Sphinx

Let’s assume that Brexit goes ahead in some form – a depressing thought, but serious people suggest that there simply isn’t time between now and the end of March to set up a second referendum even if the will was already there to do it, so the only hope would be an extension of the Article 50 period, if the will was there to ask for that. Let’s take the further giant imaginative leap and assume that Brexit turns out to be less than wonderful for most people and for the country as a whole. What might we expect – a revival of the ‘Blitz Spirit’ of courage and grit in the face of adversity? Seems unlikely, however much imaginary nostalgia for those days may be underpinning the “of course we can go it alone” project, given that it was all a myth and propaganda exercise in the first place. Thucydides offers an alternative view, in his account of the aftermath of the Sicilian expedition:

When the news reached Athens, for a long time people could not believe that their forces had been so completely destroyed, and they refused to believe even the unambiguous reports from soldiers who had actually witnessed the events and escaped. Then when they were forced to accept the truth they turned on the politicians who had played a part in calling for the expedition – as if they themselves had not voted for it – and were equally angry with the oracle-mongers, the prophets, and everyone else who had claimed to know the will of the gods and so encouraged their hope of conquering Sicily. Wherever they looked there was nothing but pain, and they were overcome with fear and absolute trepidation at what had happened… (Thucydides 8.1)

Obviously we can take this, as people normally do, as another bit of evidence for Thucydides’ personal dislike for democracy – the demos’ refusal to take any responsibility for its own decisions when they go wrong had already been identified as an issue back in Diodotus’ speech in the Mytilene debate (3.43). But we can equally well take it not (just) as snark but as another of his observations on political psychology, not to be dismissed just because it’s depressing: people don’t like admitting that they were wrong, and you can’t actually compel people in a democracy to take responsibility for the consequences of their individual vote.

Now, in Brexit terms there is a fairly long list of people who merrily promoted the Leave agenda (in some cases, at least, for their own private ends), offered misleading promises and prophecies, or simply failed to do their job in holding these others to account; it’s not going to break my heart if their erstwhile supporters turn on them in anger. The bigger risk, already emerging, is that these cheerleaders are bright enough to see the writing in the wall, get their excuses in early and find some alternative scapegoats: Brexit has been betrayed, Brexit was never properly tried, the Remoaning traitors and foreigners undermined everything etc. Not to mention the way that the knee jerk response to revelations about the illegal behaviour of the Leave campaign, its dodgy financial aspects and so forth has been “are you saying that Leave voters are stupid and were fooled by a few Facebook ads?” Yes, get them to double down on their original choice, even if it’s already turned into something dramatically different from what anyone was told they would be voting for, rather than admit to having been wrong in the first place.

It’s another example of how the Leave campaign was much more streetwise, committed, cunning and ruthless than Remain – and given Dominic Cummings’ known proclivity for Thucydides, maybe they’d just made better use of the classics of political thought… At the same time, we also have to consider the multiple respects in which the Remain campaign was hopeless, completely misjudging the situation and the sorts of arguments (in the broadest sense) that might gain traction with the mass of the population. If Leave showed its contempt for people by its willingness to engage in shameless dog whistles and button-pushing, Remain did so by refusing to take them or their concerns seriously – not so much bringing a knife to a gunfight as bringing a bag of sweets to a barroom brawl.

It’s worth looking back to that earlier episode in Thucydides’ account, the Mytilene Debate. Actually a fair number of people have already recommended this in the context of Brexit – but solely, it appears, to support the claim that it’s perfectly all right for a democracy to change its mind and vote again. Well, yes. Did we need Mytilene to tell us that – and does anyone seriously think that this example will persuade anyone who isn’t already of this opinion? No, the reason for re-reading Mytilene is to understand the sorts of arguments that might actually persuade people to change their minds, as well as to get a sense of what we’re up against in the brilliant rhetorical manipulations of Cleon. For example, here’s one part of Diodotus’ speech:

It has become the norm that good advice given without ulterior motive is suspected just as much as bad. The result is that, just as someone arguing for a completely disastrous policy can only win support for it through deception, so someone arguing for better policies has to lie to be believed. This is the only city where an excess of criticism makes it impossible for anyone to benefit the people openly and honestly – anyone who openly offers something good immediately falls under the suspicion that secretly there’s something in it for them. (Thucydides 3.43)

As ever with Thucydides, we don’t necessarily assume that these are the words that were actually spoken; rather, they serve to draw out the key issues. The necessity of unscrupulousness; the need to accept that bad faith will be assumed; the need to accept that things are as they are, not as we might wish them to be. Diodotus denounces Cleon’s immoral, instrumentalist arguments – but then offers arguments that are just as immoral and instrumentalist, just for a different end. Again, depending on our own beliefs, we can take this as evidence of Thucydides’ cynicism, or his realism and insight. Whatever else one might say, Diodotus was at least effective in changing the minds of enough people to swing the vote the other way.

As the Corcyrean stasis later in the same book shows, if you’re in a fundamentally divided society it’s rational to act on that knowledge – those who carried on trying to be moderate and rational got stomped by both sides – while at the same time such a course of action makes the triumph of factionalism ever more likely. But the Athens of the Mytilene Debate isn’t yet at that point; Diodotus’ rhetoric is certainly manipulative, but it doesn’t entirely descend to Cleon’s level – it’s just streetwise enough to pitch the argument in a way that might appeal to his listeners, in a way the Remain campaign certainly wasn’t.

This isn’t one of those regular pleas to listen to Very Real Concerns and then develop a policy that offers a cuddly, more liberal racism. Perhaps the campaign to reverse Brexit needs alternative ways of appealing to some of those people (that seems to be the basis of the overall Labour Party approach, even at the expense of not consistently opposing Brexit); perhaps it needs a pragmatic decision that some of them are currently unreachable without completely abandoning the higher ground, if then. Diodotus didn’t need to persuade everyone (and he failed to do so), just enough; and he did this in part by understanding the appeal of Cleon’s arguments and finding ways of not saying that people were stupid to have been persuaded by them.

We are Nicias; we failed to persuade the country not to throw itself off a cliff, partly because of an irresistible public mood but also because our one arguments weren’t good enough. But whereas Nicias then accepted the role of trying to make a doomed enterprise work – it is May, isn’t it? – our goal is still to try to stop the expedition sailing, and failing that to limit its effects. And to go that we have to admit our failures, to foresee events or get desperate enough to campaign properly or find the right tone and messages. Part of us, I suspect, still wants people to admit that they were wrong; but that’s not only unlikely, it’s an impediment to any hope of getting them to choose differently now and in future…

Incidentally, Victor Davis Hanson published a piece yesterday explaining how it’s the Left’s response to Trump that has destroyed all political consensus and civility and respect for law, just as at Corcyra. Yeah, right. The more usual reading, that Thucydides shows the spiralling dynamic of factionalism, as each side provokes the other into reaction – in the crudest way, both sides do it – is clearly liberal nonsense. It does highlight the same problem as with hardline Brexit supporters: Trumpists are not likely to abandon their support if that means admitting they were wrong in the first place. Hanson is clearly not in a place that can be reached through reasoned discourse; but opponents of Trump do need to think about how to reach others, less far gone, and speak to them not as a Nicias but as a Diodotus. That may not be a great choice, but it’s the one we’ve got.