Hayek, astroturf and centrism

In my efforts to understand astroturfed political campaigns, I decided to read Hayek’s polemical essay ‘The Intellectuals and Socialism’.

The essay is the source of Hayek's reference to “second hand dealers in ideas” often assumed to mean think tanks. I’m not sure this is what he meant in 1949, regardless of how apt it feels today.

Hayek’s "intellectuals" are journalists, school teachers and other purveyors of knowledge. They are the second-hand dealers in ideas whose role is to act as an intermediary between social, political and cultural ideas and the public at large who, he assumes, are inescapably under their influence.*

In the essay he rails against a media and cultural world dominated by socialist intellectuals , putting this dominance down to the awe-inspiring utopianism of socialist ideas in contrast to the workaday “practical”  “sensible” “realistic” (dare I say) centrism of liberalism.

Hayek complains that: “what [liberals] lack is a liberal Utopia… a program which seems neither a mere defence of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty… which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today to be politically possible.”

This quote could literally have been uttered by David Cameron or Tony Blair. It is precisely the kind of “what works is what’s best” managerialism that guided first term New Labour. It feels entirely apt for a society chugging along with 3% growth, decent wage growth and a public sector borrowing requirement of 37-40% of GDP.

Hayek didn’t believe he was living in an actually existing capitalist society.

And I think it is precisely this that's is at the root of the failure to adequately respond to the crisis of 2008. It is the reason why liberalism offered, at most, an apologia to 2008 according to this week’s Financial Times. It is possible Hayek would have campaigned for Brexit, though our current no-deal trajectory sits ill with the centrism in his 1949 essay.

All of which is to say that Hayek and today’s “intellectual neoliberals” in the media continue to spectacularly miss the point.  

In a society marked by social distress, it is insanity to think a media ‘huddle’ with Michael Gove a masterstroke of social action.

When millions of children cannot get a decent diet; if you don't know where next week's wages are coming from; if one of the great markers of human progress has gone into unprecedented reverse, then no amount of editorializing, lobby briefings or press releases is likely to shift public opinion.

Because Hayek was wrong, fatally wrong, if he believed that public opinion turned solely on whatever vision or anti-vision is on offer from media intellectuals.

Surely this is what the 2017 general election result, and all opinion polls since, conclusively demonstrated? Public opinion does not turn on whatever latest smear is concocted in the Westminster lobby, it turns on the deep and long-standing churnings in people’s everyday material conditions.

Unless and until liberals are able to understand that a politics that addresses 2008 and its fallout is the new centrism, they will stay irrelevant.

*Note - I find the essay useful in getting my head around the funding decisions of charities like the Political and Economic Research Trust (PERT). Not just the money it gave to the TaxPayers Alliance, but the money doled out to early culture war outfits like the New Culture Forum. I’m researching a longer piece on this, including how PERT ended up funding a campaign to have traffic lights abolished).   

A letter to the patrons of the CAA

All reasonable people should be working hard to ensure Antisemitism is stamped out and that the issue is not inflamed.

Unfortunately a petition by the Campaign Against Antisemitism appears to have done just that.

The title of the charity’s petition ‘For the many, not the Jew’ could hardly have been more inflammatory.
The result has been an outpouring of violent comments in support of the petition that are nothing less than incitement to political violence (I won't share or link to the comments here, the petition is easily found). Thankfully, in his response to questions raised by the Skwarkbox blog, the Chairman of the CAA condemned the comments.

The Charity Commission has also confirmed it is in contact with the charity after concerns were raised by members of the public about it. 

I am struggling to think of another campaigning organisation (perhaps other than Leave.EU or UKIP) that has acted in such an irresponsible way.

It is true that neither the CAA, nor its patrons, are responsible for comments placed in support of its petition. But it is equally true that the comments do the charity, its officers, trustees and patrons no credit whatsoever, in fact they devalue it.

The charity counts a former Archbishop of Canterbury, sitting MPs, lords and high profile barristers among its patrons. In addition to writing to them, I have also written to the charity.

It is beyond comprehension that those associated with the CAA would not do whatever they can, however small, to de-escalate this.

The text of my letter is below.

Dear Sir / Madam

As a patron of the Charity ‘The Campaign Against Antisemitism’ I must draw your attention to the charity’s petition ‘For the Many, not the Jew,’ currently hosted at Change.org  ( https://www.change.org/p/the-parliamentary-labour-party-jeremy-corbyn-is-an-antisemite-and-must-go )

In particular, I wish to raise with you the many instances in which petitioners are choosing to deploy violent language against the leader of the UK opposition, Jeremy Corbyn MP.

Whilst neither the charity, nor you as a patron, are in any way responsible for the comments people chose to make, I do feel that in the current climate you and the CAA have a responsibility to help de-escalate and perhaps even distance yourselves from these comments.

Barely two years have passed since a sitting MP was murdered in the street by a man who espoused hard right views. It is a tragedy to see comments of a similar, violent nature being recorded alongside the CAA's petition.

It is incumbent on all people involved in public life to act in a responsible way and, where possible, to use their influence to de-escalate this type of inflammatory and violent rhetoric.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

'Cults’ 'Cranks' and understanding fake news

‘Cranks’ recently became a shorthand to describe a particular group of social media campaigners who support the leader of the UK opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.

It differs from the ‘cult’ catch-all beloved of a section of commentators. An important difference being the consensus, even among Corbyn supporters, that ‘cranks’ are a particular sub-set whose views are informed by questionable conspiracy theory.

Still, as a label, ‘cult’ is also problematic. It writes off whole swathes of digitally engaged people, mostly motivated by a sense of injustice, and hope for a better future.

The notion of the unthinking, unquestioning cult-like dupe is not particularly helpful for us in trying to understand what is going on in our society. Take the phenomenon of  'fake news' and a paper by Alice Marwick which questions the effectiveness of traditional fact checking or media literacy campaigns in countering it.

There’s no reasoned or rational ‘magic bullet’ to fake news. A well argued or irrefutable fact is rarely sufficient to end a fake news narrative, it probably never was. Instead, Marwick argues, we need to understand how people ‘make meaning’ from media and stop pretending that shot-in-the-arm fact checking or media literacy projects will change things.

She argues:

“A socio-technical approach to understand how and why people share fake news reveals complex social motivations that will not be easily changed.” (p480)

Though US-centric, her paper has helped me understand what motivates, and gives agency to, those in and around digital activist spaces who are often described as Corbyn ‘cultists’.

Fandom: Trekkies, Brosettes and Dungeons and Dragons

There is often something herd-like about the way people get behind Corbyn on Twitter. At times I find it a bit uncomfortable with it (who am I to criticise?).
But in her paper Marwick suggests the possibility of using ‘fandom’ as a frame to understand what could be going on in these digital activist circles.

Fandom is a phenomenon cultural theorists have written about for decades, from: Klingon-speaking Star Trek groupies to the Brossettes, Beatlemania and football fanzine editors.

The relevance of fan culture here is summed up by the observation that: 

“Fans did not simply consume content: they produced their own in the form of fan art, fan films and fan fiction.”

It’s easy to label people a ‘cult’, all the better to dismiss them, but isn't it more likely that Corbyn activists are simply bringing a pretty standard cultural tradition, that of  'the fan' to their organised digital activism? Of course Trekkies and fanzine editors were rarely political. In contrast today’s digital activists have agency and, in the case of Corbyn, a political figurehead. I suspect it's really this latter combination that really irks people.

Voice and agency

History is replete with examples of elites horrified at the sound of the politically disenfranchised finding their voice.

Corey Robin’s book, The Reactionary Mind, notes that US elites were often at least as disgusted by the verbal speech acts of women or slaves, as they were of their emancipatory ideas.

In their ‘catch all’ denunciations of ‘cultists’ it feels like ‘sensible’ media commentators, politicians and influencers are, at least partly, objecting to the same thing.

A lie is halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on (pt2)

I like a bit of symmetry in my social media content. So, after Tuesday's post about how fake news outruns truth on Twitter, I’m following up with an example of a bit of ‘truth’ that’s taken nearly half a century to catch up with an apparently false cultural idea. You may be familiar with the ‘infamous’ Stanford Prison experiments of the 1970s? These ethically dubious experiments saw students voluntarily incarcerated in a mock prison, policed by ‘mock’ student prison guards. Soon into the experiment the mock guards began mistreating the volunteer prisoners. A chilling conclusion drawn from the study was that even ‘normal’ people tend to abuse their power over others, given a certain set of circumstances. But a new French documentary blows the lid off the 46-year-old experiment. The film includes in-depth interviews with students and academics who were there. Is the truth finally catching up with the ‘fake’ findings of the Stanford Prison experiment, nearly half a century after its findings became embedded in western cultural lore? Blog is here: https://lnkd.in/gPqpccX

A lie is halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on (pt1)

Finally we have proof! A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has its boots on. This MIT research finds that false news travels faster on Twitter, by orders of magnitude, than 'truth' (though 'truth', as ever, is probably doing alot of heavy lifting here). Interestingly it's not robots spreading disinformation at an exponential rate, it's us. And what does the research conclude makes people engage with false stories more easily? Yes, you're right: emotion. There's strong research in the area of 'affective intelligence ' that's been saying this for a while now. Research is here

Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories

Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories

news.mit.edu

http://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308

What are campaigning charities really afraid of?

Something that interests me is the disparity between mainstream charity campaigning and politically-motivated campaigns, on the right.

I was prompted to think about this again in the wake of yet more research about the impact the Lobbying Act has had on charity campaigns. The Sheila McKechnie Foundation, finds 90%  of charities blaming the Lobbying Act for having a chilling effect on their campaigning activity, forcing them to avoid being critical of government on contentious issues like welfare reform, for example.

This phrase in the report jarred with me in particular:

“Ultimately, it is up to the Government as the accountable body for such freedoms and regulations, to ensure that the interaction of policies and legislation do not unreasonably constrain what civil society may speak into public life, and how.”

But a cursory glance at the actions, activities and networks around organisations like the Taxpayers Alliance reveals that some campaigners are clearly feeling none of the ‘chill’ that is paralyzing mainstream charities and NGOs.

A further quote from the SMK report, this time from the Salvation Army included an incredible (for me) assumption about the 'public imagination' when it comes to campaigning. 

“The original intention of the Lobbying Act was good, but the public imagination now says that any attempt to influence is illegitimate. But an uninfluenced democracy is a dictatorship. There’s danger that the voluntary sector makes itself illegitimate by ceasing to influence. We see influence as good as long as it is transparent.”
(The Salvation Army)

Of course transparency matters. But what is this public imagination the Salvation Army speaks of? Is there evidence people actually think charity campaigns are illegitimate? Is it real or in the mind of the Salvation Army’s own campaigns team?
For sure the media does seem more critical of charities these days, but this isn't entirely unjustified, given recent issues around fundraising and safeguarding affecting charities and NGOs. It is also true that certain right wing campaigns (for example, the IEA) have played a role in creating an air of skepticism about the advocacy work charities do. 

But huge public support for campaigns like Stop Funding Hate and the groundswell behind movements like Momentum would appear to contradict the notion that the public has lost faith in campaigning.

Perhaps certain charity campaigners have lost faith in themselves? Perhaps the public has simply lost faith in certain charities?

Back to the future for Onwards: a new think tank for t'yoof

It’s been a dazzling few weeks in Westminster village think tank world with tanks close to Conservative Party MPs continuing to make the biggest waves (where do they get their money from?).
‘Onward’ with its plethora of ex-Policy Exchange hands, is the interesting new outfit on the block. But what’s driving this spontaneous flowering of Conservative wonkery? 
It's t’yoof innit? 

The Huffington Post reckons:

‘…many [Tory] MPs realise that unless they can appeal to younger voters the election after the next one could be disastrous.’

So who better to lead this new generation of “second hand dealers in ideas” than…. Michael Gove MP!! 
It's not like he’s been a more-or-less ever present cabinet minister for eight years is it? And as a massive Brexiteer, he'll easily endear himself to young people, surely.
And to top it off, Michael was himself young once.

Here he is on TV in the 80s… being youthful.

Micky will, of course, be partnered by that saviour of Scottish Conservatism, Ruth Davidson.

Anyway, for me it's the collection of ex Policy Exchange staffers, trustees and associated fellow travellers that's notable about this new 'Onwards' outfit (The Times' Sam Coates noted it, the Guido blag noted it too). Former Policy Exchange Trustee Lord 'finger on the pulse of yoof' Finkelstein has apparently signed up, though he's been coy about out it on Twitter, imo. 

Back to the future?

Ex Policy Exchange Comms head, Nigel Faith, is chief among the luminaries heading up this new forward-looking thinky tanky thing. Faith left Policy Exchange to set up lobbying company WPI. There he was joined by ‘respected economist and policy expert’  Matt Oakley, the architect of Iain Duncan Smith’s benefit sanctions policy. A policy which, new research, has [again] confirmed has been an absolute catastrophe for young people. Oakley himself formerly worked for Policy Exchange. See Donkey passim.

Another WPI staffer is Guy Miscampbell, someone who seems to be really likeable on social media. Back in 2014, Guy wrote a paper (you guessed it for..... Policy Exchange!) on benefit sanctions. The paper was heavily criticised by academic Dr David Webster a respected benefit sanctions academic, see Donkey passim.

(In passing – and for no other reason than mischief – I must also draw the reader’s attention to another member of the team at WPI – John 'Come to Peckham and say that' McTernan – mastermind of Labour’s 2015 Scottish General Election campaign. The south London slugger is listed as an ‘associate’ at WPI.)

So it’s great to see ‘Onward’ adopting such a forward looking recruitment strategy. I'm sure it will it will soon have much to commend itself by way of further immiserating t’yoof over the coming years.