Crick Centre Associate Director Hendrik Wagenaar warns of a growth in “political nihilism” following the UK’s referendum on membership of the EU on 23 June.
Here are three, seemingly unrelated, news items from among the wreckage that is strewn out in the media landscape, like debris from a plane crash, after the Brexit vote at the end of last month.
Item 1: Two days after the referendum the Independent reported that over a million people who voted for Brexit regret their vote and would prefer to reverse it. The phenomenon has a name, and a hashtag: #Bregret.
Item 2: In an interview on Radio 4’s Today Programme on June 27 Alastair Darling said about Boris Johnson: “Boris Johnson seems to be taking this as a big game, where the last four months were just a jolly laugh, where it didn’t matter and nothing is going to change.”
Item 3: In the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad three well-known pundits, Thierry Baudet, Jort Kelder and Arno Wellens, wrote an opinion piece titled “Posh Elites of the Netherlands, you are triggering a Nexit”.
What is the connection between these three items? Let’s begin with the last, perhaps an interesting alternative to the usually Anglo-Saxon perspective. The article is a masterpiece of rhetorical subterfuge. In the first lines of the article the authors provocatively address the paper’s readers. They, the readers of “a reputable bourgeois newspaper” (The NRC is somewhere in between The Times and the Guardian) believe, according to the authors, that the controversy about leaving or remaining within the EU corresponds with the gap between people with lower v. higher formal education. Then comes the authors’ first rhetorical blast: Reader you are wrong, because it’s you, the Europhile, who is irrational. Then, abruptly, follows a long description of inconsistencies and “mistakes” that the authorities made around the recent referendum in the Netherlands, in which a majority voted against the Association agreement with the Ukraine. Which is followed by a diatribe against the Central Planning Agency which allegedly produced misleading statistics to cover up the failures of the Euro. The article ends with a plea to leave the EU. What the Netherlands gets out of the EU (open borders, free use of ATM machines throughout the Eurozone) does not compensate for the problems (uncontrollable inflow of refugees and migrants, an overbearing bureaucracy, too many regulations). With their blind faith in the cheating, incompetent political elite, the gullible reader of the NRC, him-or herself a member of the “posh elite”, will trigger a Nexit vote by ordinary Dutch citizens.
Don’t try to find a coherent argument for there isn’t any, but I think we recognise the pattern. This is the anti-politics of ‘us versus them’ and of the out-of-touch elite. Besides a highly tendentious litany of mistakes and ‘cover ups’, the authors do not present a single fact about the relationship between the Netherlands and the EU. The EU must dissolve, they assert, but they do not even start to formulate an alternative. Judging from the tone of the article they clearly enjoy the fun of taunting the “posh elite” and the readers of the “bourgeois” newspaper that saw it fit to publish their diatribe. This is the contemporary face of political nihilism. Nihilism is not just an exhibit in the museum of political history. It is not safely ensconced in the displays cabinets about 19th century Russia, the Weimar Republic and Rome in the 1930s. It is also not the murderous nihilism of the followers of ISIS and Boko Haram. Political nihilism has resurfaced once more, dressed in the attire of the professional politician, in the midst of the open democracies of the West.
Once we understand the role of political nihilism in contemporary politics, a lot of the more baffling characteristics of recent political events begin to fall into place. The overt lies about the UK contribution to the EU (£350 million a week to Brussels), asserted over and over again by the Leave camp, even after the UK Statistics Authority had debunked them. The lack, or better the utter lack of interest in, a workable alternative after the decision to leave the EU. Or Trump’s outrageous accusations of the press, his chronic lying, his glorification of political dictators and strongmen, and his repeated racist/sexist statements, triumphantly delivered at his rallies. These are not meant as arguments in a national debate about serious issues, these are acts of political vandalism delivered with glee and impunity. This is a political performance with the implicit message: See how far I dare to go! This is political behavior that comes straight out of the manual of the Russian nihilist Dmitri Pisarev, the one time inspiration for Lenin: “What can be smashed must be smashed; whatever will stand the blow is sound, what flies into smithereens is rubbish; at any rate, hit out right and left, no harm will or can come of it.” Just smash the reigning order. It’s all a “jolly laugh” for the nihilist.
The Guardian, 10 June 2016
Bur despite the antics of its proponents, political nihilism is no laughing matter. Nihilism is cruel, unforgiving and absolutist. It deliberately aims to divide people and pit one ethnic or religious group against another, using redbaiting and both overt and covert racism. Trump’s dismissal, on the basis of his ethnicity, of judge Gonzalo Curiel who presides over lawsuits against Trump University as biased, or his recent plea for racial profiling, do not need to come as a surprise. Nihilism feels deeply resentful towards kindness, reason and open-mindedness. Its preferred currency is negativity; it has no positive vision of an even remotely attractive social and political order, and, more importantly, it does not even feel the need to have such a vision. Its preferred mode of communication is not conversation or even negotiation, but agitation, an excited mix of self-justification, accusation, denunciation, and rousing calls to action. It’s preferred political tactic is that of the scorched earth, “just smash the reigning order”. The ideal politician is the cocky hell-for-leather man, who “tells it as it is”, the crowd and the nihilist leader egging each other on in an ecstasy of liberated xenophobia.
Image courtesy of Andrew Parsons via Flickr
Political nihilism has real word consequences. The theatrics of Johnson, Gove and Farage has plunged the UK in a political, economic, and arguably moral, crisis. Reports of racist hate crimes in the UK have increased fivefold since the Brexit vote. Trump is in the process of destroying the Republican party. 17 million people in the UK and so far 11 million in the US have responded to the lure of the nihilists. And here is the dilemma that political nihilism presents for the open democracies in which it currently thrives: as it is not about arguments, it cannot be countered with arguments. The register of political nihilism is emotion, symbols, charisma and performance. And performers need an audience. Nihilists like Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, the Dutchman Geert Wilders and the Austrian Heinz-Christian Strache, effectively tap into a miasma of free-floating anger and resentment that wafts through the political space in almost all Western democracies at the moment. The nihilist likes to attach that anger and resentment to specific targets: immigrants, refugees, Brussels bureaucrats, the EU. Mass media, attracted by high readership, viewer ratings, and oligarchic agendas, are all too happy to help this process along.
Images courtesy of George Skidmore via Flickr and Rijksoverheid/Phil Nijhuis via Wikimedia Commons
What can we do about the resurgence of nihilism in contemporary politics? Reasoned argument, based on a politics of truth and factual accuracy, is a weak weapon against the emotional furor and rhetorical taunts of the nihilists. Necessary and indispensable as it is, it also misses the point. Jeffrey Alexander in his magisterial treatment of civil society The Civil Sphere says that democracy depends on the existence of solidary bonds that extend beyond political arrangements. Democracy simultaneously evokes and is dependent upon a civil sphere that rests on legal, journalistic and associative institutions and has access to cultural practices of civility, criticism and mutual respect. Granted, democracy in this sense is always fragile and prone to attacks from authoritarian forces, but it also has a remarkable capacity for “civil repair”, as Alexander notes.
Democracy as civil sphere contains a large repository of memories, exemplars, ideals, language and experiences from which critique on and alternatives to the craven claims of the nihilists are formulated. This deep and rich stock of living forms of connectedness and mutuality is rooted in history, movies, novels, newspapers, and everyday fact-to-face contacts with our fellow citizens. From within this free space the language of justice, civility, truth, indignation, inspiration and mutual respect are formulated. We all counter nihilists. The young persons who take to the streets to protest the Brexit vote. Citizens and NGOs in many European countries who spontaneously welcome and support refugees. Progressive parties that formulate an alternative politics within national parliaments. Residents of inner city neighborhoods who make ethnic integration work. The young IDF veterans of Breaking the Silence, maligned and harassed by the Israeli government, who courageously expose the injustice at the heart of Israeli political society. Bloggers and newspaper columnists who eloquently argue that the writing is on the wall. These and similar examples are the ramparts against political nihilism. Each of these in itself is only a small gesture of solidarity and connectedness against the destructive forces of political nihilism. Their strength is in the collective, in their dispersion throughout society, and, thus, in their articulation of the continuing integrity and vitality of civil life.
Biography
Hendrik Wagenaar is a Professor at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Associate Director of the Crick Centre, both at the University of Sheffield. Follow him on Twitter: @SpiritofWilson
Note: this article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Crick Centre, or the Understanding Politics blog series. To write for the Understanding Politics blog, email us at [email protected]
