Democracy for Sale: a review
To understand what the crude populism of the new right is, you need to understand where it came from. This may be the best overview of that subject written so far.
Peter Geoghegan’s Democracy for Sale is an essential addition to a relatively small bundle of books that explain why a number of governments have arrived at the strange place that they now occupy in 2020. It’s a strong contemporary account – required reading – but it’s also an important reference work.
Every political writer needs it in their bookshelf because it catalogues the players, the timelines and the techniques that we understand to fit under the umbrella of dark money, along with a who’s who of the different-but-associated small purposeful groups that have understood politics for the game that it is.
Geoghegan’s book is about a confluence of forces and phenomena. All of the obvious ones are there – Russia, Steve Bannon, Cambridge Analytica, etc. In particular, the book recognises the vast inspirational contribution that this network received from Gianroberto Cassalegio of the Italian Five Star movement, and this alone justifies the cover price. It has also thrown an Irish curveball into the mix – the contribution of Ulster’s respectable churchy sectarians of the DUP to the wider alt-right ecology.
But it also shows how the vast influence powerhouse of social media has changed so much. It traces the way that it gave momentum to the older version of largely undiagnosed political corruption driven by the network of outwardly respectable political think-tanks such as the IEA (which is particularly neatly filleted in the book). This is not a journalistic clippings-job though. Geoghegan has done the legwork. He’s stayed on the story and followed the money. It takes the various small purposeful groups behind Brexit and other crude-populist movements and gives them the grudging respect that they deserve.
Written from a social democratic perspective, Geoghegan is plainly very worried by the right-wing politics that he is writing about. There’s a nice sense of the ridiculous in the book, and the crass narcissists of The Intellectual Dark Web make occasional appearances, but he also doesn’t hide a slight awe for the competence, the drive and the craft of political actors such as Nigel Farage, Aaron Banks, and Claire Fox, among a cast of hundreds.
It shows how the structures of liberal democracy have failed to adapt. Earnest technocrats have only been able to look on in bewilderment. ‘Hacking’ isn’t the real concern in a world where Facebook and Google are openly selling the kind of data that the most pernicious darknet operatives could only dream of finding. It’s written from a strong understanding of how these entrepreneurs have learned how to neutralise ‘the commons’ of constructive political discourse and drive a selectively de-funded political journalism in new directions.
Geoghegan can see how all of this can’t simply be explained by purposeful corruption. Liberal democratic politics left the doors unlocked and the lights on and it bears a lot of the blame for the burglaries that happened as a result.
So many other contemporary accounts are written like breathless commentaries on the soap opera of politics, without realising how dramatically political mechanisms have changed. By contrast, Geoghegan shows how far conventional beltway political writing fails to grasp anything other than the surface patina of politics. One of the themes that runs though the book is the changing nature of public participation. This is not only an account of successful strategies – a more sophisticated and unpredictable public are also part of the story. With possible exceptions such as Eitan Hersh or David Swift, the political centre and left seem to have totally failed to grapple with the reality of modern democracy and the obsolescence of traditional activism in the face of the turbocharged upgrade of activism deployed by crude-populists.
The conclusions are a must-read. Geoghegan is absolutely writing about corruption here. It’s not just another wrinkle in the evolutionary story of modern democracy. This book shows social/liberal democracy – history’s most successful experiment and greatest success story – is currently locked onto a course that could end in its own destruction and that the electoral politics that drives it may be a fatally compromised mechanism. These forces won’t be deflected by journalists or by fact-checking. They’re too agile for the grinding gears of official oversight or checks-and-balances.
Almost uniquely, the book has fully internalised an understanding that the ownership of the political process has been partly transferred into new hands and until that problem is acknowledged, we all have a lot to worry about.
It’s early reception in the newspapers is focusing on the various political scandals that it resurfaces, and in some cases, reveals for the first time. To its credit, the book is easy to read. It’s an attention grabber as it adds a number of new episodes to many of the long-running stories of recent years – the entrepreneurial jigsaw of corruption, crankery and political grifting that has renovated right-wing politics. It offers a strong convincing narrative for anyone who needs one and it understands the political nature of what has transpired. That crude-populism is a new kind of right-wing politics with a different character and different aims.
The only real way to fully understand is to see where it came from. This book is the best overview of that subject that I’ve read so far.
Declaration of interest: Peter is a friend. We met through a shared political outlook and he spent part of the time writing this book as my houseguest. His book contains a few references to my 2017 work Save Democracy, Abolish Voting.
