Another week brings another exposé of Reform UK. Sitting down on Monday to watch ITV News’ undercover documentary into Nigel Farage’s outfit, I anticipated a barrage of racism, misogyny, and the dropping of expletives into conversation like they were World War Two bombs over Dresden. In what followed, one Reform councillor gladly detailed the “Sunday morning Rose Garden executions” he would enact as Prime Minister, while another declared of asylum seekers arriving in the UK on small boats that he would “take them out.”
But most bemusing was the documentary’s introduction, which featured a man at a protest throwing a Nazi salute, with an Israeli flag hanging below him. Now, many things are presently being said about Israel and its actions, but that’s a conversation I have neither the inclination nor the flexible word count to tackle. But it isn’t complex to recognise that a Nazi salute and the flag of a nation founded in part in response to Jewish persecution, used as symbols of the same cause, is something of a contradiction.
How did it happen that these antithetical symbols could find themselves on the same side? In part, I don’t know how sincerely this man threw that salute; it’s possible he was entirely facetious. Maybe this was just an extension of right-wing online antagonism, doing the worst thing possible to provoke middle class lefties into producing overwritten student thinkpieces about it.
This technological goading bears some sense. So too does the idea that given the extent to which our technology has sped up political discussion (news is no longer disseminated in the morning in the papers then at night on TV, but continually), arguments become mish-mashed and coagulate, and suddenly you’re throwing a Nazi salute before the Israeli flag, or wearing a keffiyeh to talk about a wealth tax.
What’s more, in sharing your views online, in a medium built on perception, you are no longer simply declaring what you think, but deciding what you are seen to think – and in this environment, symbols are useful political agitators. Mix in the quick pace of discussion and an instinct to provoke, and you have a peculiar farrago of ideological signifiers that should be mutually exclusive.
This seems to be the mood of present politics. Everything is a symbol and spectacle. Hold a Starbucks cup and you’re avoiding an anti-Israeli boycott; wear Kneecap merchandise and you’re an anti-Semite; feign ignorance and become a defender of a broken status quo. Having been fed a mode of political communication that prizes the image of engagement above engagement, everything becomes a representation of your thoughts.
It’s often remarked that social media encourages outrage through a sensationalist algorithm. But before even that, disseminating the bulk of political information through a medium that emphasises how others perceive you, at such a fast rate, surely harms political discussion by ensuring that views aren’t presented as views, but as dislocated pantomime exaggerations of those views, with no greater relation to your ideology than a shadow puppet does to a rabbit. There is no way to advance any worldview because each worldview is represented by some confused muddle of avatars that frequently conflict, but offer the vibe of an ideology.
I return from my lengthy digression. The man throwing the Nazi salute above the Israeli flag has fallen into no contradiction, because these are just ways of notifying us of his beliefs: anti-woke, anti-immigration, anti-left, and agitating.
It’s vibes-based politics: I know what he thinks; he doesn’t have to tell me. Although, I’ve met these anti-immigrant guys. And in this case, he probably will.
Photo by Mike Newbry on Unsplash.
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Political symbols have become a spectacle
Another week brings another exposé of Reform UK. Sitting down on Monday to watch ITV News’ undercover documentary into Nigel Farage’s outfit, I anticipated a barrage of racism, misogyny, and the dropping of expletives into conversation like they were World War Two bombs over Dresden. In what followed, one Reform councillor gladly detailed the “Sunday morning Rose Garden executions” he would enact as Prime Minister, while another declared of asylum seekers arriving in the UK on small boats that he would “take them out.”
But most bemusing was the documentary’s introduction, which featured a man at a protest throwing a Nazi salute, with an Israeli flag hanging below him. Now, many things are presently being said about Israel and its actions, but that’s a conversation I have neither the inclination nor the flexible word count to tackle. But it isn’t complex to recognise that a Nazi salute and the flag of a nation founded in part in response to Jewish persecution, used as symbols of the same cause, is something of a contradiction.
How did it happen that these antithetical symbols could find themselves on the same side? In part, I don’t know how sincerely this man threw that salute; it’s possible he was entirely facetious. Maybe this was just an extension of right-wing online antagonism, doing the worst thing possible to provoke middle class lefties into producing overwritten student thinkpieces about it.
This technological goading bears some sense. So too does the idea that given the extent to which our technology has sped up political discussion (news is no longer disseminated in the morning in the papers then at night on TV, but continually), arguments become mish-mashed and coagulate, and suddenly you’re throwing a Nazi salute before the Israeli flag, or wearing a keffiyeh to talk about a wealth tax.
What’s more, in sharing your views online, in a medium built on perception, you are no longer simply declaring what you think, but deciding what you are seen to think – and in this environment, symbols are useful political agitators. Mix in the quick pace of discussion and an instinct to provoke, and you have a peculiar farrago of ideological signifiers that should be mutually exclusive.
This seems to be the mood of present politics. Everything is a symbol and spectacle. Hold a Starbucks cup and you’re avoiding an anti-Israeli boycott; wear Kneecap merchandise and you’re an anti-Semite; feign ignorance and become a defender of a broken status quo. Having been fed a mode of political communication that prizes the image of engagement above engagement, everything becomes a representation of your thoughts.
It’s often remarked that social media encourages outrage through a sensationalist algorithm. But before even that, disseminating the bulk of political information through a medium that emphasises how others perceive you, at such a fast rate, surely harms political discussion by ensuring that views aren’t presented as views, but as dislocated pantomime exaggerations of those views, with no greater relation to your ideology than a shadow puppet does to a rabbit. There is no way to advance any worldview because each worldview is represented by some confused muddle of avatars that frequently conflict, but offer the vibe of an ideology.
I return from my lengthy digression. The man throwing the Nazi salute above the Israeli flag has fallen into no contradiction, because these are just ways of notifying us of his beliefs: anti-woke, anti-immigration, anti-left, and agitating.
The international student experience: At the crossroads between two worlds
It’s vibes-based politics: I know what he thinks; he doesn’t have to tell me. Although, I’ve met these anti-immigrant guys. And in this case, he probably will.
Photo by Mike Newbry on Unsplash.
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