Social media noise is quickening our slide towards fascism

The role of being a prime minister got more difficult with the advent of social media. Once there were few people on the stage giving out instructions, so to speak. But now there are millions. Who the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. Social media may well prove to be the most pernicious invention since Sir Walter Raleigh brought tobacco back from the American colonies. 

Lunacy rules OK. Opinions are everywhere and now it seems that unless you take into account the feelings of all expressed on social media you are faulty as a leader. But how can you lead anything if advice and observation comes thick and fast from all quarters? And polls are continuously debilitating on most occasions.

How can you have truth when it is expressed, conflicted, questioned and dismissed so often and so completely? So much emphasis is given to this so-called public opinion. But how can leaders run anything if all they are loaded down with are criticisms and bitter personal comments?

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But that is not the only problem we have to face in 2025. We have to face up to the press in some ways imitating social media as if it were led by this recent innovation. Social media rules OK. And mixed in with the actual news put out by newspapers and TV companies are, as an example, stories of how a man is divorcing his wife because she went on stage and snogged a singer while performing – in Dominica of all places. She was an influencer so obviously of some significance.

So running the economy with this constant barrage of observations, the NHS, or whatever else falls into your remit is made more cumbersome and difficult because you are always having to look over your shoulder as to what your critics are up to.

But alas, sorry to say, this process is over 300 years old. Jonathan Swift undermined the Whig government in the early 18th century when he agitated against their European war run by the Duke of Marlborough, who seemed to get richer with every war that he fought on behalf of Great Britain. Swift questioned the wisdom: did we really need another war that impoverished the country? His pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies caused the government to fall. And the vitriol directed by newspapers and magazines in the early days of a middle-class reading public really did bring about change.

But being able to suggest that the press is essential, which it often is, does not hide us from the fact that a process of dislocation is going on under the effects of this new, ever-questioning social media. We are in a world that does not seem to be able to seriously evaluate what is actually going on because there is so much contradiction and false opinion. We are left in a kind of Tower of Babel situation where the clash of opinions is overwhelming. And the mountain of advice stops you from thinking clearly.

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In the pursuit of profit, companies have created the means by which using our phones we can clog up governments simply by overwhelming them with opinion. And it all looks so democratic, because it involves everyone.

But there is a bigger problem that complicates our current political times. Which is, we are seeing the creation of new political forces that no longer believe in the old social democracy that has existed since the end of the Second World War. We have people who question the modern world created by elected members like Blair, Bush, Obama, Clinton, Biden, etc, who seemingly have left the world in a very vexed state.

According to these largely alt-right forces in the US, who have their own president and guru in Musk, we need to rip up all that compromise and war creating. That doesn’t mean to say that there won’t be wars, but they will be different kinds of wars. 

There is certainly a legitimate argument to say that the last 40 years of western world leadership have left the world almost punch-drunk. That we have had decades of regime change and meddling in the lives of others that has complicated and made more unstable the world in which we live.

At the same time, the supposed democracies of the west have perfected businesses that led to a growth of consumerism and individualism that has changed the whole world. That the west has made China rich, chasing profits by closing down its factories and sending them east. All of these activities have created an overheated world.

What we face in 2025 is a hotter, madder, more divisive world; and at the same time we don’t have a press, or media, that is adding clarity to the pile. And we have world leadership that doesn’t really know what to do. As fascism arises in virtually every continent in response to the increasing dislocation of people in America and Europe, the growth of people seeking a better life from beyond Europe and America is upsetting internal politics. Who is there to stand up against this encroaching fascism?

New leadership will have to come out of this quagmire. For it will not be provided by the present incumbents.

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Big Issue. Read more of his words here.

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