Who are ‘the people’ in these new political times?
by Brendan O’Neill, Spectator:
During the massive, impressive Women’s March in London on Saturday, in which thousands of noisy women, men and children stuck it to Trump, the organisers tweeted the following: ‘We are the people.’ Wait — it’s okay to say ‘the people’ again?
Since Trump’s victory in November, and even more so after the Brexit Revolt in June, anyone who used the phrase ‘the people’ risked being branded a useful idiot of hard-right demagoguery. ‘Do you know who else spoke of “the people”?’, left-liberals would inquire, accusingly. ‘THE NAZIS.’ Brexiteers and Trumpeters ‘roar that they represent “the people”,’ said Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer, as part of ‘their endeavour to silence any dissent’. ‘The people’ is a fantasy category, academics insisted.
Yet now it seems it’s cool again to talk about the people. ‘We are the people, hear our voice,’ said the London wing of the Women’s March. So 17.4 million Brexiteers are not the people, but 80,000 marchers against Trump are? The 62 million who voted for Trump, including vast numbers of women, are not the people, yet crowds of anti-Trumpites squeezed into Trafalgar Square are?
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