“When Prophecy Fails” and the Cult of Brexit
When I was a Politics undergraduate, somehow even speccier and clumsier socially than I am today, an Israeli classmate of mine said something so egregious that it has stuck with me to this day. Without a hint of irony, and in a lecture hall full of educated, mostly Leftist peers and academics, he entreated, “The more criticism I hear of Israel, the more pro-Israel I become”. This, with the death of Rachel Corrie still fresh in the memory, at the height of the tensions of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. But what struck me most was how seemingly out of character this proclamation was for this young man. Largely, his politics aligned with my own, and he was a vocal advocate for LGBT+ rights. And yet here he was, banging the drum for a regime that would go on later that same year to massacre a sleeping Palestinian family in Beit Hanoun. What makes a man, I thought, speak out with such conviction, when the facts of the situation seem to be pointing in completely the other direction?
The answer may lie, it turns out, in human social psychology. In 1956, noted American social psychologist Leon Festinger published “When Prophecy Fails”, a study into a Chicagoan religious group known as The Seekers. The group, led by proto-Scientologist and sometime-automatic writer Dorothy Martin, believed that a great flood was set to wipe out human life on Earth on December 21st, 1954, and that only their group would be saved by the visit of an extraterrestrial from a planet named Clarion, with whom Martin had claimed to be in contact. As the clock struck midnight on December 20th, and no alien visitor appeared, the group sat together in a stunned silence. Martin began to cry. It was Festinger’s theory that, in order to lessen the pain of their prophecy going unfulfilled, many of The Seekers would double down on their beliefs, making a redoubled effort at proselytising to seek social support and confirmation. After all, these people had given up jobs, education, in some cases left their spouses and given away all their material possessions to join The Seekers, such was their fervent belief in Martin’s message.
And so it proved. At 4:45am, with no alien contact apparent and little sign of a cataclysmic flood on the horizon, Martin received a further alien contact via automatic writing, which in effect stated that God had decided to call the whole thing off. The message read, “The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction”. Thus, The Seekers had the explanation they were looking for without having to stare the bare facts of their situation in the face; namely, that they had given up the trappings of their earthly lives based on a fantasy, or a mirage, or a lie, or some combination thereof. While some members of the group returned to their pre-Seekers lives following the disconfirmation of their beliefs, many chose to remain, the pain of admitting the falsity of their faith, and the difficulty of walking back the logistical steps necessary to return to their previous life, too much to bear. They instead became even more fervent, more evangelical, more intensely committed to the message that Martin, or her alien contacts on Clarion, had brought to them.
Human history is replete with examples of what Festinger came to refer to as “cognitive dissonance”; the mental discomfort associated with having to hold two separate and mutually contradictory beliefs at the same time. The Millerites suffered from it when William Miller’s predicted return of Jesus failed to come to pass, resulting in the Great Disappointment of 1844. Christian radio presenter Harold Camping was forced into a hasty revision of his prediction that the world would end on May 21st, 2011 when that date came and went without incident. The Seekers found a way to maintain their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, likewise my Israeli classmate. And right this minute, in the United Kingdom, a vast swathe of the population of a developed, first-world, technologically advanced island is grappling with cognitive dissonance as their nation heads steadily towards what is increasingly looking like a political and economic disaster. They are the Brexiteers, and, rightly or wrongly, they are currently shaping the social, political and economic future of Europe.
The reasons behind some people’s decision to vote to leave the European Union on June 23rd, 2016 are well-documented, from concerns about “immigration” and “sovereignty” to a general discontent with the political class. Better articles than this one have already bemoaned the falsehoods inherent in the Leave campaign’s rhetoric and literature. As time has gone on since the referendum result, many of those lies have fallen away, replaced by hard truths about the potential for a deep recession if the UK leaves the European Union with no deal. Academic papers have predicted a cumulative fall in GDP per capita in Britain of 5.36% by 2030 as a result of decreased migration to the country. The UK Government has had to scramble for answers to issues as wide-reaching as “labelling tobacco products”, “trading in drug precursors” and “broadcasting and video on demand services” in the event of a no-deal Brexit, before mention is even made of the potentially deadly spectre of a return to a hard border on the island of Ireland.
And yet, as the problems have piled up, as the Brexit beast has looked increasingly unwieldily and its goals impractical or impossible, those championing Brexit have become exultant, triumphant, channelling the spirit of the Blitz, seemingly more assured than ever of a glorious return to sepia-tinted days of yore. Many are more determined than ever before that the UK leave the European Union on the most definitive terms possible, which is to say, no deal.
Keep Calm and Carry On, they say, evoking a period they never lived through to espouse emotions they never experienced, their cognitive dissonance driving them on, unable to look the truth in the face, lest their worldview fall apart around them. Social psychologists sometimes refer to this phenomenon as an “escalation of commitment”; a pattern of behaviour in which people facing an increasingly negative outcome from a decision nevertheless continue to pursue the outcome instead of changing course. The most infamous geopolitical example of escalation of commitment theory was Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to continue to fight the war in Vietnam long after the situation on the ground had become untenable for American troops. LBJ was willing to risk American soldiers’ lives to save face, to rescue his worldview, to sate his cognitive dissonance; now, in 2019, the Brexit brigade is willing to sacrifice large portions of British economy, industry, international freedom, geopolitical relations, and potentially the Peace Process itself, for the same reasons.
Now here’s the true kicker: when the inevitable happens, when a no-deal Brexit crunches the British economy, when race relations bubble over, when Ireland erupts into violence, when the value of the Pound tanks even further than it already has, some will still champion the benefits of Brexit from the rubble. M. Lamar Keene calls this “true believer syndrome”, a term coined after an experiment in which a colleague of his claimed to be a psychic medium channelling a spirit named “Raoul”. When the man later openly admitted to the audience that Raoul was a complete fabrication, many refused to believe him, preferring the lie. When writing of this phenomenon, Keene stated, “I knew how easy it was to make people believe a lie, but I didn’t expect the same people, confronted with the lie, would choose it over the truth”. Presciently, he added, “No amount of logic can shatter a faith consciously based on a lie”.
And here we are. We know the Brexit campaign lied and continue to lie. We know the spin and the bluster. We see the smoke and mirrors. But it is to no avail. Boris Johnson is a spirit medium, and he is acting with impunity because he knows he can. Because the Brexiteer faith in Brexit is stronger than the truth — because if it wasn’t, the Brexiteer worldview would shatter. The cognitive dissonance is too much to bear.