Kurt Andersen on Donald Trump and Fantasyland – BBC Newsnight

when Trump won the election a year ago one writer Curt Anderson had just finished a book that he would title fantasy land it put the birth of fake news of hyperbole and false claim into a much wider historical context in it he argues America has long been a place where renegades and freaks came in search of freedom to create their own realities it began he suggests with the Pilgrim Fathers and the Salem witch trials and goes right through to the present day he looks at religious America and what he termed the homespun rebooting of Christianity from Mormons to charismatic s' it takes us through new-age quackery an explosion of self-help manuals and practitioners to the free-for-all era of the 1960s where he says liberalism ran amok conspiracy theories flourished in America believed in UFOs and it ends here in the current day creationist belief climate change denial Disneyland and a sense it must be true if you read it on the Internet all this he says helps to explain the rise and acceptability of Donald Trump himself and an America where the difference between opinion and fact is crumbling [Music] well Kurt Anderson joins us now and Kurt you write that Trump who really took office or at least won the election just as the book was finished understood that a breakdown of shared public reality built upon while accepted facts represented an opportunity you think he appreciated the fantasy land that you described in that book I don't think but I do think he understood it in some visceral sense that now was the time after having flirted with the idea of running for president for 30 years that it could work that that the the Americans sense of reality versus fiction had become iffy enough that he had a chance that's too far-fetched does never mean Trump believes his own reality surely yes and no he lies he and he believes it's both and he simply has no fixed commitment to factual empirical reality it's whatever serves him at a given moment like the ultimate salesman idiot so when you talk about the history of America what you build up is a sense that people have been following their own realities for 500 years some of that will sound very critical of religion a very unforgiving of faith and of people being able to believe something that is just less dictated than science I am happy I have nothing against faith in religion as it is practiced in Christendom in most of the rest of the developed world third in the UK in Europe and Australia and the rest it is the extreme and extravagant religion of various kinds that in which the United States has always specialized and which has made it even more divergent from the rest of the developed world today and it's not bad in and of itself it's strange in and of itself but but but it I think it has led to our politics where where an entire half of the country can be persuaded that climate change doesn't exist for instance or almost that many who believe that evolution isn't real and shouldn't be talking public schools and so forth and so on some of those religious ideas some of them are not but they are all about believing the empirically unfounded and improbable and untrue you don't arrive at a conclusion to why America seems to kind of break the mold of being a deeply religious country and yet a very economically successful one we tend to see the correlation the other direction well and and yes and we have been we have been an exceptional country in many ways I believe that this worked that this allowing a thousand flowers to bloom and all kinds of fantasies to be engaged and propagated work for 700 years because there was there was a set of establishments in control it wasn't allowed to go crazy and get out of control whether it was in religion where the mainline churches in Protestant ism ruled or and and and in in in the economy where we're nothing it was when when when it got extreme it was it was brought back I would say in so many different ways starting in the 1960s but certainly the last 20 years economically religiously and in other ways spiritually that we have gotten out of control what would you change though you don't want America to stop being free to think or leave what it chooses know that there is no I mean no it cannot be fixed by Fiat there's no programmatic here's what we here are the law is we need to pass I however that the serious people of all political stripes conservatives as well as liberals and everybody in between have to recommit to to reality and and and then have to give up their faith they don't have to give up their hunches and their superstitions but they we have to have a shared set of facts if we're going to have a society in a country and an economy that continues to thrive and as it has Anderson thank you very much thanks for coming in measure

Channel: BBC Newsnight

Views: 45,438

Rating: 4.6829681 out of 5

Keywords: bbc, newsnight, news, interview, Donald Trump, Kurt Andersen, Fantasyland, Emily Maitlis, Us president, US presidential election

Id: 3_lozqi8u4E

Length: 5min 28sec (328 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2017