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Accepted Paper:
Expert knowledge and populism: the decline of trust in political institutions amongst Brexit voters in Barking
Amir Massoumian
(SOAS University)
This paper will grapple with questions of ‘post-truth politics’ by detailing interviews conducted in a pub in Barking. I will highlight how interlocutors share sentiments of being ‘spoken down to’ by experts and how this affects trust in political institutions.
Paper long abstract:
In Hannah Arendt’s account of the dissolution of democracy, the ideal subject of authoritarian rule is described as individuals for whom the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. In lieu of the Trump election and the Brexit vote, terms such as ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news’ have given rise to the concept of ‘post-truth’ politics, where ‘appeals to emotion and personal belief’ shape public opinion in conjunction to a ‘blatant disregard for truth.’ In such a narrative, audiences are portrayed as purely passive, falling victim to untruths because they lack the proper information and skills to discern the truth. However, explaining post-truth in terms of a fragmentation of authority, cognitive biases, apathy and so on ignores the extent to which the acceptance of post-truth representations may depend on specific forms of knowledge. By discussing ethnographic findings during my fieldwork amongst Brexit voters in a pub in Barking, London, this paper will grapple with the question of how Brexit worked to validate specific forms of knowledge linked to the lived experiences on my interlocutors.