A little bit of hope after a terrible week

A survival guide to the next four years.

Photo by Blake Cheek on Unsplash

Depressing week. No point pretending otherwise. A godforsaken week. Every morning waking up to some of the most depraved current affairs items we've seen in our lifetime. Every evening going to sleep knowing that the worst people are gloating in their beds.

Wherever you look: Bastards. Bastards making the running. Bastards in their moment of triumph. In their pomp. The main lesson a child would learn today is that only the most cruel, the most ignorant, the most mean-spirited succeed. Decent-minded, honourable people seem so shocked by their advance that they become almost immobile.

Every time Donald Trump or Elon Musk do something dreadful, people hesitate. Earlier this week, Trump refused to rule out an invasion of Greenland or Panama. As part of what I suppose is some kind of pitch-rolling PR operation, he sent out his dimwit semi-functioning son to Greenland to be pictured with some people in MAGA hats. It seems almost funny, except it isn't. The open threat of military action to take territory, without even a hint of justification, is the behaviour of a rogue state. His arguments are for lebensraum, pure and simple.

The prime minister of Greenland, Múte B. Egede, was firm enough. "Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland," he said. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said: "Greenland is not for sale". And yet the broader European response was utterly weak.

"We're speaking of something that is extremely theoretical on which we will not want to elaborate," a European Commission spokesperson said. Hopeless. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen took until last night to even respond. When she did, it was cryptic, equivocal and tortured. "The EU will always protect our citizens and the integrity of our democracies and freedoms. We look forward to a positive engagement with the incoming US Administration, based on our common values and shared interests."

In every case, there is a sense of shock and equivocation, an uncertainty about how to proceed, a hesitancy. And underneath that there is fear. That's the brutal truth of it. There's ten days until the inauguration. This is just preamble. As Susie Dent wrote on BlueSky this morning, the word of the day is 'uhtcearu': the sorrow before dawn.

They want us scared. They like it. Part of the reason this week felt so terrible is that we know they are gleeful about it.

We have developed a sense of destiny around right-wing populism. There is a background assumption about the direction of history, which has been absorbed by the press, by broadcasters, by people on social media, and that bloke in the pub. The assumption is that this is their era. They win and win and win. So every time they are victorious, it seems predestined. We dwell at length on the failure of progressives to understand their country or engage with its voters. But every time they lose - and they lose all the time, remember - it's treated as delaying the inevitable. No thought whatsoever is given to how populists lost touch with the people of their country. No news crews are sent out to market towns on a Tuesday afternoon to do vox-pops about why people backed the centre-left.

The next four years will be like this week. I hate saying it but it's the reality. They will keep saying and doing terrible things. The news will be toxic, a poisonous machine churning out horror. We will feel off-balance, exhausted, afraid, full of apprehension about where the world is going. We have had years to accustom ourselves to this tactic and yet we have failed to do so. We don't seem to have developed a defence or a way to negate it. But there are techniques we can use.

Honestly, I don’t know how effective they are. Quite often I feel like returning to my previous profession of mainlining Class A drugs. But they offer some kind of hope at least.

There is a useful rule to use when dealing with news about Trump. As far as I can tell, the first person to articulate it was the brilliant lawyer and commentator George Peretz. It's this: Pay attention to what he does, not what he says.

This approach helps you filter out the noise and focus on what matters. It provides a shield against Trump's 'flood the zone with shit' tactic. It is rule number one, the foundation of any sensible approach to surviving this period, maintaining your concentration and deflecting their information attack.

Like all good principles, the Peretz rule has exceptions. Sometimes the things that are said are so outrageous to moral sentiment, or national dignity, or the safety of a minority that we have to respond. That was what happened this week with Musk's attacks on Keir Starmer and in particular Jess Phillips. It put politicians in danger, it spread far-right narratives, it humiliated Britain. We had to engage. To do otherwise was to allow the message to spread without opposition.

Here is a second rule: Do not allow it to overwhelm you. The quickest way to burnout is to be always-on. If you are reading or listening to this stuff 24/7 - first thing in the morning, last thing at night, with the news on as you make dinner, with a podcast about it over the weekend - you will simply die out there. It'll be too much. Make sure you have periods away from this, where you can feel more serene. Do not allow yourself to be under assault the whole time.

And here is a third rule: Focus on what you can influence, rather than what you cannot.

Let's be honest. US voters are not interested in what you think about something. You might think it is outrageous that Trump or Musk attack firefighters as they risk their lives to stop a blaze. It is. But nothing you say about it can make a difference.

That is not the case in the UK. And let's be clear. If this week showed anything, it is that the existence of a centre-left party in power in the UK is considered an affront by US populists, probably because it refutes the idea that they are inevitable. They have to undermine Labour, because the presence of a Labour government shows how profoundly evitable these monstrosities truly are.

But here, on this issue, we do have influence. We do have power.

Here is one example. Musk's intrusion into UK politics this week was met by a hopelessly illiterate and amoral response from the BBC's political team. The corporation's Verify unit did excellent work, as always, but that only does so much good. Only a certain type of reader will want that much detail. For most people, the news is something that happens in the background as they make a cup of tea. And here, the BBC had a terrible week.

Around half eight on Tuesday morning, Nick Robinson spoke with BBC political editor Chris Mason (you can hear it at 02:28:30 here). He engaged in what can only be described as sane-washing. He conceded that Musk's "critics" say his comments involved "gratuitous hyperbole, falsehood, devoid of subtlety and nuance in some instances". But then went on to basically validate Musk's deranged tweets by insisting that there is "undeniable a perception" that society has failed to "do justice" to the grooming gang scandal. Ultimately, he offered listeners a frame for what was happening. "Elon Musk has no doubt transformed the volume of this conversation, ensuring the government was confronted with a reality it couldn't sidestep".

It was absolutely extraordinary. Musk was trading in far-right conspiracy theories. He was suggesting that Starmer covered up and blocked inquiries into grooming gangs - utterly false. He said Gordon Brown "sold those little girls for votes" - utterly false, fucking disgusting, a goddamn outrageous thing to say. He was trading in the great replacement narrative of liberal politicians bringing over Muslims to replace their white voters. He was spreading the QAnon paranoia of a global elite paedophile network. He was promoting the sainthood of Tommy Robinson, a street fascist.

It was so far off the boundary of respectable opinion that the border would not even be visible anymore. Yet the response of the BBC's political editor was to present this as a perfectly reasonable debate between Musk on the one hand and Starmer on the other, complete with all the usual amoral vacuities about "perception". And then - incredibly - he handed the victory to Musk.

These are the kinds of things we can do something about. We can use official complaints procedures to insist on BBC coverage which is properly informed about what is happening. We can insist that they do not treat fascists and non-fascists as moral equivalents. We can demand that journalists covering these stories are educated in the conspiracy theories which are inspiring them, which Mason clearly is not.

This type of action is available in all sorts of areas: in the organisations we volunteer for, in the campaigns we support online, in the politicians we email, in the conversations we have in the pub. Some of us will be in senior professional positions and have a vast array of areas where we can exert influence. Some of us will not be, and will therefore have a more limited room to manoeuvre. But we can all do something. We all have leverage of one type or another. We can use it. We can do our bit. We can stand up for our values.

They're in their pomp right now. They're in their moment of triumph. They are savouring the sense of chaos and panic in their enemies.

But you can defend against it. You can adopt a system of largely ignoring the chaff and focusing on the pertinent actions. You can make sure that you have time away from the news, so it does not consume you. You can focus your efforts on what you can change, rather than what you cannot.

Most of all: you can resist the myth of powerlessness. History has no direction. Their victory is not preordained. In the great words of Sarah Conner: "There's no fate but what we make for ourselves." They can be defeated. They have been before. They can be again.

It's been a shit week, no two ways around it. Next week will probably be worse. But the time for startled horror is over. Now is the time to stand up to bastards.