This evening, Britain’s most perceptive and devastating political programme returns to our screens. It isn’t Question Time or Newsnight. It isn’t even a gritty BBC2 drama. It’s a reality TV programme which originated in the Netherlands. It’s The Traitors.
The concept is simple. A bunch of strangers are locked away together in a castle. Some of them are Traitors, who murder one of the others every night. Some are Faithful, who have the chance to vote for who they think is a Traitor every evening, at the round table. Whoever is left standing at the end takes home the prize money. And within this simple concept, all of human behaviour is contained.
Some time ago, my obsession with this programme stopped being healthy and became extreme. Family members considered an intervention. Close friends looked down awkwardly at their beer glass as I tried to initiate another conversation about it.
You know you’ve a problem when the British series isn’t enough for you and you go searching for international versions to sate your hunger. The American version is rubbish, but the Australian version, which is available on BBC iPlayer, ended up being even more gripping than the UK one. I’ve watched hours and hours of this stuff and spent more time than is strictly healthy fixating on its political implications.
In the opening stages, the show has nothing to do with finding Traitors. It is about conformity. You will see this – it’s pretty much guaranteed – over the course of the opening episodes.
Anyone who is remotely unusual – perhaps they’re nervous, or introverted, or they struggle with the demonstrative theatricality required on reality television – is quickly accused of being a Traitor. They don’t quite act right. They don’t feel right. This is reliably interpreted as untrustworthiness. We all say that we like people to be individual and authentic. But in truth, we’re suspicious of those who don’t fit in.
In these moments, the group reacts like a flock of birds. They stop thinking independently and move as a single hive mind, targeting the unusual. You might as well be sitting in the French National Convention in 1793. The kind of behaviour we’re talking about hasn’t remotely changed since then. The outsider is attacked. And everyone else tries to stay tucked away in the group, so they won’t be noticed.
In the later stages, the focus on eccentricity lessens, but it’s still not really about finding Traitors. The purpose of the game in the second half is to be popular. The more popular you are, the less likely people are to turn against you during the vote, and the more likely they are to protect you. Succeeding is not really about lying well, or being perceptive. It is about building alliances.
This lesson is not restricted to the game. It happens all around us. Social and institutional rules are not followed on an equal basis. They depend on someone’s level of popularity. Why is Donald Trump able to get away with an attempted overthrow of American democracy while his opponents are treated as criminals because of email protocol? Because of his popularity with his supporters.
Why is Nigel Farage forgiven for stoking far-right riots last summer while Ed Miliband loses an election for eating a sandwich badly? Because of his popularity with the press and party members. Why do some prime ministers stay in position, despite failing, while others are booted out? Because they have maintained distinct groups of loyalists. In politics, as in The Traitors, establishing alliances is the core tectonic activity which dictates the outcome of surface-level events.
The Traitors is a modern day witch trial – and I love it
Read MoreTraitors typically do well in the show. In most countries, in most seasons, they win. And the reason for that is quite simple. It is because it is surprisingly easy to lie. And people who are being lied to are surprisingly bad at spotting it.
Watch the programme carefully. You will see the same technique over and over again. A Traitor is suddenly in the spotlight at the round table. All eyes are on them. They have to explain themselves. And then, instead of doing so, they simply turn the spotlight on someone else. They do not answer questions, they just raise them in a different direction. This technique works nearly every time. It is quite hard to prove your honesty. But it is astonishingly easy to encourage people’s suspicions in an unrelated area.
There’s a lesson here in how to spot political lies. The Traitors teaches us to look out for those who whip up the crowd against outsiders, who use their popularity to escape accusations of deception, and who respond to scrutiny by raising unrelated suspicions about others.
By some weird chance, its simple format works as a kind of social petri dish. Pay careful attention. There’s a lot to learn. If we had any sense, we’d be showing it to school children in their politics class.
Now, can someone please stop me watching the New Zealand version? This has gone too far.
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