Credit: George Frey/Getty
Something’s gone wrong with politics. It’s becoming nasty and weird and the old rules don’t seem to work anymore.
What’s to blame? Or, rather, who? Writing in the Guardian, George Monbiot points the finger at the cult of personality. It’s easy to see why. The rise of populism has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of the attention-grabbing outsider-politician. Donald Trump is the prominent example. Others include Matteo Salvini, Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage.
However, Monbiot’s argument goes well beyond the natural affinity between populism and demagoguery. He sees the celebrification of politics as a general phenomenon – with the cult of personality being thrust upon political leaders who are clearly uncomfortable with it:
“Neither May nor Jeremy Corbyn can carry the weight of the personality cults that the media seeks to build around them. They are diffident and awkward in public, and appear to writhe in the spotlight. Both parties grapple with massive issues, and draw on the work of hundreds in formulating policy, tactics and presentation. Yet these huge and complex matters are reduced to the drama of one person’s struggle.”
Indeed it’s not just politicians – the media happily looks elsewhere for personalities around which it can frame political stories – so much sexier than the boring old issues! As Monbiot observes, “an issue is not an issue until it has been voiced by an actor… Climate breakdown, refugees, human rights, sexual assault: none of these issues, it seems, can surface until they go Hollywood.”
It used to be said that politics is showbiz for ugly people; but that was before the two industries began to merge. One can imagine no other era in which a celebrity like Taylor Swift, a blameless purveyor of crossover country-pop, could come under sustained pressure to proclaim her political opinions (or the ‘correct’ ones, anyway).
If my calculations are correct, Ms Swift will be old enough to run for President in 2032. Perhaps she’ll face her old adversary Kanye West (or whatever he’ll be calling himself in 14 years’ time). And why not? After all, we have a star of reality television in the White House right now.
Trump epitomises everything that we might fear about personality politics: not just its limitless power of distraction from more meaningful matters, but also its association with what Monbiot calls a politics of “symbols, slogans and sensation” (which he characterises as irrational and even fascistic).
So is this what’s gone wrong with politics – the relentless media obsession with personality?
No, it isn’t. At least, not primarily.
For a start, there’s absolutely nothing new about personality politics.
When the enemies of Jesus tried to trap him with a political question – i.e. whether the Jewish people should or shouldn’t pay taxes to the Roman authorities – he held up a coin bearing the image of Caesar and said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. 1 Even in an era many centuries before anything we would recognise as mass media, personality and images of personality were of huge significance.
Elevated persons not only served as the apex of a hierarchy, they also symbolised its legitimate authority. And over a lifetime – or, in the case of a dynasty, several lifetimes – they embodied the continuity of a state or a society or even a civilisation. In short, the cult of personality served an institutional purpose.2
What is different about personality politics in the modern era is the purpose that it serves.
*
Modernity consumes institutions. It can do so suddenly and destructively as in the case of totalitarian modernity, or gradually and carelessly as in the case of liberal modernity. Either way, the regimes of the modern era have frequently attempted to replace old institutions with new ones; but because these are artificial, not organic, in their origins they typically fail to engender a sense of heartfelt belonging.
Politics isn’t always rational – and I don’t see anything wrong with that. Others would disagree. George Monbiot sees something fascistic in replacing “substance, evidence and analysis” with “symbols, slogans and sensation.” Jamie Bartlett, in a must-read article for UnHerd, argues that the spontaneity, subjectivity and tribalism of social media lends itself a “fascist style of politics”.
There’s a lot that’s true and timely in these warnings, but we also need to remember that reason alone does not, and should not, govern our relationships with others. Respect, loyalty, compassion, love: each of these things requires that we engage with our fellow human beings on a deeper level. If politics is to achieve something more than mere administration, politicians need to do the same.
But how? With the institutional structures of society in decline or dead altogether, how can leaders connect with their people? Well, there is a very different means of engagement: narrative.
Stories are old – as old as the oldest institutions. It’s reasonable to suppose that our institutional instincts (to band together for mutual support) coevolved with our narrative instincts (to make sense of unfolding events). The philosopher Alex Rosenberg argues that our hardwired interest in plot, character and motivation was critical to human evolution. These things enabled a ‘theory of mind’ – i.e. an ability to recognise others as separate beings with emotions and intentions independent of our own: always handy when you’re hoping to live long enough to reproduce.
But our narrative instincts have a fatal flaw – they enable us to construct a false representation of reality. Rather than a useful interpretation of events, we can satisfy our compulsion to understand with a possibly dangerous delusion.
Luckily, even this capacity can be turned to good use. Over the millennia we’ve elaborated our stories into myths, fables and parables that express an essential truth in a form that can be communicated down the generations. Typically, these would be constructed in such a way as to make clear their distinction from everyday life (for instance, by featuring fantastical elements like talking animals). Even the down-to-earth parables of Jesus contain deliberate exaggerations designed to draw attention to a transcendent reality. An example is the amount owed to (and forgiven by) the king in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant 3, which was “10,000 talents” – an unfeasibly large sum (equivalent at the time to 200,000 years of wages), but clearly meant to illustrate God’s great mercy.
Other religious stories are intended to be taken as absolute rather than allegorical truths. However, these are meant as a glimpse into spiritual realities beyond human understanding. Whether one chooses to believe them or not, their nature is clearly signalled.
Furthermore, such narratives were contained within a tradition, whether religious or cultural, that not only propagated the stories, but also explained how they should be told and understood. In the pre-modern world, the power of narrative, like the cult of personality, served an institutional purpose.
Modernity, however, has ripped the power of narrative loose from these moorings – and thereby changed its very nature.
Most obviously, narrative is now free to serve no other purpose than pure entertainment. And given our evolutionary predilections for plot, character and motivation, we can’t get enough of it. Or rather, we can, because fiction is available in quantities and varieties that our ancestors could not have imagined.
Unbound narrative can be used for other purposes too – including political purposes. In the absence of strong institutions, politicians connect by telling stories that they hope people will buy into. The problem with that is that real life doesn’t work like a story. Aspects of reality can be explained using stories, but trying to fit the whole thing into a narrative structure involves simplification at best, or, more likely, outright distortion. The life of a nation has a cast of millions, which for narrative purposes has to be narrowed down. Hence the focus on a few personalities – especially those most adept at generating their own drama.
Therefore, personality politics now serves a narrative not an institutional purpose. This matters because while institutions are about satisfying the human desire for continuity in the face of a complex and uncertain world, unbound narratives cater to the human appetite for novelty and easy explanations. They purport to give us an insight into places we’ve never been, events we haven’t witnessed, people we’ve never met. And furthermore, they do so in a way that is always compelling, never confusing and continually moves the story along. Politics as narrative means that instead of journalists and leaders, we have dramatists and performers. Or, as Monbiot puts it, the problem isn’t fake news but “news about a fake world”.
*
I’m conscious that in trying make my argument in 1,500 words I’m telling a story of my own – one inevitably full of simplifications, not to mention distortions.
But that’s not the twist in my tale. Rather, it’s that the storification of politics is no longer something just being done to us. Increasingly, we’re becoming the authors of our own deception.
In the digital age, people aren’t content to be passively entertained by narrative. As if to regain that long-lost sense of belonging, they want to be personally involved in the stories they consume. The expanding fake worlds of fan fiction, fan art, cosplay, online gaming, reality TV and social media are testament to this impulse. Yes, these audiences are being manipulated in the process, but they are also the manipulators.
Politics is being disrupted by politicians who understand this – who are willing to submit to a process of co-creation by their most ardent fans.
“Yes we can”, “Take back control”, “Make America Great Again” – these aren’t just narratives, they’re an invitation to participate.
FOOTNOTES
- Matthew 22
- I’m interpreting ‘institution’ broadly here – it can mean any corporate entity, whether formally or informally organised, to which individuals can belong, but which is intended to be bigger and longer-lasting than any individual member.
- Matthew 18:21-35
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeExcellent article. So sad to see Ron de Santis drop out of the presidential race. The last sentence in the article about lockdowns possibly being inevitable in the future sent shivers down my spine!
I disagree with the title and conclusion of this analysis…which may be based on the assumption that Kennedy, Jr. is not a contender. That is not to say I think Kennedy is sure to be one…but I do hold on to Hope. There is an unfairly steep amount of work that RFK, Jr. must pay for and enact that neither established party’s leading contenders must …but he continues to plod through the necessary steps…maintaining a positive attitude and refraining from feeling sorry for himself and thereby becoming embittered. He disciplines himself, daily, to avoid negativities toward Biden (a long-time family friend) and Trump, who he generously gives credit to for a number of policies Kennedy feels were justified.
I think RFK, Jr. is uniquely best qualified to be able to deal, in the aftermath of a botched pandemic response, with the reckoning of the mess, having litigated so many of the organizations implicated, thereby understanding them and those involved in a way that no one else does.
That said, if not for RFK, Jr.’s campaign, I would agree with Bhattacharya’s analysis of the loss of DeSantis’ presence in the 2024 presidential campaign.
Much as I like Trump, I agree that DeSantis deserves great credit for standing up to the lockdown loons. Conversely, I don’t think intellectual dishonesty about reevaluating the hysteria is confined to the Republican establishment.
The entire West (including the public and, especially, the media) had a collective fit of cowardice and irrationality over the WuFlu. They don’t want to be reminded, but they should be – if only for the sake of the children whose lives they blighted.
Dr, Bhattacharya will forever have my gratitude and admiration for his bravery throughout the entire Covid ordeal. What he had to endure in trying to bring common sense to the response is unforgivable.
Dr. B, it was largely because of you and Governor DeSantis that my husband and I moved from New England to Southwest Florida in January 2021. The residents of our former town are still wearing masks!
If Trump wins, he should give de Santis the health portfolio.
DeSantis dropped out of the race for reasons unconnected with COVID. After all, COVID as an issue is rapidly disappearing in the rear-view mirror.
Those of us who suffered under lockdowns and were oppsoed to them in principle, as well as those of us who were treated like dirt for not getting “vaccinated”, will never forget Covid.
I see there is no mention on the page of Dr. Joseph Ladapo, whom DeSantis appointed as Florida’s Surgeon General. While his general views may be sound, it doesn’t seem like he is well equipped to defend them scientifically, and a number of his statements appear more than dubious.
I have the highest regard for Dr. Bhattacharya. His fight during Covid hysteria for common sense public policy grounded in science. An immense amount of grace under pressure from Jay. Similarly Gov. DeSantis exhibited courageous leadership before, during and after Covid. But I have to throw the challenge flag.
Trump made regrettable calls on this. And he certainly won’t champion an inquiry on the campaign trail. But he knows the harm the CDC and NHI caused and will, once in office, wan to clean out the rot. New heads at NHI and CDC will do the job without making it a White House task. Dr. Jay are you interested?
Especially if Vivek is given a prominent place in the administration. My bet is the timing of DeSantis’ withdrawal and his endorsement will have earned him a spot too, so I am much less pessimistic than Bhattacharya (with all the regard I have for him too).
Yep. RFK, Jr. is the remaining American presidential candidate most likely to properly weigh collateral damages of the lockdown/mandate era and avoid a repeat. But of course he has been disparaged and dismissed as “anti-vax” and a conspiracy theorist by the establishment, including mainstream media.
Disparaging and dismissing RFK Jr on those grounds is like taking candy from a baby.
Have you ever actually watched video of any people who tried to debate RFK? He ran rings round them. Please. The MSM is wholly bought and paid for by the censorship industrial complex. They want to take your possessions and keep you in a 15-minute city. You want that? Have another booster.
Wait now: he didn’t run rings around Peter Hotez in that 3-hour debate on the Joe Rogan podcast…
…of course that was because Hotez was too chicken to debate him!
The reason there are such distinct and contradictory visions of the future in general stems from the fact that almost no one seems to be able to avoid applying any principle in two distinct and contradictory ways, anymore.
While DeSantis’ decisions during Covid were generally good, like so many others he lacks consistency – standing up for bodily autonomy in the face of coercive vaccine mandates while failing to extend this principle to abortion bans, which he so vehemently supports.
My hopes will be saved for those who are more truly committed to fundamental rights – wherever they may be.
How does it serve bodily self determination to kill an unborn child who has no possibility to say otherwise ? That’s just cruel. And kind of stupid. Nature has a way to regulate this kind of foolishness all by itself: people with high birthrates prevail and people with low birthrates decline. Abortion is no different than a slowed down genocide.
Much like donating a kidney to a relative who needs one can be a wonderful thing to do – it is your choice to do so, even though it can make the difference as to whether they live or die. That it can be lifesaving does not mean anyone should be forced to do it. There should be no more obligation for me to give a potential relative the use of my uterus than there is for me to give a more fully alive relative my kidney.
No fault power over life and death — even life you’ve created. Because that life must be important to you; hopefully, yours is to someone….
You are confusing who is making the sacrifice: It’s not the woman who carries a child, but the unborn child who is forced to give its life. So tell me, to stay consistent within your argument, why should the unborn child be obliged to die just so the mother doesn’t have to accept responsibility ?
Because, of course, a “fetus” has no rights, right?
To address Clementine’s tangent: What about Bodily Autonomy for the victims, over 1 million per year worldwide, murdered by abortion?
( — well over half of whom, BTW, are female, even if <9mo old )
it was desantis’ handling of the pandemic that thrust him onto the stage, and into the fast-lane for the nomination. he fumbled the ball.
there will be further hearings on covid, but the result will be the same: the topic is political, and so will be argued about as if either team has answers.
You make a good point about DeSantis and COVID. Both the current and previous president have shown little scientific curiosity about the subject or for the “solutions”, so long as you set aside political science. Florida did a pretty good job with this, and DeSantis deserves some credit for his leadership on the matter.
It is borderline scandalous that DeSantis is not going to be the nominee (barring any act of God).
He did himself no favours at all with his terrible campaigning. One wonders how he ever got to be Governor of Florida.
I think punishing politicians who botched the Covid response is a waste of time. We need to move forward and develop a rationale strategy for future pandemics.
We had a “rationale strategy” (USA) based on a century of study by innumerable epidemiologists since the Spanish Flu of 1916. The standard was to NOT lock-down and to keep society working, protect the vulnerable, and masking was not that important. The “science” was ignored, as Battacharya has tried to point out, but was censored.
I agree. Though it might be satisfying for people to admit that they were wrong, it would be more useful if they demonstrated it by their actions, rather than forcing any kind of explicit declaration of fault. Pushing “you were wrong” instead of “what can we do better next time” is just more likely to fail, regardless of the situation.
The problem is that all too many politicians and their MSM and bureaucratic supporters are only interested in how they can stick it to their political opponents or avoid any blame falling on themselves. They are not interested in the truth just what serves their purposes.
Then our job as citizens is to vote out these clowns.
The WHO has developed one for us.
I agree with Jim V.
We’re falling behind in so many important projects to improve and secure our lives and cultures. We have a lot of work to do. Pointing fingers doesn’t help; in fact, it makes it harder to move forward.
There is zero prospect of an independent assessment of lockdown here in the UK. Our vast Faux Inquiry is evidently as pro lockdown as it is a legal money guzzling virus. Every political party, the NHS and all public health organisations, the unions and the BBC and media ALL conspired to bully and cajole the nation into the catastrophe of lockdown. Any judgement to the contrary is just too damaging for them. The truth will stay buried .till the next time.
Quite right. The UK enquiry is a sham and political theatre rather than an honest scientific examination of the effects of lockdown compared to alternative approaches. As you say a whole public class is determined to show there was nothing wrong with lockdown apart from Johnson not embracing it quickly enough and dithering. It is no more than an insult to the public and the scientific approach. It should never have got bogged down in emails and politics but have followed the route suggested by the author avoiding all post hoc political point scoring.
The UK inquiry is currently proving highly awkward for the SNP, so it’s not all bad news.
I notice the ever-reliable WHO has published estimates by ‘experts’ (Bill Gates?) that mass vaccination was a resounding success. In the UK apparently it saved nearly half a million lives ( are these the same experts who predicted millions of deaths without ‘tough measures ‘ I wonder ?).
But current excess deaths in the UK are steadily eating away at even that number.
Meanwhile Mr Vaccine promises us shots for everything -the mind boggles.
But the truth is seeping out bit by bit and no doubt they’re really hoping that we’ll all gradually accept that we’ve been had but will be too busy worrying about keeping the lights on and too exhausted to kick up a fuss.
The fact that they know they can say any old rubbish and still be taken seriously by the MSM as if they are the infallible medical gods of the world is extremely worrying. God help us if the pandemic treaty goes forward for we will be herded into accepting rushed out, experimental vaccines and medications in the event of a pandemic – one is already being talked up – like so much cattle
A subject that Unherd has not covered at all is the WHO pandemic treaty which continues to move toward ratification. From my limited understanding, that treaty would place pandemic response authority in the hands of the WHO, and you can bet they’re in favor of lockdowns.
Why isn’t Unherd covering that topic at all?
The WHO is a paper tiger. If Trump is re-elected the US will likely withdrawal again. Any sovereign nation can wave the middle finger at ignore proclamations from the WHO.
This was your answer when I last mentioned the WHO treaty. The WHO is only a paper tiger if you are not a cowardly politician. In the future pandemic no politician will dare to react on his own iniative for fear of being blamed later. So, here comes the WHO charging over the hill. How could you be blamed if everyone was signed up to the same treaty?
That’s exactly my fear.
Well, it is those same national politicians who would have signed up to the Treaty! This sounds to be like an irritation, not anything like on a par with a supposedly liberal British prime minister removing civil liberties for over 2 years
Can you really compare Florida with California when adjusting for age? What if Florida was able to take a more restrained approach because the older population moderated their own behaviour given the much higher risk?
Can you compare economic and educational outcomes when their economies and living circumstances are entirely different?
You might be right. On the other hand, I think it’s hard to argue that Florida’s approach was some kind of disaster. IMO Covid outcomes were largely driven by population density, demographics and overall health of a population. Vaccines were beneficial for the elderly and infirm. Lockdowns did nothing but impoverish people and punish students and young adults.
Re Veenbaas’ comprehensive (and mostly-accurate) comment: Surely what’s gradually becoming biggest issue is the sad fact {which he didn’t include} that, in the long run, due to gradual systemic clotting from most vaccines vs CoVid, on-average they hurt and even kill more than they help, even for the elderly and infirm.
This factor overshadows his rightful condemnation of the harms caused by the lockdowns … which, in-effect, forced a near-equalization of the daily activities of the elderly and infirm with those of all other main sub-populations. {– thus, also settling the previous commenter’s insightful objection. } [ See “*” ] And so,
in sad irony, the lockdowns enabled the age-adjusted analyses to be quite accurate, in showing the above-mentioned average harm of current vaccinations: with their formulas’ adjuvants including aluminum ( causing single-fibril neuronal-tangling [i.e. dementia] ) and PEG ( common antifreeze, much more hepato-toxic when injected ) ; and, even worse, with every single RNA CoViD vaccine sample’s analysis revealing the inclusion of coronavirus DNA, thereby making the vaccinated organism’s [the human’s] cells continue manufacturing spike proteins which of-course eventually cause system-wide clotting which of-course eventually shuts down sections of multiple organs and then the whole organism. [ Sources available, via RepayingKindness at grnall dot com ]
——–
*: From one article (– of a liberal source, at that –) , in 2023 April, re the results, vs lockdowns & vaccines, after age-adjustment of FL’s CoViD stats:
<< .. With an adjustment to show what it would look like if each state had the same age and health profile as the United States as a whole, Florida’s death rate jumped [[up]] to 12th lowest, while California’s fell to 36th. That calculation included the proportion of each state’s residents over age 65 and under age 20, obesity and smoking rates and prevalence of diseases including asthma, cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
For some states, the adjustment made little difference. [Examples] … … For others, the difference was substantial. West Virginia, which had the country’s highest actual death rate, had the 14th lowest when the figures were adjusted to account for its older and unhealthier population. >>
— from https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/why-major-study-argues-floridas-covid-death-rate-compares-favorably-to-californias/
\\
And your “differences”, to me, make the case for variety and choice in any future decisions on what to do in a pandemic. Just a bit different to the WHO ope size fits all approach.
I suppose it’s always possible to do something incredibly stupid (like lockdown) and then question the counterfactual which can never 100% be proven. But the comparison between two sunshine states with large populations and radically different policy choices is as close as we can get to a fair comparison.
And it overwhelmingly shows that lockdowns were the disaster we always knew they would be.
There will never be a reckoning. Because it will not be allowed to happen. The CDC is still pushing Covid boosters against all reason, including for young children. Fauci is pocketing big bucks on the lecture circuit and Congress engages in its usual kabuki theater that leads to nothing.
From what I can tell, as this article suggests, same song in the UK. The people in charge will never admit to being wrong or misjudging events or even being overzealous. Their DNA won’t allow it. They’ll pivot to the next shiny object while giving the appearance of inquiry to mollify the loudest voices. And that’s it. I would love to be proven wrong, but it’s not likely in this case.