Weaponising groupthink

By Pete North - May 31, 2020

If you’re pro-lockdown, you’re freedom hating servile sheep who like being bossed around whereas the antis are brave free-thinking free spirits. Just like wanting a deal with the EU makes you a “fake Brexiter”/remainer, and thinking Dominic Cummings ought to have followed the rules makes you a remainer plotting to overthrow Brexit. It’s all following the same depressing and achingly tedious pattern.

I rather suspect this is why a great many Twitterers keep me at arms length. I am not likely to conform to any particular scripture. It is entirely possible to consent to the lockdown while also being a lockdown sceptic. You can be concerned about the economy and the potential threat to civil liberty while also realising that there is a common good in play.

What the Twitterers can’t cope with is the idea that as a “prominent leaver” I’m one of the most vocal critics of Brexit and Brexiters. I’m unsure why I shouldn’t be. The whole Brexit debate is is centred on the freedom to choose the direction of our country. We are in the process of removing an inhibitor to democratic choice, and I’m totally on board with doing that, but I don’t have to agree with them on where we go next or what the shape of the new relationship looks like.

They don’t particularly grasp why, as a leaver I’m not especially fond of Dominic Cummings or Boris Johnson. I thought they were more of a brake parachute than a rocket boost in the referendum campaign, and by way of intercepting the campaign on behalf of the Tories, they have killed of the electoral insurgency thus robbing Brexit of its momentum and transformative potential. I also think his excuse for swanning off to the opposite end of the country, when everyone else was ordered to stay at home even if they were ill, is wholly inadequate.

The removal of nuance from debate is quite deliberate. There are powerful forces at work with agendas of their own, not least the nihilistic wreckers who want to terminate all formal relations with the EU. They’ve worked hard to implant the notion that the removal of Cummings is part of a deep state plot to overturn Brexit.

This is quite ridiculous. We have already left the EU and the extension mechanism for the transition can only be used once and only if an act of parliament allows it. All it does is keep us in the transition framework. To overturn Brexit there would now need to be a re-accession process presumably preceded by a referendum – and certainly wouldn’t be initiated by this government. It’s difficult to see how overturning Brexit could credibly be accomplished before the June deadline.

But the people spinning this yarn know full well that is the case. They just don’t have any scruples about telling massive lies. They want a no deal Brexit, they want Cummings and Johnson at the helm and there is no low they will not stoop to.

This is not the first grubby little deception either. One wonders how the Twitter grunters go from being implacably opposed to Theresa May’s deal containing a backstop that could be replaced if implemented to supporting a near identical deal that hands Northern Ireland to the EU in a protocol that is final – all because it has Boris Johnson’s stamp on it. That right there is a masterstroke of propaganda.

Many of the high power political actors on Twitter know how to weaponise prestige and title. If you’re trying to build a constituency from scratch it takes many years and progress is glacial but if you can get a politically aligned MP/think tank patron and some cash to splash on advertising – or even just recognition among personalities in the bubble through connections, then you have an instant audience of readily malleable followers who’ll buy whatever you spoonfeed them. The Telegraph, Express, Guido and Breitbart are masters at ignorance farming.

If you can take an issue, rob it of any nuance, and tickle the prejudices of activists then you can seed virtually any lie you like. The extent to which is applies to the country is a matter of some debate, but it is an undeniable Twitter dynamic and observable on any given day.

This is ultimately what is feeding the culture war. It’s far from organic. The misinformation is fed in right at the very top and proliferated by loyalist activists and promoted by allied media outlets. Because we believe in a marketplace of ideas, and we frown on censorship, with a herculean effort required to refute simplistic narratives (when they have the numbers advantage), means that liars and cheats prosper.

I’m not really sure if we can call this democracy. Either way it certainly isn’t healthy. It’s not even as if the left are any better. We are locked into a destructive and obsessive battle that threatens to destabilise everything. The strife we see in the US this week is the ultimate destination. US politics is in a more advanced state of decay but I don’t think we are too far behind. Like America, it only takes a catalyst event before things start falling apart.