This is a sentence I could have written today: “Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest – forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”
Yet it was penned in 1950 by Hannah Arendt in her powerful study of how the Nazis and Stalinists rose to power – The Origins of Totalitarianism.
The tools they used to control “the mob” are the same ones being deployed today – scapegoating vulnerable people, manipulating events to provoke unrest, controlling the media and public discourse, lying and spreading misinformation, undermining confidence in the state and the rule of law, preying on those who feel marginalised and radicalising them, eroding freedom of speech and freedom of movement.
The only difference today is the presence of social media which permeates society like a poisonous gas you cannot see and barely smell.
For many of us, social media is a frivolous means of sharing funny memes, family stories, and our own take on the world. But behind the scenes we are being manipulated by powerful corporations, malign governments, and bad actors who use social media to radicalise people and destabilise society.
Algorithms – the drivers behind the content we interact with online – decide who and what we see, they decide which stories to promote and, chillingly, which ideas we are exposed to. They make apparently random connections to steer us down a specific pathway.
They tell us what to buy, who to date, where to go on holiday, who to vote for, what to think, and who to terrorise and murder.
Even those of us who believe we are ‘savvy’ are being gamed by a system directed by billionaires and dictators whose sole purpose in life is to enrich and empower themselves at our expense.
The terror we have seen on our streets since the shocking murder of three young girls in England last week is not a spontaneous reaction to events. It is a carefully planned far-right uprising managed and coordinated by malign forces operating across borders.
And it is not a coincidence that it comes within weeks of the election of a Labour government in the UK.
Far-right agitation not just a British or an Irish problem. It is not just about who rules the USA, or France. It is not just about Putin and the fate of Ukraine. It is a threat to each of us as individuals, impotent it seems in the face of forces impossible to control because they are invisible and elusive.
In all of this, it is worth mentioning the bravery of those who came out to show the far-right that it did not represent their communities – in south Belfast, in Hull, Liverpool, Sunderland and elsewhere. But, as the Nazis demonstrated, it will take more than that to quell the insurrectionists. It takes leadership and political will. It takes determination.
And that is where many of us despair. The very people we rely on to defend life and liberty have themselves been corrupted by those who wield the algorithms – Republicans in the USA, Tories in Britain, the right in Ireland, north and south.
The silence and dissembling in the face of violence has been deeply troubling.
Right-wingers who have not been radicalised themselves – and many have been – are cowed by fear of the mob, and fear of what the billionaires and despots might do to them if they speak out. They need to catch themselves on.
Rightly the police and courts have been mobilised to deal with the rioters – many of whom have brazenly been playing up to the cameras and will be easily identified. But dealing with them is the equivalent of addressing the symptoms of disease rather than the cause.
Our hard-won freedoms of speech must be protected, but that does not mean giving free rein to those who exploit those freedoms to destroy the very fabric of society.
Collectively nations must legislate to curb the power of social media corporations, whose only purpose is to make themselves richer at the expense of the rest of us; we must build systems that are resilient to state-controlled ‘bot’ farms and hackers; we must revise the curriculum to ensure people have the skills needed to recognise the lies; and regulators must ensure mainstream media is not used to promote and sustain the far-right.
Is it too late? Not if this week acts as a wake-up call.