The Dialectical Presidency

Donald Trump is not a normal politician. That, at least, both his detractors and supporters agree on. To the former, it’s a sign of his dangerous unpredictability and callow inexperience; to the latter, a token of his status as one unaffected by the rot of the Washington bubble. But if that’s what he’s not, the question remains of what he is.

To answer that, we must journey back in time long before a Trump presidency was ever anything other than a punchline to a particularly bad joke. For before Trump the politician, there was Trump the businessman; the blond-haired bruiser from New York’s Midtown, clad in a sharp suit, beautiful supermodel in tow, butting heads with rivals across boardrooms. Times may have changed, the tawdry glitz of Trump Tower may have been exchanged for the grandeur of the White House, but at heart Donald J. Trump is best understood as a businessman.

Seeing him as this rather than a politician helps explain much that is bewildering about him. Trump is not bound by the conventions that politicians are normally constrained by; the expectations to speak truthfully, to fulfil promises, to act in a measured way. Businessmen have no truck with any of this. A Manhattan real estate investor, sitting across a table from his competitors, doesn’t act like a politician; he curses at them and cajoles them, he slams the table, he insults them, and eventually he wins.

All the bombast of Trump – all the gratuitous offensiveness, the rude tweets, the childish appellations he attaches to his rivals (of which ‘Crooked Hillary’ and ‘Lying Ted’ are the highlights) should be seen through this lens – as a posture Trump adopts in order to help him win. He doesn’t even seem to believe much of it; witness how fast the vitriol directed at Ben Carson, for instance, was replaced by the warm embrace of an offer of a job on his campaign. We’ve all been taken in by the act of a showman.

But this act extends to far more than Trump’s pugnacious demeanour. Far too many people – on both sides of the political spectrum – were taken in by Trump’s grandiose statements of policy during the campaign. Perhaps reasonably, they viewed them as they viewed policy announcements by prior politicians – that is to stay, statements of intent that, if elected, he would follow through on.

With the benefit of hindsight, though, their true nature becomes clear. They were not statements but opening gambits in negotiations. Take Trump’s so-called ‘Muslim ban.’ Trump made his ‘offer’ to the American people, so to speak, with his call for ‘a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.’ The reaction was mostly shock and disgust – but the initial bid had been made.

Upon Trump’s election as President, opposing ‘offers’ were made in the form of vociferous opposition both Congressional and judicial. What took place next – the wrangling between Trump and various judges – might be termed the ‘negotiations’, much as an aggressive property developer might argue with a tenant over a disputed term in a contract. What eventually emerged was a travel ban that is, by all sane accounts, very reasonable – common-sense, time-limited restrictions on emigration from a handful of notoriously dangerous countries.

This isn’t how politicians operate; it’s precisely how businessmen do. No self-respecting businessman worth his salt will walk into negotiations and state the price he wants, knowing that the cut and thrust of negotiations will drive it down. Instead he names a figure twice as high as he wants, knowing the response will be half as much as he wants. Through slow back-and-forth argumentation, eventually the two parties arrive at a price both consider ‘fair.’ It’s an almost dialectical style of governing, one which has never really been tried before.

The same applies with Trump’s flagship policy – fighting illegal immigration. When Trump started talking about building ‘a big beautiful wall with Mexico’ and repealing DACA, he almost certainly never wanted to do anything of the sort. Instead, he was seeking to do two things; firstly to make illegal immigration (by all accounts a genuine issue) part of the national debate, and also to make an extreme initial demand, knowing that he’ll never get it but that negotiations are now open.

Upon his election, Trump immediately faced pushback from liberal voices in Congress. What most failed to realise was that Trump intended for this to happen. Trump is not a moron; he employs many undocumented workers himself, and recognises that a blanket deportation would be economically damaging to the country. But by demanding a huge amount initially, he was able to pull negotiations in his favour and eventually conclude an agreement with Democratic leadership which meant that key provisions of DACA would be kept in place, with funding for a wall highly unlikely.

One of the few people who understood all this about him was the Democrat who worked alongside him on hammering out this deal, Chuck Schumer. Schumer, like Trump, is a New Yorker, and like all New Yorkers he’s steeped in the commerciality of that city. He recognises Trump for what he is; a negotiator willing to brawl a bit to get the deal he wants. Though politically he seems the antithesis of Trump, Schumer is more similar to the man than many realise. Neither are beyond a bit of chest-thumping and posturing, but fundamentally both are nothing more than negotiators. By all accounts the two have a good personal rapport – an indication that Trump’s aggressively partisan demeanour is an artfully-constructed artifice.

‘We are not wholly bad or good,’ Dylan Thomas reminds us. The same might be said to hold true for Donald Trump. It’s beyond dispute that he’s a thin-skinned sexist who will do or say pretty much anything to attain wealth and power. It’s also true that politically he’s proving to be far more nuanced than anyone had assumed. He has at least three more years left (and, who knows, perhaps even seven) and the world would be advised to prepare themselves for more surprises.

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‘Dunkirk’ reviewed

As topics for war films go, the evacuation at Dunkirk is strikingly atypical. Fundamentally, it was a narrative of catastrophe – the hurried retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from Western Europe, still reeling from the force of the Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg. It was a botch-job of a military operation, with civilian boats and pleasure yachts sailing across the Channel to ferry soldiers away from France, and thousands of weapons and vehicles left behind. If there was eventually to be a happy ending to the tale, it would not have seemed apparent to anyone there on those beaches; only after five more years of blood, sweat and tears would there be a final victory over the Germans.

Perhaps that is why ‘Dunkirk’, by Christopher Nolan, does not seek to conform to traditional assumptions about what war films should be like. Nolan’s work eschews generic conventions – narrative movement, character development, purple dialogue – and instead delivers a movie which is startlingly minimalist and stripped-back. The result is, in every sense, a cinematic triumph.

Nolan opts to split the action into three strands – The Mole, The Sea and The Air – each operating on a different scale of time (a week, a day and an hour respectively) but whose timelines slowly converge. It’s a tool he’s used before, in movies like Inception, but where previously it’s always been a somewhat self-indulgent gimmick, here it functions to structure the whole film into a coherent whole. Instead of breaking up the action – as such a narrative technique inevitably risks – it means that the whole film is one continuous crescendo of tension, culminating euphorically in the convergence of all three strands.

This is not a movie about individuals. The soldiers – unshaven, grimy and terrified – blur into one. Even the name of the protagonist of the first strand, Tommy, calls to mind the nickname for British soldiers. That’s not to say that Fionn Whitehead’s performance is not strong – but in many ways what is much more effective is Nolan’s characterisation of him as an Everyman, wandering through a hellish landscape. For the most part, dialogue is absent from the film, and that which is there is mostly functional; the terse back-and-forth of Spitfire pilots, or the barked orders of officers. Without the crutch of dialogue to fall back upon to propel the narrative, Nolan is able to let the images tell the story.

And ‘Dunkirk’ is a deeply visual movie. Even in the most character-driven of the three strands, the story of a shipowner who sets sail with his son and boat-hand to Dunkirk to rescue soldiers from the beaches, Nolan revels in spectacle. Ships sink, planes crash, oil slicks burn, columns of smoke rise. It’s testament to Mark Rylance that he’s able to anchor the plot in a rich seam of humanity, with his portrayal of the quiet dignity of a man called by duty to war. Against a backdrop of apocalyptic grandeur, the details in Rylance’s portrayal become all the more striking – his ramrod-straight posture, his softly authoritative voice.

By contrast, the third strand – the Air – features characters almost invisible to the audience. Tom Hardy, playing the Spitfire pilot Farrier, has his face covered by goggles and a mask for almost the entirety of his role, yet is able to portray an intensity which harmonises perfectly with the much-compressed timeframe of his strand. His final scene – and indeed the final scene of the entire film – is the first time we see him unmasked, as he almost ceremonially burns his plane before being taken into captivity by the Germans. It’s a moment of glorious symbolism; the Spitfire ablaze, but its pilot still steadfast and undefeated, staring stolidly into the distance.

Nolan’s command over the dramatic energy of the film is mostly outstanding. The claustrophobia and terror of the initial attempts at evacuation are conveyed brilliantly through the positioning of the camera on a stretcher as it is carried by Tommy and the mysterious Gibson (played wordlessly but effectively by Aneurin Barnard), the camera pivoting like the head of the wounded man being carried. Later, with the protagonists on board a torpedoed ship in the harbour, the camera almost bobs up and down frantically, mimetically replicating the experience of drowning. Occasionally Nolan slips into cliché – the episodes with the naval officers standing on the Mole seem somewhat artificial, despite a brisk performance by Kenneth Branagh – but generally he offers forth an authentic and sincere film.

‘Dunkirk’ is a masterful piece of art, something to which many films aspire but which few attain. Freed from the demands of a linear narrative, Christopher Nolan is at liberty to produce a film which is almost wholly visual and which relies upon spectacle to carry its energy. For a director whose earlier efforts have been criticised for being over-cerebral (‘Inception’ or ‘Interstellar’, for instance), ‘Dunkirk’ is refreshingly humane and at times wonderfully poignant.

(Third) Party Time?

There are two fairly inevitable things about two-party systems. First, that there will be perennial discussion of the creation of third parties. Secondly, that in the end pretty much nothing will upturn the two-party status quo.

James Chapman, the former Special Advisor to the hapless David Davies, is the latest in a long line of people to have proposed such a party. Since parting ways with his former boss, Chapman has been announcing to apparently anyone who will listen that he intends to set up a new party – ‘The Democrats’ – which will function as a pro-European centrist party.

Chapman might be a slightly odd character (his Twitter feed suggests a man suffering the effects of too much Mediterranean sun and too little caution) but the concept of a new centrist party isn’t altogether a strange one.

The main stimulus, of course is Brexit, something which has altered – perhaps perpetually – the political calculus of the country. We are no longer a nation defined by our attitudes to economic issues; we are one defined by our position vis a vis globalisation. On one side sit the 52% – against the European Union, immigration and neoliberal politics. On the other are the 48%, supportive of international trade and the free flows of capital and people.

In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, however, a curious thing took place. In their haste to win votes, both Labour and the Conservatives positioned themselves firmly on the side of the thin majority who voted in favour of Brexit. Both parties deposed their leadership in favour of figures opposed to internationalism (Jeremy Corbyn, whatever his youthful fanbase might believe, is and has always been a trenchant nationalist and opponent of the European Union) and have enthusiastically courted former Leave voters.

But if Britain’s political realignment saw the creation of a political coalition united by its opposition to globalisation, the entailment of that was the creation of another one, one which defines itself in terms of a positive attitude to neoliberalism. Yet this demographic has been almost completely neglected by both major parties. Corbyn’s Labour Party professes a neo-socialist programme taken directly from the 1970s, while the Tories have opted to pursue a rock-hard Brexit (though whether they’ll get it, considering the sluggish state of negotiations and the reluctance of the European Commission to compromise, is as yet unclear.)

This leaves a large pro-globalisation lacuna in the political landscape. Who can fill it? Some have suggested the Liberal Democrats, but this seems unlikely. Their brand has been irreversibly tainted by their decision to go into coalition with the Tories in 2010, and the few electoral successes they enjoyed in 2017 came not from their pro-European agitation but from what they’ve always been best at – locally-focussed campaigns won through intense canvassing.

If not the Lib Dems, does this leave room for a new centrist party – of the sort suggested by Chapman – to enter the scene? Contrary to the somewhat febrile speculation of many commentators, some of whom seem in need of something to write about during the long hot summer, this seems unlikely.

Firstly, it relies upon the assumption that all of the 48% of the electorate who opposed Brexit are ideologically internationalist. This is as mistaken as presuming that that all of the 52% of the country who supported Brexit are swivel-eyed bigots. Whilst at least some of those 48% are, many more are the economically cautious; those who voted to Remain out of an innate reluctance to jump into the void. The small cadre of hardcore Remainers do not constitute enough of a pool to form a new party of.

Secondly, it mistakes internationalism for centrism. Indeed, this difference has been elided over by multiple commentators online, who assume that a centrist party is per se going to be internationalist. Genuinely centrist parties in the past have been grounded on economic centrism; that is to say, fairly high government spending and a fairly equitable tax burden.

None of this is compatible with the brand of internationalism being espoused by those encouraging a third party; returning to the European Union would, for a variety of reasons, require adherence to the ‘German model’ of economics, one which would see spending cut and foreign labour permitted entry to the country. Theoretically an internationalist party might achieve limited success in certain areas; but it would be unable to capitalise on the potential that true centrism holds.

This leads to the final reason for the likely failure of a new third party, namely the deeply entrenched political differences that transcend the pro-globalisation/anti-globalisation dichotomy. Profound differences exist between left-wing and right-wing internationalists, both in their attitudes towards internationalism and in their stances on various other issues.

Indeed, it could almost be argued that the gulf between right-wing internationalism and left-wing internationalism is almost as profound and impassable as the one between parochialism and globalism. A centrist party would have to find a way to reconcile wildly different positions on issues like defence, non-European migration, civil liberties and the environment.

This all highlights a problem with the basic premise of Chapman’s; that a party can be founded upon an issue. UKIP tried that, and it didn’t work – after essentially exhausting the mileage that could be made out of Europe, they’ve been reduced to a risible fringe movement of nutcases and Islamophobes. Parties shouldn’t be founded upon policies; they should be founded upon ideologies.

So it is with both the Conservatives and Labour (and indeed, to their credit, the Lib Dems.) The Conservatives are not a party of low immigration or monetarist policy; they are a party which believes in the concept of hierarchy, of the inevitability of inequality, and of the importance of incremental societal evolution. Similarly, Labour is a party which is rooted in a belief in the importance of trade unionism and of egalitarianism.

Deprived of such an animating spirit, a centrist or internationalist third party cannot hope to thrive. At best it will succeed in agitating enough to make its voice heard – which may well be enough to accomplish its goals – but in reality a third party of this sort has no hope. If James Chapman wants to stop or to mitigate Brexit, a new party isn’t the answer.

New Liberalism – a manifesto

Much – too much, probably – has been written about why liberalism seemed to fail in 2016. None of it is particularly convincing. That’s not to say it’s worthless – it’s not. But whilst each of the explanations has been true, none has been both necessary and sufficient. In reality, it will take many decades – centuries, perhaps – before an intelligible and explanatory narrative can be found for the events of 2016.

That doesn’t mean that, in the here and now, we can’t react. In fact it is absolutely imperative that liberals regroup and prepare to mobilise against the forces of reaction and anti-modernity. The alternative is unthinkable; to simply surrender and watch as the 1930s repeat themselves.

But if liberalism is to go on the offensive, it needs to arm itself with a coherent ideology that can compete with the numerous anti-liberal ideologies presently ascendant. The failure to articulate such an ideology was one of the key reasons that this present period of liberalism came to an end. Far too often it seemed that the liberalism of Blair and Obama was an ad hoc menu of policies rather than a philosophy; a confused jumble of ideas with little in common.

The (perhaps inevitable) result of this was that liberalism began to be perceived as little more than a façade, merely a byword for pragmatic politics. And therefore, when the tides turned and liberalism no longer delivered prosperity (i.e. after the financial crash of 2008-9) there was no longer a valid case for it. Liberalism had predicated itself solely upon ensuring prosperity, and as such it provided no convincing reason to support it when that prosperity was gone.

In the void left by the collapse of liberal hegemony, both the far right and the far left have sought to take its’ place. Both despise liberal values, and have spent much of the last sixty years waiting to attack them. Though they (clearly) differ greatly from each other, they have shown themselves to be willing to co-operate in their attacks upon liberalism. It is this grotesque coalition – pairing Edward Snowden with Vladimir Putin, Jean-Luc Melenchon with Marine Le Pen – who liberalism must confront, if it is to ensure that liberal society can survive the next few years.

In light of all this, I propose a new paradigm for liberalism. I have provisionally named it New Liberalism – it seems the most appropriate name for an ideology which clearly follows in the tradition of liberalism, whilst seeking to distinguish itself from older and flawed versions of it. New Liberalism is not a political party or movement; nor is it even a platform of policies. It is against the essence of liberalism that it be ossified and turned into a single entity. Instead, New Liberalism is a series of principles – ten, to be precise – that I suggest should underlie liberal thought in the coming years.

 

  1. New Liberalism is the belief that a better future for all humans is possible, and that we have a moral obligation to actualise it.
  2. New Liberalism seeks social harmony, whether between classes, between genders, or between ethnicities.
  3. New Liberalism is respectful of cultural difference, but demands adherence to liberal values as a prerequisite of toleration.
  4. New Liberalism supports a gradual progression towards transnational integration, whilst acknowledging that nation-states and national identities will not disappear until a popular will exists for them to do so.
  5. New Liberalism embraces the principles of free trade and economic neoliberalism, but accepts that mistakes have been made in the implementation of both, and resolves to learn from them.
  6. New Liberalism rejects majoritarianism and demagoguery. It is predicated in consensus politics and concern for the interests of all citizens.
  7. New Liberalism seeks to build links between the left-wing and right-wing based on shared commitments to the ideals of liberalism.
  8. New Liberalism is a broad church; it is not dogmatic, nor is it monolithic. There is room for considerable debate and discourse within it.
  9. New Liberalism values the rule of law and adherence to established methods of governance, eschewing populist demagoguery.
  10. New Liberalism is a muscular and evangelical ideology, insofar as it seeks to propagate itself around the world. It is unafraid to confront anti-liberal ideologies situated anywhere on the political spectrum.

These principles are both broad and narrow. They are broad, insofar as they are not ostensibly a commitment to any specific policies. But they are narrow, inasmuch as commitment to these principles will inevitably preclude many policies. This is intentional. New Liberalism is, as (8) says, not a monolithic entity. One can be a Conservative or a Liberal Democrat or a Labour member, and also a New Liberal. It is an ideology which seeks to occupy the areas of intersection between all these parties. This area is not homogenous; there is plenty of debate to be had. But the foundational premises of this political space are not challenged.

They are also intentionally antagonistic to the far right and allied movements. Far right policies cannot conceivably be actualised in a state governed along New Liberal principles. The aspirations to equality and freedom inherent in them is repugnant to the far right. But equally these principles – particularly the unapologetic defence of the free market – are unconscionable to a far left movement.

This is not a pick-and-mix ideology. New Liberalism must be taken in its’ entirety, or not at all. The principles support each other, and indeed are all necessary consequences of the first one. Ideological flexibility – and the appearance of sly pragmatism – was the downfall of the last wave of liberalism. As such the people will respect an ideology which retains its basic principles, rather than selectively discarding them based on what seems to gain votes.

At heart New Liberalism is a reformulation of historical liberalism, one which is cognizant of its’ mistakes as well as its strengths. It recognises that liberalism failed to ensure economic stability through a variety of ill-considered policies. It recognises that mass immigration from non-Western countries has been a varied narrative, one which many are unconvinced about. It is aware of the problems of cronyism and corruption that have often afflicted liberalism before. And it promises to work towards eliminating them, whilst retaining the principles of liberalism.

Will it work? Who knows. Every ideology hubristically assumes that it is ‘right’, and history informs us that so far none has succeeded. But I do not intend to posit New Liberalism as an ideology that will last mankind till the end of time, as some kind of watertight belief system. It is specifically intended to combat far-left and far-right extremism in Europe and America. As far as this goal is concerned, it seems a beginning, at least – whilst it may not succeed in defeating the massed ranks of the radicals, it provides a platform around which opposition can rally. It plays to the strengths of liberalism, whilst reinvigorating it with new life.

The election of Alexander Van Der Bellen in Austria proves that, contrary to the wishes of its premature obituarists, liberalism is not yet dead. So too does the nomination of Sevil Shhaideh – a Muslim woman – as President of Romania, and the apparent setbacks for Marine Le Pen in France. But as liberals we must not be complacent. At any moment the situation may worsen for liberals; we must be prepared to respond.

The war is on, the armies are being massed. Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 9th will herald the beginning of open combat; another battle may well happen in the run-up to the French Presidential election in Spring of 2017. There will be many more such. But with a standard to act as a rallying-post, liberalism may not be lost.

President Trump

Though the tortuous process of appeals, recounts and formalities will no doubt continue for several days more, the result now seems certain; Donald J. Trump is to become the next President of the United States. When he announced his candidacy in June 2015, the reaction was one of mild amusement. By the time he won the Republican nomination in May of 2016, the amusement had turned to panic. But even at that juncture, few imagined that Trump would eventually succeed in his quixotic quest for the presidency. And yet.

This result is all the more surprising in the wake of weeks of polling suggesting that Hillary Clinton had a small but consistent lead in most swing states, something which led most analysts to predict a fairly comfortable victory. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only did Trump win in heavily contested states such as Florida or North Carolina, he also carried states such as Wisconsin and Michigan – both states considered ‘safe’ by the Clinton campaign. A 300+ total of electoral votes seems entirely plausible.

How did this happen? Throughout the campaign, various theories have been offered for Trump’s appeal – some economic, some sociological, some cultural. All are true to a certain extent, but Trump’s victory cannot be reduced to any of them. Perhaps the only explanation for it is that it is non-explainable. In the words of David Axelrod, a certain class of voters have uttered a ‘primal scream’ at the ballot box – a cri de coeur of rage and embitterment, channelled through the person of Donald Trump. To these voters, Trump is a symbol of resistance to everything which they oppose, and as such is worthy of the vote no matter what.

Their rage is directed at a multitude of things; feminism, immigration, sexual tolerance, intellectualism, ‘the elite.’ All of this can be summed up in a word; modernity. Donald Trump is a radical reactionary, insofar as his attitude and policies reflect a desire to take America back to a putative ‘golden age.’ Of course, this ‘golden age’ was far from golden for many – the African Americans living under Jim Crow, the women expected to abandon all aspirations and raise families, the labourers working under atrocious conditions without union rights. But – and this is the fact that won Trump the election – for a significant number of people this was a golden age. For white lower-middle class men in particular, this was a fairly blissful period, and moreover considerably preferable to modernity.

They voted to attempt to reconstruct this idealised 1950s America, and they did so in 2016 because the vestiges of it are being lost. It is no coincidence that the most fervent Trump supporters come from what might be termed ‘transition areas’ – ones which were formerly all-white, but which are slowly experiencing inward migration of African-Americans and Hispanics. Though the civil rights movement and the social changes of the 1970s/80s altered America’s landscape, there were enough enclaves of traditionalism left that voters could simply ignore the ‘winds of change.’ But when these last areas appear to be slipping away to multiculturalism and liberalism, panic sets in – the result is Donald Trump.

As such, this should inform how we – the rest of the world – react to Mr Trump’s victory. Trump has won through harnessing the rage of small-town bigots and reactionaries. He has done so by offering a vision of America inimical to modern values, and by intentionally pandering to these reactionaries. This is evidenced in his policies – from his grotesque plan to ‘ban Muslims’ from entering America, to his misinformed and economically naïve views on free trade. America has elected an emissary of parochial bigotry and suburban prejudice.

It is imperative, therefore, that we do not attempt to normalise this election. This is emphatically not ‘just another vote’, and a reality which we will have to attune ourselves to sooner rather than later. This is a fundamental alteration of America’s political climate, and a token of the ascendency of a very dangerous ideology.

The legitimacy of the vote cannot be challenged. Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America, and will remain so for the next four years at least. Attempts to contest the results, or declare them ‘rigged’, are foolhardy and childish. Furthermore, governments around the world should not attempt to shun President Trump, but must tirelessly work with him to ensure that they can influence his policy – domestically and abroad – as much as is possible. The criticism of Theresa May’s message of congratulations to Mr Trump is misplaced, albeit understandable – she has a duty to get the best deal for her citizens, and unnecessarily antagonising Trump will not get such a deal.

Areas in which foreign states can positively influence Trump include trade, defence and security. With regards the latter, Europe can (and almost certainly will) make it clear that the only loser from a breakdown of the free trade system will be the USA – if America withdraws from NAFTA, Mexican industries will just start taking orders from Germany and France. Similarly, foreign influence can be leveraged to encourage Trump to avoid provoking Iran, or attempting to ‘take the oil’ in Syria – Trump will soon come up against the limits of unilateralism, and the guiding hand of other NATO states can prevent him from taking rash steps. In all these areas, we have an obligation to work constructively with Trump’s America; if we do not, then we risk allowing a hard-right regime to run riot without any checks or balances.

But equally, the forces of enlightened liberalism must not let the people of America – and indeed the world – forget that this is an unnatural state of affairs. They must not allow Trump’s presidency to be normalised. This entails countering his divisive rhetoric vigorously and effectively. Not only must Trump’s ideology be disproven; it must be discredited and defeated conclusively. He is not right, nor is his worldview ‘just another way of viewing things.’ This fashionable relativism has no place in as serious a situation as this; we must not be afraid to decry his views as wrong, no matter how many people believe in it. Popular acclamation does not have any impact upon moral truth.

And what of 2020? Certain commentators are already attempting to mount a revisionist critique of the Hillary campaign, offering inanities about ‘appealing to the disillusioned.’ This is patently false. The white lower-middle classes didn’t vote for Trump because of specific policies; they voted because they despised modernity in general. No amount of tinkering with platforms will convince them. Fortunately, that looks unlikely to be necessary. Two demographic changes will have taken place by 2020. Firstly, America (and particularly states such as Arizona, Florida, Texas and Georgia) will have become much more diverse – this is ascribable to immigration from Latin America, as well as from Asia and the Middle East. This demographic change should put many of these states in play, just as the white middle-class population begins to plateau or decline. Secondly, millions of the ‘millennial’ generation will have grown to voting age. This generation is fundamentally inclined towards liberalism and modernity.The only risk here lies in the possibility of an ascendant right developing a ‘youth’ following; this appears unlikely, but the growth of the ‘alt-right’ over the last few years demonstrates a risk. As such, a stridently liberal voice must exist amongst the youth, one unafraid to confront alt-right and neofascist forces attempting to garner votes amongst millennials.

Work with Trump to negate his worst policies; oppose Trump whenever possible. This is the only way forward. Where it is possible to wrench a compromise from him and the GOP, do so – but do not give in to normalisation and acquiescence. Trump is presiding over a movement of people with a fundamentally wrong view of the world, and if he is greeted with silence then we will all be guilty of allowing that wrong view to become entrenched.

This is a dark moment for America and the world; the election of a racist, sexist, wilfully offensive oaf as Commander-in-Chief. But it doesn’t need to be the beginning of an apocalypse, and if Trump is opposed vocally enough then it won’t. As Shakespeare put it, “the worst is not, so long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’” As long as we keep speaking out, this is not an end, but a beginning of sorts.

An idiot’s guide to the alt-right

Those of you active on social media will inevitably have run into them at some point. They’re easily recognisable by their dodgy grammar and spelling, their love of memes and ‘internet humour’, and their apparently perpetual aggression. You’ll find them in places like 4Chan or the darker recesses of Reddit; on Twitter they might be seen adoringly retweeting people like Donald Trump, or alternatively sending anti-Semitic or racist messages to people they dislike. Since 2010 they’ve been growing in number at an alarming rate. They are, of course, the alt-right.

Though they belong, broadly speaking, to the ‘right’ of the political spectrum – hence their name – their ideology is a uniquely 21st century amalgamation of multiple older ones brought together by that great leveller, the internet. In many aspects the alt-right resembles previous movements; in other ways it seems completely new.

At heart, it is a European and American movement opposed to modernity. But it is a paradoxical movement, insofar as it could not have come about without the social climate and technology of the 21st century. The alt-right rejects modern values wholeheartedly, but embraces the technological outlook that the 21st century has brought – in particular, the internet and mobile telecommunications. The observant amongst you might recognise this as a variant of the ‘reactionary modernism’ so prevalent amongst the fascist movement.

What do I mean by modernity? In essence I am referring to post-Enlightenment thought, in particular the values of liberty and equality amongst all humans. This view has, with a few notable hiatuses, been the dominant school of thought in Europe and America for the last three hundred years. It is one rejected by the alt-right.

At heart they oppose the belief that all humans are equal. On their theory, inequality is not just an inevitability but something to be celebrated. Often they will justify this with recourse to pseudo-scientific Social Darwinism; at other times they will simply use distorted and selectively chosen facts taken from dubious sources. This is an important and underemphasised point – the scientific aspirations of the alt-right. They worship science, reason and rationality, and have nothing but contempt for all metaphysical disciplines such as literature or philosophy. Nonetheless, they generally have a very vague grasp of scientific theory and practice; instead, they often have a background in the applied sciences such as engineering or computing.

The fundamental case of inequality, on the alt-right’s theory, is that of race. According to them, racial difference is essential and all-pervading; they feel little commonality between them and an individual of a different race. However, the majority will deny being racists (though most patently are, and many embrace racism whole-heartedly.) Instead they argue that they are ‘race realists’, essentially a pseudo-scientific version of racism. According to them, they do not believe that other races are a posteriori inferior; however, they claim that the ‘unfortunate reality’ is that whites are somehow superior. Often they will produce distorted or out-of-context statistics which support this; they tend to fetishize these statistics as incontrovertible proof of the truth of the alt-right’s position, even when they’re disproved (common examples include ‘blacks are inherently criminal’ or ‘Sweden is the rape capital of the world because of their immigration policies.’

From this, they attempt to construct a ‘reasoned’ approach to racism, one in which they argue it to be a matter of ‘common sense’ that races separate. For, having claimed that whites are superior, it surely seems logical that whites ‘get rid’ of non-whites. Here, the approaches of the alt-right differ; in America the approach seems to be a deportation of illegal immigrants and a gradual removal of rights of legal non-whites, whilst in Europe there tends to be more talk of ‘humane repatriation.’ Bear in mind that in both countries the alt-right is forced to remain within the law; there is little doubt that the movement supports genocide, but cannot legally say so.

Perhaps the most important object of both disgust and fear to the alt-right are Jews. Indeed, they have been responsible for an extraordinary revival of anti-Semitic rhetoric in a way unseen since the 1930s. To the alt-right, the Jews are even more loathsome than other non-whites since they ‘hide in plain sight’, and corrupt ‘white’ society from within. Furthermore, there is an almost childlike credulousness to the alt-right’s beliefs in the powers of the Jews. They are viewed as universally malevolent, universally intelligent, and all conspiring together to bring about the destruction of ‘western civilisation.’ The usual line of argument is that they plan to do this through a ‘liberal conspiracy’ to weaken whites – such phrases as ‘cultural Marxism’ are often mentioned in relation to this, though the utterers normally don’t have much idea what they mean.

Racism, though, is but one plank of the alt-right. The other is a uniquely visceral sexism. Much as, by recourse to pseudo-science, the alt-right believe that non-whites are unequal to whites, they similarly believe that men are somehow superior to women. Indeed, the movement arose fundamentally out of the sexist ‘Gamergate’ controversy, where male ‘gamers’ felt that the traditionally male space of computer games was being ruined by the perceived intrusion of women. A distinction might be made between the anti-feminism of the masses and the ideologues of the alt-right movement. On the part of the former it manifests itself as the mewling women-hatred of men unable to build meaningful relationships with the opposite genders, and who have retreated into anachronistic concepts of masculinity. The latter, however, add an extra level of complexity to their anti-feminism by combining it with their racism. According to these individuals feminism has caused European women to have fewer children, and to have them later – this means that white European birth rates are lower (in some cases significantly) than non-white birth rates. As such, they seek to restore a world in which women lived in subordination, where their role is merely to give birth to white children. Of course, much as the alt-right uses pseudo-scientific racial theory to cloak their fear of non-whites, their grandiose theorising about women masks a fundamental crisis of masculinity that they are experiencing.

More than merely an ideology, though, the alt-right is an approach to politics. It combines toxic anti-modern views with a contradictory embrace of modern technology and culture. Much like the Nazis – who despised modernity whilst still pouring billions into scientific research and technology – the alt-right is a techno-savvy movement. Indeed, it exists (uniquely for a political movement) on the internet, principally on Reddit and 4chan. The virtue of these platforms is that they are unpoliced and lend themselves to monolithic groups hostile to alternate views. Unsuspecting outsiders are sucked into these digital lairs and radicalised, exposed solely to ‘facts’ and media which strengthens the alt-right narrative. The flames of anger are stoked ever higher, directed against immigrants, women and ‘the elites.’ In addition, these online platforms are full of in-jokes and memes – shibboleths by which alt-rightists feel part of a global brotherhood, and can feel self-righteously superior to those who don’t ‘get it.’ Occasionally these users spill out onto other websites – they are known to sally forth onto Twitter to harass individuals who provoke their fury, such as the actress Lesley Jones. Never has a movement been so dependent upon online communications; it is the lifeblood flowing through the veins of the alt-right.

Of course, it would be remiss of me to cast the alt-right as a monolithic group. The most obvious division of the movement is into leaders and fellow-travellers. The majority are of the second camp, and do not necessarily conform to the above description. In particular, many ‘fellow travellers’ will be sympathetic to religion, or perhaps marginally liberal on certain issues. However, the leadership are remarkably homogenous – young, white, male, geeky, contemptuous of metaphysics, and supportive of atheism.

Are the alt-right conservatives? Not really. Conservatism is an ideology centred upon two things; societal cohesion and structural evolution. The first element posits that for a society to advance, different groups within it should be in harmony – blacks and whites, rich and poor, town and country. The alt-right rejects this spectacularly; it attempts to sow division wherever possible, and rejects all compromise as ‘cucking’, to use their delightful term. The second element posits that any change in society must be gradual – evolution, not revolution. Even if a previous change has been wrought by a revolution, the counter-revolution must not be iconoclastic or violent; it should be gradual and cautious. This too is rejected by the alt-right, with their calls for extreme policies against immigrants and democracy.

Neither are they ‘neo-Nazis’, as some well-intentioned but misguided people are attempting to label them. Neo-Nazism is based upon a reconstruction of Nazi ideology in some shape or form; a potent combination of totalitarianism, racism, and third-positionism. The alt-right, though they share the second of these beliefs, generally rejects the first and second of these. They are violently libertarian (perhaps best described as paleo-libertarian, insofar as their libertarianism is wedded to white nationalism) and often approving of brash capitalism. Put simply, the Nazis would have viewed the alt-right as a bunch of long-haired wastrels who needed a shower, a uniform and a ticket to boot camp; the alt-right would have viewed the Nazis as boring reactionaries, even if many of them pay considerable lip service to the Third Reich (at least partly because of the transgressive value of doing so these days.)

What they are, then, is a manifestation of the new division in politics; between populism and elitism. I use the latter word in a non-pejorative sense, descriptively rather than normatively. By it, I mean the liberal-minded, educated class – not merely ‘educated’ in the sense that the alt-right is, simply provided with technical knowledge, but with a liberal, humanistic education. It is these people, regardless of political affiliation, who (for better or worse) are now the fundamental opposition to the populists. Though there is enormous diversity between populists – it is, after all, a movement encompassing Black Lives Matter and the alt-right – they are united in their loathing of ‘the elites’ as much as those elites are united in their fear of the populists.

It seems fairly uncontroversial to state that the alt-right are a serious threat to Western civilisation. In common with terror groups like al-Qaeda or Daesh, they seek to destroy the liberal values intrinsic to the West, and reconstitute our societies in a totalitarian and illiberal mould, one in which women are oppressed, minorities persecuted, free thought stopped, and the self is negated in favour of the state. The British MP Jo Cox was killed by a member of the neofascist group National Action, a group which shares a lot of things with the alt-right (indeed, it is in many ways functionally identical.)

Far-right ideology is fairly indestructible; no matter how many times it is ‘defeated’ by liberalism, it comes back in new forms. Nazism was destroyed in 1945, but it returned as the neo-Nazi hooliganism of the FN and the BNP. The triumph of neoliberalism in the early 21c put paid to those forms of far-right rhetoric, and for a few years liberal thought reigned unchallenged. The alt-right is merely the latest in this long line of challengers to liberalism. Will it be defeated? Certainly. How and when? Who knows – but it looks like they’re going to be around for a long time.

 

What happens next

It wouldn’t be a total exaggeration to say that Britain has, for the last three days, been embroiled in its biggest crisis of the 21st century. On Friday we saw Britain exit the world’s largest politico-economic bloc, swiftly followed by a collapse in the value of the pound and trillions being wiped off the value of stock markets worldwide. Hours later the Prime Minister announced his resignation, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer simply vanished. By the weekend over three million people had signed a petition calling for a second referendum, and MPs were openly calling for Parliament to simply ignore the referendum.

I voted to remain in the EU. I believed, and continue to believe, in the European project and the creation of the world’s first superstate based on values of humanism and liberalism. Like the vast majority of experts, I think that a British departure from Europe will be have serious economic consequences, ones which will damage the prosperity of the nation for years to come. Perhaps more fundamentally than any of this, though, I feel that this referendum was more than a question of membership of the EU; it turned into a plebiscite on modernity, one in which we seem to have voted against the liberal values that many had presumed we held dear.

Nonetheless, I oppose a second referendum, and I urge you to do so as well. Why? Not because I’m a defeatist, or have simply given up. On the contrary, I think this result should be an impetus for liberal-minded individuals across the political spectrum to make sure their voices are heard louder than ever. This is not a retreat.

However, I don’t feel that a second referendum is at all a productive way of moving the debate forward; indeed, it might easily be seen as a retrograde step. Firstly, a second referendum would be a repeat of the greatest constitutional error in the last few hundred years – a dereliction of duty by Parliament. In Britain, Parliament is sovereign and supreme as a governing body; not the people. Our constitution has historically evolved in the direction of a representative rather than direct democracy, for the very good reason that it provides a vital check upon untrammelled populism. Our representatives are elected on the basis of being the most able to consider what is best for the nation, by virtue of their experience and wisdom. Referendums have no constitutional precedent, and are a dangerous exercise in rabble-rousing. This last one ended with an MP being killed for holding the ‘wrong’ political beliefs.

But aside from the fact that referendums are simply exercises in fear-mongering and pandering to the lowest common denominator (on both sides; Osborne’s ‘punishment budget was hardly better than Farage’s warnings of dusky foreigners attacking English women), there’s a further problem. There’s no guarantee that a second referendum would deliver the result desired, namely a vote to remain. It might – but we don’t know that. 52% of the country voted to leave Europe; some of them might have changed their minds, but surely not enough to change the result? If a second referendum were to reaffirm a Leave vote, we would not only be humiliated but we would be left with no moral high-ground. Put frankly, at this moment we can plausibly argue that the result is not representative of the people, even if we accept it. We would not be able to do this if a second referendum said the same thing.

A second referendum, furthermore, would be exhausting and time-wasting. Campaigning for the first one took months, dominated British public life, and was pretty much universally agreed to be a miserable experience. It was an expensive, tiring mess which poisoned the political culture of Britain, and left most of the publically badly misinformed about both sides of the debate. It was also free publicity for the radicals on the right, particularly Nigel Farage. We do not need this.

Victory for the Remain camp in this second referendum would be equally catastrophic. This country contains millions of people (concentrated in certain areas, admittedly, but to be found everywhere) who despise Europe and the values it stands for. We could run this referendum a hundred times, and each time they would vote to leave. These people tend to be working-class, from marginalised areas of the country, and in many cases feel hard done by neo-liberalism. At present, they are jubilant that ‘they have their country back’, as they so tritely put it. If they were to see their victory snatched from them by a second referendum (or, even worse, by an act of Parliament) then these people would break. The killing of Jo Cox is just the tip of the iceberg; if this subgroup felt cheated, there would be blood on the streets in a way which Britain has never seen. I can foresee right-wing terror on a level which doesn’t bear thinking about, but which would be hugely destructive. Even worse, the strongly Eurosceptic Armed Forces could no longer be fully trusted to maintain order. Britain has never had a coup (though we did come close in the 60s) and I would very much like to keep it that way.

As such, I propose not to annul the referendum but to mitigate it. We must be cognizant of the fact that Parliament is supreme, and utilise this in order to try and minimise the impact of the referendum on day to day life. The anti-Europe fundamentalists will be sated through an official withdrawal from the Union, and a few symbolic gestures; but we should work to make sure that life changes as little as possible for ordinary people.

What would this mitigation entail? Firstly, it would involve the government privately making the proverbial pilgrimage to Canosa. They should inform Brussels that they are utterly penitent, and did not want this to happen, but are bound by the realities of the referendum result. No amount of grovelling is enough – the intent is to soften the hearts of the European leaders, and convince them to offer a good deal. Any deal would ideally preserve access to the free market, border controls at Calais, free movement of people and EU funds. Essentially the EU flag would be taken down, but the reality of EU membership would remain. To placate the Eurosceptic crowd, certain concessions could be made – stronger border controls, deregulation of certain areas, and exemption from EU law in some fields. We will not be able to continue paying as little as £350m for access to the single market, but hopefully the negotiating team will keep the figure as low as possible. These negotiations would take a long time to conclude, but a preliminary document could be agreed upon quickly. Armed with this preliminary document, the government would begin to stabilise the markets and move forward.

I say ‘government’ – a new government is urgently needed. This should be a unifying government, one which encompasses the more level heads from both sides of the political spectrum. The main issue here is to keep Boris and/or Gove from No. 10. Not only are both men despicable traitors for their actions towards the PM, but neither of them are at all figures that the party can unite around. Worse, despite their pretensions to moderation they would enact a strongly Thatcherite and radical agenda as leaders. Much as the referendum can (and should) be mitigated, the resignation of David Cameron should be similarly mitigated by replacing his government with one ideologically similar, and which keeps out his enemies. As Prime Minister I would suggest Theresa May; she has coped admirably with the Home Ministry brief for over five years, and has proven to be a respected and popular figure. Not only is she a moderate pro-Europe figure, she is an efficient and capable administrator with the skills required to hold together an effective government. As such, she is the most viable individual to stand up to Boris and deliver a moderate and viable Brexit.

In voting to leave the EU, Britain has fucked up. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. Let’s not get carried away, as the Leave crowd did, and view this as being anything more than what it is – a question of membership in the EU. It’s not a question of liberalism, or immigration, or anything else. Rather than throwing our toys out of the pram like petulant children, we need to focus on making the best of a bad situation. We need to rebuild our relationship with Europe, mitigating what we’ve done; we need to create a functioning government which won’t be hijacked by right-wing ideologues. Petitioning for a second referendum won’t do that; we need to move forward, and do so at pace.