Professor David Bates provides a summary of the key ideas from his recent public lecture.

On 24th April I had the exciting opportunity to deliver a Professorial Beacon Lecture at Canterbury Christ Church University, the title of which was ‘The People are Revolting: The End Times of Liberal Democracy’.  I intended that the talk would produce debate and discussion.  On this level it seems to have been a success.

The main arguments were as follows:

The idea of liberal democracy has always been historically fragile.  It has always been underpinned by a state supported form of economic violence – the violence of the ‘haves and have mores’ over the have nots.

Liberal democracy and the associated project of globalisation is broken. The idea that liberal democracy was ever the end of history was always wrong.  But at no point was this clearer than it is now.

We are entering a moment of global national populism.  Against those who wish to maintain that this is a triumph of democracy, I argued that it is a real moment of danger is upon us.  This is a moment where the antidemocratic forces particularly of big tech are mobilising big data and algorithms to undermine meaningful and substantive democracy. This is a moment of centrifugal politics – a moment of hatred and echo chambers,  rather than what we need – a deliberative civic culture.

In future posts I will suggest how we might start to fight back – to defend substantive democracy against barbarism.

David Bates is Professor of Contemporary Political Thought and Faculty Director of Research and Enterprise. His current research is concerned with the constitution of contemporary modes of political and ideological subjectivity. This work is increasingly interdisciplinary, drawing on political and social theory and contemporary artistic practice.