Brexit, Trump, and ‘Weaponizing’ Identity

by JJ van Limborgh The startling rise of populism in the West has resulted in nothing short of cultural upheaval. In the US and the UK, a unique breed of demagogues has surged to power, manipulating exclusivist identities to polarize and consolidate control. How has identity become a political weapon, and how might we return to mutual understanding? (Photo credit: Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash)

 

Identity is ‘like fire. It can create warmth and comfort or burn badly and destroy.’ This dual function of identity is essential to human existence; the ‘deep-seated, unconscious urge to seek status and belonging’ is evolutionarily entwined with our social development. However, today’s political climate has given rise to a greater ‘struggle for recognition’ and well-placed, powerful demagogues have capitalized.

‘Self-styled strongmen’ have surged to power, instrumentalizing identity to divide and further their own political objectives. It almost always leads to avoidable social polarization, and often unnecessary violence. It can be referred to as ‘weaponizing identity’ and is a fundamental cause of insecurity. This process is examined through the lens of securitization. Applying these ideas to Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, this essay demonstrates how these two pivotal political shocks involved weaponized identities: identity has been carefully ‘securitized,’ launching national identity issues into the realm of ‘emergency politics’ to consolidate control. Populism’s misconceptualization and mainstreaming by traditional media and the role of social media post-truthism are deemed catalyzing factors. These observations beg the question: what can be done to respond to the divisive potentials of ‘weaponized identities?’ Existing proposals will be supplemented by new recommendations. Most crucially, solving this problem begins with a more complete, research-driven understanding of how it works, in all of its globally diverse forms.

Securitization is a performative ‘speech-act’ for the mitigation of uncertainty. It is a mechanistic process by which security is ‘socially constructed’; the securitizing agent recognizes an existential threat to a ‘referent object’ requiring protection, leading the security actor to broadcast the threat’s urgency to the rationally selected audience and thrusting the issue into the realm of “emergency politics.” Securitization is common in ‘middle-level’ politics, where ‘egotistical collective political actors’ are the securitizing agents. Indeed, both Brexit and the rise of Trump involved a securitization process with identity at its center. ‘Identity’ can be considered the performative experience of the self, ‘constructed around membership in a community and a set of roles it expects us to fulfill.’ The ascription to a group identity is a  need fundamental to human existence; belonging to a collective is an evolutionary matter of survival and the oft-violent competition for status between such groups is a sociologically organizing feature of humanity that transcends time. However, modernity complicates these behaviors; much like security, ‘confusion over identity arises as a condition of living in the modern world.’

Globalization renders identity multi-layered and complexly intersectional. An individual can at once belong to multiple countries, religions, cultures, races, sexualities, genders, and can fluidly move between these and an infinitude of other belief systems or categories. Though commemorable, diversity and ‘freedom of choice’ can confound, disconnect, and isolate, and many are left desperate for a simplifying, unitary community for membership. This confusion has fueled the rise of ‘populism.’ Though not novel, today’s populism is newly international, widespread, and far more challenging: a frustration with the political status quo and a search for meaning in a ‘runaway world of globalization.’ While populism can exceed ideological boundaries, today’s ‘populist zeitgeist’ certainly manifests in the declaration of conservative, often right-leaning entities’ appeal to ordinary people. Moreover, ‘the state’ has endured as the basic social ‘unit of action.’ And as such, charismatic demagogues have capitalized, instrumentalizing nationalist sentiments as a lighthouse amongst the confusion, capitalizing on the primacy of the state and the unerring human need to belong.

2016 was a year of tectonic political shifts in major Western democracies; the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union by a meager 52 percent majority and Trump won the United States election with 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 227. It is important to recognize antecedents, for they formulated the original discursive terrain in both cases and transformed them into one of nationalism and xenophobia over time. The Great Recession of 2008 engendered a severe crisis for neoliberalism worldwide. In both nations, domestic economic disparities grew, propagating a narrative of resentment built on the divide between the ‘winners and losers’ of globalization.

In the UK, ‘globalization-backlash’ steered blame towards EU integration; surveys of voter attitudes demonstrated a growing conflation of economic concerns with those of EU membership. Advocates cited EU legal overrides, the severe financial burdens of bureaucratic EU regulations, and bail-out obligations to debt-crisis nations (like Greece and Spain) as rationales for EU-departure to reclaim economic sovereignty. In the U.S., anti-globalization sentiments concerned the unrelenting rise of an adversarial China, propelled by a spectacular export-growth model. Many in the American ‘rust-belt’ working-class saw globalization as harmful to local labor markets. High unemployment, low wage growth, and depressed labor forces served a burgeoning call for global de-integration and re-nationalization of industry.

Politics aside, these grievances appear reasonably legitimate, but as these economically ‘left-behinds’ clamored for change, a platform of opportunity materialized for certain individuals to ascend to the mainstream by modeling themselves as populist champions of the deserted working man, accelerated by weaponizing a particularly potent brand of nationalism.

Riding anti-globalization, anti-elite resentments, the UK Independence Party advanced steadily in electoral standings between 2004 and 2015, at home and in Europe, and exalted into the political conversation as the Party of the ‘left-behinds.’ Seeking to stifle UKIP’s rise and growing intra-Conservative dissension, then-Prime Minister David Cameron operationalized a manifesto promise for an EU-membership referendum in 2015, arrogantly presuming a ‘slam-dunk’ ‘Remain’ victory. However, Boris Johnson calculatedly seized his moment, undercutting his longtime comrade. Abdicating from his Europhilic roots, Johnson ‘bet on a horse called Euroscepticism’ and championed himself the leader of the Leave campaign, hitchhiking his way to ascendancy. Trump exploited a similar blindspot. Derided as a clownish reality star, Trump was an almost-identical populist ‘dragon,’ upending expectations on a powerful counterposition to the purportedly corrupt and self-serving elite,  which drove him to office as a blue-collar savior. 

Nigel Farage, the tenacious ‘British-Bulldog;’ Johnson, the shock-haired, bumbling comedian-cum-patriot; Trump, the ‘true American’ business mogul caricature – these well-branded ‘anti-politicians’ promised to capsize the status-quo of untrustworthy elitism, achieving cult-like allegiances. Crucially, these leaders were all populist ‘demagogues;’ not only did they seek support by appealing to the desires of the deserted ‘everyman,’ but also their latent prejudices. They knew their audience well and finessed oft-xenophobic preconceptions for political gain. 

Though research and discourse on populism has dramatically increased, fundamental misconceptions of its nature are problematically extant, especially in media spheres. In the UK, populism is liberally ‘splashed across headlines’ but is invariably applied to right-wing figures to the extent of its conflation with their essential ideology. Content analyses of The Guardian show that populist labels, when applied to far-right entities, tend  to replace more stigmatizing ones such as ‘racist’ or ‘far-right.’ The result is a ‘euphemization’ or ‘trivialization’ of the more prejudicial aspects of far-rightist ideologies; it makes them appear far more palatable. Moreover, the articles overwhelmingly ‘amplified’ the relevance and importance of these entities through the application of misleading populist labels, and thus granted them ‘agenda-setting power’ disproportionate to their actual electoral popularity.

This is not unique to The Guardian; the British media, either to sensationalize or to exhibit neutrality, misleadingly label far-right groups with populist signifiers foremostly, and also offer these entities electorally disproportionate airtime or newspaper columns, lending these figures legitimacy in a mainstream, which would be otherwise difficult to achieve. In the U.S., the less-regulated media play a similar role; ‘conservative’ media normalized extremist Trumpian discourse by smuggling in neofascistic rhetorics of hate, racism, and conspiracy under the denialistic guise of ‘vaguer, safer’ populist labels. Fox News and the Republican party have dovetailed not only in their political leanings, but in their profits from sensationalization, scaremongering, and the legitimization of the previously repugnantly extreme. In the UK, perhaps inadvertently, and in the U.S. quite deliberately, the media granted mainstream legitimacy to right-leaning actors by euphemizing and trivializing their extremes and by forming a powerful platform upon which to advance their respective agendas. These malevolent ‘fringes’ are thus sanitized and ‘stripped of their stigmas and pariah statuses’ and widely broadcast.

‘Securitizing agents’ were well-equipped to further their political aims. Johnson and Trump were both hyper-aware of their ‘rationally selected’ target audiences – the non-cosmopolitan, rural working class, bitter, xenophobic, and predominantly white., Accession to power was not guaranteed by relying only on anti-globalization economic logics. Latent nationalist prejudices had to be ‘weaponized’ to consolidate a hold on the public. And so, the ‘existential threat’ was constructed: the ‘other,’ the ‘foreign,’ endangering the ‘referent object’ of their nations. Their ‘speech acts’ were their campaigns; both Trump and Farage-Johnson rearticulated the dominant debates from ones originally of economic sovereignty to a polarizing antagonism of race and culture, but mostly nationality. They did this in two ways: the nostalgic exaltation of a noble, majestic nation to be recovered, and a demonization of the ‘other.’

Securitizing agents romanticized a nostalgic vision of ‘Britannia,’ playing on a ‘national collective narcissism’ to solidify the link between righteous populism and identity politics. These narratives stem from self-perceived  ‘Great British exceptionalism’ – the deep belief that Britain and Britishness is somehow ‘special’; its golden age imperial history and the residual ideas of the Commonwealth lead to an unjustified ‘overconfidence or sangfroid.’ Farage falsely historicized how Britain ‘stood alone’ against the specter of Nazism, blasting The Great Escape soundtrack from his Brexit Party campaign bus and relentlessly broadcasting the very notion of Britannia through flyers, posters, speeches, and media appearances. He inflamed narcissistic nationalist yearnings and, propelled by tabloidism, was hailed as a neo-imperial mythological hero, ‘on a mission’ to salvage ‘Britishness.’ Johnson also partook: ‘weaponizing his political hero Winston Churchill’ to invoke imperial pride and cast himself as a similar savior figure. Trumpism rotted with the same logic. Trump accentuated a nostalgic vision of a hegemonically uncontested American yesteryear. On TV, at rallies, through merchandising, and the written word, Trump sold a brazen, uncompromising ‘deep-story’ about ‘traditional’ collective Americanism under threat. The public of a nation already so acclimated to regular expressions of fervent patriotism, faced with a loss of status and power, were primed by Trump to react with stress, anxiety, and anger.

Britishness and Americanism were ‘weaponized’ in themselves as internalized and mythologically overblown referent objects subject to existential threat. But beneath the nostalgic slogans of ‘Take Back Control’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ laid more sinister undertones. Both movements also incorporated a xenophobic and racist process of ‘othering’; by of weaponizing the identities of those outside of their exclusively defined nationalisms, their ‘rationally selected audiences’ were granted a target for their anxieties. The championed working-class were narrowly racialized by this deliberate juxtaposition: inextricably, ‘the white working-class.’ Both Johnson and Trump ‘capitalized on hostility to mass-immigration.’ The Brexit mastermind Dominic Cummings directed British fears toward the falsely imminent accession of Turkey to the EU as a threat to jobs and British culture. Johnson himself was no opponent to such ‘race-baiting’ and antiziganism. Trump was notoriously more explicit. Dedications to ‘build the wall’ to keep out the amalgamated ‘Mexicans’ labelled ‘drug-dealers,’ ‘prostitutes,’ and ‘rapists,’ and the unilateral criminalization of ‘terrorist’ Muslims alongside travel-bans, and the demonizing rhetoric towards the Chinese foe, all served to antithesize Judeo-Christian, white Americanism against existential external threats. Patriotic nationalism became white racism under these leaders.

The mainstreaming potentials of traditional media are already clear, but the online media ecosystem has exploded in the 21st century and social media has exponentially diffused lines of political communication. Common among demagogues is a talent for the exploitation of such unrestricted access to their selected audiences. Trump was the real artist. Sowing distrust in ‘fake news’ media, he furthered the disillusionment with the status quo in the ironic advancement of his own antagonistic messaging and outright lies through Twitter. His ‘alternative facts’ were immediately available, enabling the wide broadcast of identity-based invocations and undermining the publicly held faith in the fundamental value of truth itself, by validating and spreading conspiracies. In the UK, the false imminency of Turkish-EU integration and the ‘much-disputed’ £350-million per week purportedly wasted on the EU, serve as prime examples of mis-truthing. Farage and Trump both incited a deep mistrust in science and traditional media from their online platforms. Clearly, the devaluation of truth majorly serves the interests of our securitizing agents, hoping to amplify the existential threat of the ‘other’ by any means necessary, and social media is instrumental. Agential creation of identity-related insecurity is clear in both cases. The ‘populist’ securitizing agents sought political power, and mobilizing disenfranchised, predominantly white working classes was a necessary step in this pursuit. 

The consequences of weaponized identities are dire, often violent, and always divisive. One need look no further than the mass increase in hate crimes and racial violence post-Brexit across the UK; the emboldening of racism has only entrenched identity-based cleavages and divided ‘Britishness’ into its constituent nationhoods, rather than ‘saving’ it. In the U.S., racial injustice has been earmarked by the Black Lives Matter movement, and most believe Trump dramatically worsened race relations. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, racial disparities have only grown, and the social faith in truth has evaporated further. As Johnson alludes to the mysterious ‘deep-state’, anti-vaxxers pack the streets in protest, and Capitol Hill was stormed by electoral-fraud accusers, the result of Brexit and Trump’s rise is nothing less than a conspiratorial assault on truth and democracy.

So what is to be done? Stephen M. Walt’s declaration, ‘you can’t defeat nationalism, so stop trying,’ is at once both right and wrong. The nation-state is here to stay, and so is the nation’s identity, but we must try to mitigate its weaponization. As Reem Ahmed writes: ‘while it is healthy to debate alternative views and challenge the status quo, especially when it is alienating a large portion of society, it becomes problematic when nativist sentiments are stoked up and blame is appropriated to others.’ Society must salvage the ability to celebrate diversity within democratic systems, expressing the identities so fundamental to human existence without letting them curdle into hatred and resentment in the designs of divisively minded agents. Let debates, then, be of ideology and opinion, not of shortsighted, identity-based precepts.

In the long-term, this relies on a larger social transformation. Many theorists have called for ‘cosmopolitanism,’ the fundamental politics of equal respect and common humanity in a world citizenry. Mary Kaldor sees it as a treatment to civil wars, within which identity-based particularism has played a generative role. Kwame Anthony Appiah no longer sees it as a ‘luxury,’ but a necessity in this increasingly divided, environmentally threatened world. Recognizing the inevitable link between identity and violence, Sen sees such a universalization of human dignity as a crucial means for intersectional peace. And invariably, an inclusive global economy, well-functioning institutions, and democracy are deemed prerequisites to the ‘universal solidarity’ that cosmopolitanism entails. This is a demand by no measure short of cultural upheaval. Let us, then, look instead toward practical remedies for the short-term.

Conditions for dialogue between deliberately constructed poles of identity must be ameliorated. Adding to Ahmed’s observations, it is also particularly ‘unhealthy’ to debate ‘alternative facts.’ The spreading disdain for the truth is immeasurably destructive and perpetuates identity-based divisions, especially when confounded by the ‘firehose of falsehoods’ that resultantly fills the discursive space. The ‘epistemological premium’ of objective truth and faith in qualified expertise must be revived. 

This begins by tackling the sources of post-truthism and weaponized identities: politicians and the media. Politicians must be kept accountable by fact-checking the viewpoints and figures they disseminate. Tweets, social media campaigns, and speeches should be subject to validity checks before publishing; instituting independent commissions to do so are feasible recommendations. Moreover, enforcing the accurate use of populist labels and offering airtime proportionate to an entities’ electoral popularity can counter media-mainstreaming. The latter is only enforceable through outlets bound by neutrality laws and obligations. But at minimum, a culture of fact-supplemented broadcasting must be encouraged, rather than divisively sensationalizing for sensationalization’s sake. This should not be extended to censorship or an infringement of free speech, but traditional media should be, at least, held accountable for spreading mistruths and conspiracy theories. These changes will keep the legitimizing catalysts of weaponized identities fairly contained.

It also begins with education. An awareness and suspicion of post-truthism and the proclivity of actors to manipulate it for personal gain in our educational institutions must be instilled. Promoting ‘epistemic vigilance’ toward misinformation and bias by ‘fostering intellectual agency,’ re-establishing the credibility of science and broadening literacies for civic and digital media sources are great existing proposals. This should be coupled with a broader, culturally representative education, accommodating a fairer and more holistic picture of the ‘others.’ This process has begun by the emergence of a curricular focus in the UK on British colonial-violence, which was previously suppressed. Applied widely, the new generation would be better equipped to detect and consciously avoid ‘the lies that bind’ and to pursue cosmopolitan inclusivity and the preservation of non-misleading empirical truths, rather than be restrained by exaggerated politics of difference. 

It is time to re-imagine political correctness. One does not have the right to say whatever wildly racist or offensive remark that may come to mind. In fact, that would only entrench deeper identity-based divides. But, observing liberal contemporaries, there is emerging a worrying and widespread readiness to be ‘offended’  and to proverbially die on whatever ‘woke’ hill is popular in that moment, inhibiting productive debate. It is, still, a process of ‘othering,’ keeping the ill-informed on the ‘canceled’ outs. It is critical to educate each other in the pursuit of collective understanding, instead of lying in wait for blacklisted trigger words or topics for a chance to signal virtue. Scholars and policymakers must learn why certain behaviors cause offense and divide, not just simply that they do. These behaviors only deepen identity-based divides by stifling effective discourse, allowing weaponized identities free reign. 

Identities are fundamental to humanity’s social organization and today’s political climate has allowed demagogues to instrumentalize identity for their own objectives. The paper defines this as weaponized identity and explains it as a fundamental cause of insecurity. Applying securitization theories to Brexit and Trump, this paper demonstrates how political figureheads weaponize identity by transforming narratives of economic sovereignty to ones of xenophobia and suspicion of the ‘other,’ bolstered by media mainstreaming and post-truthism. The paper suggests responses to the weaponization of identity. However, no response is more crucial than a complete, research-driven understanding of how it works, in all of its globally diversified forms.

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Jan James (JJ) van Limborgh is pursuing MS in Global Affairs, with a concentration in Transnational Security and a specialization in Global Risk from New York University. His academic and professional interests are tailored toward MENA (or SWANA) region futures, global identity politics, and post-truthism/disinformation.

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