The echo chamber is the defining characteristic of this berserk and entertaining political age: squadrons of foam-flecked absolutists ranting to people who agree with them about everything and thus come to believe that their ludicrous view of the world is shared by everybody.
It is true, for example, of the Stalinist liberal Remainers — that tranche of about one third of the remain vote who will tell you proudly that they have never met anyone who voted leave and that therefore either nobody did vote leave — or they voted leave but we shouldn’t take any notice of them because they are worthless. The BBC, civil service and academia share this capacious chamber and one day soon, when I become the not wholly benevolent dictator of the United Kingdom, we shall have to bring the bulldozers in and demolish the whole edifice, let a little light into their closeted world, expose them to views which differ from their own.
But it is true, too, of many on the right, whether it be the growling Untermenschen who believe that Tommy Robinson is the victim of a Zog-inspired conspiracy, or the Leavers who still think we are certain to exit the EU with no deal (how, just how, you morons? Yes, I would prefer that we did. But it’s not going to happen, is it?).
Or indeed the jabbering preppy halfwits of the US alt-right, such as that Owen Jones mirror image Ben Shapiro: petulant, arrogant and magnificently ill-informed, and yet enveloped to such a degree by his adoring, intellectually-challenged supporters that he has, like Owen, come to lack any sense of self-awareness and perspective. And thus when challenged by a decent interviewer — instead of some Fox News sycophant or an ill-prepared airhead — he comes unstuck and turns into a nasty little self-regarding crosspatch, spitting feathers and contumely.
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