Learning the language of populism - a lesson for the elite

I've been curious about the way in which language is used to, as the trendies put it, 'other' people - make them out to be pariahs. Most commonly this language is used to validate the prejudice of its user. Take this example:



The anonymous author of this comment doesn't like vaping and explains why (although heaven knows where they got the science from - Daily Telegraph maybe). Which is all fine, even if I disagree. What's interesting is the final sentence - "...it does seem to be the chavs who use them most."

Imagine - and this is Bradford so entirely possible - if most of the vapers this person saw were from our fine city's Asian population. You can be absolutely sure that, not only would the commenter be unlikely to use the term 'paki' but the newspaper would have taken down the comment sharpish had they done so. Yet comment after comment can cheerfully use the term 'chav' without facing any sort of opprobrium.

Now you know me well enough to understand that I don't see this as a problem - people shouldn't be punished for what they say only, should it harm others, for what they do. We've created this idea of 'hate speech', embellished and polished it to the point where things that are merely stupidly unpleasant become 'hateful' - we're encouraged to report all of this stuff to the cops without actually knowing at what point 'hate speech' becomes a 'hate crime'. Worst of all we've begun to use this as justification for considering anyone not sharing the established view of what is 'hateful' as beyond the pale - xenophobes, bigots, ignorant. Or in the words of the commenter - chavs.

As a result of this enforced language moderation, we are shocked when people like Nigel Farage, Donald Trump or Katie Hopkins seem to get through to a load of ordinary people by ignoring what the elite has decided is 'hateful'. We assume that this is hate finding hate and stop there (hoping that there aren't enough of these nasty xenophobes, bigots and ignoramuses to actually get any power - risky given Brexit). We even misunderstand what people hear:

This kind of liberal dismissiveness is common but does not reflect the way that many Trump supporters actually talk about his statements. To use some terms from linguistics that actually may apply to the candidate, we can observe that Trump supporters are highly cognizant that what his words denote (building a wall, for instance) are not as important as what they index (his stance toward the world: that he is against the status quo, that he is willing to offend, that he is not phony, that he is willing to discuss racial animosities that other politicians dance around).

This conforms well to the way in which many in public health believe that, while they are immune to the blandishments of advertising, others (by which they mean those sort of people who use e-cigarettes and go to KFC) are not able to resist. The result being calls for all sorts of advertising bans and marketing restrictions.

If us liberals - and I use this in its proper English sense rather than its corrupted American meaning - are to make our case, we need to understand how folk like Trump, Hopkins and Farage communicate. It's as much about positioning as it is about content. We're familiar with the phrase 'sticking it to the man' but what we've not spotted yet is that we are 'the man'. And this is hard for folk who consider themselves to be bang on trend, caring, socially responsible citizens.

Keven Meagher wrote an article in Labour Uncut that set it out:

You don’t own an Apple Mac. You can’t taste the difference between Guatemalan and Colombian coffee beans. You voted to leave the European Union and you don’t regret it one tiny bit.

You want to buy British and be proud of your country. You like your politicians in suits. You wonder why we can’t just jail or expel Muslim fanatics who hate us.

You drink lager or real ale, not craft beer. If you go out for a meal, it’s to a Harvester pub, not a bijou Vietnamese canteen.

You’ve started shopping in Aldi and Lidl these past few years. You think climate change is overblown. Overseas aid is misspent and the benefits system is a soft touch.

The problem is that plenty of people "of the left" simply failed to get what Meagher was saying. These folk chose to think that he was arguing for an anti-immigrant, anti-union, union flag wrapped policy platform rather than making a plea to change how we talk to people, to learn the lesson of Trump and Farage, to listen to folk rather than lecture them about their failings and inadequacies.

During the referendum campaign I was asked to speak with the Denholme Elders, a group of old people who meet at the village's Mechanics Institute. It was inevitable that the discussion moved to immigration and I made clear that, whatever the outcome of the referendum, we'd still have significant immigration. One woman, not liking what I'd said, told us a story of how her daughter had been insulted and spat at by some young Asian men in Bradford. This tale resulted in nods and murmers of agreement - immigration was a problem.

Now I could have simply moved on and, in the manner of Gordon Brown, ranted about Little Englander bigots once I'd left. Indeed that's how the bulk of the commentariat feel about these situations. How does this help? Isn't it better to say to them - "those young Asian lads aren't immigrants, they were born here and it's their city too - their nasty attack on your daughter is our problem but not something made worse or better by immigration." After a bit of argument back and forth, most people in the room accepted that the bad behaviour and criminality of some Asian lads isn't resolved by stopping future immigration.

Now I'm not suggesting that all these folk have become open borders advocates but they went away having had a conversation - on their terms - about immigration. None of this patronising "how can you think immigration is a bad thing" language that so many use and a recognition that immigration should never be used as a prod to nudge people into changing the fundamentals of their culture. If anyone changes it should be the immigrant not the folk those immigrants have come to live amongst.

We've spent a couple of decades sneering at white working class culture - attacking its diet, its music, its dress and its language. And at the same time we've rammed the celebration of other cultures - food, dance, dress and festival - in the faces of these people whose lifestyle we disparage and dismiss. We need to stop a moment and think what we're doing. And recognise that what we call promoting order, what we call public health, and what we call multiculturalism - all this represents a consistent and unjustified attack on the traditions of England's working class.

The people many of you call xenophobes and bigots, the folk you dismiss as stupid - even morons, are no longer there to be herded. Unless we change our language, recognise the effectiveness of that blunt incorrectness used by Trump, Farage, Hopkins and others, we will see these people continue their support for such populists - they are, after all, the only politicians actually listening to them. The only ones offering anything to the chavs.

We have to learn the language of populism, to be less sensitive, to reject the word police and to start painting - in blunt terms - a picture of a society that celebrates the beery, smokey, loud culture of the chav just as much as it celebrates the cultures of Muslims, Hindus and Jamaicans. And a society that doesn't condemn the simple pleasures of a pint, a fag, a burger and some banter.

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UKIP, Momentum and the SNP are no more cults than the Liberal Democrats

I know it sometimes looks that way. Especially if you spend too much time paddling in the more febrile parts of social media. But politics has not become a contest between competing cults - Corbyn's success isn't cultic nor is euroscepticism or Scottish nationalism.

Although some seem to think so:

The political faithful dream of a glorious future: a Scotland free of English tutelage, an England free of the domination of Brussels, a Britain free of greed and poverty. Like the great religious dreams of the past, these causes take over lives. But all present formidable difficulties. In political as in religious cults, believers must be insulated against doubts. The most effective method is to blacken the outside world, and make alternative sources of information appear like the Devil’s seductions that tempt the godly into darkness. As Professors Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth put it in their study of political sectarianism: “There is only one truth — that espoused by the cult. Competing explanations are not merely inaccurate but degenerate”.

Calling the forces challenging your world view a cult is a convenient excuse for worldly wise Guardian readers safe in their well-paid publicly-funded jobs. Now it's true that these causes do take over the lives of a few people - all of the causes and their leaders have a collection of fan-children, resplendent with badges, hands tightly clutching banners, faces suffused with joy at the sight of their campaign's human manifestation. But the people turning out to a damp Corbyn rally, sitting on uncomfortable village hall chair waiting for Nigel Farage or handing out yellow and black leaflets to Glasgow commuters - these folk aren't members of a cult but really do want things to change.

Nicola Sturgeon, Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn aren't the leaders of cults but are the fortunate beneficiaries of people's political will - admittedly not all the people (so far it seems only Farage can lay claim to success in his campaign) but enough people to challenge the certainties of managerialist and technocratic centre-ground politics. Calling supporters of Scottish nationalism, UK independence or state socialism cultists may be jolly fun on Twitter or in your column in New Statesman or The Guardian. But it simply isn't true - or at least no more true than calling Blairites a cult - or, for that matter, doing the same for the growing band of Remain refuseniks and Brexit deniers.

It is true that we gather with people of like mind - I follow and am followed by far more West Ham fans than you because I'm a West Ham fan. And, in amongst the banter and vigorous discussion of why we haven't got a right back, we behave very similarly to those political in-groups with particular enemies and consistent lines of comment. Indeed, that group of West Ham fans will moan about how we're always last on Match of the Day, how teams like Chelsea and Liverpool get far too much coverage, and how the football authorities have it in for us. This doesn't make us a cult any more than very similar assertions by followers of Corbyn or over-enthusiastic cybernats makes them a cult.

The real point about cults - from the Manson Family and Jonestown through to Scientology - is that they get people to two things: cut themselves off from normal society to live within the cult; and get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise have done ('free love', suicide, even murder). And cults are characterised by leaders who control and direct the actions of members - none of the political leaders we've mentioned fit this characterisation.

For all the adulation afforded Corbyn, Farage and Sturgeon they are not leaders of cults. Rather they are the vehicles through which the political mission is delivered - Scottish independence, leaving the EU and a socialist Labour Party. So long as these leaders deliver - or seem to deliver - success their position is assured. Nicola Sturgeon is the First Minister of Scotland giving nationalists the hope that the mission is still achievable. And Corbyn looks likely to have his leadership affirmed by Labour members - a victory that, in the view of Momentum supporters, sustains that momentum towards 'socialism' (however loosely defined). If, for whatever reason, either of these positions falters does anyone think supporters won't turn to a different leader to take up the cause?

Cults are not made by confirmation bias or the clustering of people as communities of interest. Cults are deliberate creations that use ideologies - religious or political - as the vehicle for gaining and securing power for power's sake (although what is meant by power will vary). The adulation, the conspiracy theories, the aggressive defence of the mission, and a 'you're either with us or agin us' attitude that we see with political movements such as separatism are not features that define a cult even if they are things we'd superficially associate with cults.

What the solid, dependable centrists need to understand is that, very often, they fit the same pattern and description (if you don't believe me check out Liberal Democrat social media). Just because your mission is defined as 'mainstream' doesn't mean it doesn't take on those same cultic characters - clustering with like minds, aggression, adulation of leaders - that are falsely attached to separatist, far-left and right-wing causes.

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Who is 'us'?

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Nigel Farage, in that inimitable manner of his, has been on about Muslims. And in doing so dear old Nigel has framed it in these terms:

..there are some Muslims in Britain who comprise ‘a fifth column living in our country who hate us and want to kill us’.

My question in all of this is to ask who Nigel means by 'us'? We sort of know, or think we know - it's clearly not intended to mean Muslims so might mean everyone who isn't a Muslim. The problem is that we struggle to determine who 'us' might be - at least when we get to the point of actually sorting out the sheep from the goats, us from them.

Firstly there's no doubt that there are a bunch of people who hate me for what I am (or choose to be) - some hate my Englishness, others hate my catholicism, and another bunch hate me for being a Tory. Amidst all this hatred there's a few who hate me for rejecting the idea that there is one god whose prophet is Mohammed. A minority of these hate-filled people entertain the idea of violence as a means of projecting their hatred

But that doesn't get any nearer to the vexed question of who Nigel means by 'us'. It's all mixed up in judgements about language, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual preference and political opinion. Which perhaps means that, while Nigel thinks I'm part of 'us', I don't think I am because it would mean accepting his world view by suggesting that my Black, Pakistani and Jewish friends are somehow 'them' - tolerated rather than welcomed in my place.

What we see here is the irony of the left's groupthink - ironic both because the left focuses closely on defining characteristics (and society's attitude to those characteristics) and also since I'm talking about Nigel Farage who isn't 'of the left', at least in conventional terms. If we define people as members of a particular group (or groups) then we allow for the sort of comment that Nigel Farage makes by allowing for the existence of 'us' and 'them'. If, on the other hand, we define people as individuals who have a particular set of characteristics - some innate, some acquired, some a matter of choice or belief - then the idea of 'us' ceases to have relevence other than as a practical pronoun.

The political use of the word 'us' is exploitative of people's desire to belong. Nigel Farage uses it to suggest that Muslims living in Britain are not 'us' because a few of those Muslims hate some non-Muslims and may want to be violent towards those people. And we therefore have to reject all Muslims because we can't on first assessment tell whether this is a Muslim who will chat to us about cricket, laugh at our jokes and discuss business, or a Muslim who is only a switch away from blowing us all up.

But, on this logic, I should reject other groups that might hate me too. How do I know that the person with the Twitter account proclaiming their hatred of Tories isn't planning violence against me - perhaps a terrorist attack on the Conservative Club? I've watched the antics of anti-austerity campaigners and reckon they're pretty violent at times - how is this different from what Nigel Farage is saying about Muslims? Clearly such people aren't 'us'.

We could go on here - citing how some people hate (and therefore might be violent towards) a host of different groups from gays and lesbians through an assortment of races or religions, to the supporters of the wrong football club. There is no 'us' if it is defined by membership of a group not, in one way or another, hated. But the word is convenient and deniable - membership of 'us' is fluid and flexible subject to interpretation and amendment. Confronted by a challenge, I've no doubt that Nigel Farage would absolutely deny that 'us' didn't include Muslims even though the logic of his criticism tells us this must be the case.

I am quite comfortable with 'us' existing - my support for West Ham places me in a group where 'us' is fellow supporters and 'them' is everyone else. And the same goes for a load of other things - from my politics through to my group of close friends or family. But where we make the mistake is in framing political debate in terms of 'us' and 'them' - I'm guessing this isn't a new thing but it is, despite the opinions of right wing nationalists like Nigel Farage, very much associated with the left of politics, with the idea of collectivity and with the primacy of the group in their idea of society.

In the end there should be no 'us' in politics where that word is used to define others as an enemy, as unwanted or as dangerously different. Nor should there be an 'us' that means one group of people being unfairly privileged by government simply because of their membership of that group. And there should not be an 'us' where the politician campaigns on the basis of group interest - 'vote for me, I'm the Muslim/Black/Working Class candidate'.

You and I are not defined by our membership of a given group or groups - for sure such membership might inform what we think important but imposing this 'us-ness' on people is essentially divisive however well meant it might be. We know it's divisive because we see Nigel Farage do it with Muslims and are outraged. But Farage's use of 'us' is absolutely the same as the 'us' that determines the multiple manifestos at the recent election (for young people, for the disabled, for England, for Scotland, for ethnic minorities, for LGBT people). Are people really defined by age, gender, sexual preference and ability or by the specifics of their own lives, loves, interests and opinions? Surely it's the latter - I do hope so.

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