In recent years, geopolitics has undergone a radical change. The boundary between the left and right is fading due to ideas spreading further and disrupting the clear political views of people. One such ideology is populism, which has found new proponents among the world populations. In Britain, Brexit was an enactment of such occurrence. This, together with the ever-increasing political merit of big data and the anti-European sentiment represent an amalgamation of factors influencing the people’s vote. In this essay, I will explain how populism and political manipulation have affected Britain and attempt to find the answer to the question of which of the aforementioned components had the most influential impact on the choice of the British people.
Populism is an indefinite notion, according to Cox, M. (2018) the idea is merely a tool for political agitators to gain and hold on to power by appealing to the people with specific views. Its popularity can be attributed to many factors. One which is the unsought consequence of globalisation, which in recent years has introduced inequalities between states and people. Developing countries have profited more substantially than others, due to their access to cheap resources. As a consequence, the Global North could be defined as ‘losers’ of globalisation, and especially its populations of the middle class (Horner, R. et al, 2018). These people tend to associate the economic downturn of recent years and the growing gap between liberal elites and the working class, with the increasing interconnectedness of global economies (Postill, J. 2018). It was this component that resulted in the rise of populism and in ensuing elections, triumphant for populist politicians and ideas, such as Brexit and Trump. The trend has spread across the world, with leaders such as Hungary’s Orbán, Erdoğan in Turkey and Duterte in the Philippines all coming to power in recent years.
The results of Brexit referendum in 2016 were a genuine surprise to the whole world, including the British people. The grounds for such an outcome could be explained by referring to various political campaigns and the redefined world politics in the guise of populism. However, this question requires deeper evaluation. The sentiment of the ‘left-behind’ populations in Britain, is a deep-rooted notion shaped partially by past changes in the economy, like privatisation in the time of Thatcherism (MacLeod, G. and Jones, M. 2018). Today the right-wing populist ideology implemented by politicians like Nigel Farage is based upon the changing political climate. For rightist Leave campaigners it was easy to influence some people with often overemphasised advertisements shown online. For this strategy, owning data is a tremendously valuable advantage. Robert Mercer – one of the key Trump supporters contributed to leave campaigns’ objective by helping in acquiring the data provided by Cambridge Analytica (Cadwalladr, C. 2017a). This fact uncovers a clear connection between Trump and Brexit, which makes the circumstances of Brexit even more intriguing.
These days, big data is an increasingly valuable asset. Whoever owns it, possesses immense power. Therefore it is obvious that it is in powerful people’s interest to gather as much data about populations, as possible (Eastwood, G. 2017). They are often prepared to resort to cunning actions or even contravene the law, in pursuit of obtaining data. In the campaigns of 2016 US presidential elections, Trump campaign has used political targeting as a practice to reach more prospective voters. The crucial data was provided by Cambridge Analytica, which acquired it from a scholar – Aleksandr Kogan, who had created a data-collecting application (Cadwalladr, C. 2018). Facebook users unwittingly gave out their and their friends’ data to the app, which collectively gathered valuable information on over 50 million Americans (Rosenberg, M. et al. 2018). As a consequence of that breach, a privacy scandal emerged (Ram, A. 2018).
The use of political manipulation in the Vote Leave Campaign was described as ‘hijacking of British democracy’ (Cadwalladr, C. 2017b). It was given this name because of the particular influence the advertisements had on the people’s vote. As Vote Leave spent millions on Facebook ads, the people who this manipulative strategy worked best on, were often ill-informed and unaware of its existence. Thus, being exposed to images of borders overflowing with migrants, sparked a desperate thought of preventing what was drastically exaggerated, from happening. Moreover, the feeling of being forgotten resulted in the need of getting heard and opposing the government. In the often less educated and left-behind populations, being shown targeted advertisements triggered the intrinsic conception of anti-migrant and anti-EU sentiment (Cadwalladr, C. 2019). These thoughts translated into reality at the ballot boxes, where 52 per cent of voters decided to leave the EU seen as an integrated entity, marking a pivotal moment in British history.
Previously stated arguments show that the increasing interconnectedness of geopolitics and its links to political manipulation with the use of big data are affecting and changing multiple states across the world, including Britain. Thus, one could argue that the rise of rightist populism in the UK and the hijacking of British democracy were more impactful factors in causing Brexit, than the anti-migrant and anti-European sentiment of the British people. However, it is crucial to understand that this very sentiment was the causing factor of populism in the first place. Therefore Brexit was more indirectly caused by the anti-European view, through the rise of populism, and political manipulation triggering this idea.
Today, the changing politics and ever-growing importance of data are shaping the world. Powerful people often extend their dominant authority in order to influence other nations. The views of people, accommodated by precisely targeted ads, were the main factor for changing the geopolitical state of the world. Therefore, while global geopolitics and the hijacking of British democracy were undoubtedly very influential and wide-reaching immediate factors for Brexit, the anti-migrant and anti-European sentiment was a fundamental factor underlying it on a broader scale.
References
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