Live at the Colosseum

According to Elon Musk, "Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy." Musk is as vague about these principles as he is about his plans to buy Twitter, though as a free-speech "absolutist" he is presumably against lifetime bans of the sort handed out to Donald Trump, if not against blocking people who annoy him. He also doesn't interrogate what free speech means in the context of a democracy where voice reflects wealth and power, perhaps because he cannot see his own privilege. Musk's use of the town square metaphor reflects his status as a public figure who has little trouble being heard above the hubbub of the crowd. But there is another metaphor that has been widely deployed by Twitter's critics, one that sees the platform as a zero-sum combat zone. As Renée DiResta put it in the Atlantic, "Twitter serves less as a town square than as a gladiatorial arena." This doesn't make much sense as a metaphor. A Twitter ratio in which a bluetick is widely derided as a fool is not like two men fighting to the death. But the image of the bloody ampitheatre, rather than the boisterous market square, does tell us something about the liberal commentariat. 

There was a good example of this a couple of weeks ago when the Guardian ran a comment piece by Moya Lothian-McLean decrying the malign influence of Twitter's "gladiatorial arena" (natch). Her specific charge, borrowing from Julia Bell's Radical Attention, is that the platform's divisiveness and promotion of rage is not only distracting but debilitating: that "Consensus politics, or even any kind of politics, becomes impossible, because we are too outraged to actually think". The claim that politics has become more fractious and antagonistic is a commonplace in the liberal media, along with the belief that democracy is being eroded by populism, but actual evidence for this is lacking. In fact, political consensus has steadily increased since the 1980s, with the result that there is often little of substance to choose between the main political parties. This is not simply the product of neoliberal hegemony or the self-replicating nature of modern cartel parties. It reflects a steady shift of the political centre to the right, the defining characteristics of which have been the defence of property and the absorption of Islamophobia into mainstream discourse (consider the current French Presidential campaign).

Attempts to draw dividing lines between the parties tend to reveal that fundamental consensus rather than a gaping divide over political principle. For example, the British government's scheme to process asylum-seekers in Rwanda is intended to pick a fight with "lefty lawyers", but while the Labour Party has loudly denounced Priti Patel's plan as unworkable and extravagantly costly it has otherwise accepted that offshore processing is legitimate. This should hardly surprise us, given that the idea was first considered by David Blunkett as Home Secretary back in 2003. One of the reasons why Labour's attacks on the Conservative government have been weak is that on matters of substance they haven't offered any real alternatives beyond amelioration. Even in areas where they should be able to highlight clear policy differences, such as on climate change, they have been tentative and hesistant, or even  bluntly reactionary as in the demand for injunctions against protestors. Keir Starmer's pitch is that he would be a more competent manager than Boris Johnson, hence the repeated use of the phrase "Get a grip". The problem with our politics is not a lack of consensus.

Lothian-McLean's case against Twitter isn't particularly coherent. She starts by saying that "It silos people off into echo chambers in which their interaction with like-minded individuals can vastly change their perception of reality (For instance, at the 2019 election I truly thought Labour had a chance.)" But she then tells us that "Extensive research shows that disagreement – even the well-evidenced, politely delivered kind – does very little to change someone’s opinion". You could reconcile these two claims by assuming that Twitter simply reinforces predispositions (the classic interpretation of how propaganda works), but then "vastly change" is obviously hyperbole. There's also an inherent contradition in the idea that Twitter creates both echo chambers, in which everyone agrees, and gladiatorial contests, in which everyone very loudly disagrees. Thinking Labour had a chance in 2019 was perfectly reasonable - it did have a chance - but to suggest that Twitter obscured the probability only makes sense if you went through the campaign without being exposed to either FBPE propaganda on the need to vote Liberal Democract or the extensive cast list of right-wing Labour types gagging for defeat. 

Most of these critiques of social media end up being about behaviour, with a strong whiff of sanctimony on the part of individuals granted the privilege of a newspaper column. According to Lothian-McLean, "Dissent on Twitter is rarely ever expressed politely: it is gladiatorial. Twitter communities often show up to back their chosen fighter, furthering the sense of “us” v “them”". But impolite partisanship isn't peculiar to social media: it is the very essence of newspaper comment, after all. The difference between Twitter and a newspaper is simply one of access. The reason why the bird site is so popular with the politico-media caste is precisely that it amplifies their own behaviour: trenchant opinions, contempt, bullying etc. But it doesn't create this, any more than the penny post created the intemperate letter to the editor. One thing Twitter has allowed journalists to do is to offshore their self-disgust: "When I am on Twitter, I find myself hating everything and everyone – especially myself – wasting their lives arguing about nothing. I lose my ability to empathise, to see humanity beyond the avatars. Never am I more disconnected than when I am plugged in."

This reluctance to address the nature of the wider media, and in particular the press, is pathological. Consider this: "Existing in a state of constant fury on Twitter doesn’t equate to full-blown extremism. But the obsessive, feverish, zero-sum nature of Twitter discourse certainly contributes to an environment that breeds, at best, suspicion and hostility to opposing worldviews and, at worst, festering radicalisation. Transphobia is an obvious example; Twitter has seen the spread of anti-trans views beyond the confines of niche forums to become a moral panic." But the current prominence of transphobia has little to do with social media and everything to do with the traditional media, particularly broadsheet newspapers that have sought to demonise trans rights activists as a moral threat and part of a wider "wokery" that imperils national identity. Kathleen Stock did not achieve prominence through Twitter - she was promoted by the Times and the BBC - and "niche forum" isn't exactly an accurate description of Mumsnet. 

Despite insisting that consensus politics is made impossible by Twitter, Lothian-McLean has to concede that the evidence doesn't support such a pessimistic view: "The thing is, the extreme division that characterises Twitter is not widespread in society at large. Research by King’s College London’s (KCL) Policy Institute in 2019 found that while people had become more polarised based on their political identities, for example Brexiters and remainers, differences in opinion on specific policies, such as immigration, were in fact starting to converge." We are living in a age of grudging consensus and are consequently ever more determined to argue that other people are wrong. This might lead you to wonder whether these "political identities" have been deliberately accentuated to give the impression of difference. Indeed, perhaps the defining characteristics of Twitter aren't the trolling and the pile-ons but the declarative bio and flag-adorned names. Are we really arguing passionately, or are we simply performing identity? 

Musk may be a vain fool and his vision of the public square heavily biased in favour of those with the loudest voices, but he does at least recognise that democracy is practised as discourse, even if he remains vague on the details. In contrast, the liberal commentariat's choice of the gladiatorial metaphor points to a rejection of discourse in favour of struggle, which is both a reductive view of democracy and a theory of politics as tactical advantage rather than strategic truth (i.e. my side must win not to achieve a particular goal but because my side must win). Ironically, the metaphor works better as a reflection of the opinion economy of the press and TV in which striking a pose is always more important than establishing truth and you are only one bad performance away from career death. Indeed, the idea of "cancellation", which exists more in the fearful minds of the commentariat than in reality, is perhaps just an expression of this existential anxiety: the ultimate thumbs down. What bothers newspaper columnists who've built a career on the bully-pulpit is not the viciousness of Twitter but the proximity of the crowd.