'Countering the post-truth turn': a Spinozist educational approach

The 2024 UK election saw the reemergence of Nigel Farage as leader of Reform UK, the political successor to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Brexit Party. Reform UK’s manifesto stated that ‘the small boats crisis threatens our security’, blaming, ‘woke ideology’ for multiculturalism which has ‘imported separate communities that reject our way of life’. Indeed, post-Brexit political debate in the UK has often been described as ‘post-truth’, because of its reliance on emotion and assertions that ignore factual rebuttals (Sayer, 2017). In this blog post I argue for an educational approach based on the philosophy of the 17th-century rationalist philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) to counter these emotionally charged racialised narratives.