Lessons from 2018: the year of uncivil society
by Mary Harrington, UnHerd:
We mustn’t let ‘policy laundering’ stifle public opinion.
The year 2018 was not just a year of royal weddings and Russian extra-judicial killings. It was also the year our polite official consensus on what civil society is — or wants — was challenged by new movements from outside the ideological mainstream. It was the year of uncivil society. And it holds lessons for the future.
What is uncivil society? First, let’s define its more familiar cousin, civil society. If business is about buying and selling things, and government is about setting rules and distributing the resources we hold in common, civil society is all the ways people organise outside these two structures. Churches, charities, clubs, societies, ad hoc groups — civil society incorporates any social organisation driven by ethical or community objectives.
Uncivil society is angrier and more militant than churches and clubs. It emerges when a significant grassroots group comes together to campaign for ethical or social aims that the mainstream views as foolish, wicked or simply unattainable.
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