The rise of Reform has seen Nigel Farage’s party win five seats in parliament, control of numerous councils, and their first elected Mayors. Reform’s success is due to a number of factors, not least Labour’s failures. But is an underreported part of their success tapping into feelings of fatalism that have been steadily growing across society?
In 2016 a project called ‘Framing the economy’ (a collaboration between the Frameworks Institute and the New Economy Organisers Network) released a report which included the finding that people in the UK ‘are deeply fatalistic about the possibility of fundamental economic change, rather than believing that we can build a more co-operative, democratic and sustainable economy’. The project had interviewed forty people across the UK about systemic economic change in order to develop effective messages for progressive organisations to use. The fatalism finding wasn’t interrogated in that report – in part, perhaps, because it didn’t have a straightforward answer.
Almost a decade on, the Frameworks Institute has now launched an in-depth report looking at the dynamics of what they call ‘cultural mindsets’ in the US. The organisation recognises the widespread mindset of ‘the system is rigged’ and how this is activated across the political spectrum. They highlight that whilst this can be used to critique an undemocratic and unequal system, it can also be used to fuel fatalism and open the door to support for authoritarianism. When governments fail to address wealth inequality, cost of living crises, and collapsing public services, it provides fertile conditions for fatalism to grow. A recent study of 160 countries showed that youth satisfaction with democracy is declining – not only in absolute terms, but also relative to how older generations felt at similar stages in life. This dissatisfaction can be compounded when governments (like our current Labour government) tell the public (in an echo of Margaret Thatcher’s infamous ‘TINA’) that there is no alternative to the current system.
Today’s challenges – from climate change to inequality – are difficult to overcome, and the future feels increasingly uncertain. This uncertainty is hard on our nervous systems, both individually and collectively, because it triggers our threat response, potentially sending us into fight, flight, or freeze mode. As Perma Chodren writes, ‘[t]he tendency to centralize into ourselves, to try to protect ourselves, is strong and all-pervasive’. When our society works to amplify this tendency rather than counterbalance it, it can feel embedded in our culture. Over time this individualist culture, when values like equality, compassion, or justice have been undermined so consistently by the mainstream, can turn into fatalism or even nihilism. Within the mainstream discourse, the concept of a society that prioritises collective values over economic power is now such a marginalised idea that it seems almost absurd to many people. The result is that collectivist proposals for the economy are either patronised, dismissed, or critiqued.
As a new economy leader at the time the ‘Framing the economy’ report was published, I was interested in the results, but like others I brushed past the fatalism finding. I only really paid attention to it after spending two years on the doorstep as a Parliamentary candidate in the lead up to the 2019 general election. Yes there was Brexit, and yes there was palpable hatred of Jeremy Corbyn, but there was also a deep sense of fatalism amongst a large part of the electorate, which proved to be a powerful barrier to initiating conversations about change. In fact, the optimism of many Labour activists seemed to be actively irritating to those most fatalistic.
One good example is the reception of the now-infamous policy of free broadband. When the policy was announced during the general election campaign, it seemed obvious to Labour activists like myself that it would make a material difference to most people’s lives. Moreover, it didn’t feel so different from many of the kinds of promises being made at that point by Boris Johnson’s Conservatives or Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. But even beyond the noise of the media spin about ‘communist broadband’, people genuinely didn’t seem to link the idea. During conversations on the doorstep, my attempts to bring up the policy were met with hostility and fatalistic disbelief that it could be possible.
This fatalistic suspicion and rejection of left-wing policies was in part because they were put forward on the basis of collectivism. Research from the Frameworks Institute on cultural mindsets argues that ‘a mindset rooted in individualism makes public policies that support the community good seem off base, unnecessary, and misguided’. Decades of cultural individualism have left people unreceptive to ideas rooted in universalist principles; indeed, collectivist mindsets have been so weakened in the UK that any form of collectivism can now easily be seen as a threat. For progressive politics, this combination of fatalism and individualism represents a toxic brew.
Reform understands these tendencies of their target audience and is exploiting it for their own gain. Messages and frames the left have been pushing about the system not working, being broken, or ‘a rigged system’ are being taken and used very successfully by the far right globally. But rather than pointing the finger at economic power, extreme wealth, or governments that have overseen the rigging of the system, they attack marginalised groups such as migrants, people of colour, women, and LGBT people, presenting the solution (sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly), as restoring full white and male supremacy, against its receding dominance.
When collectivism is perceived as a threat, strongmen like Farage appeal by promising to protect people based on their individual identities can prove particularly appealing. These dynamics have been highlighted by the work of American political theorist Wendy Brown. When I spoke to her earlier this year, she emphasised that ‘what's scary to me about it is that deep fatalism has as its underside a readiness to be responsive to demagogues’. Fatalism is underpinned by fear, and to respond to it as progressives, we have to respond to people’s fears more directly. Looking at the US following Trump's victory, Brown asked ‘What was wrong with our analysis, our strategies, our alliances, our readings of where and how people are hurting’, and suggests that one mistake made by progressives was their ‘indifference to fear’.
The Frameworks Institute research offers detailed strategies for how rhetoric about the system being rigged can be most usefully framed to avoid reinforcing fatalistic mindsets, and to instead encourage agency. They suggest using values-led arguments about solidarity and freedom from domination, emphasising the “how” not the “who” (e.g. ‘Our economic system is designed to give corporations power over us’), and offering solutions that match the scale of the problem (e.g. breaking up corporate monopolies). They also suggest future research should explore how to ‘talk about the path to big bold solutions.’
However, whilst messaging is critical, countering fatalism fundamentally requires moving people out of a “fear” mindset, since research shows that fear and anger can reduce people’s sense of agency. Since fear narrows people’s political horizons, then activating emotions that expand perspectives – such as curiosity or humility – is key to countering fatalism. Indeed, some research suggests that curiosity in particular can stimulate a desire for agency. This is important, and has implications both for how messages are delivered, and for how social movements should try to work more broadly to inoculate people, and themselves, against fatalism.
When I spent a huge amount of time on the doorstep as a parliamentary candidate, talking – and above all listening – to voters, I noticed that when I tried to be honest and humble about what could be achieved with a socialist government, it would activate a different set of responses. If I shared that we knew bringing about big change would be difficult, and that we would often get things wrong, but that we would have a clear purpose about what we were trying to do, then people would soften, listen, and become more receptive, showing a willingness to engage rather than shutting the conversation down. An antidote to fatalism – whether on the doorstep, in our communities, or in our social movements – is showing people that we are all holding uncertainty together, but that through that uncertainty we can still find shared purpose for collective change.
Fran Boait is the former Executive Director of Positive Money.