Thursday 29 December 2016

The Social Acceptability List 2016



Another year whipped by, and it turned out to be a year like no other. Rulebooks are being burned and ripped up and rewritten, and what’s deemed acceptable has become a game of trial and error. The Overton Window has been stretched, but perhaps only for those with the most vocal following. So what’s in and what’s out? The Fallen in Public look at our politicians, newspapers and netizens - What’s in? What’s out? What’s OK? What’s not? Read on to find out...

IT’S OUT!

Experts: “I think people in this country have had enough of experts.” Michael Gove, 2016.

Give me your academics, your economists, your huddled central bankers yearning to speak free, the wretched refuse of your teeming think tanks. And bind and gag them and throw them out to sea. If 2016 was anything, it was the year that people stopped listening to people who know more about things than they do, and this distrust – this victory of blind gut instinct – has been celebrated. This is a victory of the little people, said Nigel Farage, self-appointed king of the little people.

It’s been a long time coming. Experts have been ushered onto news panels next to politicians and pundits for some time now, and as the latter two’s trust has waned over the years, it’s no surprise that the third has been condemned. Digital media has done its part by making everyone a journalist (read expert) and most analyses condensable into 142 characters. An entire thesis can be cast in to the bin with one comment below the line: “What is this shit?”

After two years of surprise results in the UK and the US, pollsters were the first to look daft. If they can get it wrong, pundits wondered, maybe all experts are wrong? And maybe, just maybe, the opposing position to that of experts is correct by definition. Yep, find out what experts think, and choose the other option – that’s where we’re at. “Experts built the Titanic,” noted an insightful caller on Radio 2.

Economists have been making bad predictions for all of eternity; it’s not their fault if politicians have presented them as cast iron guarantees, rather than a collection of estimates within set parameters. But economic orthodoxy, faith in the neoliberal model, has no doubt blinded economists to failures: the IMF, the ECB and central banks in the West have been peddling neoliberal economic policy (austerity, privatisation, deregulation, etc.) regardless of evidence contrary to its expectations, and evidence of poor results. The reason? Too many rich people are doing too well.

You’d expect the cynics of economic experts to be crying out against neoliberalism, right? Well, curiously enough Michael Gove hasn’t gone this far, perhaps because the economic consensus, the one he’s been telling people to ignore, is largely based on policies made possible and popular by one Margaret Thatcher, and are rather close to his heart.

The depth of the anti-economist jibe is this: they didn’t see the financial crash coming; they haven’t fixed the euro. And look at Greece – eeww. Who could argue with that? A child can understand it.

The distrust extends to the high reaches of academia, charged with being left-wing brainwashers by a McCarthyist press, the judiciary, labelled ‘enemies of the people’ by the Daily Mail for making judgements on constitutional law, and international organisations like NATO, the UN, the International Criminal Court. These post WW2 organisations are a pain in the ass for Russia, China and Israel, and now America has a president who’ll finally sympathise.
Against the experts are pitted the people, the real people. "There's only one expert that matters, and that's you, the voter," Gisela Stuart of Vote Leave puked into a microphone earlier this year, in a wonderful celebration of 2016, the year when truth and knowledge went relative.

Tuesday 27 December 2016

The Social Acceptability List 2016



Another year whipped by, and it turned out to be a year like no other. Rulebooks are being burned and ripped up and rewritten, and what’s deemed acceptable has become a game of trial and error. The Overton Window has been stretched, but perhaps only for those with the most vocal following. So what’s in and what’s out? The Fallen in Public look at our politicians, newspapers and netizens - What’s in? What’s out? What’s OK? What’s not? Read on to find out...
IT'S IN: Walls!


"I WILL BUILD A GREAT WALL" – Donald Trump.

Walls are back! Some thought that walls had had their day, but they were wrong.

The Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall and the Wailing Wall are great historical walls of fear, division and protection, and so are our contemporary walls. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 signifying the end of capitalist/communist, east/west, democratic/authoritarian divisions, the presumed new order was to be one of unfettered (as much as humanly possible) trade and travel, typified in institutions like the EU. Liberal democracy was the answer, it was said – problem solved. But with capital flight, gentrification, outsourcing and (deep breath) immigration, along with other traits of neoliberal capitalism – wage stagnation, job insecurity, etc. – western populations have rediscovered their love of being boxed in.

It’s no great surprise that immigration tends to be the big villain. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign wallowed in the dirty language of xenophobia, promising to build a wall to keep out Mexicans. Britain doesn’t need a wall to keep out Europeans, because we already have a moat, but the sentiments were the same: fear of outsiders coming to wreak havoc and steal jobs. The simplest answers are given for the most complex of problems, and what could be simpler than a wall? If Ukip ran on a ticket of widening the moat, they’d surely sail to victory.

The EU has an external border, but since 2015 temporary internal borders have been reintroduced all around France and in certain areas around Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Going rogue, Hungary has been whipping up walls, one alongside its non-EU neighbour Serbia; one alongside its ‘open border’ neighbour Romania. The EU external border is gradually becoming more rigorously fortified.

Not one to be left out, Britain has joined in the effort to combat the Migrant Crisis because she is beginning to feel the effects, and so in an effort to stop refugees and better life-seekers from getting into trucks and getting into the UK, Britain has built a wall in Calais, one kilometre long. It’s a classic example of treating the symptoms rather than the causes. Perhaps they are practicing for the post-Brexit world, which could include a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and maybe, if all hell really breaks loose and Scotland goes independent, one there too! I’m guessing no one will want to talk about causes there too.
Walls are nothing if not symbolic, and sometimes you can have the symbolic aspect without the physical thing. So non-tangible walls are on the up too: London is seen as an out-of-touch enclave of Liberal Metropolitan Elitists; Washington is a swamp which Trump has promised to drain; European provincials are unsure whether they should hate Berlin or Brussels more; Russians and Ukrainians despise one another; the English think the Scots are taking their money, the Scots think the English are taking their freedom; the British young blame the British old for taking them out of the EU; liberals blame bigots for taking them out of the EU; bigots blame politicians, globalists and soppy wet liberals for creating an EU that had to be left, and my gran blames everyone for everything. Extremely high, albeit imaginary, walls separate all sides.


And the digital world makes it super easy to discover just how hated you are. Social media is rife with communities which communicate in echo chambers, learning how to use keywords to separate their friends and their foes – libtards, Brexiteers, Remoaners, Leavers, Remainers, MSM, Daily Hate, Guardianistas, ‘out of touch’, progressives, ‘regressives’, control, ‘religion of peace’, ‘waycist’. The internet, striving to replicate and re-present the anxieties of the real world and doing a damn fine job.

Monday 26 December 2016

The Social Acceptabilty List 2016

Last Christmas, we gave you a list. The Social Acceptability List 2015 sought to reflect on a year of social discourse; how certain concepts, words and things moved towards or away from the so-called Overton Window. The list was this:


It was in!

islamophobia, war, voting out the box, ties with china, shaming

It was out!

privilege, global warming denial.

A year on, we’re able to see how things have changed, or haven't. Islamophobia’s still riding high with burkini bans in France and “Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”. War, too, is ever popular, with the one in Syria reaching what appears to be a disastrous climax.

The social activism of ‘shaming’ and ‘checking one’s (or another’s) privilege’ has continued, and the tactics and concepts of the left have spread to the right: the so-called white male’s fightback is simply identity politics without the understanding of historical prejudices. Hence where privilege last year was out, it’s now in. The Identitarian Movement of Europe, and the Alt-right movement in the US, seek power in their white, male identities in the same way that Beyonce found it in her black, female one.  

Voting out the box (Syriza, Podemos, Ukip, Corbyn...) was big in 2015 but 2016 has been defined by it, specifically by Brexit and Trump – two votes which threaten to throw entire societies into the wilderness. 2016 has been marked by a vocal disgust at those who have voted in this way, leading to debates about how and where people get their information. Those who question Facebook as a reliable news source and/or the Trump/Farage-led peddlers of deliberate mistruth and misrepresentation are told they are scornful of voters who warmed to it, and are, ultimately, undemocratic.

Finally, discussion of global warming has been drowned out by talk of other things, but conspiracies in general are up and global warming denial has been bolstered by Trump, who claimed that manmade global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to thwart the American economy. On the back of these loose words, and with a rise in protectionist economic policy sentiments, ties with China could be in question. Trump has taken a pop at China’s South China Sea militarisation, taken issue with China’s low valued currency, and taken a call from Tsai Yingwen, Taiwan’s independence-leaning president, hitting China precisely where it hurts.

After 2015’s glory year in Anglo-Chinese relations, typified in Xi Jinping’s romantic trip to David Cameron’s pub, and George Osborne’s glowing expectations of trade with the Chinese, 2016 has been full of stumbles. The Brexit vote has caused worry and bemusement in China, who value stability over pretty much everything. The new UK PM Theresa May ordered a review into the Chinese-backed Hinkley Point power station because of security concerns. But things settled down later: May went ahead with Hinkley (as if she had a choice), and China’s state-backed SinoFortone bought the pub chain that includes Cameron’s pub so Xi could toast this little victory.
Keep posted for the Social Acceptability List 2017!