If you want to lose any remaining faith in the idea of lively, good-faith civil discourse, just watch the latest episode of Jubilee’s YouTube series Surrounded. This time, it was former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan in the hot seat — following past guests such as Alex O’Connor, Charlie Kirk, Jordan Peterson, and Sam Seder — debating 20 “far-Right conservatives”.

Defending propositions including “Donald Trump is pro-crime” and “immigrants, overall, are good for America,” Hasan debated opponents who all took turns pushing back. It didn’t take long for viral moments to emerge: a known groyper proudly calling himself a fascist to scattered applause, and another telling Hasan — after he mentioned being an immigrant — to “get the hell out.”

These clips are ragebait par excellence. Clearly, there is a market for this type of content. There is even a certain genius by the creators in taking online culture-war debates and transferring them into an offline setting where both sides can duke it out in person. But in its realisation, it demonstrates the ongoing degeneration of civil discourse into hollow spectacle and bottom-of-the-barrel “entertainment”.

With any form of public debating, there will always be an element of entertainment and showmanship. It’s unavoidable and there’s nothing wrong with it, especially when done well. Style and substance don’t need to be mutually exclusive. But Jubilee’s Surrounded is a warped caricature of modern debate. It’s more of a game show than a forum for political dialogue, where the point is to splice together short clips that allow supporters of either side to think: Wow, look how stupid the other side is. Instead of trying to get to the meat of an issue, or illuminate something through dialectic, it incentivises attention-seeking and virality.

The format suits professional debaters like Hasan and Kirk, who have their rehearsed talking points locked and loaded, ready to deploy them when needed. But being adept at verbal sparring doesn’t equate to being a virtuoso at arguing over ideas. It’s one thing to run rings around semi-literate fascists or ignorant “woke libs”. It’s another to discuss nuanced ideas and issues with interesting and thoughtful interlocutors who can challenge the proponent.

Of course, public debate resembling a circus isn’t recent nor exclusive to social media channels like Jubilee. Piers Morgan’s Uncensored is a clear example of a format that does well to generate viral clips of talking heads who try to demolish each other, especially on culture-war topics and Israel-Palestine. Viewers won’t be illuminated about anything, but isn’t it fun seeing Norman Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz engage in a verbal boxing match?

One only needs to look at Bill Maher’s Real Time and old Saturday Night Live parodies of political panel shows such as The McLaughlin Group and later The View, where a lot of noise was made but very little of value actually said, to see that this sort of television has a long history. But in a digital age, shows like Jubilee’s Surrounded can make it a lot worse.

William F. Buckley’s Firing Line offers a striking contrast — the likes of which simply doesn’t exist today. The leading intellectuals and commentators of the day, from both Left and Right (including radical voices), would engage in what Buckley called “a lively discussion” involving both interview and debate. Watching old episodes, it’s easy to notice a much more sincere intellectual curiosity and commitment to Socratic dialectic, with often adversarial discussions proving highly stimulating.

In our digital age of short clips and mass polarisation, a reboot of Buckley’s “lively discussion” is hard to imagine. Instead we’re left with shows like Surrounded, a spectacle where performance eclipses understanding. This is not a revival of discourse but its distortion.

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Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.

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