Disaster porn

Roadmaps and manuals for the dissolution of democracy

Interviewer: I've been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.…

Stig: Well he had to, didn't he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. I had transgressed the unwritten law.

[Monty Python, season 2, episode 1, “The Piranha Brothers”]

When I was a young lad (language had just been invented, and we were all excited to see what writing would achieve), I started to read my dad’s science fiction magazines, surreptitiously. In fact, I basically learned to read this way, as nobody else seemed to be teaching me literacy, which explains my low standards and bad dad humour.

The first three novels I read were, in order

• Olaf Stapledon’s First and Last Men

• George Orwell’s 1984, and

• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

I was around seven or eight. As one can imagine, I was warped by this dystopianism, but as a tonic I also watched Star Trek original series, and also read Isaac Asimov’s and Arthur Clarke’s stories and books.¹ However, as tonics go, it was not enough, and I grew up to become a full-fledged card-carrying professional cynic, which is why I studied history and philosophy at university.

One such book was Earth Abides by George Stewart, published in 1949, a year after 1984. This novel, which along with A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller, 1959), is my standard for collapse of civilisation stories, which meant at the time of the Cold War, the collapse of the United States. And thus, democracy. In retrospect, the symbolism was obvious, but not to me. I just thought it was playing with a cool idea.

Now, we are faced with the very real possibility of the dissolution of democracy in the US, as norms and conventions are trampled on. It’s leading, I think, to the need for violent resistance, because once norms are ignored by the powerful, there are no other tools to persuade them. I’m not suggesting this as a prudential course of action or a prescriptive notion, I hasten to add. I’m trained as a philosopher and historian: the point is to comment, not make change. I would very much love it if we could restore democratic norms constitutionally in all the countries where the obscenely rich have purchased hard right political figures.² I’m just, well, cynical about the likelihood.

But why? Where did we get the impulse to dismantle equality and prosperity in favour of what is basically a revived feudalism? There are so many sources, this is almost a meaningless question, although fresh water economics has much to do with it, at least as an immediate cause. Of course there are competing underlying interests that motivated that. Marx is a good diagnostician, but you’d be better off not taking his prescriptions for treatment.

One thing that bothered me in my introduction to dystopian science fiction, though, is that what these generally liberal authors were proposing, or worse, prophesying, bore a nasty resemblance to the burgeoning survivalism and the conspiracy theories of hard right proposals. It’s led me to wonder, did they take this literary genre as blueprints for their desires? Similarly, as terrorism became the political nemesis du jour, a rash of novels and TV shows gave explicit details on how to commit terrorist acts. Yes, I’m looking at you 24, and Tom Clancy of course. These works are usually sold to the publishers as “offering insight into terrorism or conspiracy theorists” but they must inspire as much for the bad guys as the good (assuming we can identify black and white hats).

Likewise the insatiable fascination with Nazis and dictators (“History” Channel) has I think normalised such monsters as part of the human experience. We do not resile from them so much as find them fascinating, in a dark kind of way. Ditto “serial killers”.

What’s going on? Well I think that those who are predisposed by their village cultures to adopt fascism, or authoritarian politics, or survivalism, and so forth, look for instructions from the popular culture, and Ayn Rand is not the only source here. These fictional books, intended as warnings, become manuals for achieving the discord that the readers so inclined want.

And this should give us pause. Perhaps Tarantino was right to make Inglourious Basterds as a satire and parody. No wannabe Nazi is going to emulate Colonel Hans Landa if they want to get by without a swastika carved on their foreheads. Of course there are always some people who will behave badly, but they do not need instructions. It’s the rest of the 5% that we do not wish to radicalise.³

My view is that the thirst for deviant literary exemplars is something that is encouraged by those who seek only to market books, TV shows and advertisements. What is lacking here is some sense of moral decency. What keeps democratic and liberal institutions going (or as Popper put it, maintains the Open Society) is acceptance of conventional behaviours like doing what the highest court in the land rules, or following a constitutional practice. What kills it, is a failure to insist upon the unwritten rules that prevent evil outcomes.

1I read one of his stories, “The Sentinel” in 1961 or so, ten years after it had been published. Couple of years later, I saw that some American director was going to film it. I waited anxiously for around six years to see it. Kubrick renamed it though.

2I live, and was raised, in Australia. We’ve been watching, if not paying attention, to this takeover for decades. In 1975, a hard right state premier broke convention and replaced a late senator with a lackey for his side rather than one from the party of the deceased incumbent. Since then, we gave life to Rupert Murdoch’s empire, and toadied to industry, no matter the affiliations of our governments. I’m not making this just about the US.

3Assuming a normal distribution, it is my opinion that 5% of a given population are bastards (or basterds) and 5% are saints.