The Politics Of Emotion

How To Fight Conspiracies

The problem with almost all discourse about politics can be traced back to one place – the fact that Hillary Clinton lost an election that everyone who works in politics didn’t understand how she could have lost. It’s led to a lot of assumptions that don’t hold up about how to win elections, about whether or not Trump caused the realignment the US has undergone, and about the alleged rising tide of a different kind of conservatism.

In the 6 years and change since that loss, we’ve had a pandemic, a vaccine rollout, elections in every major English language democracy and in most cases multiple per country, and we see the same story almost everywhere. There has been a rise in a sort of muscular cultural conservatism, either in them coopting the main conservative party or in the PPC or New Zealand’s ACT Party. Not every movement is the same – ACT is substantially less crazy than, say, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation across the ditch – but they’re gaining popularity for the same reason – emotion, and nostalgia.

What do supporters of Bernier’s PPC have in common with Obama 2012-Trump 2020 voters, which is the same with fans of Nigel Farage and Hanson? Nostalgia for a bygone and in their view better time. For whichever reason they view the past as better – be it contempt for public displays of homosexual affection, views on the role of women, or a fear of seeing non-white people – these people do not like what has happened in the last 65 years.

Whether they consciously admit it or not, the problems these people have is that the world isn’t what it used to be, and their amorphous complaints about vaccines and mandates and rules all come back to the same place – they used to be the majority, and they’re not anymore. There used to be huge advantages to being a straight white man (or a combination of 2 of those) in the world, and now that advantage is vastly diminished.

The problem is this manifests in 1000 different ways – sometimes it’s in actual racism or homophobia or misogyny, and sometimes it manifests in the search for blame. What’s the reason people believe in microchips in the vaccine or the WEF controlling our lives or what’s the new one, Digital ID? It’s because they dislike the emerging status quo and they want to blame someone else for it, and it’s easier to blame elites than it is to admit that their views are merely a vocal minority.

And if the left is going to win, they have to remember that they’re in the cultural majority.

…

In the aftermath of Clinton losing, there were a lot of takes (as there always are) about why. Most of them were just whatever the author of the take wants from the Democratic Party (leftists claimed she lost because she was insufficiently progressive, moderates claimed the concessions to Sanders cost her, shock of shocks), but the big one that came around from all factions was Democrats were unfocused. They cared about niche issues irrelevant to the electorate, and lost because of it.

The problem with that take is that that’s actually what the modern right across the world is doing. In their supposed “defence of women’s sports” (also known as transphobia), in their attacks on “Woke Banking”, on Digital ID, and on gas stoves, the GOP are focusing on a set of culture war issues with exactly zero connection to the public. Are there a group of voters who are otherwise socially liberal but are uncomfortable with persons biologically born male competing in women’s athletics? Sure, if you ask them. Are they going to change their vote on the issue? Fuck no, because nobody cares.

The problem is, when Pierre Poilievre says something like “no government I lead will impose Digital ID”, a lot of people decide the right answer is to explain either why there’s no such thing or that the government already has your info. The right answer to it is to let Poilievre continue to say it, because it’s absurdist nonsense. Who is the audience for this crackpot conspiracy? Nobody, because the thing is, the barrier to entry to know what the fuck they’re talking about is so high that I frequently fail to meet it, and this is kind of my thing.

The solution to all of this is not to get dragged into cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac, but for the broader left to start making a coherent argument for their own salvation against the incoherence and nonsense of the right. We know what playing whack-a-mole with dumb conservative ideas can accomplish, that’s been all Rachel Notley’s done for the last 2 years. Spoiler, barring a miracle, she’s going to lose out in Alberta. What the left needs to do is not drone on about the specifics of the claim or counterclaim of the week from the right, but to focus on their message, and paint the opposition as tragically out of touch and full of fucking weirdos.

You know why swing state Democrats essentially ran the table of competitive races last year despite truly dogshit turnout from core Democratic communities? Because on the whole, they successfully managed to paint their opponents as ludicrous and focused on inane shit while Democrats cared about protecting a woman’s right to choose. You saw time and time again election deniers and no-exceptions anti-choice Republicans massively underperform the saner parts of the ticket, because voters decided there was a price to pay for crazy.

The right paid a massive price for crazy in the fall in the US, and in Canada they can be made to pay the same one, if the left in general and the Liberals in specific focus on the right issues. The argument against Poilievre is not going to be that he’s on the wrong side of these fringe conspiracies, but that the act of focusing on them is, in and of itself, disqualifying. Not morally so, but practically.

Voters are not dumb, and specifically the group of voters who have locked the CPC out of power the last 3 elections aren’t. The suburban, degree holding, social liberals are not going to be won over by appeals on fucking Digital ID or whatever else, and a Liberal Party focusing on their issues while the CPC plays the political equivalent of fucking Duck Hunt.

If I’m the Liberals, I don’t engage. At all. Let Poilievre take his flights of conspiratorial bullshit, and paint him as unfocused and unserious. We know a rote lecture will not change hearts and minds, so don’t bother trying. Condescending to these voters that they’re dumb hicks doesn’t help the Liberal brand of being elitist fuckwits, so don’t bother. Let Poilievre run with these distractions, and let him paint himself into a corner.

Because he will. And it will cost him everything.