I have worked in advertising for 28 years. In that time I have seen many briefs for communication campaigns, but none contained the line ‘It is important to insult the target audience, or at least treat them with barely disguised disdain.’
So I wonder whether the referendum result might have gone the other way had Remain supporters refrained from using social media in the days before the vote. Impossible to enforce, of course. The problem with the self-righteous is that they are so eager to virtue-signal to each other that they will go on doing it even when it is completely counterproductive. One American expert has written a blog post entitled ‘Liberals, Want Trump to Win? Keep Calling Him Racist.’
Progressive people are always more inclined to disparage conservatives than vice versa. One explanation, as Jonathan Haidt explains, is that the moral intuition of conservatives is, perhaps surprisingly, more complex than that of liberals.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in