Revolting How The Establishment Are Undermining Democracy And What They Re Afraid Of

A short, sharp intervention in the crucial debate about the future of democracy, which has been brought to a head by events from Brexit to the Trump phenomenon.

A short, sharp intervention in the crucial debate about the future of democracy, which has been brought to a head by events from Brexit to the Trump phenomenon. We live in strange days in the history of democracy. Every serious politician in the Western world supports democracy. Yet when the EU Referendum and American Elections both delivered the 'wrong' result, elites challenged the merit of the people's will, and some even tried to block it. Preferring unelected institutions, from technocrats to the courts, self-appointed higher minds questioned whether voters are fit to be trusted with their own futures. Ours is the age of "I support democracy, but..." And yet the answer will never be to impose limitations. Popular democracy must offer better choices, rather than removing choice altogether. It's time to defend democracy and fight for more it, with no ifs, buts or backtracks.

Numerous analysts have lately expressed concern about tendencies including democratic backsliding and populism occurring in many countries worldwide. This book considers such theories in the context of the United Kingdom (UK) in the period since 2016, examining Brexit and numerous other subjects. The author applies the techniques of the historian, drawing on a variety of primary and secondary materials. Offering both evidence-based assessment and polemic, the work presents its analysis in a variety of different forms, intended to convey the complexity and extensive sweep of the issues. The book concludes that, while they have precedents, UK democracy faces real and broad challenges. The author makes recommendations for addressing these problems.

Frank Furedi examines the frequent claim that democracy is a means to an end rather than an important value in and of itself. The prevalence of this sentiment in the current era is not surprising, given that the normative foundation for democracy is fragile, and there is little cultural valuation for this outlook. Until recently, virtually every serious commentator paid lip-service to democracy. However, in recent times the classical elitist disdain for democracy and for the moral and intellectual capacity of the electorate has acquired a powerful influence over public life. Democracy Under Siege outlines the long history of anti-democratic thought, explains why hostility to democracy has gained momentum in the current era, and offers a positive affirmation of the principle and the value of democracy.

With an unrivalled combination of exceptional clarity and intelligent analysis, Politics is the perfect introduction to political studies. Written especially for undergraduate students, this is the only introduction to politics to combine genuine accessibility and an analytical approach, encouraging critical study and engaged debate right from the outset of a university course. Alongside comprehensive coverage of concepts, approaches, and ideologies, the book features chapters on all crucial elements of political studies, from institutions and states to security, political economy, civil society, and the media, making it an ideal text for a broad range of courses. Current debates and key developments in contemporary politics are taken into account, with coverage of the rise of populism, Brexit, and the Trump presidency, as well as a broad range of international case studies and examples. Politics also features a lively and accessible design and a range of helpful learning features throughout, including key points, case studies, key debates, key thinkers, key quotes, and questions. The book is also fully supported by online resources to help students take their learning further. For students: - Test your knowledge of the chapters and receive instant feedback with online multiple choice questions. - Take your learning further with relevant web links to reliable online content. - Revise key terms and concepts from the text with a digital flashcard glossary. - Learn more about key thinkers' ideas and backgrounds. For registered lecturers: - Reinforce key themes from each chapter with suggested seminar and essay questions. - Incorporate active learning into your seminars with political scenarios, discussion questions, and teaching notes. - Use the adaptable PowerPoint slides as the basis for lecture presentations or as hand-outs in class. - Assess students' learning with a ready-made test bank, which can be customized to suit your needs.

This book employs a history of ideas approach to trace the complex journey of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and its afterlives. Although the RCP existed for barely two decades, it left a curiously lasting impact on British politics, and its legacies have provoked bewilderment, suspicion, and animosity. Formed as the Revolutionary Communist Tendency in 1978, the RCP represented a distinct and often controversial offshoot of the Trotskyist left. Campaigning principally around 'unconditional support for Irish freedom' and anti-racism, RCP cadres expounded an independent revolutionary politics to supersede capitalism. In the 1990s, however, the RCP leadership ruefully declared that the working class had suffered an historic defeat, and the party dissolved in 1996. Combining wide-ranging archival research and twenty-four life-history interviews with former activists, Preparing for Power examines ideological continuity and change among the ex-RCP milieu. Explaining the party's key ideas, their evolution, and their retrospective contestation, Jack Hepworth analyses the RCP's trajectory in a broader political context. In doing so, Hepworth illuminates a network which has been the subject of considerable media sensation and polemical attention.

The Ideology of Political Reactionaries offers a new perspective on the beliefs reactionaries share, presenting a theory of reactionary ideology in the process. Rather than taking self-contradictions in the reactionary imagination as a reason for diminishment, complexity is taken as a challenge. The book argues that the features that unite reactionaries lie in rhetoric. Reactionaries make three persuasive appeals: to decadence, conspiracy, and indignation. They also display some recurrent styles. The book’s rhetorical approach entails a critique of the alternative approaches to reactionary politics (dubbed as ‘dispositional’, ‘sociological’, and ‘conceptual’). At the heart of the book is the textual analysis of the writings of a range of figures who are chosen in deliberate diversity and who have interacted with political audiences in different eras and settings: Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, Éric Zemmour, Joe McCarthy, Anders Breivik, and Nigel Farage. Analysis of their writings helps the book to reckon with some particular puzzles of ideologies and rhetoric. These puzzles include the proximity of reactionaries to conservatism, the ambiguity of their nostalgia, the myth of their essential charisma, and the apparent fetishisation of facts. The Ideology of Political Reactionaries ought to interest anyone concerned about current ideological trends and, in particular, students and scholars of politics and history.

We are in crisis. As a society we have never been less connected. The internet and globalisation fuel ignorance and anger, while the disconnect between people's reality and perceived identities has never been greater. Karl Marx outlined the idea of a material 'base' and politico-cultural 'superstructure'. According to this formula, a material reality - wealth, income, occupation - determined your politics, leisure habits, tastes, and how you made sense of the world. Today, the importance of material deprivation, in terms of threats to life, health and prosperity, are as acute as ever. But the identities apparently generated by these realities are increasingly detached from material circumstances. At the same time, different identities are needlessly conflated through a process of reeling off a list of -isms and -phobias, and are lumped together, as though these groups all somehow have something in common with one another. Th is process is not just inappropriate but obscures the specific nature of problems being faced. In The Identity Myth, David Swift covers the four different kinds of identity most susceptible to this trend - class, race, sex and age. He considers how the boundaries of identities are policed and how diverse versions of the same identity can be deployed to different ends. Ultimately, it is not that identities are simply more 'complex' than they appear but that there are more important commonalities. In a powerful call to arms, Swift argues that we must unite against these identity myths and embrace our differences to beat inequality.