On Politics: The Online Right (and Left)

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 579 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For the best part of a decade, a new type of anti-systemic, nationalist politics has been emerging from different corners of the online world. In Britain, this has united with older forms of cultural conservatism to propel Nigel Farage and Reform UK to within touching distance of power (at least for now). In this episode, James is joined by political theorist Alan Finlayson to understand what’s driving these changes and the ways in which different styles of online rhetoric, on both the left and right, are shaping our political discourse. They also consider whether the distinction between left and the right is still meaningful and why the way we understand equality has become the fundamental political dividing line. Alan Finlayson is professor of political and social theory at the University of East Anglia. Read more on politics in the LRB: https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm James Wood, and this year on the LRB's Close Reading's podcast, I'm asking,
0:07.4	Who's Afraid of Realism? I'll be taking a range of great novels and short stories,
0:12.4	from Flobe's Madame Bovary and Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, up to more recent works
0:17.2	by Amit Chowdhury and Gwendolyn Riley. And I'll be examining what makes and makes
0:22.5	for the real. How does realism produce its effects? What's the difference between artifice
0:28.3	and artificiality? And who is and has been afraid of realism and why? The series starts with
0:35.5	two episodes on Madame Bovary, which you can listen to right now.
0:39.2	And in the third episode, I'll be talking to Adam Thurlwell about Dostoevsky.
0:43.1	You can find a link in the description or search close readings wherever you get your podcasts.
0:51.4	Hello, you're listening to On Politics and New Strand of the London Review of Books podcast.
0:57.6	I'm James Butler and I'm a contributing editor here at the LRB.
1:01.7	For the best part of a decade, something has been brewing on the semenor sides of the internet
1:06.1	producing what we came to call the alt-right.
1:10.5	Over a longer period, the politics of Nigel Farage,
1:13.5	xenophobic nationalism, cultural conservatism,
1:17.1	something that trades very strongly on victimhood
1:19.4	and claims or expresses an anti-systemic energy,
1:24.2	those politics seem to have shaped British politics very, very profoundly.
1:28.4	Yet the connections between the two phenomena are not always obvious.
1:32.3	Nigel Farage's current electoral vehicle, Reform UK, looks much more serious than any of its
1:37.2	predecessors. It currently dominates the polls, while the two parties of the historic duopoly
1:42.7	languish somewhere between 15 and 20%.
	...

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