Over the last 10 years, the terms of political debate have changed completely – and week by week they seem to get worse
The notion of virtue-signalling – the act of performing progressive stances that don’t cost you anything in order to burnish your own moral credentials – has been around since at least the 00s. In a political sense, it meant always being the one who reminded others to say “chairperson” not “chairman”; always manning the barricades for signs of bigotry, always being on the right demo. If its values were sound – all we’re talking about, really, is trying to systematise courtesy to others – it was often easy to lampoon, because it felt performative and had a hair-trigger.
But what has risen in its wake – vice-signalling – cannot be seen as its mirror or answer, any more than dehumanisation could be seen as the equal and opposite of decency. They’re not in the same rhetorical category. The term doesn’t bring itself to life; for that you need the US president. Cast your mind back to 2015; although Donald Trump had said he might run for election to the highest office in every cycle this century, his speech in Trump Tower was his first campaign launch, and it was where he announced that he would build a wall between the US and Mexico. In seemingly unplanned remarks – the grammar was off, the structure meandered, the vocabulary was vague and repetitive – he said “[Mexico] are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and they’re rapists.”