Barack Obama has told an audience in Glasgow that hope is worth fighting for despite the major challenges facing the modern world. The 44th president of the United States said online platforms had shifted in recent years towards content that stokes anger and fear. He nonetheless believes a drift to extremism is “not inevitable.”
He spoke to an OVO Hydro crowd of 12,150 people in conversation with British journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera. The event forms part of three speaking dates in the UK. During the evening he reflected on his time in the White House and examined the political and social challenges facing the US and the wider world.
Social media and the pull of anger and fear
Obama said that during his presidential campaign in 2008, when social media and technology were gaining traction, he had viewed them as a beacon for hope. He argued that the same tools that could mobilise people around democracy or human rights could also be taken up by hate groups. In his words, they had “connected people for good, but also for ill.”
He suggested that people are naturally drawn to negative emotions. “It turns out that the reptilian side of our brain really gets attracted to anger, fear, resentment and the sense that someone is out to get you,” he said. He added that a great deal of social media and other information is shaped around that appeal.
Obama, who has already spoken in Belfast, is due to appear in Manchester on Thursday night as part of the tour. Despite the risks he described, he maintained that a slide towards extremism was a choice societies could still avoid.
Free speech, regulation and concerns over AI
Obama said there was a “critical balance” to be struck between free speech and regulation. He recalled that after the Second World War, the federal government in the United States, and certainly in Europe, set rules because of what propaganda had done in the hands of leaders such as Hitler. He warned that big lies and misinformation can distort public debate, enrage people and incite violence.
He said the government of that era decided to hold those spreading such material responsible. “We have not chosen to do that,” he said, referring to the present day. He argued that the world and its leaders will need to find new mechanisms and institutions that allow rigorous debate and disagreement while helping people establish basic facts.
Obama said that if he had to assign blame for polarised politics and the rise of populism in many places, he would point to the information entering people’s brains every day. He said this left young people discouraged, and described the current information diet as unhealthy. He also warned that artificial intelligence could make it harder to distinguish what is true from what is not, a development he believes would make democracy difficult to function.
Hope, change and lessons from history
Asked whether he still believed in a phrase from Martin Luther King Jr, which he had quoted years ago, about the arc of the moral universe being long but ultimately bending towards justice, Obama said he still stands by it. He described hope as an active choice people must make, one he called “almost theological.” He said it was “a decision about how do we face and embrace this finite amount of time we have on the planet.”
He told the audience he believes it is healthier for people to think that change is possible. “I think when we act on that basis, it doesn’t always work out, but over time things do get better,” he said. Obama also said humanity appears to move in cycles, with people forgetting lessons from the past and beginning to take progress for granted.
He gave an example of political language that fosters hatred and scapegoats groups including immigrants, Jews, Black people and gay people, which some dismiss as simply talk or humour. He said people forget where such rhetoric can lead and become less tolerant as a result. Obama concluded by telling the audience that the world faces big challenges, but that he thinks “we can be better” and that making the world better remains worth fighting for.
