Ezra Klein: belief

Transcript context

…I have a couple theories. One, it is just one of the lessons of the period that the theory that having a more pure form of social democratic politics as an answer to right-wing, nationalistic populism — that that is going to work, that this sort of right-wing populism is an answer to people’s economic concerns that is countering the neoliberalism that is making them worse — that’s wrong. It’s just flatly wrong. I think we can say that at this point. It may be good to have a social democratic set of policies, but it does not somehow inoculate you from the power of that right-wing populism. I remember when Corbyn was being hailed as showing a politics that could truly work, that this is what Americans had to do, too. And I think that you have to take that with almost as much force in the other direction. He is in some ways, maybe, a uniquely bad politician. The fact that he didn’t have a clear position on Brexit was quite bad. But there is a very deep potency to this form of politics that is being played with around Brexit, also in America, also in a bunch of other places, that I think needs to be taken seriously. I will say that Fintan O’Toole just wrote a book called The Politics of Pain that I thought was really remarkably sharp on this, and as an analysis of the British psyche was one of the most convincing things I’ve read, making an argument, going way back in Britain’s history, that there’s a deep, unresolved set of psychic questions around Britain won WWII, and then somehow feels like it lost the piece that it deserved to, if not own Europe, then be understood as a savior of Europe in an ongoing way. Instead, here you have the European Union emerge. In many ways, the European Union is dominated by Germany, the aggressor in World War II. There was some interesting stuff about colonialism in the British psyche. He does a lot of very deep analysis of popular British television and literature that I think shows this in an interesting way. I recognize that gets at some endogenous dimensions of the Brexit question, but I think it’s a recommendation worth following for readers. The other thing that I will say is that, in terms of things that I think are broad based — and this gets to sort of Martin Gurri Revolt of the Public theses — is that Boris Johnson clearly shares quite a bit — as does Brexit — with Donald Trump. A lot of the national populist politicians seem to me to share certain dimensions with each other. And one of the core things they share is, one, that I think we’re in an age, technologically and for other reasons, where extremely strong, outrageous, conflictual forms of politics are at least somewhat advantaged, certainly on the right. They’re very good at practically dominating agendas. I think that the media has not in any way effectively adapted to the social media age. cs are at least somewhat advantaged, certainly on the right. They’re very good at practically dominating agendas. I think that the media has not in any way effectively adapted to the social media age. So, the way in which we’ve been overturned is that, among other things, we think that our primary power as an institution is that we can cover things positively or negatively, that the thing we’re covering doesn’t much matter so much as how we are covering it. So, we’re covering somebody’s lies, right? Boris Johnson said lies a lot. We’re fact-checking that all over, and, “Well, that’s really going to show him.” Instead, what we’re actually doing is amplifying the lie. What a lot of these players have understood is that — to actually use something that Mike Cernovich, the right-wing civic nationalist, I guess, guy, says — “Conflict is attention, and attention is influence.” So highly conflictual politicians seem to me to be advantaged. Politicians who lie a lot — they’re able to use that level of very brazen lying as a way to hijack the media narrative because the media will cover somebody who has said something incredibly untrue over someone who said something kind of benignly true. You could think about this in America as a difficulty for an Amy Klobuchar going up against a Donald Trump. A politician like Amy Klobuchar is very popular. She highly overperforms in Minnesota. She is a very effective politician in the Senate. But if you go back a couple of years, she wasn’t getting very much coverage, whereas the people who are more provocateurs were. So, that way in which the coverage dimensions were shifting, away from “What does a consensus of party elites tell you about who to pay attention to?” versus “Who goes most viral on social media?” That has really changed who is succeeding in politics, and the kind of people willing to play that game tend to be either highly ideological or highly conflictual. Why isn’t California a better-run state than it is?…

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