Living in Constant Crisis: How Politics Hijacks Current Affairs

The rampant use of crises in politics provides politicians with clear authority, but it comes at a cost: politics cease to matter. 

The liberalism of the 1990s offered a past-nationalistic ideal of a global cosmopolitan society based on free trade. After the war in the Middle East and the consequent rise in terrorism and migration, coupled with a financial crisis and climate change, it became increasingly difficult for any politician to run a successful campaign on the basis of a positive vision. The promise of a better world stemmed from a vision in which local and national inequalities vanished. The image promised endless prosperity through borderless trade. Highlighting the idea, politicians saw themselves as managers who steer their nations toward this united vision. However, the concept of affording politicians power and authority failed. And so did faith in ideologies.

Today, power cannot be found in a vision, it has to be established in a crisis. A crisis is always fictitious. To assess the future, science has been called in. From that point forward, academia and politics converged. This alliance, however, harmed science, because no one can predict the unknown with certainty using current knowledge. There are simply many more hidden variables influencing a given prediction. Therefore, scientists must apply the precautionary principle, which requires them to imagine the worst-case scenario with limited evidence. Risk becomes a phantom Suddenly, a crisis  can no longer be seen or grasped; it becomes a mere illusion. And voilà, action without reason is justified. A post-truth era has emerged, in which science supports crisis rhetoric.

The fear of global terrorism, a fantasy of secretly organised evil that can strike anywhere and must be watched from everywhere, is the contemporary pinnacle of crisis politics. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that Al-Qaeda was not an organisation capable of eradicating the free world. However, the power of Al-Qaeda was left unquestioned because the narrative favoured all parties involved. The global terrorism crisis gave the governments and the terrorist organisations authority among their territories, and it maintained the level of vigilance that allowed the media houses to know that their viewership would stay engaged with their outlets. Crisis is not bound to any ideology. It can be freely used by all perpetuating parties for their own gains. Crisis politics ensures that attention is captured, allowing those in positions of power to appear relevant to crisis mitigation.

False assessment becomes even more challenging in a globalised society where risk is omnipresent. States are constantly trying to prevent the risk that had previously been imagined. Ruling parties change; they cast all blame on the previous rulers and fabricate a new crisis. However, you have only a limited set of blameworthy crises until a recent magnified crisis hits back at your own party. These crisis-driven politics are creating a self-perpetuating circle, diminishing trust in institutions and their experts. Once the illusionary risk assessment is disproved, as it will be because the envisioned future cannot be predicted accurately, the authority vanishes. Although crises become omnipresent, they lose their grip over time.

When institutions and experts lose credibility, there is only one mobilisation slogan left: “We are here for the people,” a message that establishes fictitious boundaries. The demarcation sits between the disconnected elite and parasitic poor, defining the space for the common, justful citizenry. The existential crisis is framed for the common people, and it is caused by either an internal force of domestic global capital (left) or by an external force, predominantly manifesting itself in cultural distinctiveness (right). Both ends of the spectrum represent one side of the globalisation problem, neglecting the underlying issue of democratic deficits caused by the hierarchical nature of current politics. As the globalised world becomes more difficult to predict and manage, politicians can only downplay the issue’s complexities and blame the elites or opposing political parties.

Populism has evolved into yet another rhetorical tool for mainstream politics. People can no longer unite around a shared positive vision; populism, as a last resort, affects the deep desire for care.Political rhetoric must convey a consistent crisis narrative in order to increase the need for care, from which actors gain authority. Furthermore, to still be able to mobilise the citizens in an environment where individuals bear the most risk and social media gate-keep conversations, politicians must escalate the crisis in order to garner strong support for their leadership plans — leaving the sense of urgency to be the driving force for mainstream politics.

Yet, in order to regain their lost credibility, current politicians must link their goals to the romanticised past. As a result, they employ nationalism. The nationalist narrative aspect is critical because, as imaginative crises devalue the future, citizens can only hold onto consolidating history, which is maintained through a unified education system. Nationalism provides politicians with an opportunity to be the saviours of the diminishing power of the states and their citizens. By associating themselves with the performative history, they can gain credibility and authority. By becoming the nation’s protectors, they gain the ability to survive multiple terms and even corruption scandals because they can label the media outlets that call their behaviour out as “anti-national.” Therefore, politicians cling to common historical narratives conveying the strength of the nation, even though the past is also based on fabrication. Inside the post-truth era, the distorted past and future allow all imaginings to be political.

And when everything is political, politics loses its meaning. In other words, when crises become unpredictable and unmanageable, the electorate loses interest in real policy consequences, paving the way for demagogy. Policies, like crises, become delusory; fear becomes the sole political agenda. On the surface, fear appears to aid in taming the effects of globalisation, but it undermines the entire economic project by creating an internal distressing rapture within each voter, which fuels anti-system movements. However, limiting free choice and making the world more predictive based on distorted notions of the past and future is a false promise that will only push democracies into authoritarian states.

We live in a time when grand ideas have lost credibility, and politicians rely solely on the fear of phantom crises to mobilise voters. Crisis-based governance transforms societies. They devolve into inefficiency and totalitarianism. When political parties ride the waves of performative crisis, appropriating natural uncertainty, political polarisation rises, the status quo is maintained, and the inability to resolve the true socioeconomic conflict becomes a reality.