The far-right consistently relies on cultural power to marshal public support, and more progressive political forces have not always met this kind of cultural challenge with cultural answers. 

‘I play to peoples’ fantasies’: Trump

‘I play to peoples’ fantasies’, Trump (2016) declared in The Art of the Deal. He did exactly this in his contest with Clinton, using evocative symbolic appeals such as ‘Build the Wall’, ‘Make America Great Again’, ‘Drain the Swamp’, ‘Hillary’s emails’, ‘Mexican immigrants’, the ‘Muslim ban’, as well as ‘the people bec[oming] the rulers of this nation again’. His use of cultural power energised his base and helped propel him into office.

Bernie Fraser, chairman of the Climate Change Authority from 2012-2015, describes the ‘uncivilised’ nature of the climate debate, lamenting ‘the wild assertions blaming every lost job on the carbon tax … assertions not based on any objective consideration of the evidence’. The assertions may have been wild, but they were politically effective, and were often conveyed using cultural power. 

Who is better at engaging people with stories and images?

The political right has frequently prevailed by applying greater skill in mobilising images, narratives and social drama than progressive movements. Invoking the Great Big New Tax on Everything, Tony Abbott successfully waged his scare campaign against the carbon tax.^⁠ Barnaby Joyce added that there would be ‘a new tax on ironing, a new tax on watching television, a new tax on vacuuming‘.

In cases like these, being stronger in the cultural dimension of power can mean being more politically powerful overall. In different ways, Trump, Farage, Boris Johnson, Morrison and Abbott have been more effective than their opponents in wielding this kind of power.

In Australia, the spectre of asylum seekers arriving by boat as a threat to the nation’s borders is an older instance of cultural power. ‘Stopping the boats’ has become associated with fitness to govern. Abbott undertook a similar symbolic assault on climate policies with his scare campaign about the Great Big New Tax on Everything, and his efforts to de-legitimise the carbon tax and Gillard’s standing as national leader. This cultural assault on climate policy coursed across Australia like a political ‘superstorm’. It played an important role in creating the political climate where Australia’s carbon tax could be abolished. 

Tony at Climate March Melbourne Real Big Tony, Flickr

The case of Brexit

In the UK, images and narratives have powerfully shaped the Brexit debate. The way people have ‘imagined’ British sovereignty, Britain’s relationship with the European Union and what Brexit might offer have had deep political effects. For commentary, see Kettle (2018), as well as Freedland (2019), who writes, 

For at least three decades, “Europe” served as the all-purpose bogeyman of British politics. Cheered on by a Europe‑loathing press… politicians of all stripes found it convenient to blame Brussels for any and all ills. How easy it was for British politicians to say they’d love to act on this or that issue, but their hands were tied by those villains in the EU. Every summit was a “showdown” pitting plucky Britain against the wicked continentals. Both of the main political parties played this game…. Underpinning Brexit, with its belief that Britain should separate itself from its closest neighbours, is a refusal to accept that we are one part of an interdependent European economy. For the Brexiteers, Britain remains a global Gulliver tied down for too long by the Lilliputians of Little Europe.

It happens again and again

Political phenomena like these are not exceptions and aberrations. They keep recurring, and they represent significant obstacles to creating a political climate conducive to addressing climate change. The capacity of politicians like Trump, Abbott, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage to stir up a maelstrom of cultural power and public anxiety raises the question of how the climate movement and other movements find cultural answers to cultural challenges—as well as organising communities to respond. Relying unduly on information politics and the hope that rationality will prevail in public debate can be a recipe for political failure-even political disaster.