The Illusionists

Thus it is. And we sacrifice ourselves for these visions, which are almost always illusions for the sacrificed, but illusions with which, after all, the whole of human certainty is mingled.

Victor Hugo - Les Misérables (1862)

Illusions are rum things aren’t they? I’m not thinking of the illusions performed by stage magicians. Politically inspired illusions are the rum ones because only the middle class seems to be taken in by them.

Many members of the political class and the mainstream media are illusionists but they usually specialise in amateurish illusions. Which is particularly rum because whenever we look closely, their illusions just fall apart and aren’t even entertaining. Yet for the most part, audiences appear to be uninterested in how even the most flaky political illusion is performed. Definitely rum.

Political illusions have many helpers though. Illusionists overcome the flaky nature of their act with assistance from hordes of willing dupes and fanatics. These are the people who really make the illusions work, who believe them to be an important aspect of real life. For them, the top hat really does contain a rabbit.

We could even divide political parties by the way they make use of fanatics. How they use them to create the illusion that their political schemes are far more essential or morally indisputable than reality would ever suggest. Yet to do that we may have to admit that the traditional left has been much better at attracting and grooming its fanatics than any other political grouping.

The illusions become visible in many ways, especially where fanatical claims to indisputable truth or the moral high ground are clearly absurd. Even useful idiots may be more idiotic than useful though. There are pitfalls. A current example is the gender politics debate even though it is barely a debate, fanatics having shut it down so effectively. Yet there are rumblings - the useful idiots may have a problem. Let's hope so.

What we may be seeing now with the coronavirus debacle is the emergence of a new mode of political repression hidden behind a pretty flaky public health illusion. The useful idiots certainly like this one. They are happy to justify any loss of personal freedom by even the most specious health projections based on little more than guesswork. Attempts at rational debate are abused and often censored in pursuit of a fantasy world of perfectible health.

Media people and the political class appear to be well aware of what goes on when fanatics are recruited to bolster illusions. It allows them to sell themselves as possessors of arcane knowledge behind a diffuse but effective shield of idiot support.