Description
The politics of rebellion has fundamentally shaped recent British political discourse, mobilized by actors across the ideological spectrum. Rebellious movements like Black Lives Matter, #KillTheBill and Palestine Action have forced a reckoning with the racial and imperial contours of the British state; meanwhile Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have placed the climate emergency at the centre of political discourse. These movements mount important challenges to entrenched hierarchies of liberal/racial capitalism. At the same time, and in sharp contrast, a series of more reactionary political currents have also mobilised the intellectual, aesthetic and affective politics of rebellion. This includes right-wing media and think tanks, Conservative politicians, elements of the far-right, anti-trans activists, and anti-mask/COVID ‘sceptic’ activists. This phenomenon raises questions about how rebellion functions as a source of legitimacy in liberal democracies, even for groups that do not seek substantive shifts in existing power structures, or whose politics are straightforwardly exploitative, oppressive or supremacist in character.
Through a media analysis of major British newspapers, this paper examines the disjunctions and resonances between these contrasting figurations of rebellion. It explores the ambiguous political life of rebellion, questioning whether reactionary uses of rebellious rhetoric merely co-opt progressive language or reveal deeper, complex relationships and inheritances. It argues that apparently contradictory or hypocritical mobilisations of rebellion demonstrate the bourgeois or liberal character of both right and some apparently left-wing articulations. By investigating how rebellion is increasingly deployed in the service of reactionary politics, the paper also explores how it might be reclaimed for more liberatory projects.
