Empowerment - How Trump and Modi get their support

Irfan Husain in The Dawn

SO here we are again, scratching our heads over how everybody got the US elections so wrong, and pondering a future with a narcissistic joker like Donald Trump as the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military on the globe. My early reaction was: stop the world, I want to get off!

But on reflection, we’ve been here before. This is not the first time a rabble-rousing populist has clawed his way to the top. Remember Hitler? He, too, was elected because his message of anti-Semitism and nationalism resonated with Germans who were being squeezed by sanctions imposed by the victorious Allies after the First World War.

Closer to home, we have seen the rise of Altaf Hussain to utter dominion over a liberal, cosmopolitan city like Karachi. He may now be in decline, but for nearly three decades, he wielded more power than most politicians in Pakistan have. He could shut down the city with a word, and allegedly have opponents liquidated with a mere nod.

Many of us in Karachi wondered at this hold he had over his followers. Thousands sat on roads in the blazing sun while he regaled them with bizarre, scarcely comprehensible rants from London while clearly under the influence. For rational, sensible Pakistanis, the whole MQM phenomenon passed all understanding.

The wave of support for Imran Khan is another example of apparently irrational group-think. Why should thousands of educated people camp out in Islamabad for months over allegations of rigging that have been dismissed by the election commission as well as the courts? Why this blind faith in Imran Khan?

Why this blind faith in demagogues?

The reason for failing to comprehend this seemingly illogical behaviour is, I suspect, rooted in our inability to grasp that motives other than logic often drive people. In Trump’s case, he appealed to people not because they necessarily believe that he will bring jobs back, or rid America of Muslims and Mexicans. What resonates is the feeling of empowerment ordinary Americans think they have gained by kicking the liberal elites out of power.

Supercilious and superior, educated, well-heeled types made little attempt to tap into the rage and the angst felt by millions of insecure Americans who felt threatened in a number of ways: unemployment, a demographic shift that will soon reduce white Americans to a minority, and the increasing economic and political power of women. So while there might be nothing rational about a desire to take America back to the 1950s when wages rose and whites were unchallenged, many Trump supporters equated his campaign with a rosy, almost utopian vision of their country.

Similar sentiments were on display during the Brexit campaign in the UK. The Leave supporters insisted they wanted to ‘get control’ of their country. Whatever the economic arguments made by both sides, the driving force behind Brexit had little to do with the promise of prosperity, and more to do with returning the country to an era that had few foreigners.

The MQM phenomenon was about Mohajir identity and empowerment. While the prospect of government jobs was a powerful incentive, the movement was basically driven by a search for pride and dignity. We missed this because we were part of an entitled elite living in our own cocoon.

In our rationality and our complacency, we misread how important they really are to people who have little sense of self-worth. So when a demagogue comes around and channels these elements into a powerful movement that challenges the status quo, we are totally blindsided.

One thing these random examples have in common is that they are all part of a post-truth politics where a demagogue can tell any number of lies without being penalised by voters. The American media, including fact-checking websites, listed the semi-truths and outright lies Trump frequently deployed in his speeches and debates. But for true believers, they were irrelevant to the overall message of redemption and hope.

When truth loses relevance in political debate, it is next to impossible for rational liberals to win. If your opponent can make up whatever he likes to prove his point, either you descend to his level of dishonesty and lose credibility with your constituency, or stick to the truth and lose the argument.

This narrative composed of rumours and fabricated figures rules supreme on 24/7 TV chat shows and the internet. Panellists and bloggers can peddle the most outlandish conspiracy theories and accusations without being questioned. False stories can be planted with ease and go viral. Ill-informed and gullible voters are easily swayed by spin doctors.

So what does this mean for the future of democracy? Clearly, populism and demagoguery are on the march, and liberalism is in retreat. The politics of identity is in conflict with tolerance and inclusiveness. The important thing is to shed our sense of superiority, emerge from our bubbles, and try and understand what people like Trump and Imran Khan represent.

Taslima Nasrin at India Ideas Conclave 2016

It’s only wrong when YOU do it! The psychology of hypocrisy

Dean Burnett in The Guardian


In these times of political turmoil, aggressive online discourse, “post-truth”society and lord knows what else, one thing is hard to deny: there’s a lot of hypocrisy flying around. People regularly and angrily lambast others for doing something, while doing pretty much the exact same thing themselves.

Pundits condemning young people for being “special snowflakes” for wanting to be sheltered from controversial views in “safe spaces”, then having an apparent meltdown whenever they see anything even vaguely inconsistent with their opinions. Angry online types who condemn the BBC for “bias” while enthusiastically linking to sites that make no effort at all at neutrality. People who preach tolerance and respect but get outraged whenever anyone disputes their methods. The list goes on.

You’d think that the highest level of politics wouldn’t allow such behaviour, but no, seems more common than ever there. Wherever you find it, it’s often infuriating. Where do people get off dictating how others should behave, putting restrictions on what they can say and do that they don’t adhere to themselves? It’s wrong and immoral, and shows that they can’t be trusted.

Or does it? In the scientific sense, hypocrisy is somewhat more complicated. It can manifest in several ways, and for several reasons, and often times the people guilty of it aren’t doing it purely to be self-serving.

Sometimes timing is the difference between being called a hypocrite or a saint. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

The nature and timing of hypocrisy

A lot of things that are labelled hypocrisy may not actually be hypocritical, and a lot of the time, things that are hypocritical are given a pass because they are consistent with the observer’s worldview.

For example, someone who urges people to give money to charity but is then found out to give nothing themselves, they’d be considered a hypocrite. But if someone is known to be something of a skinflint then starts urging people to give to charity, they may still be considered a hypocrite, but it’s also possible they’ve just had a change of heart. Changing your mind or working for redemption are regularly considered good things. Bob Cratchit didn’t stop to accuse Scrooge of being a hypocrite.

Also, people tend to react more strongly to hypocrisy when it includes criticism or negative judgement. Someone boasts about being a live music supporter but is found to never go to gigs? Hypocritical, annoying, but not really worth getting angry about. But, a right-wing politician condemns homosexuality and attacks gay rights, but is then found to be engaging in homosexual activity themselves?Appalling. People react strongly to perceived injustice, so hypocrisy like this will get them very angry and demanding retribution.

Similarly, people are far quicker to notice and call out hypocrisy when it goes against their own beliefs. A politician you oppose promotes family values but is caught having an affair? Hypocrite! Drum them out of office! But if it’s a politician you support? Gutter journalism! So he’s not perfect, give him another chance! There are more important issues to worry about etc.

Basically, people aren’t 100% rational or consistent. Value judgements are typically subjective rather than objective, so the extent and seriousness of the hypocrisy is often in the eye of the beholder. This feeds into hypocrisy in other ways too.

  We have a much higher opinion of ourselves than is usually warranted. Hopefully, other people will be willing to point this out. Photograph: PeopleImages.com/Getty Images
You think you’re better than others

Humans aren’t cold logical robots, and we typically have a higher opinion of ourselves than is warranted. Most humans have a self-serving bias, where we evaluate our own abilities and performance far more highly than is actually the case. People who achieve a certain level of intellectual achievement in certain contexts can reverse this, but we mostly think overly-well of ourselves.

It’s no surprise; the brain is riddled with cognitive and memory biases that are geared towards making us feel like we’re good and decent and capable, no matter what the reality. The problem is that our judgements of other people are far more “realistic”.

In some cases, this can lead to hypocrisy. A pilot would be well within her rights to stop an untrained person from assuming control of a plane, even though she does that all the time. This isn’t hypocrisy, this is simple acknowledgement of ability. Likewise, some people may tell others to do something and not do it themselves because they genuinely think they don’t need to do it, but the other inferior people need to be told. Not very nice, granted. May even not be a conscious decision. But it’s also not deliberate hypocrisy, if you look at it that way. Not that this makes any difference to the outcome, as far as most are concerned.

 Thinking one thing and doing another can cause a lot of internal distress, and you just want it to go away. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Dissonance is disturbing

Those of you who are familiar with cognitive dissonance, the process whereby a mismatch between behaviour and attitudes/beliefs causes discomfort in the brain, may wonder why this doesn’t undermine hypocritical behaviour. Surely it would prevent people from doing things they openly condemn?

Again, it depends on the situation. Often, the “I’m better than other people so it’s OK” conclusion would be enough to reconcile it. But other times, it gets more serious. Take the earlier examples of anti-gay politicians found to be engaging in homosexual acts. This comes across as immensely hypocritical so they should be experiencing serious dissonance. But it could be argued that their actions are an attempt to resolve the dissonance. You’re raised in an environment that believes homosexuality is a sin, and you end up believing this completely. Why wouldn’t you? Then you hit adolescence and it turns out you are homosexual (it’s not a choice, after all). Now you’ve got serious dissonance; beliefs that insist homosexuality is wrong combined with physical attraction to the same sex.

One way to resolve this is to double down on the anti-gay behaviour. “I can’t be gay, look how much I hate them and work against them!” Now your beliefs and behaviour are more consistent, a sort of “fake it ‘til you make it” approach. But it’s difficult to maintain, as sex is a very powerful motivator, and people often aren’t strong enough to fight it. So you end up with strident anti-gay campaigners submitting to their desires. It’s not intentional hypocrisy in a sense, and it would be easy to only pity them for their struggles if they didn’t harm anyone else.

But they do. So it isn’t.

  “I could work hard to be a good person, but... why bother?” Photograph: Blend Images/REX/Shutterstock

Hypocrisy is just easier

The problem with practising what you preach, or maintaining a high moral standard, is it’s work. You tell people to give money to charity or abstain from certain indulgences, this means you have to do these things too. But what if you just said you do these things, but didn’t? You get all the benefits of people thinking you’re a good and capable person, but you don’t have to practice any restraint. It’s win-win.

Humans are prone to the principal of least effort, often known as the “path of least resistance”, which means they’ll go for whatever option requires the least work. Hypocrisy allows you to appear principled without having to be so, which is much easier than adhering to strict principles. Modern politicians seem to have grasped this fact, making big speeches about all the great things they’ll do and then never doing any of them. Given how they seldom seem to suffer any consequences for their hypocrisy being revealed (i.e. any political event of 2016), why would they stop?

There are some positives though. Some studies show that, when called out on hypocrisy, people can end up more dedicated to the beliefs and practices they only claimed to adhere to previously. So don’t be afraid to point out hypocrisy when you see it, you might be doing some good overall.

And that includes hypocrisy about things you agree with, otherwise you’ll be… well, there’s a word for that.

He’s right, the economy is sick – and businesses like Trump’s are part of the disease

Mariana Mazzucato in The Guardian

Trump won because he unashamedly stood as the champion of the dispossessed. More than the 16 Republican rivals he left in his wake, and more than the Democratic party standard-bearer he defeated, he led the cry of those who felt they had been left behind by globalisation. He channelled and inflamed inchoate anger, inflamed racial divisions and exploited a sense of burning injustice at a system “rigged” against the little guy. He was the self-styled winner who knew how to play the system, the strong man who alone could fix it.






To Trump, as to the Brexiteers, the enemy was the outsider: the Mexicans, the Chinese (the biggest “theft” in human history), Muslims, even Nato allies. His economic and security messages melded together: it was time to circle the wagons, to put America and Americans first. Trump won because he offered what seemed to the ears of many a plausible narrative about the failures of US economic policy that left so many behind– failures stretching back three decades before the collapse of the economy in 2008.

But while he was forceful about the consequences of a sick economy, his diagnosis could not be more wrong. He won by blaming external forces, trade and immigration. The truth lies much closer to home. It is the actions of US businesses, like his own, that lie behind the failure of the economy to deliver rising living standards for ordinary Americans. They have made money by extracting value, not creating it. And the problem has only become worse since the 2008 crisis.

The shareholder value revolution of the 80s created a corporate governance model that rewards quarterly returns over investments in the productive capacity of companies. Companies increasingly spend their profits, now at record levels, on buying back shares in order to boost stock prices, stock options and executive pay. This has led to a financialised economy, which many of Trump’s policies – including a lowering of corporate income tax – will only worsen.

Until the 80s, wages kept up with productivity, but since then they haven’t, and unions have weakened. As wages failed to keep pace with living costs, personal debt increased to cover the gap.

This rise in personal indebtedness has given life to new types of financial instruments that suck blood out of the system, leading to an increasingly financialised economy. The growth in size of financial intermediation as a percentage of GDP has outpaced growth in the rest of the economy.

The globalisation of capital (in contrast to labour) has meant that when growth falters capital can go elsewhere. Indeed, Trump’s behaviour – setting up businesses, letting them fail, avoiding paying suppliers, using bankruptcy laws to avoid taxes for decades, then setting up another business somewhere else – is the perfect symbol of this asset-stripping form of capitalism.

It is this breaking of the unwritten contract between capital and labour – that is, the sense of shared purpose and shared reward between the American worker and his or her employer and an associated failure to support American workers as they adapt to structural and technological changes - that lies at the heart of the problem. It is not the robots that are the enemy.

The reckoning that should have happened in 2008 never came. Not enough has been done to reform the model of capitalism which is itself responsible for Trump’s rise. We can only hope that his election will finally open the eyes of his opponents as to why new ideas are needed.

For this is not the only way. Trump sees the role of the state as limited to protectionism and funding basics like infrastructure, but what is needed is a much more active state, able to address societal problems through investments in innovation, in order to stimulate private investment and give direction to growth.

We need a decisive shift towards investment-driven growth, replacing the current consumer-driven, credit-fuelled model which adds to the stress of the most vulnerable. Tackling inequality should be a central objective of economic policy, for economic reasons every bit as much as social reasons. We must reconnect the company with society, and instil a sense of broader obligation, rewarding value creation over value extraction. In other countries such as Germany and Scandinavia a more participatory form of stakeholder capitalism gives workers a role on company boards.

Trumpism might be a uniquely American political expression, but the dysfunctions in American capitalism that have given rise to it are not. Though the specifics of the solutions may differ, European models of capitalism have many of the same fissures. Now, more than ever, Europe must find its own distinct language and policies if we are to solve the political, social and economic crisis on this side of the Atlantic .