Trump's Election Prove Democracy is a Rule of the Mob
Updated 17/11/2016 9:06
In his victory speech, Donald Trump called his election campaign
a "movement"—that's if you can call racism, misogyny and xenophobia a
movement.
My opening line is in a way an echo
of what we have been hearing over the past year and a half, only some of us
could not hear the voice of the 47.5% of the people who voted for Trump. We are only hearing voices
similar to our own. Harvard Professor Cass R. Sunstein describes this
phenomenon as living in echo chambers in his book
Republic.com 2.0.
What we see is an attitude where the liberal choice is
believed to be the natural choice and everything else is considered insane.
Living in an environment where we
only hear what we would like to hear is creating a society that is divided and
is unwilling to engage with people of opposing views. While the alienation of
people short-changed by globalization cannot be discounted, the fact that
Trump's campaign was successful, despite being riddled with remarks demeaning
women and minorities, shows how liberal values find little resonance with a
large number of people.
We are living in a world where we
are interconnected but not cross-linked. For instance, a study by Halbertstam and Knight of 500,000
communications during the 2012 US elections in a social network of 2.2 million
politically engaged Twitter users reports that 91% of retweets of tweets by
Democratic candidates are produced by liberal voters and 99% of retweets of
tweets by Republican candidates are produced by conservative voters. They also
conclude that information reaches like-minded users much faster than those with
opposing ideology.
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While opposing sides in the US were
acutely divided, thousands of miles away in India, the Hindu Sena and
affiliated groups performed yagnas for Trump's victory
in reverence of his message of love for "Hindus" and a Modi-style
"Ab Ki Bar Trump Sarkar" slogan. This shows that we are willing to
engage with people who have views similar to our own but we have a disregard
for any opposing views.
In India we jump to name-calling
anyone holding a contrary opinion; online trolls and offline goons quickly
follow to abuse those holding the opposing viewpoint. This process kills the
space for meaningful discourse. Any potential to understand the other side's
perspective is lost in whataboutery and the high-decibel madness of social
media and newsrooms.
The liberal movement, one that
espouses equal respect for women, immigrants, people of different colour and
religion, has failed in sharing its message with the people. This is not the
case only in the United States but also in India where liberal values appear
more as a form of intellectual dogma handed out to the people by liberal
"thinkers" only to be followed but not questioned!
Living in an environment where we only hear what we would
like to hear is creating a society that is divided and is unwilling to engage
with people of opposing views.
What we need is liberals getting out
of conference halls, academic conclaves and cosy media circles to engage in a
discussion about gender equality and respect for religious and racial
minorities with people on the ground. Every few months we witness tension
around the concept of nationalism in India—have the liberals reached out to
people and discussed why it is important to question the government and its
actions from time to time?
Instead what we see is an attitude
where the liberal choice is believed to be the natural choice and everything
else is considered insane. So, Donald Trump mistreating women is insane, Donald
Trump's call for banning entry of Muslims to America is insane, Donald Trump
building a wall with Mexico is insane, but this insanity will never be
understood in a society that may have internalized misogyny, racism and
religious hatred until the liberal voice gets out of the echo-chamber and engages
with the people.
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