Racists chasing dystopia

Normally I like to save reviews for the entirety of a book, but the latest one I've picked up doesn't lend itself to that format very well. Radicals Chasing Utopia, a 2017 book by Jamie Bartlett, is an eclectic look at the work of various fringe groups looking to bring about drastic change in society. Since each chapter forms a standalone text, I'll do separate posts for each section that particularly grabs my interest.

I have to give enormous kudos for Bartlett for being willing and able to engage with people he obviously doesn't agree with. In chapter two he explores the world of the far-right anti-immigration lobby in Europe. It's abundantly clear he doesn't share their viewpoints, but he does manage to maintain a civil relationship with them. I doubt very much I could ever do that. Indeed, some of the more extreme opponents think we shouldn't even try, and I'm not entirely unsympathetic to that. After all, why engage with such awful people as neo-Nazis ?

Two reasons. First, to understand what drove them to become neo-Nazis, and second, the help them see the error of their ways.

Well... there's a more obvious third reason. People often ask, "is it okay to punch a Nazi ?", which is frankly an absurd question considering what we had to do to stop them the last time around. My big caveat is that whole societies do not turn wholesale to far-right zealatory for no reason, and that treating them all as Hitler-level fanatics (who are utterly unpersuadable and probably do need to be shot) is massively counter-productive. 

Anyway, as a journalist, it isn't Bartlett's place to explore anything but the first option. Fair enough. But in this he falls flat on his face. As I've said many times before, we should try and work out the underlying reasons why people are turning to hate groups and address those reasons rather than pandering to their superficial xenophobia. People do not become bigoted idiots for no reason at all, but they don't usually turn into racists twats as a result of evil foreigners. Something else is going on.

Bartlett makes an honest but ultimately disappointing effort to examine this. As he says :

It's lazy and simplistic to call Pegida supporters racist, ill-informed bigots. The people who do so not only misunderstand them; they risk making the problem worse, because it provides Pegida supporters with the ammunition that the liberal elite are trying to silence them.

I don't really have a problem with that in principle. Demonstrate to me that something beyond idiotic bigotry is guiding these people and I'll listen. Hell, we should all desperately want this to be true, because if there is some more quasi-rational reason for the appeal of these populist monsters, we'd have a much better chance of stopping them. The problem is that Bartlett immediately goes on to starkly contradict himself :

The problem with groups like Pegida is more subtle. They have a tendency to tar all Muslims with the same unfair stereotypes, often in an intentionally inflammatory way, and do not apply their 'defending Western values' message consistently.

Errmm... how exactly is this not ill-informed racist bigotry then ? Judging an entire group of people based on the actions of a few abhorrent individuals is pretty much the definition of idiotic racism to me. Okay, he makes the point that Tommy Robinson is indeed "well-informed" about the contents of the Qur'an, but this entirely misses the point. Being well-informed and being stupid are not at all the same thing. Knowing the contents of a religious text and truly understanding it - and, more importantly, understanding how its followers interpret it in practise - are not at all the same thing either.

I give further kudos to Barlett for immediately and unequivocally pointing out the flaws in the logic of the far-right : the ignorance of the good deeds done by religious groups, the cherry-picking applied to the statistics, the confirmation bias at work, and the ludicrous double-standards when Robinson et al. insist they can't be responsible for the actions of the more abject Nazis within their own groups. As he says, what's really going on is an "irrational fear" here, not anything justified by the evidence.

So what causes this irrational fear ? In part it's learning by induction, with Bartlett listing the various horrors committed by religious extremists that did genuinely happen. But that's not enough to create widespread hate groups. Bartlett's opinion is that it's about the white working class having no political figures to stand up for them any more :

Jeremy Corbyn joined the anti-Pegida-UK demonstration... marching under the banner "We Chose Hope". He was joined by local Labour MP Laim Byrne who said, "We don't want our community threatened by racists." Jess Phillips MP called Tommy's plans a "costly hate rally". Racists. Idiots. Not a frustrated group of people who find, in the flag-waving and chanting, some reclamation of power in a system that ignores them.

But that's bollocks though, isn't it ? Someone opposing racism is not automatically opposed to the white working class, they just hate racism. And that's commendable. Look, politicians have a duty to defend the interests and welfare of their constituents - not to pander to their worst tendencies. Suppose, for example, a community feels their jobs are threatened by an influx of migrant workers. Should their MP halt the immigration ? No - the right approach is to ensure job security through enforcement of minimum wage laws and other economic policies. There's no contradiction - none, none whatsoever - in standing up to racism and simultaneously aiming for prosperity for all.

Bartlett continues :

Not a group of derided people for whom the bravado and aggressive patriotism is something they can feel pride in. Not a set of citizens who have become politicised and are, even if I think they are misguided in their targets, getting involved in politics for the first time in their lives, and so should at least be given a hearing. Heaven forbid it might be any of those things. They're just hate-filled racists. So it's a good job we abandoned them. Look at what these idiots think after all !

Except that Robinson and the other ringleaders aren't getting involved for the first time, they've been at it for many years. As Bartlett himself says, they're not uninformed. But they have, undeniably, come to monumentally stupid and bigoted conclusions. There may well be some truth to the charge in their group members feeling hard done by, but when such people resort to racist chanting on the street, just what kind of response does he think they should be given ? Society should accept some responsibility for allowing things to get to where they are, but to blame Labour figures for standing up to racism and not mention years of Tory austerity (never mind years of demonising immigrants in the gutter press !) is not in the least bit sensible. Attacking people for attacking racism is bloody stupid.

Elsewhere Bartlett gives rather too much credit to the surface statements of the bigoted idiots :

In fact, most Pegida supporters see themselves as anti-fascists, standing up to Islamist totalitarianism. The speeches I heard usually contained the antithesis of fascism : support for free speech, liberty, democracy, and gay rights.

Yeah, but freedom and liberty for who and to do what ? Bartlett immediately follows this up with examples of the far-right cherry-picking statistics to rationalise their existing conclusions. He's trying to paint them as not unintelligent in that they're aware of the evidence, but, to me at least, ends up doing the exact opposite. Willfully ignoring the overwhelming data showing that most Muslims are - guess what ! - entirely normal people is in my mind on par with Flat Earth lunacy. 

By all means, criticise the faith. But demonsing its believers is madness. I'm not in the least bit persuaded that these hate groups are anything more sophisticated than that, even if they themselves obviously don't see it that way. You can't ask a villain if they enjoy their villainy, because they're never going to say, "yes, I really like hurting people, mwhahahahah !"

I have the distinct impression that Bartlett is a lot more confused about what's going on than he himself is aware of. He says :

But even if politicians did listen, I'm still not quite sure what Pegida would actually tell them, apart from to stop immigration from Muslim-majority countries, and perhaps ban any new mosques being built. There is a vague desire to protect traditional culture, but what that actually is was never clear to be. They want Muslims to integrate more, but exactly how they're supposed to do that - especially when they are being singled out and shouted at - was never really explained. It's all emotion and indignation. Feelings rather than a set of demands, and feelings are almost impossible to satisfy.

Which is in direct agreement with what the "metropolitan liberal elite", as he derisively labels them, have been saying all along. I don't get how he remains so unaware of the contradictions here : are the hate groups misunderstood, misinformed, poorly treated individuals in need of some care and attention, or are they a bunch of racist bigots who've used the evidence to rationalise their position and aren't actually willing to listen to reason ? It's all very strange.

On the situation across the pond Bartlett seems on even less firm footing :

Many left-wing parties now seek to represent both a socially and economically liberal graduate class and a less liberal blue-collar working class. The two groups interests don't always align, and most political leaders - well-educated liberals themselves - are more at ease with the language, politics, lobbying groups and ideas of the progressive wing.

Fair enough as far it goes, but sadly this hint of getting at the root of the problem is all we're given. Again, progressive liberal policies seem to me to be infinitely more closely aligned with the working class than those of the right, who actively choose to harm the poorest rather than help them. And he goes on :

As a result, billionaire politicians with economic policies that won't help them, like Donald Trump, can attract millions of working-class voters who feel forgotten with the right language and identity-based promises. That a billionaire has been able to successfully position himself as a man of the people should shame liberals. It's an indictment of their stunning failure.

Except that just isn't true : Trump voters tend to be wealthier, not poorer, and aren't strongly split by education level. Bartlett paints an appealing narrative, and I almost wish it was correct so we could more easily address the problems, but it was already clear this was not the case before the book was published. Given that the major split in Trump voters is by race, I think this is a stunning and shameful success of the right, not a failure of the left in trying to prevent bigotry. Bartlett has got things badly backwards.

Pegida might be misunderstood, patronised and lazily smeared as a bunch of ignorant fascists and racists, but that doesn't mean their ideas are harmless, or that their desire to defend Western values won't be twisted by others to promote illiberalism or xenophobia.... David Duke, former Grant Wizard of the openly racist Klu Klux Klan, said he has "the same message" as Trump.

Bartlett ultimately completely fails to convince me that these groups are in any way misunderstood or lazily smeared. He presents no clear reason why they should have these grievances and seems to willing to take their professed values of liberal democracy at face value, not considering the reason Tommy Robinson excludes the more openly-Nazi individuals might be nothing more than a way to avoid obvious criticism. In the end, he gives far too much credit to people whose ideas are manifestly and utterly wrong. The problem is indeed more complex and subtle than we might give it credit for, but not necessarily in the way Bartlett thinks it is.