NARCISSISM, KITSCH AND NOSTALGIA

Trump Brexit And The Politics of Illusion 

‘[Nazism] involved, perhaps first and foremost, a love of self, not the reality of the self but the self that is reflected in the mirror. This narcissism was projected into a political movement and eventually came to encompass an entire nation. The reflection in the mirror the Nazis had of themselves – blond, blue eyed, strong as Krupp steel, eternally youthful, with a Nietzschean will to power - that was the myth…
Nazism was an attempt to lie beautifully to the German nation and to the world. The beautiful lie is, however, also the essence of Kitsch. Kitsch is a form of make-believe, a form of deception. It is the alternative to a daily reality that would otherwise be a spiritual vacuum…”

Rites of Spring, The Great War and The Birth of The Modern Age.’ Modris Eksteins

I
The past is perhaps just as much an imagined country as it is another one. As Pessoa reflected, the greatest of all nostalgia's is the nostalgia for things that never were. The whole Leave campaign during last year’s plebiscite campaign had just such a nostalgia as a backdrop. The slogan, ‘Take Our Country Back’ a demand for a return to an imagined earlier, better, age. A similar thread, ‘Make America Great Again’ was the theme running through Donald Trump’s election campaign. The slogan could just as easily have been, ‘Back to the Future.’
The Presidents of Russia and the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain are not motivated by a political vision of the future, but by visions of the past. The same is also true of our current leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition, – more of him in a moment.

Vladimir Putin in Uniform
Putin’s lost nirvana is the USSR. A world in which he was a member of the elite, lauding it over the subject colonial people of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in the most powerful empire on the planet. If Hitler’s defining moment was the Armistice of 1918 and the defeat of Germany, Putin’s was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both whispering the incantation to themselves of this humiliation – ‘never again.’
Of course, Putin cannot reconstruct the USSR, but, rich in natural resources and with a sizeable nuclear Arsenal, he can throw his weight around and shape Russia in his own image. A gangster Tsar endorsed by the Orthodox Church and adored by the nationalist right, that feed his vicious narcissistic pathology. An enemy of Putin is an enemy of Russia.

II

Trump by contrast is a much emptier vessel, a slogan on two legs, a serial liar and sexual predator who sells get rich quick formulas to rural hicks, possessed of the ego and narcissism of a man with no brains who has made money.[1]  The vision of America he sells is a distorted picture postcard image of the 1950’s, a time of American hegemony and certainty. What he really believes in however is Donald Trump; Trump the playboy with a heart of gold, who will roll back the clock to a time before ‘political correctness,’ a time before Gay and lesbian, gender and racial equality laws. To a time when a ‘guy’ could be a ‘guy’ around the girls and grab them by the pussy, - because in truth they loved it. Everyone- since Trump projects his own memories onto the entire world, - was so much happier back then. Donald looks in the mirror and wants to create a world fit for playboy businessmen. In short Trump combines the outlook of a Hugh Heffner with the morality, and nepotism, of a Bernard
'Everyone' Was So Much Happier Then
Madoff.
However, Trump is merely the instrument of other, far more sinister figures like Bannon, whose agenda can be unequivocally categorised as fascistic. They dream the same dreams of racial and cultural superiority as the Nazi’s.  They are currently aware that they must remain in the shadows and never be too explicit about ‘the project.’

III

 John Major famously conjured up Orwell, at the latter’s most weakest and most sentimental: [There]...'will still be the country of long shadows on county (cricket) grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers'. 

But in his defence Orwell was writing ‘The Lion and the Unicorn,’ from whence the quote comes, in 1940 when this culture was truly imperilled and had one eye on morale. It bares as much comparison with the England of the early 1990’s, let alone of 2017, as that of the England portrayed in Pygmalion. Yet it is an enduring image, a ‘Hallmark’ image for greetings cards that will always sell well. It is also, one suspects, an image engraved on the heart of a Tory vicar’s daughter, Theresa May. Brought up in the Home Counties, insulated from the vibrant but untidy multicultural Britain of London, Birmingham, Liverpool an Leeds, she grew up in a conservative world that viewed change with suspicion, and felt nostalgic for a time when Britain ruled the waves. She embodies those values and that nostalgia and as Tom Whyman, in an incisive New York Times piece has pointed out her speeches are ‘a sanitised version of the dream of a British Empire.’ From ‘Red White and Blue Brexit,’ to ‘Global Britain,’ it is the stuff of facile fantasy. It is also rooted in the narcissism of British self-regard reflected in the kitsch of Royal memorabilia and the last night of the proms. It is a picture postcard image of the England of 1955, with Suez erased from the history books.


Corbyn At the Durham Miners Gala
And what of our leader of the opposition,- a man as inspiring as Jehovah’s Witness with a head cold on a wet Monday morning. He too lives, not with the complexities of globalisation and the problems of a de-industrialised economy, but in an imagined past. In an idealised world of coal and steel and heavy manufacturing, of powerful Trade Union giants such as the NUM, TGWU, SOGAT. He believes that the people he meets at the Durham Miners Gala reflect current thinking within working class communities. His Kitsch is the Kitsch of miner’s lamps, Trade Union badges and Tolpuddle Martyrs T towels. When Corbyn looks in the mirror he sees a leader of the working class, a man destined to confront the bosses, - the dragon’s opponent.  

Like cheap plastic Christmas decorations from Walmart or Poundland what they are all selling, in their different ways, is illusion and tawdry kitsch glitter. Corbyn however will never get near power, all his narcissism will do is inflict immense damage on the movement he purports to love.

The illusions and dreams they are selling will soon fall apart and then there will be a terrible fallout, a terrible reckoning. However whether the snake oil salesmen and women themselves  will face the music seems doubtful. The scapegoats, - ‘Remoaners’ foreigners, liberal lefties, - are already being set up to take the hit.

In the meantime, we have entered the age of narcissism and kitsch. So get your Brexit souvenir mug while you can. Though be warned, they can only decline in value.   
  


[1] Though even in this respect huge question marks hang over his record. 

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