I woke up on 13th December last year feeling crushed. Labour had badly lost the election, and the optimism and energy I had been channelling for the past few months had withered away the moment the exit poll came out. I stayed in bed for the rest of the day, crying intermittently and sending dazed and furious texts to equally furious friends.
The election period had played havoc with my mental health. Despite (or perhaps because of) the hope I was feeling, I was wound up and unable to sleep, concerned I wouldn’t be able to put a dampener on the sticky angst of a mixed state of mania and depression. This all came crashing down, of course, on the night of the election. Then, in the new year, the mismanagement of coronavirus by the Conservative Party renewed my misery.
I saw friends of mine similarly affected by this onslaught of political failure and colossal mismanagement. One, prone to depression, spent most of the month in bed; another, a heavy drinker at the best of times, went on a bender so extended that it even surprised him. Many others reported feeling disheartened, defeated, and flattened. A survey by BritainThinks last year discovered that 83 per cent of respondents felt let down by the political establishment. Strikingly, only 24 per cent of those under 34 reported feeling optimistic about the country's future.
Thinking about politics in strategic terms is obviously important—it’s vital to identify potential goals and work out how we might achieve them. But the emotional element to politics is also crucial. Fighting for what we believe in is deeply personal, connected to the most intimate facts of who we are. For many, political engagement comes from a hope for something better—the desperately-felt desire for a world that is fair, just, and equitable. Losing that hope can be devastating.
With the recent UK election, the erosion of the Labour Party’s Corbyn-era policy platform and the failure of Bernie Sanders to get on the US Democratic Party ticket, the left has taken a beating over the last year in the UK and US—not to mention the hostile media coverage during Corbyn’s time as leader of the Labour Party. This has led many to adopt a political nihilism, the feeling that nothing can possibly get better.
“I really see this as intertwined with my wider experiences of depression,” Matt, an activist in his twenties, told me. He points to Mark Fisher’s writing on “depressive realism” as the most accurate depiction of his mood over the last year. Depression, Fisher writes, “presents itself as necessary and interminable: the glacial surfaces of the depressive’s world extend to every conceivable horizon.” Fisher ties this landscape with his idea of capitalist realism—the idea that capitalism is the only viable way of organising society. And if you feel your efforts to make change in the world are in vain, the world can start to look as “necessary and interminable.”
“When I’m depressed I see the world as this irrevocably horrible place,” Matt says. “Somewhere nothing good can possibly happen, at least not to me." In the period after the election, he “didn’t see the point in anything.” "Just like I understood my depression was something I couldn’t change or get rid of through willpower, I also felt like that there was nothing I could do about what was going on in the world.”
Leah doesn’t have long-standing mental health problems. But she has also found her mood severely impacted by political stress. She was part of a group of precarious workers organising for better conditions in their workplace, demanding job security and fair pay. It didn’t work. Leah now has a new job, but many of her colleagues are still on the same contracts.
“Up until then, I’d never had anything I’d consider as serious as depression or anxiety,” she says. “But the impact of our campaign failing was massive. The only thing I can really compare it to is a really, really awful break-up. I was unhappy for months, my confidence was completely knocked, and it pushed me from being an upbeat person into someone who was quite negative about things, particularly about the potential for change.”
So are we helpless in the face of political depression and despair? Leah believes the world is “bad and getting worse.” Outside of her own bruising experiences, she points to a collective paralysing anxiety about climate change: “What are you supposed to do with that? It’s too big to even look at.”
But from the success of Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia to the Chilean public voting to scrap the Pinochet-era constitution, and from the small daily wins of Covid-related mutual aid groups to Black Lives Matter to the growth of unions and grassroots groups like the IWGB, the London Renters Union and ACORN, there’s hope to be found. Over the last year, I’ve found myself comforted, supported and uplifted by people I’ve organised with again and again. I’ve also experienced anger, an outgrowth of despair that can drive change, particularly as I realise that I'm not alone.
Matt has refocused his energies in things he thinks he can tangibly improve. “I can’t change the fact I have depression or the material circumstances that I believe triggered it, and I think it’s important, personally and politically, that I continue to acknowledge that that’s the case,” he says. “But I can do things that make a positive difference to my life and ability to cope. Similarly, I can’t do anything about the government’s handling of Covid, but I can make sure I’m showing up for my community through mutual aid.”
“You might feel like you’re only making incremental changes,” Matt concludes. “But for me, every tiny act of defiance and every tiny thing you make better means something. Even if the nihilist in me wants to disagree.”
