The politics of the lonely crowd
by Frank Furedi - Spiked on line
The other day my eight-year-old son came home, took off his jacket and announced 'Daddy, I really hate Bush!' Until that point, this child had strong views on the subject of football (which he loves), school dinners (which he dislikes) and mobile phones (which he desperately desires). But this was his first statement of political preference. Why did he feel so strongly about the American president? 'Because he's so stupid', my son replied.
As a proud father, I would like to boast that my young son and his classmates have developed a precocious interest in political affairs. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Children are no more curious about political life than their elders. Rather, political life in the Western world has become so infantilised that even eight-year-olds can share its brilliant insights.
In their conviction that George W Bush is mentally deficient, children have embraced the wisdom peddled by best-selling cynic Michael Moore, sophisticated media commentators from both sides of the Atlantic, and hundreds of thousands of anti-Bush protesters. Hating the stupid US president was sufficient to mobilise large crowds of people during his recent visit to London. In the USA, demonstrating how much you hate Bush has animated discussion during the Democratic Party primary elections. Howard Dean, who has perfected the art of being very angry, managed to mobilise tens of thousands of young people to join his vociferous campaign - before it failed.
It appears that how you feel, rather than what you believe in, has become the defining feature of political protest. This sentiment was revealed by the actress and veteran left winger Vanessa Redgrave, who announced her intention to put on a one-woman play in London to 'express her anger over President Bush's visit' in November 2003. During a conversation about Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor-turned-governor of California, a housewife from San Diego told me: 'I have a good feeling about this guy.' When I asked what she meant, she replied: 'He is a genuine person and not a politician.' In California, Arnie's famously anti-political message gained him strong feelings of support (1). Similar sentiments inspire hostile gestures towards Bush.
The coincidence of the politics of feeling and an apolitical populism is one of the distinctive features of contemporary protest. By focusing on an individual politician's personality, it personalises politics. But even more importantly, protest has become a strikingly personal matter. It is about the protester as an individual, and says more about how he feels about himself than what he thinks of the issue at stake. That is why it is difficult to define today's acts of protest as constituting a political movement. On the contrary: they are the product of a profound mood of political disengagement that afflicts most Western societies.
Disengagement
We live in an era of political exhaustion and social disengagement. Fewer and fewer people are prepared to vote, and fewer still are interested in getting involved in party politics. In the UK, membership of the major political parties has fallen by half since 1980. During the same period, political party membership in France has declined by two-thirds, and in Italy by 51 per cent. By comparison, the German figure looks good: total party membership fell by only nine per cent, probably because of an influx of new recruits from the east (2).
The decline of party membership coincides with a wider disengagement from political life. Today, people's idealism and hopes are rarely invested in a belief in political change, and individuals rarely develop their identities through some form of political attachment. Thirty years ago, an individual might have identified himself as a Labour man, whose outlook on life was shaped by his belief in a socialist future and whose relationships in the present were with a community that shared this broad view. Today the question of who you vote for is seen as barely significant, and self-identity is viewed far more in terms of individuals' lifestyles, cultural habits and personal experiences.
What has changed during the past two decades is the very meaning of politics itself. Last century, political life was dominated by radically different alternatives. Competing political philosophies offered contrasting visions of the good society. Conflict between these ideologies was often fierce, provoking violent clashes and even revolutions. 'Left' and 'Right' were not mere labels - in a fundamental sense, they endowed individuals with an identity that said something crucial about how they saw themselves.
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