IN an article for the Irish News a few weeks before the EU referendum I set out my reasons for voting Leave, explaining my concerns about the Topsy-like growth of a new European empire.
No mention of jingoism, or immigration, or straight bananas, or even Germans. No mention of the creation of some sort of Utopia outside the EU.
Nevertheless, the very fact that I was voting Leave was enough for some people to stop following me on Twitter - in some cases they even blocked me altogether - and for others to accuse me of being a "blinkered, bigoted, racist, little Englander."
I am none of those things, as it happens, and I've expressed my distaste for UKIP and extreme right policies on many occasions. But none of that mattered; for in the eyes of some people, by expressing a preference for Leave - a choice I explained across a number of newspapers and platforms, although I never joined or campaigned for the official Leave campaign - I was "no better than fascist scum." In fairness, many other people expressed their disappointment that I was voting Leave, yet respected the fact that I had reached my decision after "careful, thoughtful and fair-minded analysis."
Something similar happened when I wrote: "I don't think I could vote for either Trump or Clinton." Again, I was unfollowed and blocked. Trump supporters accused me of "turning a blind eye to the election of a lying, money-grabbing, war-monger": while Clintonites said I was blasé about the election of a "white-supremacist, clinically unhinged misogynist." I bumped into someone in a Belfast bookshop who, having introduced herself as a reader of my Irish News column, expressed her distress that I was backing Trump. When I said I wasn't, she claimed that my criticisms of Clinton amounted to the same thing as backing Trump. I pointed out that I was also critical of Trump, to which she responded, "it's your moral responsibility as a commentator to undermine Trump, but you shouldn't do it to Clinton too. You only encourage stupid people."
I've been thinking about the reaction to both those electoral outcomes since I read, on Tuesday evening, that lexicographers from the Oxford Dictionary have declared that 'post-truth' is their international word of the year. They define the term as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief." And when you combine that growing appeal to emotion and personal belief with the growth of social media (particularly Twitter and Facebook) you can see just how powerful a force it has become.
Increasing numbers of people pick their own news and views now, by going to sites and blogs that filter out anything with which they disagree. They block people with contrary opinions. They don't use reason and logic to counter an opposing view, they simply pour bile on the messenger. It's got nothing to do with persuasion and conversion and everything to do with wagon-circling and running with your own herd. Yes, I do accept that people often preferred their own newspaper and political party (in the days when millions read papers and joined parties), but at least they were willing to expose themselves to other opinions and influences. They enjoyed debate. They were willing to have their mind changed. They accepted the possibility that the other person might have a valid point.
What concerned me with both Brexit and the presidential election - although I accept it may be just a passing phase - is the visceral hatred from both sides. They clearly despised each other. And this wasn't just the so-called fringes: it was also apparent among the educated middle-classes and the commentariat. There was no give and take and very little evidence of a let's-agree-to-differ attitude.
Politics has always been ugly. Nowadays, the electorate can be pretty ugly, too. The referendum and the election may be over, but the war continues on social media. Millions of people will continue to hurl abuse and lies at each other, mostly from the comfort of anonymity and mostly destined for huge disappointment when the champions on their own side turn out to have feet of clay.
Too many people seem to believe that social media gives them a voice and a freedom that mainstream media and politics denies them. It doesn't. It allows them to be cantankerous, abusive and downright nasty in ways which wouldn't be tolerated by the mainstream; yet, in the great scheme of things it will mean diddly-squat to their everyday lives - which will carry on much as before. Brexit will not be what they expected it to be. Trump will continue to backtrack, as he's done already on Obamacare, same-sex-marriage, building a wall and deporting immigrants. Politics will continue to be dominated by cabals and elites and the new media will be brought under the control of advertisers and billionaires with their own agenda.
And, once again, millions of people will be very, very angry. It won't be long until new technology and new media has become 'the mainstream' and when it does, it too, will silence and sideline those who threaten the centre, the status quo, the mainstream and the influence of the usual elites. Nothing much changes.
