Year of revolution brought us carnage, chaos and fear
It could take us decades to comprehend the true impact of 2016, says Ben Macintyre.
With his usual knack for the demotic one-liner, Nigel Farage, the former UK Independence Party leader, called 2016 ‘‘the year of revolution’’.
And so, by just about any historical measure, it was: the political elite was roundly humiliated; people voted for radical change and surprised everyone, including themselves, by getting it; Britain decided to remove itself from the European Union; and America’s voters ushered in Donald Trump, perhaps the most unconventional and unpredictable president in history.
The dramatic changes in American and British politics took place against a backdrop of roiling instability across the globe. The appalling carnage in Syria spilled out in brutal acts of Islamic State-backed terror; worsening relations between Russia and the West seemed to slip into Cold War mode; North Korea tested yet more nuclear weapons. For the first time in a generation, nuclear conflict seemed possible again. The planet got hotter, in every sense.
The world at the start of 2017 feels a very different, and much more perilous, than it did a year ago. But what kind of revolutionary year was this? Was it a revolution like 1789, when the tumbrils rolled in France and the ideological impact ripped across the world, utterly changing the old order? Was it like 1989, when communism cracked and crumbled with such breathtaking speed?
Or will 2016 turn out to be remembered more like the mid19th-century upheaval, when violent political turmoil spread across Europe and parts of Latin America, a combination of surging nationalism and antagonism towards feudalism?
The two greatest political upsets of 2016 were remarkable in the sense that they came about not through violence, but through the ballot box. The similarities between the Brexit referendum and the United States election are striking: in both cases, voters ignored the warnings of experts and the predictions of the pundits and voted, in many instances, out of anger more than conviction.
The possibility that David Cameron might lose the Brexit vote, and then his job, seemed remote indeed when the referendum process started. In the same way, Trump’s presidential campaign was widely treated as a joke by the cognoscenti. Cameron and Hillary Clinton were defeated by their own complacency and sense of entitlement, which was, of course, exactly what voters were angry about.
And boy, were they angry. Clinton and Trump were the two most unpopular candidates in The angry voters of 2016 . . . voted for change but also, in a sense, for uncertainty, which is what they have got. presidential history. They loathed each other; most voters loathed one or the other of them, and frequently both; the voters also disliked each other, and vented their antipathy on social media.
America has had bad-tempered elections before, but nothing to match the sheer vituperation of 2016, reflecting a sense of dislocation that runs deep in US society: the country has never been more bitterly divided over class, race, gender and party.
A similar, if less lurid, form of anti-politics pervaded the Brexit vote. Asked whether Britain should remain part of the EU, many Leave voters chose to answer a different question: Are you happy? They delivered a resoundingly negative answer, plunging the future of the entire European project into question.
The political fallout was immediate, undignified and fascinating. What had been framed as a referendum on principle became a knock-down, drag-out fight among political personalities vying for power. That, too, is characteristic of revolutions.
And like earlier revolutions, the Brexit explosion threatened to ignite and inspire similar effects in Europe, fuelled by anxiety over immigration and resentment of the establishment, with a Right-wing resurgence in France and the Netherlands. Particularly in Germany, there is a realisation that decades of integration in Europe have been deeply, and perhaps fatally, undermined by Britain’s vote.
The political triumph of the unlikely and exotic over the expected and predictable was captured in the image of Trump and Farage, standing in front of the Trump Tower penthouse, grinning with self-satisfied, naughty-boy glee. Depending on your viewpoint, it was the image of populist democracy storming the citadels of power, or the perfect leitmotif for a political world turned upside down.
Underpinning these shifts in the political tectonic plates was a fundamental shift in the perception of reality. ‘‘Post-truth’’ was identified by the Oxford English Dictionary as the international word of the year: ‘‘Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’’
The surrealism of post-truth politics was summed up by an exchange between Mr Trump and Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, on the subject of Barack Obama and the threat posed by Islamic State. ‘‘He’s the founder of Isis,’’ Trump said.
Hewitt (no friend of Obama) pointed out that the president had spent much of his time in office combating Isis: ‘‘He hates them. He’s trying to kill them.’’
Trump was unfazed: ‘‘I don’t care. He was the founder. The way he got out of Iraq . . . that was the founding of Isis, OK?’’
The phrase sounded good; whether it was true or not was, electorally speaking, immaterial.
The internet has broadened information exponentially, but 2016 may have been the moment when it achieved a fundamental narrowing of opinion: with so many people getting their news from social media, many voters only had to listen to opinions they already agreed with.
Internet users become separated from information that challenges their views, isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. This was the year in which voters received and recycled only such ‘‘information’’ that confirmed existing beliefs – an almost perfect definition of what ‘‘news’’ is not.
While citizens struggled to separate truth from post-truth, the tragedy of Syria unfolded, a truth many did not want to see. The images of death as civilians struggled to flee the carnage shocked the world, but did nothing to halt the annihilation of Aleppo.
Vladimir Putin was unmoved. From Syria to Ukraine to the alleged manipulation of the American election, Russia’s steady assertion of its power seemed reminiscent of the most aggressive period of Soviet rule.
And while Putin flexed his muscles from Moscow, Kim Jongun in Pyongyang continued his macabre display of technological might in a starving country. In February, North Korea launched a long-range rocket into orbit, violating United Nations treaties and provoking a wave of condemnation. Seven months later it carried out its fifth nuclear test, reportedly the biggest yet.
If the images of desperate refugees and the smoking ruins of Aleppo offered one indelible reminder of the impact of the war in Syria, then the terror attacks in Brussels in March offered more: 32 people were killed in three coordinated bombings for which Isis claimed responsibility. Three months later the group also claimed responsibility for the attack on Ataturk airport in Istanbul, which killed 45 people.
The US and China, which are responsible for 40 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, ratified the global climate agreement in September, but the planet continued to warm: the same month, global CO2 emissions exceed 400 parts per million, believed to be the highest level in human history.
But amid the storm and stress, the predictions of Armageddon, nuclear and natural, there were moments of strange tranquillity, and even amity.
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison, proving that while crimes against humanity may continue, they do not go unpunished. Bob Dylan won the Nobel prize for literature, allowing his fans to celebrate and his detractors to complain, and providing equal satisfaction to both.
So what kind of revolution was 2016? Some compared it to 1989, but in that year the revolutionaries, from Poland to Tiananmen Square, knew what they wanted. The angry voters of 2016 did not seem to know what they wanted, so much as what they reviled. They voted for change but also, in a sense, for uncertainty, which is what they have got.
The world feels different at the end of 2016, but it looks much the same. America has not collapsed with the election of Trump. Theresa May is steering Britain, without excessive drama, towards Brexit.
‘‘A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.’’ So said Fidel Castro, whose death in 2016 was, itself, another mark of change. If the past is anything to judge by, the real impact of the 2016 year of revolution will not be fully understood until far in the future.