. But it's probably too late to do anything about that now. So what can we do? Distribute Trump memes of course. Du'uh.
There have been many explanations put forward for his continuing popularity: that it is simply an expression of protest against the political classes and will soon dissipate; that his supporters are the 'angry white men' whose days in the sun are fast disappearing; that Trump's lack of any sort of vocal filter is a refreshing stimulant in the land of packaged politics; and even (astonishingly) that this billionaire property tycoon (who was set on his way as a lad with a small multi-million pound leg-up from his dad) speaks for the downtrodden and impoverished victims of corporate America.
For me the worrying thing though, potentially even more worrying than the statements he makes and policies he proposes, is the fact that his most endearing feature to his supporters appears to be his utter lack of expertise in or careful consideration of the issues he is commenting on. Foreign affairs in particular seem an unknown field to him (he once said that he gets his foreign policy ideas from Fox news, and see this account of his ignorance for instance) but he presents even this as an asset, saying once in an interview "But the voters want to see unpredictability. They're tired of a president that gets up and says every single thing."
And terrifyingly it is this sort of thing that wins him support, it seems. How? Why?
Part of the reason, clearly, is Trump's 'outsider' appeal. He feeds off a widespread American perception of a cosy consensus between politicians, big business, the media and special interest groups (the establishment) on approaches to every area of policy that ignores the desires of the general population. Even this is worrying of course as it implies a complete loss of faith in the democratic process in America. Politicians, far from being seen as representatives of the people, have come to be regarded (by some at least) as the Enemy. And indeed this study demonstrates that they may have a point.
However the real problem for me is that Trump has gone well beyond simply positioning himself as the anti-politician politician. His brand, and his obvious appeal to a vocal section of the US population, goes deeper than that. The message he gives, time and again, with his impromptu outbursts and his unscripted outrageousness is that he rejects not only the political establishment and all its codes and conventions but the very notion of intelligent, careful and well-informed policy making too.
The world is a complex place and government a difficult, demanding and subtle business to get right. But what Trump is saying to the American people is, forget all that! He doesn't do complexity and is uninterested in nuance. His answers to the most complex problems are simple: immigration, central american poverty and the awful legacy of the 'war on drugs'? Build a wall. The growth of a destructive, anti-western jihadist ideology across the world? "Bomb the hell outa them." A mass shooting (like all those other US mass shootings, only this time carried out by two muslims)? Ban muslims from entering the US.
And the thing is it is precisely that sort of simplicity that seems to be his appeal. It used to be possible in vast swathes of America to live insulated from the complexities of the modern world. For decades life was very good (people said 'have a nice day' as if they really meant it), until terrorist attacks took place on US soil and a generation began to grow up in the knowledge that they might be the first not to be more affluent than their parents. And the internet had come along- a baffling window into the chaotic alien world that existed outside Dullsville Tennessee- and it was all too much.
It's not just Trump who offers simplistic anti-intellectual answers to problems too complex for most Americans to have had to consider until recently. I happened to stumble on a bizarre phenomenon recently: the modern flat-earthers. Their discussion tool of choice is the meme- a perfect way to present a simplistic and anti-intellectual argument in an easily digestible form. Here are some examples (there are thousands). Climate change deniers work in much the same way, until it becomes as though reasoned argument is of itself to be distrusted. If you can't reduce your approach to a meme then it's some sort of establishment conspiracy.
Is this a legacy of too much affluence and too much insulation from the world outside for too long in the US? Quite possibly. Affluence and security build a sort of self-obsession that does not set you in good stead when that affluence and insulation dissolve. But it's probably too late to do anything about that now. So what can we do? Distribute Trump memes of course. Du'uh.
Wednesday, 13 January 2016
What happened to the Labour party?
There have probably been thousands of well-informed words written by those in the know (and millions of ill-informed ones by those who wish they were) about the latest apparent slow-motion suicide of the parliamentary Labour party and I suspect there is little I can add to the sum of human knowledge in that regard. However that has never stopped me in the past and I have my own angle on the current situation born of my personal experience, that may be worth sharing.
Briefly, for anyone who is not aware, the narrative over the last few months has been (or the version promulgated by the UK media at least has been) one of open warfare between Jeremy Corbyn and his 'team' (the corbynistas) and large and vocal sections of his party's Westminster MPs. There have been off-the-record and even live on-air complaints by Labour MPs of everything from bumbling inefficiency to Stalinist ruthlessness and a steadily simmering air of dissent, dissatisfaction and dislike. The person most often absent from all this has been Jezza himself, whose pronouncements (such as they have been) have generally sounded reasonable (non-contentious even), conciliatory and non-aggressive. At least they have sounded like that until deconstructed and spun by a range of commentators inside and outside the PLP, seeking to interpret them as confrontational and/or naive.
So what the hell is it all about and why are the PLP behaving like this? There is no realistic prospect of them ousting Corbyn and having him replaced by a leader more to their liking, nor is there any possibility that this sort of internecine strife will do anything but damage the Labour party's chances of electoral success (on which their future careers depend). So why?
Perhaps it is less to do with political and ideological differences (does anyone actually, really, want to see billions and billions of pounds spent on a missile system designed to ensure that if the world is destroyed in a nuclear holocaust at least plucky Britain will have got to play its part?) and more to do with the nature of institutions and the relationship between staff and their bosses. Labour MPs may be the democratically elected representatives of their constituents, but they are also members of a small to medium-sized enterprise operating out of dilapidated premises in SW1 and as in all such institutions the relationship between staff and boss is a complex one.
Very rarely a charismatic boss (and one who is in the right place at the right time) can transform an institution, or at least be the figurehead who catches a process of transformation and makes it his or her own. In a political context Tony Blair pulled that trick, and before him Maggie Thatcher. True, in both cases the party they became leader of was ripe (desperate even) for change but arguably without them that change would never have come to fruition.
Much more often though, it is the institution that transforms the boss, much as the boss may believe otherwise. So David Cameron, shallow, plausible, untroubled by detail and human cost and able to articulate a vague vision of a 'stronger Britain' that covers a multitude of sins is the perfect leader for a Tory party that wants to dismantle the state and not feel guilty about it. Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband on the other hand were both troubled, ineffectively sincere, occasionally prone to impotent petulance and overshadowed by more successful and charismatic mirrors of themselves. They were the leaders the PLP expected and in a masochistic sense wanted because they gave MPs an excuse to
feel sorry for themselves.
Jeremy Corbyn doesn't fit that mold though. Habituated for so long to being on the losing side of any given argument he is no longer phased by voicing anti-populist sentiments. Unlike Brown and Milliband, both of whom appeared to have lived Labour party internal politics for so long that it had replaced the blood in their veins Corbyn seems endearingly out of touch with the complex shenanigans that clearly occupy most labour insiders' every waking moment. The bottom line (which is an ironic one in the situation) is that the PLP has evolved into an archetypally political (with a small as well as a big P) organisation and its new boss does not appear to be a political operator in that institutional sense.
So what happens when an institution acquires a boss who does not appear to be singing from the unwritten hymn sheets the staff have all memorised over years? Well, that is where my personal experience comes in. As head teacher I inherited a school that was obsessed with its own internal politics and I am simply not very good at (or very interested in, come to that) that sort of politics. And it seems that when an institution acquires a boss who does not fit its expectations then the reaction is confusion and (for some) something like hatred. It doesn't really matter what the boss does or says, or whether the staff involved agree with or even like him or her. It is more that they aren't playing the game by the rules the staff have internalised and made their own.
Some of my staff, I am convinced, never forgave me for not fitting the image they had of a 'proper' head. They might have complained about my predecessors- called them dictatorial bullies- but at least they knew where they were with them. I disorientated them. I asked them what they thought and believed in and told them that I didn't have magic top-down solutions for every situation and some of them hated me for it.
Of course I am not comparing myself with Jeremy Corbyn. I was head teacher of a secondary school, not potential Prime Minister of the UK, but in a sense I can empathise with him. And perhaps what he is doing is the right thing: rising above the vitriol and simply doing his best to keep a clear head (its is what I did in a similar situation).
However quite possibly it isn't. If I had my time again I wouldn't have been so high-minded about internal politics. Labour MPs (like my staff) are human beings who have dedicated a significant portion of their best years to serving in an institution that they may hate, but also identify with and have made their home. A leader who tells themselves they are above their staff's petty vindictiveness and squabbles is no sort of leader in fact. And if Jeremy Corbyn is to transform the Labour party then he has to engage with it. All of it. And that includes the MPs who are currently running him and themselves into the quagmire.
Briefly, for anyone who is not aware, the narrative over the last few months has been (or the version promulgated by the UK media at least has been) one of open warfare between Jeremy Corbyn and his 'team' (the corbynistas) and large and vocal sections of his party's Westminster MPs. There have been off-the-record and even live on-air complaints by Labour MPs of everything from bumbling inefficiency to Stalinist ruthlessness and a steadily simmering air of dissent, dissatisfaction and dislike. The person most often absent from all this has been Jezza himself, whose pronouncements (such as they have been) have generally sounded reasonable (non-contentious even), conciliatory and non-aggressive. At least they have sounded like that until deconstructed and spun by a range of commentators inside and outside the PLP, seeking to interpret them as confrontational and/or naive.
So what the hell is it all about and why are the PLP behaving like this? There is no realistic prospect of them ousting Corbyn and having him replaced by a leader more to their liking, nor is there any possibility that this sort of internecine strife will do anything but damage the Labour party's chances of electoral success (on which their future careers depend). So why?
Perhaps it is less to do with political and ideological differences (does anyone actually, really, want to see billions and billions of pounds spent on a missile system designed to ensure that if the world is destroyed in a nuclear holocaust at least plucky Britain will have got to play its part?) and more to do with the nature of institutions and the relationship between staff and their bosses. Labour MPs may be the democratically elected representatives of their constituents, but they are also members of a small to medium-sized enterprise operating out of dilapidated premises in SW1 and as in all such institutions the relationship between staff and boss is a complex one.
Very rarely a charismatic boss (and one who is in the right place at the right time) can transform an institution, or at least be the figurehead who catches a process of transformation and makes it his or her own. In a political context Tony Blair pulled that trick, and before him Maggie Thatcher. True, in both cases the party they became leader of was ripe (desperate even) for change but arguably without them that change would never have come to fruition.
Much more often though, it is the institution that transforms the boss, much as the boss may believe otherwise. So David Cameron, shallow, plausible, untroubled by detail and human cost and able to articulate a vague vision of a 'stronger Britain' that covers a multitude of sins is the perfect leader for a Tory party that wants to dismantle the state and not feel guilty about it. Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband on the other hand were both troubled, ineffectively sincere, occasionally prone to impotent petulance and overshadowed by more successful and charismatic mirrors of themselves. They were the leaders the PLP expected and in a masochistic sense wanted because they gave MPs an excuse to
feel sorry for themselves.
Jeremy Corbyn doesn't fit that mold though. Habituated for so long to being on the losing side of any given argument he is no longer phased by voicing anti-populist sentiments. Unlike Brown and Milliband, both of whom appeared to have lived Labour party internal politics for so long that it had replaced the blood in their veins Corbyn seems endearingly out of touch with the complex shenanigans that clearly occupy most labour insiders' every waking moment. The bottom line (which is an ironic one in the situation) is that the PLP has evolved into an archetypally political (with a small as well as a big P) organisation and its new boss does not appear to be a political operator in that institutional sense.
So what happens when an institution acquires a boss who does not appear to be singing from the unwritten hymn sheets the staff have all memorised over years? Well, that is where my personal experience comes in. As head teacher I inherited a school that was obsessed with its own internal politics and I am simply not very good at (or very interested in, come to that) that sort of politics. And it seems that when an institution acquires a boss who does not fit its expectations then the reaction is confusion and (for some) something like hatred. It doesn't really matter what the boss does or says, or whether the staff involved agree with or even like him or her. It is more that they aren't playing the game by the rules the staff have internalised and made their own.
Some of my staff, I am convinced, never forgave me for not fitting the image they had of a 'proper' head. They might have complained about my predecessors- called them dictatorial bullies- but at least they knew where they were with them. I disorientated them. I asked them what they thought and believed in and told them that I didn't have magic top-down solutions for every situation and some of them hated me for it.
Of course I am not comparing myself with Jeremy Corbyn. I was head teacher of a secondary school, not potential Prime Minister of the UK, but in a sense I can empathise with him. And perhaps what he is doing is the right thing: rising above the vitriol and simply doing his best to keep a clear head (its is what I did in a similar situation).
However quite possibly it isn't. If I had my time again I wouldn't have been so high-minded about internal politics. Labour MPs (like my staff) are human beings who have dedicated a significant portion of their best years to serving in an institution that they may hate, but also identify with and have made their home. A leader who tells themselves they are above their staff's petty vindictiveness and squabbles is no sort of leader in fact. And if Jeremy Corbyn is to transform the Labour party then he has to engage with it. All of it. And that includes the MPs who are currently running him and themselves into the quagmire.
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