ANYTHING TO AVOID THEIR OWN INADEQUACIES: “Fake News” Is the New “Bregret.”
After a majority of British voters stunned the political establishment on both sides of the Atlantic by voting to leave the European Union, the media quickly alighted on a narrative to reassure “Remain” partisans of their moral superiority: “Leave” voters, ignorant of the actual implications of their vote, were already regretting their decision en masse.
In August, we addressed the dangers of this kind of blind self-congratulation (which was never really supported by the data): “By trying to delegitimize votes for the likes of Trump, Le Pen, Wilders, and Grillo, or for causes such as Brexit or the Dutch referendum on Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU, as being the products either of external manipulation or of some other form of false consciousness, our elites are refusing to even countenance the underlying causes fueling these sentiments.”
Now that elites worldwide are reeling from Donald Trump’s presidential victory—”Brexit plus plus plus,” the candidate called it—a variation of this narrative is once again taking hold in liberal circles. This time, it’s centered on “fake news”—the idea that Trump’s victory can be chalked up to phony right-wing news websites, which allegedly had an outsize presence on social media networks in the run-up to the election. As with “Bregret,” the obvious implication is that the election of Donald Trump is not a real rejection of the cosmopolitan establishment, because if voters actually understood their options, they would not have elected him.
President Obama appears to be sold on a version of this theory.
Well, Obama. Plus:
Both Brexit and Trump were manifestations of cascading failures of the governing elites of the Western world, who pushed too hard for universalistic values and grew fundamentally disconnected from their populations. Saving liberalism will require elite introspection and a deeper understanding of our current crisis of governance. Self-satisfied assurances that anti-establishment voters are clueless—that they didn’t understand the significance of their vote and will now change their minds, or that they could be educated if social media sites simply promoted the right news outlets—are borderline suicidal.
Yes.