Jamie Bartlett: Forget far-right populism - crypto-anarchists are the new masters
After decades of
exaggerated prediction, the internet is finally transforming politics, but not
in the way the digital prophets expected. The 90s, you may recall, were awash
with optimism about our online future: limitless information and total
connection would make us more informed, less bigoted and kinder citizens. But
the internet is an overwhelming mess of competing facts, claims, blogs, data,
propaganda, misinformation, investigative journalism, charts, different charts,
commentary and reportage. It’s not the slow and careful politicians who have
thrived in this busy environment, it’s the people with the shareable
cut-through messages. Donald Trump might
very well be the first truly social-media politician: his emotion-filled,
simplistic blasts are perfect for the medium.
As a result, society
is currently gripped by a curious consensus: that the internet has conspired
with rightwing populists to sew up the future of politics. Noting the emergence
of populist strongmen and demagogues, who seem to be digital wizards like
recovering Twitter addict Trump, and violent opponents who seem only to bolster
their support, many are comparing – with a certain grim fascination – our current turbulence with the 1930s. That is a very short-term view
of things. The supremacy of the populist right is not the inevitable future.
The rise of the right is better seen as an early skirmish in a much longer, and
far more significant, technology-led restructuring of our politics and society.
Digital technology has helped the populist right for now, but it will soon
swallow them up, along with many other political movements unable or unwilling
to see how the world is changing.
Consider for a moment
how your life has changed thanks to digital technology. You can become friends
with 2 billion connected people, chose your own news, and watch/date/order
whatever you want, on demand. Infinite choice and control is now the norm, and
yet formal politics has barely evolved since the days of Robert Peel. Our
modern political system came of age in the industrial revolution, which was a
time of massive organisations and centralised control. We are now, however,
firmly in a new industrial revolution, characterised by endless choice, digital
technology, data, automation and artificial intelligence. The economy,
identity, political allegiances, perhaps even the essence of what it is to be
human, are all starting to change, and our politics will have to change with
it. The current set-up, including the populist right, will cling on for a
while, like a legacy IT system that’s too pricey to update, but it will shortly
become redundant. So what else might
follow?
In October last year,
while researching my new book, Radicals, I was invited by a Slovenian hacker
in his late 20s called Pavol to a place called Parallel Polis, a three-storey building in Prague that
includes a 3D printer workshop and the “Institute of Crypto-Anarchy”. . read more:
