Delegitimisation

The assault on the Capitol was symbolic of an assault on democracy and resulted from a foolish strategic error on Donald Trump’s part (although the symbolism may come to mean something useful in the long term). And yet one has to ask why it is focussed on so much when what ante-dated it was so much more significant in terms of respect for democracy.

The Brexit referendum and the 2016 US election were assaulted by direct attempts to delegitimise them using supposed Russian connections to undermine what were seen as stupid ‘populist’ votes. Brexit, promised to be carried out come what may at its inception, was blocked for 4 years in Parliament and Carole Cadwalladr won the Orwell Prize for suggesting that Cambridge Analytica and Arron Banks’ links to Russia ‘explained’ it. The Information Commissioner has recently pronounced that Cambridge Analytica has no case to answer (for using methods praised as being cutting edge when Barrack Obama used them in 2012). Cadwalladr has just paid the first tranche of £60,000 to Banks, having lost his libel case. I wonder if she’ll return the Orwell Prize.

In the US the Mueller inquiry sought to delegitimise the 2016 result by proving Russian links and failed. 

Why are these things viewed as anything less than assaults on democracy and refusals to accept the legitimised democratic instruments we use to avoid armed conflict? Because the votes did not compute for liberal progressives they thought they could only be explained by outside interference. This was the measure of their arrogance, stupidity and contempt for ordinary people.

The symbolism of the attack on the Capitol can be extended back in time to embrace far more than the response to the 2020 election.

And, of course, the attempt to delegitimise reaches beyond politics to the point of demonising, criminalising, disallowing and ‘cancelling’ any conservative voice just for being conservative. The conservative voice was not that long ago seen as an indispensable part of the productive and healthy dialogue and tension we need between left and right. Now the aim is to eliminate it.

The attempt to erase the conservative voice from politics by rendering it de facto illegitimate is catastrophic for sane politics. It bodes very badly indeed.