The attempted coup in Turkey was perhaps the most extreme example, but it is really no different than the leave vote or the popular support for Donald Trump. President Erdogan has massive popular support in Turkey, with over 50% of the vote in the last presidential election. However, given Turkey has locked up more journalists than any other country in the world, you might expect that the odds have been stacked slightly in Erdogan's favour. When the only voices you hear are affirming a single viewpoint, why would you consider any other? Unfortunately it would appear that the coup attempt demonstrates that not everyone in Turkey believes what they're told in the news. Worse than that, it shows that some people felt so divorced form the message they were presented, so detached from Erdogan's status quo that they felt the need to take violent action to overturn it. I am not saying that a military coup against an ostensibly democratic government is right, I am just saying that you need pretty good motivation to want to stage one in the first place, especially if you're not even top brass; this was effectively a mutiny. Anyway, it failed, and rather than see it as a worrying indicator of the deep divisions within his country, Erdogan has taken it as an excuse to get rid of everyone in public life who might disagree with him. Going on the numbers so far dismissed or detained, this is quite a lot of people, which is as it should be in a healthy democracy. Unfortunately despite what he says, Erdogan isn't massively interested in democracy, but rather appears to be on the verge of going full Pinochet, which is something neither his country or nor either of the continents it straddles needs right now.
Of course Erdogan creates his echo chamber of opinion by removing opportunities for contradiction in the mass media, but with no conventional means for expressing their opinions, his opponents must have found other outlets. Such outlets most likely coalesced around social media which as we all know (theoretically) assist in creating their own echo chambers. Many of the mutineers must have been surprised to find that many of the Turkish people did not exactly welcome them with open arms. They probably had months of convincing each other that theirs was the only reasonable cause of action and that its justification was as plain as day to any idiot, only to find out that most of the idiots still bought the line fed to them every day by a cowed media. In the aftermath of the attempted coup Erdogan and his supporters are even more convinced of the rectitude of their cause and course: the enemies of democracy have shown themselves, so more can be done to rid the world of them. Anyone questioning the actions of Erdogan can be shown to be wrong, because such people have been shown to be enemies of democracy, willing to kill civilians. It is an absolutist outlook that gives one a simple way to discredit all dissent.
We in the west can comfort ourselves that we are not so blinkered as all that; we understand democracy, we are measured and reasonable, yet we are as polarised as we have been at any time since the Second World War. After the war, there was an understanding that extremes had led to destruction and death on a scale that severely traumatised those it did not kill. The response was a kind of truce, an agreement, not to agree, but to respect each other's point of view; this may have been easier with the USSR as a constant reminder of the alternative. However, after failure of the radical movements of the 60s, the world gradually began to drift away from this compromise: the right wing elites, paranoid about what popular support for any left wing ideology could do for their wealth and power base, started the campaign to label anything vaguely progressive as dangerously revolutionary and therefore just dangerous. This worked well for them whilst they had broad control of the popular press and therefore public opinion, and whilst the dismantling of the state had some demonstrable financial benefit for those who bought shares or council houses. However, the advent of the social media complicated matters: the temporary rage that the popular press whips up to push a particular agenda (or just to sell more newspapers can get caught in little social media eddies that turn into whirlpools of discontent. Currently, the perception is that this can be to the advantage of these press organisations, especially as they no longer have to rely on anything approaching factual journalism, but can allow entirely made up headlines create a furore (and click-through) based on nothing more than their own momentum. The danger for the popular press is that the credulous who form these waves of wrath find some other source for their outrage - social justice for example - so in order to retain their interest, ever more sources for 'moral' outrage must be sought, or the same groups of 'culprits' must be targeted repeatedly, reinforcing dangerous stereotypes.
I saw a tweet in response to some new Trump nonsense that was simply this: "DONT BELIVE THE MEDIA LIES, REAL AMERICANS SUPPORT TRUMP." What struck me most about this was not the fact that its writer felt the media (presumably all of them) lie, but the idea that somehow those who don't vote for Trump are not true Americans. This in itself is not a new concept, Americans love to call each other names and claim that only they and not their opponents understand the true nature of what it is to be American, but the fact that it was shouted made it feel like it was a conviction rather than a belief.
Jeremy Corbin is very much presented as a conviction politician, a man who sticks by his dogma in the face of the grubby compromise of modern politics. This is presented as very noble, and I'm sure it is, it's just not very practical. I agree with many of Corbyn's principles, but I am beginning to understand that he has no idea how to enact them. Principles and beliefs can be good, but they are not the same thing as policies. Where principles have the advantage is that they are easier to articulate and delineate. It is easier to define a person by their principles than by their actions; easier to label them. This labelling works well for creating binaries: this is what/who I am for and this is what/who not. Hence why so many of Corbyn's supporters see enemies everywhere and every criticism as a personal attack on their principles. Like everyone else, their beliefs in these matters are simply amplified by the agreement of everyone around them; everyone in their social echo chamber sees the world as they do, that is how they first came to be connected, so it is no surprise that these people reinforce the view that the dogma is right, indeed unquestionable. Perhaps more worryingly though, they reinforce the idea that anyone else is universally wrong.
Donald Trump has no obvious ideology, but he does offer principles. The fact that these principles are based in the reality of neither his life, nor America, nor the world is immaterial; he offers principles unsullied by the dirty compromise of politics. There is no argument against this because all alternatives are establishment lies, created by a shady elite who serve only their own interests. The truth can only lie in the hands of Trump and his supporters.
It is not surprising that this concept of a monopoly of truth works so well for Trump, Corbyn and Erdogan alike: in a society where we use hashtagged words or phases to define whole concepts, it is not hard to define all others as #wrong, especially when the algorithms associated with those hashtags will tend to seek out only those who agree with us or the most deranged of those who don't. In each case, there is a kernel of truth to the messages presented: the Turkish coup was essentially anti-democratic; Erdogan is essentially anti-democratic; the right wing media and establishment do have it in for anyone who runs the Labour Party; the vested interests of a moneyed elite do damage American democracy. Unfortunately in each of these cases, the observers of these facts have taken them and made them the tennent of an anti-ideology that only their principles can overcome. By reinforcing and amplifying the messages from their personal echo chambers, each moves the world a bit further away from the messy compromise it needs in order not to slip into chaos. Unyielding ideologies cannot coexist and yet they seem increasingly to be the only thing we are wiling to consider.
I had an argument with a friend recently* where I accused him of spouting empty rhetoric (because he refused to be drawn on the practicalities of realising his ideals). He retorted that only politicians can spout empty rhetoric, people like him just have opinions. This is fine, we are all entitled to our opinions, as we are entitled to be disappointed when the actions of our politicians don't coincide with those opinions. What we should perhaps be more wary of is when the rhetoric of our politicians simply echoes the opinions of everyone else in our little echo chamber: it is then that we need to take a look outside.
*we're old fashioned enough to be able to argue about politics and still remain friends
