Authentocrats

"The Authentocrats" claim to the be the new voice of common sense that speak for the common man and woman; right-wing, traditional and dangerous, Joe Kennedy argues that they are everything but what they purport to be. In contemporary Britain, a lot has been said about what it is that “real people” want politically. Forgotten by elites and sick of globalisation, so the story goes, they demand patriotism, respect for the military, assurances on defence, and controls on immigration. In trying to meet these supposed wishes, politicians attempt to appear normal, salt-of-the-earth, authentic. Authentocrats examines the function of this “authenticity” in a centrist politics which, paradoxically, often defines itself as cosmopolitan, technocratic and opposed to populism. Casting a doubtful eye over – amongst other things – latter-day James Bond films, contemporary nature writing and stand-up comedy, Authentocrats suggests that the sooner we can break with the sententiousness of a skewed conception of authenticity in aesthetics and politics the better. The self-anointing political realism which declares that the left can save itself only by becoming less liberal is matched culturally by an interest in time-worn traditional identities: the brute masculinity of Daniel CraigÍs James Bond, the allegedly "progressive" patriotism of nature writing, a televisual obsession with the World Wars. Authentocrats charges liberals themselves with fuelling the post-liberal turn, and asks where the space might be found for an alternative.