Geronimo and Conservative Philosophy

The saga of the dearly departed Geronimo rumbles on a week after he was put down at the government's behest. There's a lot of toing and froing between Defra vets and Geronimo's owner, Helen Macdonald, about the meaning of the results, but it's the actual politics surrounding the demise of the hapless alpaca that have got interesting.

As noted last month, this case allowed Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer to burnish their tough guy/tough choices credentials. We can't well have our leaders swayed by things like compassion or common sense, or allow a case such as this be seen to undermine their standing. For Johnson, too many u-turns undermines his precious authority. For Starmer, protecting and re-legitimising state institutions, particularly the power of the executive, are also central to his politics. It's not that he failed to make populist capital out of Geronimo's onrushing doom. I doubt the notion even occurred to him.

More interesting, however, is the popular reaction. Or, to be more precise, the reaction of voters who normally support the Tories. Tory press comment sections and Facebook groups are wall-to-wall with lamentations for the dear departed and anger aimed at Defra and the government both. Curious, one might think, how an animal can inspire a show of mass empathy and sadness when human tragedies caused by the wars of Western governments, like Afghanistan, for example, raise barely a murmur of concern from the same quarters. What is the difference?

If one has enjoyed a passing acquaintance with the banalities of conservative philosophy, its positioning of human nature has it as something heartless and cruel. The emergence and maintenance of tradition married to cautiously slow-paced change and the smack of firm government helps keep the demon spirits in check. What the Tories have managed to do, with the able assistance of New Labour, is over the course of 40 years is organise, socialise, and cultivate this misanthropic assumption via conscious political strategies and institutional design. A case of the reality of human nature catching up with its idea off the back of a programme of social engineering.

There are some exemptions to the de facto distrust and cynicism this organises in millions of minds. An ever-shrinking pool of who is permitted to be regarded as the deserving poor. And animals. Here, animals are positioned as innocents, helpless creatures who can't help but be the victims of cruel humans. Their non-sapience and relatively fixed natures, and ignorance of the human world simultaneously renders them objects to be pitied and entities to be envied. Because of their fundamental, essentialised naivete they require protection and, in the thoroughly neoliberalised conservative imaginary, are much more deserving, rank higher than, and find a place in the hearts of these people than human beings. After all, as sentient beings capable of making choices, if we end up in a bad or sad situation it's our responsibility we got into a mess and our responsibility to climb out of it.

In the case of Geronimo then, we're seeing a well publicised but modest blowback against the Tories. Having cultivated mass indifference to the suffering of other people, Johnson's complicity in the destruction of a harmless alpaca has struck at sections of his party's loyal supporter base like few things can.

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