Are we experiencing “collective outrage”? Not the sort that’s farmed by media barons and algo-savvy modern day shock-jocks. The kind that feels like system failure. The moral compass spinning. With more race riots looming and extreme weather, slop summer cooking our brains…
A few thoughts.
On the right, there are daily grievance spreaders, but usually it comes back to the basics: racism, misogyny, and supremacy The more extreme, constantly outraged about immigration, now use every news cycle as a chance to onboard people to fascism / riots.
It’s a pattern. It’s system-calibrated.
When you consider who funds our legacy media class, which is predominately and disproportionately from generational wealth (even Marina Hyde is the granddaughter of a baronet) and who funds Rumble, GB News, Joe Rogan, and new networks of hate, it’s clear: their shared focus is on ‘The Great Distraction’.
We can see the hate preachers on the right being funded by those who hoard resources. On the far right, they game algorithms to get rich quick. We see their media and the politicians they back, weaponise DEI, dehumanise “the boats”, whilst rallying against NetZero, and taxes on extreme wealth.
On the left, there isn’t the funding, but there are the organisers who make things happen. The issue isn’t the will or even the majority argument, it’s that the organs of power don’t play our songs. Our protests fall on deaf ears. Or opened letters are met by blind eyes. Our petitions are ignored.
Without resource, without the harnessing of collective outrage, we’re left with broken political systems, toxic media ecosystems (including defunded public media), and what feels like us screaming into an abyss. The system failures we see and feel are undeniable, but our collective outrage is gaslit.
Burnout seems far more prevalent on the left. The interconnected nature of many of the things we’re collectively distressed about can be unifying, but it’s a multi-system failure Or a polycrisis. And the number of fronts to fight on is untenable without power and resources and infrastructure.
As anti-fascists and everyday citizens chanted to race rioters in the UK last summer, “there are many, many more of us than you”. And we need to remember this as we see ICE raids in US and war crimes go unpunished On most issues, the prevailing views are a world away from our media narratives.
We’re now seeing newspapers on the right and right-wing MPs end their smears and finally show moral outrage over Gaza. We’re seeing MAGA meltdown about being lied to and manipulated (an awakening?).
The sands are shifting. Collectively, our outrage is aligning. We need new systems. How do “we” upgrade?
We live in a time of system failure or, rather, systems operating for those who extract from it. Whether it’s Farage mining the attention economy or his donors extracting our natural resources. Economic and social justice can’t happen without fixing the broken media and political ecosystem.
As regular readers will now, we at West Country Voices are very concerned about the dominance of the right in our media and the efforts to convince the entire population that Farage/Reform UK represents the voice and will of the majority. In the US, this far right hegemony is destroying democracy and destabilising society. You might be interested to read this: https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/01/02/americas-right-wing-propaganda-problem-might-be-terminal/
Why is there no big money to support progressive campaigns? Because, it seems, wealth and power are concentrated in a tiny percentage of the population, and while we are a massive majority by number, we are reduced to minority status when it comes to power and influence.
But there are things we can do, grassroots initiatives we can copy, organisations we can join. For example, the efforts of a handful of women in South Devon going out onto the streets once a week with a democracy meter to talk about politics and society in a calm and inclusive way, hoping to demonstrate how undivided we actually are at the grassroots level and attempting to counter the toxic narrative spun by the media and those politicians who thrive on hate and division.
You could sign up to The Movement Forward, Open Britain, the 99% Organisation for starters.
To counter the poison, check out the community resources from Hope Not Hate.
Get in touch if you are involved in positive action to shift the dial!
Editor-in-Chief
