CommonSpace columnist Siobhan Tolland says the voters are using their votes to smash the system – but it doesn't need to be dominated by the extreme right
2016 HAS unleashed something truly awful, hasn’t it? Just when we think Brexit is bad we only go and have America vote for Donald Trump as president.
Trump. A tantrum-ing, xenophobic misogynistic megalomaniac now has the keys to the nukes!
There is no need for me to talk about how despicably disgusting this man is. He is like your leeching, aggressive drunk that dominates your local bar: everyone having to be nice at his insistence because he might just smash a glass in your face if he feels offended.
How hopeless do people need to feel to grab onto people like Farage and Trump, offering them any explanation that makes any kind of vague sense?
But here is the thing: people preferred that over the established political structures – a damning testimony to how much people hate the establishment. People felt that stepping into a neo-fascist unknown chaotic abyss was better than the status quo.
How shitty does your world need to be to cling on to the gun-toting pirate ship for safety? How hopeless do people need to feel to grab onto people like Farage and Trump, offering them any explanation that makes any kind of vague sense?
Joss Whedon tapped into this psyche a few years back. Underestimated for his astute political commentary, Cabin in the Woods offer us a mirror into our imploding society.
As our heroes drive off into their horror scenario, Marty tells the gang: "Society needs to crumble. We’re all just too chicken-shit to let it."
The ultra-right tapped into that resentment and fear; that need to smash the status quo. It encouraged a false smashing of society by playing the outsider, the anti-politics politician.
Cabin in the Woods sees our protagonists enter a clichéd horror scenario, but unknown to them they are controlled by scientists offering them choices of different horrors.
They have to die, of course, but the heroes can choose the cause of their own death. They can choose zombies, razored monsters or ghosts. The protagonists have freedom to choose their fate, as long as it ends in death.
As the heroes discover they are being played, they are told they must play the game or the ancient one, hidden in the bowels of the earth, will be unleashed. The scientists plead with them to accept the established storyline or unleash the evil chaos the ancient one will bring. Dana and Marty are left considering this choice as their friends have been killed off.
But the protagonists smash the storyline into pieces, and refuse to follow the path set for them. They decide that they will not be controlled and will smash the narrative they are trapped in.
Whatever comes next has to be better than what we have now, right? "Humanity," Dana sighs, "it’s time to give someone else a chance."
We need to understand why people voted in this nihilistic way. Try, for a minute, to forget the consequences of the act, and think about the act itself.
"Giant evil gods," Marty muses. They die, wishing they could have seen the evil gods smashing from out of the earth.
After watching that film my friend and I mused on the nihilistic choice of the protagonists. I say mused, but we were much more of the view that they totally should have went for it. It totally can’t be worse than what they had. Fckn right on!
We were, of course, thinking about our own lives. Neo-liberal society, we sighed, let’s give anything else a chance. Our sense of being battered over the head by neo-liberalism and desperate for its end was reflected very clearly in Whedon’s film.
But then Brexit came along. And then Trump won.
It was that same sense of desperation, futility and hopelessness that led to the popularity of the SNP, or Syriza in Greece or Bernie Sanders in the US.
Is this what people felt like on the day of the Brexit referendum? On the day of the American elections? Did they arrive at the polls, exhausted, beaten to a pulp and want the status quo to just end? With their sense of economic and social self-worth drowning in a vicious economic strategy, did people just collectively decide, 'fuck it, anything has to be better than this'?
The ultra-right tapped into that resentment and fear; that need to smash the status quo. It encouraged a false smashing of society by playing the outsider, the anti-politics politician.
In its persona (but not its policy) it offered an anti-establishment mirage based on false, overly simple but credible solutions to vastly complex problems.
How else did a xenophobic bully become a better choice than the establishment (choose A for Brexit xenophobic bully and B for Trump xenophobic bully). People put crosses in the boxes to smash the establishment: the consequences of that almost became irrelevant, marked by the largest Google search in the aftermarth being, 'what is the EU?'.
People voted nihilistically. Destroying the system itself was of paramount importance. I understand the attraction of this, yet it now leaves us sitting on the edge of an unknown fascist darkness bleeding into our world.
It may not feel like it, but the ultra-right does not dominate how this desperation is articulated. It can be, and has been, harnessed in a positive social democratic way.
We need to understand why people voted in this nihilistic way. Try, for a minute, to forget the consequences of the act, and think about the act itself. The act of destroying something that you hate that has kept you imprisoned like a dog in a kennel. Did it feel like a genuine act of liberation?
It was that same sense of desperation, futility and hopelessness that led to the popularity of the SNP, or Syriza in Greece or Bernie Sanders in the US. It may not feel like it, but the ultra-right does not dominate how this desperation is articulated. It can be, and has been, harnessed in a positive social democratic way.
We have to accept that the established political structures have been smashed, and they will not be glued back together again. They should not be glued back. Our only hope now is to fight and build genuine alternative to the fascist monster that has risen.
Picture courtesy of Gage Skidmore
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