How the political right shifted towards postmodernism
And clinched the White House
We all are most probably familiar with the much-repeated, analysed and polemised resurgence of right-wing populism by now. But why has the movement, as it can be categorised, attained such a traction and support in just a few years? Support big enough to take candidates embracing the message to the White House and to various governments in Europe? No, it’s not about some recently uncovered truth about the fundamental meaning of life and an universal solution to the myriad of problems we face (unless you consider “blaming the immigrant” one). It is because the movement in question — in favourable conditions — has successfully managed to construe and constitute an enticing narrative about the world with its own “facts”. And many followed.
For those readers who have undertaken even a tentative dive to the conflicting mishmash of political theory, the claim on topic of this essay might sound counter-intuitive. Indeed, one of the most enduring grievances voiced by those identifying as right-wingers tend to be that some objective reality out there is being denied by the postmodern/constructionist leftists, socialists, communists, green-hippies, watermelons and the like. At the same time some academics have claimed that the nearly exhausted idiom of post-truth age—itself often attributed to the recent rise of populism — is a direct logical and philosophical successor of the postmodern movement. Neither of the offered narratives is particularly accurate but both offer some context and insight for the subject at hand: “what do you mean social constructionism is now a right-wing thing, too?” Namely, both claims partially strike the chord on how the developments of the last few years in Europe and wider West can be interpreted.
None of you have probably been left cold by the heated election campaigns in the United States in 2016. Or could have escaped the media-attention directed at the Brexit vote. Or Marine Le Pen’s rhetoric against Emmanuel Macron in France. In each of these instances — in fact in every political and what you think as non-political event —our human minds construe what we interpret is happening.
Those in the States who rooted for Hillary Clinton thought the e-mail scandal was a political witch hunt to undermine the candidature. Those who rooted for Donald Trump downplayed the importance of his crude rhetoric and possible conflicts of interest along the campaign trail.
Those in Britain who wished to remain in the European Union could not fathom how anyone would wish to get rid of the access to the single markets. Brexiteers were flabbergasted that anyone would not wish to take back control, as the slogan went.
Those enthusiastically vouching for Marine Le Pen saw immigration and especially Islam as perhaps the biggest danger for France and the French way of life, whatever that is. Those wishing to see Emmanuel Macron reforming the ossified economic institutions in their nation could not understand why so big proportion of the citizenry wished to concentrate on such a marginal issue as immigration compared to the economy.
In all of these instances, the information available was practically the same for everyone. Yet people arrived in different conclusions. Why? Because everyone of us interpret the “facts” on the ground. They are, in practice, different kind of distortions of “facts” for each and everyone of us. We interpret the chaos of events and soundbites through different lenses of our experience, thoughts and priorities. Such process results in each and everyone of us conceptualising solitary events and hence ultimately the whole world differently, further leading to different choices on how to affect it. For this reason, there are no universal morals, absolute truths or, ultimately, no objective reality for us all. Because we have no direct access to the truth. It cannot be made present and is always interpreted through a lens — be it that of the scientist or that of the plumber.
Described above is the core assumption of the constructionist thought, which forms the foundations of the either hated or loved postmodernist movement. Such starting point goes to the very core of the political theory: epistemology. Demarcating theories along epistemic lines divides them into groupings based on how they view the world; “what can we say from the world around us, how can we obtain valid knowledge?” Above described postmodernism is a part of the anti-foundationalist paradigm, which criticises and denies the foundationalist notion that there are “basic beliefs” working as an anchor for the rest of our beliefs. That we can observe and measure such universal things out there “objectively” even while being part of and actively restructuring the world which we try to measure.
For our purposes in this essay, it is first in order to establish that the resurgent right has indeed embraced principles of social constructionism, at least to a degree. Second, I will be delving on how and why such change has happened. And finally and maybe most importantly it is pertinent to ask the question what does it mean, in the grand scheme of things.
I. Beyond the enemy lines
I do not entertain any notions of my own impartiality, neutrality or objectivity. I am very much a proponent of the constructionist starting point and think that the world is what we create it to be. That each and everyone of us is simultaneously interpreting and recreating our surroundings, our understanding and the “facts” guiding us. In my modest mind, the right-hand side of the political spectrum has been acting according to its own conception of the world since the birth of times, as has the left-hand side of the spectrum.
Yet thinking that we create and interpret the world subjectively happens to be a notion that has carved its foothold predominantly onto the political left; right-wingers have consistently across at least the recent times epistemically held that the world is “out there”. That we just need to measure it more objectively and we will find the ultimate truth about the essence of life that is universally immovable for everyone.
Against this backdrop, Shane Gunster and Paul Shaurette identified in their journal article from 2011 a partial middle ground for the epistemic split, which they dubbed epistemological populism. The writers convey it to define “certain types of individual experience as the only ground of valid and politically relevant knowledge”, it “borrows heavily from the rhetorical patterns of political discourses of populism to valorize the the knowledge of ‘the common people’, as distinguished from the rarefied knowledge of elites” and finally appeals to “‘common sense’ as a discussion ending trump-card” (Gunster and Saurette 2011, 196, 199).
Apart from the accidental nail-on-the-head with the “trump card” writing in 2011, we can see the characterisations combining elements from the epistemic foundationalism and its criticism. Namely, the epistemological populism both underlines first hand experience and how we feel the world is, how we interpret it; and simultaneously asserts it as the only valid knowledge, that there is only one truth in the world which we just need to measure with the only correct yardstick. David Roberts, writing in a long-form piece for Vox in May 2017, finds similar epistemic strands from Trump’s rhetoric and campaign, strands which he describes as “tribal”. Again recurs the emphasis that “our message is the only valid knowledge”. Essentially such approach crosses the orthodox line of epistemology demarcation between the political left and right, and perhaps that’s exactly where its seduction lies. The absurd reduction and an insulting take of postmodernism in populist epistemology is that fact is fiction and therefore doesn’t matter. A perversion of postmodernism, as some have characterised.
II. How and why — the disillusionment and the populist temptation
Yet the conditions for the development of 2016 and 2017 that caught “some” by surprise were unarguably helped by a unique set of favourable conditions for it.
Since its inception, the development of globalisation has been picked to pieces by both leftists and right wingers — for different reasons, but nevertheless. Yet perhaps the most vocal critics of the process have indeed been populists. Save for the curious outlier in Norway, pretty much every single party in the western world which is characterised or which self-identifies as populist has been skeptical of increased global cooperation.
Such platform has attracted, unsurprisingly, those who have bore the brunt of globalisation and emerged as a slight losers from it. And those who think they have. Perhaps one of the better known illustrations of how the western bottom half of the society has been left behind is the “elephant graph” (pictured on the left) introduced by Branko Milanović in his work outlining the development of inequality in recent decades. Such curve underlines the rather massive disparage in income growth since the late 80’s. In fact the real income has decreased for a portion of the western middle and lower classes, which nevertheless occupy the top 10–30% percentiles of world’s income.
In some other phase of world history such people left behind and marginalised would have voted for parties from the traditional left side of the spectrum, social democrats or socialists. Yet here lies the second key for the lucky timing of the populist movement: disillusionment with the old parties. The backbone of the populist parties has recently been the working class, testifying for such a development. So disappointed for the inaction and ineptitude of the “establishment parties” to enhance their conditions have the ones left behind by globalisation been that they have thrown their support in desperate move behind the ludicrous promises of the populists. That all would get better with these simple few tricks. They had, in essence, nothing left to lose.
To perfect the triangle, Lady Fortuna had reserved an economic downturn and a mass migration for the western world. Suddenly the already discontent and economically strained European populace witnessed tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands refugees and migrants from war-torn countries on the borders of their countries, desperate for help, safety and a better future. Ready to exploit such a combination, the populist elements played on to the uncertainty and economic plight by emphasising and exaggerating the costs the newcomers would induce to the economy.
Quickly such mood spread across the Atlantic to the ongoing election campaigns of the United States. And, if possible, the land was even more fertile across the pond for the development. The conservative movement in America had long worked to undermine the “institutions devoted to gathering and disseminating knowledge”, namely the academic world and the media. Maybe the pinnacle of the development was the creation of FOX News in 1996. But what’s striking for such development is that conservatives were not even asserting that they would create “neutral” or “objective” alternatives for the allegedly biased and liberal science and “mainstream media” — which at least try to be somewhat neutral-ish. From the radio-shows of Rush Limbaugh to the inception of Breitbart news, the objective was not to relay news but to convey a narrative, the only narrative that could be trusted. As a result of the differentiation of the institutions in America, according to the way too little attention received Harvard research about the role of media in the presidential elections, “[t]he center-left and the far right are the principal poles of the media landscape”.
So potent was the combination of the three factors and the fertile ground described above that they managed to disrupt even the political system of the United States. Normally the polarizing but fringe-cutting bipartisan political system of the States has managed to truncate radical initiatives even in spite of the rather hard-line participators of the presidential primary system. Such was for example the fate of Bernie Sanders in the same elections on the Democrat side. And so the Republican establishment had to follow Trump and his populist epistemology, albeit part of them did it rather grudgingly.
The rest is history. The campaign of Hillary Clinton adhered to the rather foundationalist epistemology and tried to counter Trump’s narrative and supporters with fact-checking and touting the aggregate (yet undeniable) benefits of free trade. But what was good against McCain and Romney — other foundationalists, as the Republican party has long been — in 2008 and 2012 was no good against the populist perversion of postmodernism.
Along with the development described above, the Overton Window has shifted significantly rightwards over the past two years. After Trump’s triumph, similar rhetoric and narrative could be witnessed across the Europe from Brexit vote to the presidential candidacy of Marine Le Pen. It has become strikingly common. Accordingly, even the traditionally foundationalist political parties on the right (as well as those moderately leftist) have had to modify their stances to accommodate the epistemic shift. Attitudes towards migrants have experienced a hardening across the board and — on a positive note — the traditional parties both left and right have been forced to actually try to solve the problems of the marginalised middle and working classes to be able to sway back the voters.
III. What’s next — reflections and a conclusion
The epistemic shift of the political right and its success has at least three kinds of offerings for us.
First and foremost, the above delineated development is even in such a perverted form — or exactly because of it — a powerful reminder that ultimately it is the narrative that significantly defines how people act and react. The way they see the world, however misguided or harsh, construes the base of their choices, ideas and opinions.
Second, if the powerful tool to understand the world can be used to construe a worldview so cold, xenophobic and full of hate as that of the prevailing populists, surely it can be used to construe something better; a worldview of tolerance, prosperity and coexistence. And to succeed with it.
Third, the planet we inhabit will suffer from different types of crisis in future. Be it the inevitable economic depression or the around-the-corner mass migration initiated by climate change, it is one of the certain things in this world that things can go wrong and will go wrong at some point. And when things go south, the pattern we’ve witnessed will repeat itself in a form or another. At that point we all should be better equipped to avoid the allurement of cheap promises, and in that the political left has a lot to do. Ever since the 80’s, the left side of the political spectrum has experienced a crisis after another, which only have accumulated as the decades went and they were left unsolved. The dusk of social democracy is one of these, but that’s a topic in itself for a later date.
The rise of the populists has subsided to a degree from its heyday, yet it recently formed a government in Austria together with the Far-Right. And the next crisis might be just around the corner.
