Activists swap politics for cult membership

OTTO von Bismarck was the first to deliver the opinion that politics is the art of the possible, an aperçu wheeled out by politicians when they’re explaining why they can’t do something desirable, or when attempting to blame something on the crooked timber of humanity, the general cussedness of things or anything other than their own incompetence.

Bismarck’s career, however, is as good an example as one could present of just how many unlikely things, like creating an empire from scratch, are in the realms of the possible. Bismarck’s distinction should really be seen as being between ideas, however bizarre, that are realisable, and those that are merely idealistic.

Charles Fourier, one of the godfathers of libertarian socialism, thought that the oceans would turn into lemonade when the workers’ paradise was achieved, which seems unlikely. But he was just as thoroughly mocked for some of his other wacky notions, which included feminism (he was first to use the word), redistribution of wealth, homosexual equality and the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Politics may not be able to contravene the laws of nature, which includes human nature. Attempts to produce “systems so perfect that no one will need to be good” (as TS Eliot put it in the 1930s, when many thought authoritarian regimes of either the Left or Right were the inevitable future) may be doomed by humanity’s instincts towards free association, self-interest, collective action, the desire to trade, to challenge authority or any of dozens of other impulses.

But when it comes to redrawing longstanding borders, or throwing out regimes, or even fundamental forms of government, that have seemed invincible, history has no shortage of examples. Indeed, what most of us think of as history is a list of such events: the fall of Rome, the Reformation, the French Revolution, universal suffrage and countless other seismic changes that were thought unthinkable by many, until they happened.

In Malcolm Bradbury’s novel The History Man, when someone objects to a Marxist student’s assertion that “all forms of knowledge are ideological. That means they are politics”, another student asks: “Who is this crazy doll? She says we don’t need a revolution.”

Howard Kirk, the book’s radical protagonist, replies: “There are people who think like that… if there weren’t, we wouldn’t need a revolution.” The historical fact of revolutions is proof that what once seemed unthinkable is perfectly possible politically. The same is true of counter-revolutions: the historian Richard Cockett’s account of the academics and think-tanks that challenged the economic and political assumptions of the post-war period was entitled Thinking the Unthinkable.

Yet those ideas about markets and globalisation have been dominant for decades, as was the Clause Iv-era of socialism that preceded them (and, among Jeremy Corbyn’s fans, is still trying to make a comeback).

Clearly, these positions are all in the realms of the possible. The error – whatever the claims of Marxian historicists, or those who believe in the necessary triumph of liberal democracy (as suggested by Francis Fukuyama), or assert that technology, or laisser-faire economics, can fix anything – is to think them inevitable.

Despite that, there is a growing tendency among those actively committed to certain kinds of politics – notably the Left, though it is apparent on all points of the compass – to consider any contrary view unthinkable: if not strictly speaking impossible, somehow impermissible.

They mostly don’t seem to think that because of pseudoscientific Marxist economics or post-hegelian historical determinism, but because they are incapable of seeing why anyone else might not share their views. Much of the current atmosphere of what passes for political discourse is not about disagreements, however vehement, about basic principles, or even the traditional, if sometimes irrational, tribal loyalty of political parties (which usually at least pretended there were principles involved).

Instead, justification is by faith alone, and evidence can be cheerfully disregarded when it collides with doctrine. What’s more, its claims are to be advanced by constant searches for heresy: those who don’t share the group’s opinions are not just wrong, but wicked. They can’t just be mistaken; they have to be thick, or misled by deceitful conspiracies, or fascist.

All sorts of people, some of whom previously seemed fairly normal, now operate like this. Ardent Remainers, of course, who think anyone who voted for Brexit was thick, misled, selfish, too old for their views to count and, naturally, racist. But Leavers who now maintain anything except a WTO settlement is a betrayal look very nearly as unhinged.

Corbynites, who collectively share the delusion that only a conspiracy of Tories masquerading as members of the Labour Party prevented St Jeremy from gaining a landslide win.

Anyone who thinks that the Union, or independence, is a self-evident, easily settled or straightforward issue, even when presented with the knowledge that their side are only a few percentage points ahead.

Those convinced of the existence – nay, the desirability – of identity politics and coming race or culture wars, and who are entrenched in their commitment to one side or the other.

All of these groups seem to regard it as an affront, not only to their own opinions, but to the natural order of things, that they might not be on the winning side. But it’s not particularly useful to deny reality.

Let’s take an example I suspect most of us will find uncontroversial. I don’t think Donald Trump is a good president. He has a record that ought to make it certain he’ll lose: unemployment is over 10 per cent, the economy’s in trouble and hundreds of thousands of people have died. He keeps saying things that are demonstrably untrue. He gives plenty of evidence of being an unscrupulous and unsuitable candidate.

But I still think Mr Trump might win, yet the reaction of most of his opponents to Joe Biden’s relatively poor polling is to maintain that their man is still ahead, and to deny that Mr Trump can prevail. If he does, they will claim that he has cheated.

I can readily believe that Mr Trump would cheat, but that attitude is missing the point. If they don’t understand that it is possible for others to disagree with them, they’re not engaged in politics, but magical thinking. And if something undesirable is inconceivable, how do they account for everything they’re complaining about?

If they don’t understand that it is possible for others to disagree with them, they’re not engaged in politics, but magical thinking