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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. 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.

Spinoza lived in a time of revolutions, religious sectarianism and epidemics, which profoundly shaped his thought (Balibar, 2008). Spinoza recognised the fundamental role of powerful emotions in politics, which he referred to as the ‘passionate affects’. ‘Affects’ are changes that increase or decrease the activity of the body and mind (Spinoza, 1996, pp. 70–71). Active affects strengthen our ability to act in the world. They arise from adequate ideas based on rational understanding – for instance, the idea that helping others fosters collective wellbeing is an adequate idea because it arises from reason rather than fleeting emotions. Adequate ideas are common to all because they arise from the shared nature of our minds and bodies.

Passive affects, the ‘passions’, result from external causes that diminish our power of acting –as witnessed, for example, in the UK’s 2024 summer race riots where outpourings of hate generated fear and threatened social cohesion. Central to the argument Spinoza put forward in his Ethics (Spinoza, 1996) is the view that destructive passions are irrational and self-defeating because they undermine our relationships and communities. The rational ethical life is based on co-operation, sociability and relationality, which in turn increases our capacity to enjoy the good life which flows from ‘mutual friendship and common society’ (Spinoza, 1996, p. 167). From a Spinozist perspective, educational strategy that increases young people’s power of acting and their rational capacities are ethical and are fundamental to mental health and social cohesion.

‘From a Spinozist perspective, educational strategy that increases young people’s power of acting and their rational capacities are ethical and are fundamental to mental health and social cohesion.’

Across 2017–19 I led a project on (Farrell et al., 2020), which investigated young people’s views of life in post-Brexit Britain. Sixty-one young people from diverse urban secondary schools and youth groups took part in the project, participating in interfaith workshops, group interviews and roundtable discussions focusing on their hopes for the future. The group interviews revealed experiences of an emboldened racism endured by those participants minoritised by race and religion. Participants reported being ‘told to go back home’ and gave accounts of scarf (hijab) pulling and name calling by passers-by. However, the interviews revealed another dimension with significant implications for education practice. The strongest themes to emerge from the project were a desire for intercultural mixing, knowledge of each other’s cultures, and understanding of the racial dynamics at work in the post-Brexit environment, as the following extracts demonstrate.

Commenting on Brexit-related religious discrimination, Amin argued that:

‘It just goes back to that religious illiteracy where people, if they find something alien and they don’t know anything then they kind of see it as some form of threat, but obviously that’s because they don’t know about it.’

In her reflections on an interfaith workshop, Rachel commented:

‘People tend to focus on what isn’t the same, so people focus on the different parts, but it’s like the more you realise like you have more in common, the less parts there are that are different.’

Tom adds:

‘What a Christian would believe and what a Muslim would believe … it’s like they all follow the same values of compassion, equality, you know like helping others.’

Educational implications

At the time of writing, threats to young people’s psychological and emotional security posed by culture wars on race, gender, eco-anxiety and military conflicts are acute. However, findings from the Britishness and Identity project offer a model for a rational educational community which reflect Spinozist values of co-operation and relationality capable of countering the contagious unreason that spreads through popular imagery and opinion (Farrell, 2025). By providing spaces for rational dialogue and intercultural encounter, educational projects which adopt a Spinozist orientation can be harnessed to tackle the passive affects produced by the crises of the present and those to come.

References

Balibar, E. (2008). Spinoza and politics. Verso.

Farrell, F. (2025). ‘That politics thing’: Young people’s narratives of connection and collaboration in the age of Brexit. Cambridge Journal of Education. Advance online publication.

Farrell, F., Lander, V., & Shaw, S. (2020). Britishness, identity and belonging. Edge Hill University.

Sayer, D. (2017). White riot: Brexit, Trump, and post-factual politics. Journal of Historical Sociology, 30(1), 92–106.

Spinoza, B. (1996). Ethics. Penguin.