Obama says drift towards extremism ‘not inevitable’

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 promoting content that stoked anger and fear, but maintained that a drift towards extremism was “not inevitable”.

Obama made the remarks while addressing an audience of 12,150 at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow, where he was in conversation with British journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera as part of a three-date speaking tour of the United Kingdom.

He reflected on his time in the White House and examined political and social challenges facing the United States and the wider world.

Obama said that during his 2008 presidential campaign, when social media and technology were gaining popularity, he had viewed them as a beacon of hope.

However, he noted that the same tools capable of mobilising people around democracy and human rights could also be exploited by hate groups.

He said they “connected people for good, but also for ill”.

“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.

“So a lot of social media and a lot of our information is informed around that.”

The former president, who has already spoken in Belfast and is scheduled to appear in Manchester on Thursday night, said the drift towards extremism was “not inevitable”.

He recalled that after World War Two, governments in the United States and Europe introduced rules in response to the dangers of propaganda, particularly under Adolf Hitler.

“We can see how big lies and misinformation can distort and enrage and incite violence. So we’re going to hold these folks responsible,” he said, adding, “We have not chosen to do that.”

Obama, who left office in 2017, said striking a balance between freedom of speech and regulation was critical.

He argued that world leaders needed to develop mechanisms and institutions that would encourage rigorous debate and disagreement while helping people establish basic facts.

“If I had a blame pie for why politics is so polarised and why we’re seeing a rise of populism in many places, it’s because of that information that is going into our brains every day,” he said.

Obama said the situation was discouraging young people and described the information people consumed daily as an unhealthy diet for the brain.

He also expressed concern that artificial intelligence could worsen the problem by making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood, potentially undermining democracy.

Obama says people forget lessons from the past

Speaking about hope, Obama was asked whether he still believed in a phrase attributed to Martin Luther King Jr., which he had quoted years earlier, about the moral universe bending towards justice.

He said he stood by the quote, describing hope as an active, almost theological choice that people must make.

“It is a decision about how do we face and embrace this finite amount of time we have on the planet,” he said.

Obama told the audience that believing change was possible was healthier, adding that although efforts did not always succeed, things improved over time.

“I think when we act on that basis, it doesn’t always work out, but over time things do get better,” he said.

He also warned that humanity appeared to follow a cycle in which people forgot lessons from the past and began taking progress for granted.

Obama said people sometimes dismissed hateful political rhetoric targeting immigrants, Jews, Black people and gay people as mere talk or humour, forgetting the consequences such language could produce.

He warned that such attitudes could lead to declining tolerance and greater division in society.

Despite these concerns, Obama said the world would continue to face major challenges but expressed confidence that people could work towards a better future.

He maintained that efforts to improve the world remained worth fighting for.

Credit: BBC