John Stoehr has a nice piece about what he calls the “malicious nihilism” of Trump supporting media and pundits. They’ve stopped trying to argue that Trump is not racist, since he explicitly stokes racism, but, they’re saying, since Biden is a Democrat, and Democrats used to be the party of racists, then Biden is racist too: “Fine, the GOP partisans now say, Trump is a racist. The Democrats are just as bad, though. May as well vote for the Republican.”
It’s a weirdly common way of arguing about politics, though, and even interpersonal issues. There was a narrative about the Civil War for a long time which was that “both sides were just as bad,” and it was the mutual extremism about the issue of slavery that led to war.[1] The “mutual extremism” was this same bad math. There was one President between John Adams and Abraham Lincoln who didn’t own slaves (JQ Adams), Congress was so proslavery that the House and Senate both banned criticism of slavery for years (the gag rules), the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans could never be citizens. Criticism of slavery in slaver states could be punished by hanging; the Fugitive Slave Laws enabled slavers to kidnap African Americans in “free” states. Pro-slavery rhetoric regularly called for race war should abolition happen, and began calling for secession to protect slavery in the 1820s. Commitment to slavery was so dominant in slaver states that they went to war against the US.
There were pro-slavery Presidents; there was no abolitionist President (JQAdams would, after his presidency, become anti-slavery, but not clearly abolitionist). No state had a death penalty for advocating slavery; there was no gag rule for advocating slavery; abolitionists didn’t advocate civil war or race war; no one could go into a slaver state and declare an African American to be free and face the same low bar that kidnappers in the “free” states faced.
They weren’t both “just as bad” because they didn’t equally advocate violence, they weren’t equally powerful, advocating civil war was commonplace on only one side, the laws and practices they advocated weren’t equally extreme.
I wrote a book about proslavery rhetoric, and when I would make this point—“both sides” weren’t “just as bad”—neo-Confederates would say, “What about John Brown?” That’s the bad math. If, on one side, advocating and engaging in violence is commonplace, then one example on the other side doesn’t mean they’re both just as bad. You can even bring in Bloody Kansas and not get the amount of violence (and advocacy of violence) commonplace in supporting slavery to be anything close to the violence on the part of critics of slavery.
Here is my crank theory about why people reason that way. A lot of people really don’t (perhaps can’t) think in terms of degrees. They think in terms of categories (this is not the crank theory party—it’s a fairly common observation). Thus, you’re racist or not, certain or clueless, proud or ashamed; something is good or bad, right or wrong, correct or incorrect; you’re in-group or out-group, loyal or disloyal. They don’t think about degrees of racism, certainty, pride, goodness, loyalty, and so on.
There’s a funny paradox. Because they don’t think in terms of degrees (or mixtures—something might be loyal in some ways and disloyal in others), they believe that you either have a rigid, black/white ethical system, or you’re what they call a “moral relativist.” They actually mean “nihilist.” So, they hear “right v. wrong might be a question of degrees rather than absolutes” as saying there is no difference between right and wrong—one of their crucial binaries is “rigid ethical system of categories or nihilism.” That binary imbues those other binaries with ethical value—being rigid about loyalty v. disloyalty seems to be part of being a “good” person.
Because people like this think in terms of putting things in a box—something goes in the box of good or bad, racist or not racist, loyal or disloyal, then, if they can find a single racist thing related to Biden, he and Trump are in the same box. And, therefore, that box can be ignored when it comes to comparing them, since they’re both in it.
And this brings us back to Stoehr’s point. The attachment to rigidity, the tendency to think in terms of absolutes and not degrees makes these people actually incapable of ethical decision-making. Since wildly different actions are thrown into the box of “bad” or “racist,” people who reason this way can’t tell right from wrong. They can end up allowing, tolerating, encouraging, or even actively supporting wildly unethical actions because of their inability to think in nuanced ways about ethics. It’s moral nihilism.
[1] There weren’t only two sides, so the claim that “both sides” were anything is nonsensical. There were, at least, six sides. Pro-slavery/pro-secession, pro-slavery/anti-secession, anti-slavery/pro-colonization, anti-slavery/pro-full citizenship, anti-anti-slavery, anti-pro-slavery.
image from https://middleburgeccentric.com/2016/10/editorial-the-train-wreck-red/
For some time, we’ve been in a world in which far too much media (and far too many political figures) defenestrate public deliberation in favor of treating every policy decision as a war of extermination between two identities.[1] When a culture moves there, it’s inevitable that some group engages in what might be called “pre-emptive self-defense.” We’re there. It’s a weird argument, and profoundly damaging, but hard to explain.
The first time I ran across the proslavery argument, “We must keep African Americans enslaved and oppressed, because, if they had power, they would treat us as badly as we are treating them,” I thought it was really weird. I’ve since come to understand that it isn’t weird in the sense of being unusual. But it’s weird in the sense of being uncanny—it’s in the uncanny valley of argumentation in two ways. First, it’s turning the Christian value of doing unto as others as you would have them do unto you into a justification of vengeance: do unto them as they have done unto you, (which is a pretty clear perversion of what Jesus meant). Except, just to make it weirder, it isn’t what they have done unto you, but what they might do in an alternate reality. And that alternate reality requires that they are as violent and vindictive as you.
The argument is something like, “Yes, I am treating other people as I would not want to be treated, and as they have not treated me, but it’s justified because it’s how I imagine they would treat me in a narrative that also is purely imagined.”
This weird line of argument turns up a lot in arguments for starting wars. Obviously, wars start because some group attacks another; someone is the aggressor. So, when you think about pro-war rhetoric, you’d imagine that the side that is the aggressor would justify that aggression. They don’t. Instead, they present themselves as engaging in self-defense. They claim that their aggression isn’t really aggression, but self-defense because the other nation(s) will inevitably attack them. It’s self-defense against something that hasn’t happened (and might never). Pre-emptive self-defense.
For instance, Hitler invaded Poland because he intended to exterminate it as a political entity, exterminate most of its population, use it as a launching spot for a war of extermination against the USSR, and then make it (and other areas) a kind of Rhodesia of Europe, with “Aryans” comfortably watching “non-Aryans” act as serfs. But that isn’t how he justified it in his public rhetoric. In his September 1, 1939 speech announcing an invasion that had already started, he said the invasion was an act forced on him, that he had engaged in superhuman efforts to maintain peace, but Poland was preparing for war. Invading Poland was self-defense because Poland was intending to invade Germany, and had already fired shots (they hadn’t). [2] The various wars against the indigenous peoples of what is now the United States, even when they openly involved massacres, were rhetorically justified as self-defense because the indigenous peoples were, so the argument went, essentially hostile to “American” expansion, and therefore an existential threat.
In other words, pre-emptive self-defense says, we are going to invade this other nation while claiming that it isn’t an invasion but self-defense (although we’re the invaders) because they were going to be invaders or would be invaders if they could. That’s nonsense. That’s saying I’m justified in hitting you because I think that, were I in your situation, I would hit me.
It’s such an unintelligible defense that it isn’t even possible to put it into writing without ending up in some kind of grammatical moebius strip. Yet it’s obviously persuasive, so the interesting question is: how does that rhetoric work?
As I’ve often said, I teach and write about train wrecks in public deliberation, what are sometimes called “pathologies of public deliberation.” While there is a lot of interesting and important disagreement about specifics regarding the processes, on the whole, there’s a surprising amount of agreement among scholars of cognitive psychology, political science, communication, history of rhetoric, military history, social psychology, history, and several other fields about some generalizations we can make about what ways of reasoning lead people to unjust, unwise, and untimely decisions. And, basically, that agreement is that if the issues are high-stakes and the policy decisions will have long-term consequences, then relying on cognitive biases will fuck you up good. And not just you, but everyone around you, for a long time.
As it happens, deciding about whether to go to war, how to conduct a war, and whether to negotiate an end to a war are decisions that activate all the anti-deliberative cognitive biases. (Daniel Kahneman has a nice article explaining how some cognitive biases are pro-war.) So, there’s an interesting paradox: cognitive biases interfere with effective decision-making, arguments about whether to go to war (and how to conduct it) have the highest stakes, and those decisions are the most likely to trigger the cognitive biases. We reason the worst when we need to reason the best.
And what I’m saying is that we bring in that bad reasoning to every policy decision when we make everything a war. When people declare that a political disagreement is a state of war (the war on terror, war on Christmas, war on drugs, culture war, war on poverty), they are (often deliberately) triggering the cognitive biases associated with war. The most important of those is that our sense of identification with the in-group strengthens, and our tolerance for in-group dissent decreases. Declaring something a war is a deliberate strategy to reduce policy deliberation. It is deliberately anti-deliberative.
And one of the anti-deliberative strategies we bring in is pre-emptive self-defense. In war, that strategy consists of months of accusing the intended victim (the country that will be invaded) of intending to invade. Then, once the public is convinced that the country presents an existential threat, invasion can look like self-defense. In politics, that strategy consists of spending months or years telling a political base that “the other side” intends an act of war, a complete violation of the rule of law, extraordinary breaches of normal political practices (or claims they already have), then “us” engaging in those practices–even if we are actually the aggressor–looks like self-defense. Pre-emptively. Thus, pro-slavery rhetors insisted that the abolitionists intended to use Federal troops to force abolition on slaver states, pro-internment rhetors argued that Japanese Americans intended to engage in sabotage (Earl Warren said that there had been no sabotage was the strongest proof that sabotage was intended).
I think we’re there with the pro-Trump demagoguery about “voter fraud” (including absentee ballots, the same kind that Trump used–there is no difference between “absentee” and “mail-in” ballots)–it’s setting up a situation in which pro-Trump aggression regarding voting will feel like pre-emptive self-defense.
I asked earlier why it works, and there are a lot of reasons. Some of them have to do with what Kahneman and his co-author said about cognitive biases that favor hawkish foreign policy:
“Several well-known laboratory demonstrations have examined the way people assess their adversary’s intelligence, willingness to negotiate, and hostility, as well as the way they view their own position. The results are sobering. Even when people are aware of the context and possible constraints on another party’s behavior, they often do not factor it in when assessing the other side’s motives. Yet, people still assume that outside observers grasp the constraints on their own behavior.”
The “fundamental attribution error” is that we attribute the behavior of others to internal motivation, but for ourselves we use a mix of internal (for good behavior) and external (for bad behavior) explanations. So, if an out-group member kicks a puppy, we attribute the action to their villainy and aggression; if they pet a puppy, we attribute the action to their wanting to appear good. In both cases, we’re saying that they are essentially bad, and all of their behavior has to be understood through that filter. If we kick a puppy, the act was the consequence of external factors (we didn’t see it, it got in our way); but petting the puppy was something that shows our internal state. In a state of war, even a rhetorical war, we interpret the current and future behavior of the enemy through the lens of their being essentially nefarious.
And we don’t doubt our interpretation of their intentions because of the bias of “asymmetric insight.” We believe that we are complicated and nuanced, but we have perfect insight into the motives and internal processes of others, especially people we believe below us. Since we tend to look down on “the enemy,” we will not only attribute motives to them, but believe that we are infallible in our projection of motives.
And it is projection. I’m not sure whether the metaphor behind “projection” makes sense to a lot of people now, since they might never have seen a projector. A projector took a slide or movie, and projected the image onto a screen. We tend to project onto the Other (an enemy) aspects of ourselves about which we are uncomfortable. If there is someone we want to harm, then projecting onto them our feelings of aggression helps us resolve any guilt we might feel about our aggression.
These three cognitive processes combine to mean that, quite sincerely, if I intend to exterminate you (or your political group, or your political power), I can feel justified in that extermination because I can persuade myself that you intend to exterminate me, since that’s what I intend to do to you.
Pre-emptive self-defense rationalizes my violence on the weird grounds that I intend to exterminate you and so you must desire to exterminate me. Therefore, all norms of law, constitutionality, Christian ethics are off the table, and I am justified in anything I do. It’s a dangerous argument. It’s an argument that justifies an invasion.
[1] And, no, “both sides” are not equally guilty of it. For one thing, there aren’t two sides. On which “side” is a voter who believes that Black Lives Matter, homosexuality is a sin, gay marriage should be illegal, we need a strong social safety net and should increase taxes to pay for it, abortion should be outlawed, the police should be demilitarized and completely changed? What about someone who believes there shouldn’t be any laws prohibiting any sexual practices or drug use, there shouldn’t be a social safety net, taxes should be greatly reduced, abortion should be legal, we shouldn’t intervene in any foreign wars? Those are positions held by important constituencies (in the first case many Black churches, and in the second Libertarians). Some environmentalists are liberals, some social democrats, some Republican, some racist, some Libertarian, some Third way neoliberal. The false mapping of our political world into two sides makes reporting easier and more profitable, and it enables demagoguery.
In addition, not all media engage in demagoguery to the same degree. Bloomberg, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Nation, New York Times, Reason, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post are all media that sometimes dip a toe into demagoguery, but rarely. Meanwhile, The Blaze, DailyKos, Fox, Jacobin, Limbaugh, Maddow, Savage, WND and pretty much every group named by SPLC are all demagoguery all the time.
WALLACE: But, sir, we have the seventh highest mortality rate in the world. Our mortality rate is higher than Brazil, it’s higher than Russia and the European Union has us on a travel ban.
[….]
TRUMP: Kayleigh’s right here. I heard we have one of the lowest, maybe the lowest mortality rate anywhere in the world.
TRUMP: Do you have the numbers, please? Because I heard we had the best mortality rate.
WALLACE VOICE OVER: The White House went with this chart from the European CDC which shows Italy and Spain doing worse. But countries like Brazil and South Korea doing better. Other countries doing better like Russia aren’t included in the White House chart.
[….]
TRUMP: [About the prediction that covid would go away in summer.] I don’t know and I don’t think he knows. I don’t think anybody knows with this. This is a very tricky deal. Everybody thought this summer it would go away and it would come back in the fall. Well, when the summer came, they used to say the heat — the heat was good for it and it really knocks it out, remember? And then it might come back in the fall. So they got that one wrong.
[March 16, 2020, Trump said it would go away. He wasn’t alone in making that prediction, but it was a minority opinion, as covid was thriving in hot places even then. ]
[…]
TRUMP: [Fauci’s} a little bit of an alarmist. That’s OK. A little bit of an alarmist.
[….]
TRUMP: I’ll be right eventually. I will be right eventually. You know I said, “It’s going to disappear.” I’ll say it again.
WALLACE: But does that – does that discredit you?
TRUMP: It’s going to disappear and I’ll be right. I don’t think so.
WALLACE: Right.
TRUMP: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. You know why? Because I’ve been right probably more than anybody else.
[….]
TRUMP: Chris, let the schools open. Do you ever see the statistics on young people below the age of 18? The state of New Jersey had thousands of deaths.
Of all of these thousands, one person below the age of 18 – in the entire state – one person and that was a person that had, I believe he said diabetes.
One person below the age of 18 died in the state of New Jersey during all of this – you know, they had a hard time. And they’re doing very well now, so that’s it.
[So, notice that, not only is unconcerned about staff, but he doesn’t seem to understand the concept of the children infecting others, let alone the issues related to long-term damage from the disease.]
[….]
TRUMP: And Biden wants to defund the police.
WALLACE: No he, sir, he does not.
TRUMP: Look. He signed a charter with Bernie Sanders; I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate. Did you read the charter that he agreed to with…
WALLACE: It says nothing about defunding the police.
TRUMP: Oh really? It says abolish, it says — let’s go. Get me the charter, please.
WALLACE: All right.
TRUMP: Chris, you’ve got to start studying for these.
WALLACE: He says defund the police?
TRUMP: He says defund the police. They talk about abolishing the police.
[It doesn’t.]
[….]
TRUMP: Because I think that Fort Bragg, Fort Robert E. Lee, all of these forts that have been named that way for a long time, decades and decades…
WALLACE: But the military says they’re for this.
TRUMP: …excuse me, excuse me. I don’t care what the military says. I do – I’m supposed to make the decision.
[….]
WALLACE: You said our children are taught in school to hate our country. Where do you see that?
TRUMP: I just look at – I look at school. I watch, I read, look at the stuff. Now they want to change — 1492, Columbus discovered America. You know, we grew up, you grew up, we all did, that’s what we learned. Now they want to make it the 1619 project. Where did that come from? What does it represent? I don’t even know, so.
WALLACE: It’s slavery.
TRUMP: That’s what they’re saying, but they don’t even know.
[…]
TRUMP: Biden can’t put two sentences together.
[….]
TRUMP: I called Michigan, I want to have a big rally in Michigan. Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Michigan? Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Minnesota? Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Nevada? We’re not allowed to have rallies.
WALLACE: Well, some people would say it’s a health…
TRUMP: In these Democrat-run states…
WALLACE: But, wait a minute, some people would that it’s a health risk, sir.
TRUMP: Some people would say fine
WALLACE: I mean we had some issues after Tulsa.
TRUMP: But I would guarantee if everything was gone 100 percent, they still wouldn’t allow it. They’re not allowing me to do it. So they’re not — they’re not allowing me to have rallies.
[….]
[About the test of his cognitive abilities—Wallace says it’s an easy test]
TRUMP: It’s all misrepresentation. Because, yes, the first few questions are easy, but I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. I’ll bet you couldn’t, they get very hard, the last five questions.
WALLACE: Well, one of them was count back from 100 by seven.
TRUMP: Let me tell you…
WALLACE: Ninety-three.
TRUMP: … you couldn’t answer — you couldn’t answer many of the questions.
WALLACE: Ok, what’s the question?
TRUMP: I’ll get you the test, I’d like to give it. I’ll guarantee you that Joe Biden could not answer those questions.
WALLACE: OK.
TRUMP: OK. And I answered all 35 questions correctly.
[On healthcare]
TRUMP: Pre-existing conditions will always be taken care of by me and Republicans, 100 percent.
WALLACE: But you’ve been in office three and a half years, you don’t have a plan.
TRUMP: Well, we haven’t had. Excuse me. You heard me yesterday. We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do. So we’re going to solve — we’re going to sign an immigration plan, a health care plan, and various other plans. And nobody will have done what I’m doing in the next four weeks. The Supreme Court gave the president of the United States powers that nobody thought the president had, by approving, by doing what they did — their decision on DACA. And DACA’s going to be taken care of also. But we’re getting rid of it because we’re going to replace it with something much better. What we got rid of already, which was most of Obamacare, the individual mandate. And that I’ve already won on. And we won also on the Supreme Court. But the decision by the Supreme Court on DACA allows me to do things on immigration, on health care, on other things that we’ve never done before. And you’re going to find it to be a very exciting two weeks.
Mussolini’s headquarters just before an important vote
I often say that the first step in demagoguery is the reduction of politics to identity. And I’m often understood to be making an argument that is very different from what I’m trying to say. It’s important to understand that I’m talking about in-groups and out-groups from within social group theory. So, the “in-group” is not the “group in power.” It’s the group someone is in.
If you meet a new person, and ask them to describe themselves, they’ll typically do it by listing whatever happens to seem to be the most relevant social groups they’re in (their “in-groups”): Christian, Irish-American, Texan, teacher. If I were at a conference of teachers, it would be weird for me to say that I’m a teacher, since everyone there is (it isn’t information anyone needs), and that I am Irish-American would only be irrelevant. I’d list the in-groups most salient for that setting.
We all have a lot of in-groups; our membership in those groups is a source of pride. We also tend to have at least some out-groups. Out-groups are groups against which we define ourselves—we are proud that we aren’t in them. They can get pretty specific. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that my kind of Lutheran (ELCA) often takes pride in not being that kind of Lutheran (e.g., Missouri or Wisconsin synod); college rivalries are in-/out-group; fans of a band often take pride in not being the losers who are fans of that band (or kind of music).
There are two ways I’m often misunderstood when I say that the first step in demagoguery is the reduction of politics to in-group/out-group. The first is that, since I’m saying that social groups are socially and rhetorically constructed, people think I’m saying that social groups have no material reality, and that would be a stupid thing to say. Being a cancer survivor is a very real and material identity. Even categories that are purely socially constructed with no basis in biology (the notion of “Aryans” v. Central or Eastern Europeans) had the very real and material consequences of Hitler’s serial genocides. I’m saying that there aren’t necessary and inevitable connections among social group, material conditions, and how the groups are constructed. What it means to be a “cancer survivor” varies from one culture to another (whether it’s a point of pride or shame, for instance)—that real and material identity doesn’t necessarily or inevitably lead to a specific social group or political agenda.
Second, I’m often understood to be arguing for some Habermasian/Rawlsian identity-free world of policy argumentation in which arguments (and not people), like autonomous mobiles in space, engage with one another. That kind of argumentation is neither possible nor rational.
Of course our identity is relevant to our argument; it’s one of many things we should consider. For instance, that someone is a cyclist means that they can give useful information about what feel like the safest places to ride a bike where they live. That’s relevant information because they’re a cyclist. My opinion about what are the safest places to ride is not relevant because I’m not a cyclist. Unless I’m a traffic engineer who has a stack of studies about accidents in the city. The traffic engineer (who may or may not be a cyclist) and the cyclist have views that should be considered. Neither one is necessarily right.
Thinking about politics in terms of social groups become toxic when we think those groups are discrete (you’re either in one group or another) ontologically grounded categories (meaning that we think we know everything we need to know about an individual when we categorize them into a social group). That notion that, once I’ve put you into a social group I know everything I need to know about your motives, beliefs, politics, and moral worth (you’re a teacher, so you’re a liberal elitist who supports Biden because he’ll increase teacher salaries and you’re greedy). You might really be a cancer survivor, teacher, cyclist, or traffic engineer, but once I know your membership in any of those groups, I don’t immediately know everything about you.
Identity politics is healthy when it is about acknowledging that we have a system that privileges some social groups over others, that some social groups might be possible to ignore (a person could have a long and happy life without ever understanding the distinction between Missouri and Wisconsin Synod Lutherans) but that some are so interwoven into community identity and political rhetoric you can’t not see them (such as “color” in the US), that there are real material conditions of being identified as belonging to some groups versus others, that claims about groups are generalizations that may or may not apply to specific individuals because of overlapping group membership, that overlapping group identities mean that membership in a specific group that guarantee identical experiences (intersectionality).
Those approaches aren’t ways of thinking about identity and its relationship to politics that contribute to demagoguery.
While it’s probably cognitively impossible not to be strongly influenced by notions of in-group, not everyone does so in the same way. In-group identification seems to require some notion of out-groups (or at least non-in-groups). We’re only aware of the boundaries of the in-group (the line that marks “in” so to speak) if there are boundaries, and that means at least the possibility of being outside those boundaries. There must be non-in-group members for there to be an in-group. There also must be groups of people who are outside those boundaries—out-groups. We tend to define ourselves by not being out-group.
What varies is how much hostility we feel toward non-in-group members, whether we group them all as one out-group, and whether we narrate ourselves as in a zero-sum battle. I might take pride in being ELCA and believe that that group has better theology than Missouri Synod, but that pride in my in-group doesn’t require that I feel threatened by members of the Missouri Synod; it doesn’t mean I believe that it is bad for me if something good happens to them, or that it is good for me if something bad happens to them (zero-sum).
When we think in terms of zero-sum, we fail to see ways that we might have shared interests, values, or goals with an out-group or some of its members. We will settle for policies that hurt us, as long as they hurt the out-group; we deny goods to the out-group, even if their getting those goods might benefit us.
So, when I say that we shouldn’t reduce politics to questions of identity, I don’t mean that consideration of identity is always a reduction, but it is a reduction when we assume that there are only two identities, that they are internally homogeneous, and they are inevitably in a zero-sum relationship with each other.
The first thing to explain is that “neoliberalism” is not a lefty political/economic ideology. It’s conservative (I’ll explain why it has the word “liberal” in it below). Reagan was the first neoliberal President, and he did the most to reshape American policy as neoliberalist. Clinton, Obama, HRC, and Biden are not and were not socialists. They are “third way neoliberals.”
In the late 18th and early 19th century, a political ideology arose that is often called “liberalism.” [1] The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas defines “liberalism:” “It is widely agreed that fundamental to liberalism is a concern to protect and promote individual liberty. This means that individuals can decide for themselves what to do or believe with respect to particular areas of human activity such as religion or economics. The contrast is with a society in which the society decides what the individual is to do or believe. In those areas of a society in which individual liberty prevails, social outcomes will be the result of a myriad of individual decisions taken by individuals for themselves or in voluntary cooperation with some others.” [2]
It’s useful to distinguish between political and economic liberalism—a point that will take a while to explain.
It’s paradoxical, but important, to understand that all the major political parties and movements in the US endorse political liberalism, or claim to. The disagreement is how to honor individualism, but notice that, in the major policy disagreements, everyone argues from within a frame of promoting individual freedom (gun control is about the freedom to carry a gun or the freedom to speak freely without worrying about shot, the freedom to be LGBTQ+ or the freedom to condemn them).
In the nineteenth century, economic liberalism advocated no governmental intervention in the “free market,” saying that the “free market” would better determine prices, wages, and working conditions. In Britain, this led to the potato famine among other catastrophes. In the US, it led to a cycle of booms and busts, outrageous working conditions, and environmental degradation that tanked the economy (I have to meet a person who advocates this kind of liberalism who knows much of anything about the 19th century economic cycles, working conditions, or the dust bowl). Because liberalism was such a disaster—worldwide—as was shown in 1929, a lot of people started considering other options. There were, loosely, four options that countries chose.
In the early twentieth century, a lot of people argued that liberalism as a political philosophy could be separated from liberalism as an economic philosophy (in other words, economic and political liberalism aren’t necessarily connected). But many people argued (and still do) that the commitment to a political practice (authoritarianism, democracy, monarchy) can’t be separated from an economic practice (mercantilism, autarky, capitalism, and so on). Stalinists and fascists (who have a lot in common, rhetorically) endorsed that (false) notion that political and economic commitment are the same, and insis(ed)t that, if you choose this economic system, you are necessarily choosing that political system.[3] They were wrong, and they’re still wrong, but that’s a different post. [4]
In the 19th and early 20th century, there were a lot of kinds of socialism. That’s why Communist Manifesto spends about a third of the book arguing with other socialists about why they should be their kind of socialist. That’s also why various activists who were conservative in terms of things like sexuality but radical in terms of economic issues sometimes called themselves socialist (such as Dorothy Day), and were not endorsing Stalinism.
In the early twentieth century, a lot of people believed that “individuals can decide for themselves what to do or believe with respect to particular areas of human activity such as religion,” but the government can “intervene” in regard to issues like food safety, accuracy in advertising, fraud, consciously fatal work conditions, exploitative contracts, deliberate manipulations of the market, and so on.
In other countries, this was called democratic socialism, but FDR (if I have my history correct) called it liberalism. Supposedly, he thought that people would reject the “socialism” term, and his political agenda was liberal (but his economic one wasn’t). And he’s right. I can’t even begin to estimate the number of people who say, “SOCIALISM ALWAYS ENDS IN DISASTER” (they do like them some caps lock) when someone wants to reject economic “liberalism.” It simply isn’t true that rejecting economic liberalism ends in disaster, if people maintain political liberalism. On the contrary, if people try to maintain economic liberalism at the expense of political liberalism, disaster ensues.
A society with political, but not economic, liberalism is one that doesn’t require you to have particular religious, ideological, sexual, or even political ideologies, as long as it’s all consenting adults, and there’s no force involved. The basic premise of liberalism is that your right to swing your fist stops at my face, and so a society with political liberalism is always arguing about that point of contact.
Economic liberalism has a different problem. One of the problems is empirical. The contradiction at the heart of economic liberalism is that there is force involved—no market is free. The coercion might be the government coercing businesses into behaving certain ways, businesses coercing each other, businesses coercing employees, employees coercing business. Paradoxically, the only way to maintain the ability of the individual to decide for themselves (the core of liberalism) is if the government intervenes to ensure that the market doesn’t enable some individuals (or corporations) to engage in force.
Economic liberalism as a political program got hammered by the Depression and the needs of a war economy. Post-war, there were people who argued that we’d gone too far in the direction of government intervention in the market, and we needed to go back to economic liberalism. They’re called neoliberals, because it’s a new form of the classical liberalism of the 19th century. They argue that we should let the markets take care of almost everything. As I said, Reagan was a neoliberal.
Some people felt we went too far in the direction of neoliberalism, and, while we didn’t need the governmental intervention of LBJ’s Great Society, a market completely free of government control ground the faces of the poor, destroyed God’s creation, and landed us in unwise (and endless) wars (it’s important to understand how much of this political agenda is religious). The idea was that these goals could be achieved by the government working with the market to establish incentives. This kind of person is typically called a “Third Way Neoliberal.” They want to preserve as much freedom in the markets as is compatible with legitimate community ends. They support capitalism as the most desirable economic system.
Whether that’s possible is an interesting argument. Whether it leads to Stalin’s kind of socialism isn’t.[5] And that’s what Clinton, Obama, HRC, and Biden are and were. Third Way Neoliberals.
[1] There are never just two political ideologies at play in any given era, so people who think, “If you aren’t this, then you must that” are always reasoning fallaciously. [2] Charvet, John. “Liberalism.” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, edited by Maryanne Cline Horowitz, vol. 3, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005, pp. 1262-1269. Accessed 24 June 2020. [3] Right now, we have this weird situation in which a lot of people who claim to be neoliberal in terms of economic agenda are arguing for fascism in the political agenda. David Neiwert has made that argument about Rush Limbaugh, for instance. [4] If you want a really good book about the Nazi economy, and how it ended up being not what fascists supposedly want, Adam Tooze’s Wages of Destruction is deeply researched and elegantly argued. [5] While some democracies have slid into authoritarianism, slowly voting in or allowing increasingly authoritarian policies to stand, they haven’t slowly moved into communism. Communism arises from people being in desperate situations, and there’s a violent revolution of some kind. As someone said, probably Orwell, you have to be in a desperate situation to be willing to give up ownership of your last cow.
Focussing on Derek Chauvin is simultaneously important and trivial. He isn’t important as an exceptional individual because he isn’t exceptional. If we think he’s exceptional, we miss the point. But that doesn’t make him trivial. He’s important because he’s a sign of how the system operates. While Chauvin should be punished, throwing him out of the police, putting him in jail, that won’t end the problem.
Trump is the Chauvin of demagoguery.
There are people wringing their hands about Trump, including some of the very people who created the rhetorical and media systems that took him on the escalator to the Presidency. They reject Trump, but they haven’t rejected their own demagoguery or their participation in the demagogic media system that enabled his rise.
Trump is important, but not because he’s unique, and not because of his individual intentions. They’re bad; they’re murderous and vindictive and lawless, and he has no intention of being held accountable. And he persistently engages in demagoguery–it’s not only how he argues, but how he governs. But making him the problem, as though we can solve our political problems by making sure Biden gets elected, makes no more sense than thinking police violence has ended now that Chauvin is fired.
Jeffrey Berry and Sharon Sobieraj, in their deeply troubling The Outrage Industry, argue that, “once a candidate is in office, outrage continues to be a path to career advancement [because] research shows that members of Congress who are more extreme in their politics receive more coverage in the mainstream press” (179). Unfortunately, they have the data to support that claim. The media rewards demagoguery with free publicity.
This wasn’t surprising to me. It confirmed a crank theory I’d had since I was in Berkeley in the late seventies and eighties. Or, more precisely, the era when I gave up on TV news. I gave up on TV news for a few reasons.
First, I did the math. In a half-hour news program, there would be fluff, sports, weather, and ads. A half hour would get about six minutes of actually useful news. At that time, the LA Times was a great paper. I could spend that half hour reading the LA Times, and be much more usefully informed than the half hour watching the news. There was also California Journal (it might still exist), a journal with thoughtful bi-partisan information about politics.
Second, even if I abandoned half-hour news programs, and tried to watch longer ones, they were no better. They brought on speakers, but they didn’t bring in the major figures. For instance, at that point Jerry Falwell had a smaller following than, say, the leader of the PCUSA or ELCA (mainstream Protestant organizations). But, when there was a question about religion, media brought on Robertson or Falwell.
Similarly, when it came to issues of race, they’d bring on Al Sharpton, at that point a much less important figure than any of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
The “problem,” from a ratings perspective, was that the leader of a major mainstream Protestant church would say something reasonable, nuanced, and calming; Robertson or Falwell would be polarizing. Some people would hate them; some would love them. But no one would think that what they were saying was too complicated or nuanced to understand. And no one would listen to an interview with them without being outraged. The nuanced, carefully articulated, and calming response on the part of someone who actually (at that time) spoke for more people that the demagogues Robertson or Falwell wouldn’t get the demagogic (us v. them) connection that was more profitable in terms of viewer loyalty that Robertson or Falwell got.
There was a slightly similar “problem” about representation when it came to race. Or, maybe, more accurately, there was the same problem, but with different consequences. My Congressional Rep was Ron Dellums, a fearless badass, and smart af, including about his rhetoric. That was true of most (all?) of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Any one of them spoke for more people than Sharpton did at that point. But the media went to Sharpton.
The irony is that, as far as I can tell, Dellums’ policy agenda was identical to Sharpton’s. So this wasn’t about the media fulfilling the role it often claims of being important for democracy. This was about profiting on the basis of racism, and thereby reinforcing racism. Someone like Dellums would have troubled racists’ perceptions of what black political figures were like. Dellums would have outraged racists in an uncomfortable way that meant they changed the channel. Sharpton didn’t.
This is no criticism of Sharpton. He was and is much more complicated than the “Sharpton” that was invoked (and still is) on reactionary and racist media. The problem isn’t that he went on major media and argued for his view. It’s great that he took that opportunity. The problem is that racist systems try to look not racist by engaging in rhetorically and economically profitable tokenism. Sharpton was right to go on those shows. Those media were wrong for not giving equal time to Dellums, Jordan, and various members of the Black Caucus.
And viewers were wrong, and racist, for not rejecting tokenism. This isn’t about what decisions Sharpton made. This is about a system that profits from racism.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the pleasures of outrage, about why viewers and media choose some kinds of outrage and not others. There are good kinds of outrage. Not only is there the kind of outrage that mobilizes people to do something about oppression, but there is the kind of outrage at finding core beliefs challenged. That’s a very unpleasant outrage. It enables change, it destabilizes ideology, it calls a person to rethink core beliefs. It sucks for ratings, since most people just change the channel. Dellums would have presented that kind of outrage.
Sharpton didn’t. Racists like Sharpton. They like being outraged about him because the media representation of him can fit him into racist narratives (Limbaugh still uses him to stoke racist outrage). They wouldn’t have liked being outraged by Dellums. So, Dellums didn’t get the coverage that Sharpton did; the leaders of the ELCA, PCUSA, and so on didn’t get the coverage that Falwell or Robertson did because the kind of outrage that reinforces in-group/out-group thinking is profitable. The kind of outrage that is the consequence of simplistic in-group/out-group thinking getting violated is not.
Racism is a systemic problem. And it’s profitable because demagoguery is profitable, and racist demagoguery is particularly profitable. Limbaugh’s demagogic racism has made him a millionaire.
We’re in a culture of demagoguery because it’s profitable. Both Trump and Chauvin should both be held accountable for what they’ve done. But holding them, as individuals, accountable won’t do anything to change the system in which they and people like them flourish.
Bill Barr recently said, when asked about whether history will judge him badly, “Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.” A lot of people were surprised at Barr’s saying that, since it’s most famously attributed to Hermann Goering, and his lack of concern during the Nuremburg Trials. It’s often taken to mean that Goering thought there is no truth, and truth is socially constructed, so it would seem that Barr was taking that stand.
I’ve come to think that probably isn’t what Goering meant, and it probably isn’t exactly what Barr means either.
Barr was invoking a version of what, in argumentation scholarship, is called “the appeal to Galileo.” Barr was saying that he might be condemned by future historians, if his side didn’t win, just as Galileo was condemned at the time. That’s probably what Goering was saying. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he thought future historians would be defining truth. I think it’s more likely that both Barr and Goering were claiming the position of a truth-teller who, if their side lost, would be demonized.
And here I just have to pause and say that there has not been a political group as prone to whining about being victimized as the current concatenation of fanatical GOP/fundagelical/white men committed to toxic masculinity since the slavers whined that abolitionists made them feel sad.
Barr and Goering are (were) implicitly claiming to be Galileo, Socrates, Ignaz Semmelweis. And, in that comparison, they inadvertently showed how the comparison was wrong. Barr recognizes that the Trump Administration might (let’s be honest, will) go down in history as the most corrupt, disorganized, damaging, short-sighted, and incompetent Administration in the history of the United States.
I don’t think he’s saying that he believes he is part of such an incompetent and corrupt administration. The problem with working for a narcissist, as (oddly enough) Albert Speer observed, is that first-rate people won’t work for them, so you’re surrounded by third-raters. And third-rate thinkers like Barr are particularly prone to the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon, and over-estimate their competence and expertise. They aren’t smart enough to see that they aren’t that smart.
[As an aside, I have to say that I think it’s funny that Speer didn’t realize how his observations about the Hitler system preventing the hiring of really good people applied to him as well. But it did.]
I think Barr is saying that he believe that if he and Trump fail to create a political system in which the most anti-intellectual, authoritarian, partisan, racist, short-sighted, and greedy parts of the GOP are in control of every part of a government that operates without accountability or constraints (so much for wanting small government), then “the libs” will write histories that represent the Trump Administration badly.
While I think that researchers in media and political science rely on the false binary (or equally false continuum) of left (Dem) v. right (GOP) means that they misrepresent our ideological map, it’s very clear that “both sides” do not engage in misrepresentation of the other side to equal degrees. People and media who self-identify as conservative are more likely to promote lies, fail to check sources, engage in motivism, andprivilege loyalty to group over any other values. When presented with that research, an awful lot of people who self-identify as conservative say the research must be biased because it doesn’t show both sides are equally bad.
They don’t realize that, by having that reaction, they’ve confirmed the research.
Were the research better, I think, it would show that not all people who self-identify as conservative are irrationally factional, that there are places all over the political spectrum (not continuum) where people are equally unwilling to believe that there might be intelligent and good-willed disagreement. If we could have research grounded in that understanding of political affiliation as a spectrum rather than a binary, then we could have a good discussion about how people think about politics that doesn’t reproduce our demagogic culture (in which every issue is reduced to which group is better).
But, back to Barr. Barr is more concerned about his side winning than about having a justice system that is blind to identity (the whole point of Justice’s blindfolds is that she doesn’t know who she’s judging—it’s the original position). Barr doesn’t want a system in which all people are treated the same; he’s rabidly and irrationally partisan. If he succeeds, then he’ll make sure that all histories treat him and Trump as heroes. He is the one who will write history to celebrate the winners.
But that isn’t how “winning” history works. Galileo’s persecution was much more complicated than people think, and the main problem was that his argument for heliocentrism was more accessible than others. Socrates was ordered to drink hemlock, not because the Athenians wanted to silence someone who spoke the truth, but because many (not all) Athenians believed him to be involved with the Thirty Tyrants. What made him a martyr wasn’t that he pissed everyone off with the questions he asked, but his refusal to escape the death sentence—his insistence that the law applies to everyone (which is pretty nearly the opposite of what Barr has argued, since he has argued that Trump is above accountability or any laws). The other case that gets invoked in the “I am speaking the truth but They will silence me” is Semmelweis. But Semmelweis also doesn’t show that the winners write the history. Semmelweis lost in his lifetime. And we know about him because people reconsidered.
For a hundred years, the slaver version of the Civil War was the dominant narrative. It lost the war, and won the history. Now it’s losing the history.
The most uncharitable version of what Barr said is that he is an amoral social constructivist of the worst kind, Machiavellian to the core. In my experience, that kind of person is rare. Machiavellians do claim foundational truths–they end up insisting that Machiavellianism is true.
More common is the sociopathic Machiavellian who is incapable of perspective-shifting; they just don’t think there are other perspectives. [Every once in a while, I run across people, all over the political spectrum, who think perspective shifting is bad—that’s a different post.] I think Barr is in that category of not really understanding that, not only are there other points of view, but that they might be right.
The charitable reading of Barr is that he believes that he is a victim (that is, criticized) for speaking the truth, but, he thinks, if he fails in his endeavor to substitute a one-party state for a democracy, then his opponents will treat him as he has been treating them.
[That’s another post—people who feel justified in oppressing the other side because, if the other side got into power, they would do the same –but it’s logically, empirically, and ethically indefensible. It’s never been associated with sensible policies.]
What Barr said is open, I think, to two interpretations, and neither of them makes him look like an ethical or reflective person. One is that he’s the worst kind of power politics shoddy-Nietzschean epistemological constructivist—might not only makes right, but it makes truth.
The second is that he feels a victim because he thinks he’s Galileo. But he isn’t. Galileo had a lot of evidence for his arguments, as even his opponents acknowledged he did, and Barr knows about Galileo because history isn’t written by the winners in power politics.
In other words, Barr’s saying “History is written by the winners” (most famously attributed to Goering) shows why he’s really not someone who should be head of the DOJ. Either he’s someone who thinks the Nazis were right in their power politics, or he’s someone who hasn’t really thought about his own argument.
To the extent that scholars in rhetoric are interested in Hitler (and that isn’t much) the attention is paid to his big rallies and major speeches, but, for purposes of thinking about our current problems with political deliberation, his smaller rhetorical situations are more instructive, specifically, his deliberations with his immediate circle.
The very effective Nazi propaganda machine promoted the “Hitler Myth:” that he (and he alone) had the sincerity, will, stamina, and judgment to lead Germany to the greatness it once had and was entitled to have again (Kershaw, Hitler Myth). His superior judgment enabled him to have brilliant insights—better than supposed “experts”—on topics ranging from interior design to economics. He was particularly prone to showing off this “universal genius” at meals, during which he delivered monologues for the benefit of his inner circle, his most devoted followers—the people most deeply committed to him, and most committed to promoting the myth of him as a universal genius. The paradox I want to pursue in this talk is that those were the people who, because of so much exposure to his opinions and processes of judgment, must have known that he wasn’t a universal genius at all. Yet, they seem to have believed and not believed in his perfect judgment.
Albert Speer, who maintained in his mendacious post-war writings that he avoided the mealtime monologues, describes an illustrative moment, when Hitler lied to his dining companions about having chosen all the marble personally for various buildings. Speer comments:”Hadn’t he noticed that I was sitting at an adjoining table? What so took me aback was and is the fact that he was still clutching at glory in such ridiculously trivial questions” (Spandau118).
Speer says, “How intense and uncontrollable this man’s desire to show off must have been!” (Spandau 119). It wasn’t just Speer who must have noticed that quality. He mentions that “Hitler quite often presented as the fruit of his own reflections” information that Speer knew had been given him by other experts, and that all of the inner circle knew that Hitler lied when he claimed to read all of a treatise, since he also bragged about only reading the ends of books.
Speer, describing an evening that devolved into Hitler’s “lengthy expatiations on the role of the individual in history” (Spandau 58), says that Hitler’s “relationship to history was sheer romanticism and centered around the concept of the hero. He might well mention Napoleon or Old Shatterhand in one sentence” (Spandau 59). ‘Old Shatterhand’ was the hero of the German author Karl May’s Western novels, which Hitler loved, and which informed Hitler’s understanding of American history and culture (although May hadn’t been to the US prior to writing most of the Shatterhand series). Speer says that “Hitler would rely on Karl May as proof for everything imaginable” including what constitutes the ideal company commander (in the form of May’s fictional Winnetou, Spandau 347; see also Kershaw, Hitler 7, Hubris 15, ). Someone whose assessment of a major foe is grounded in popular novels is hardly a genius, let alone a universal one.
Many of Hitler’s lunch and dinner monologues were later published as a book called Hitler’s Table Talk (an obvious reference to The Table Talk of Martin Luther), or, more accurately, some version of those monologues was. The history of their publication is fraught, and there are reasons to doubt many of the passages (especially regarding religion). There is also reason to think that the published version is more coherent than what listening to them was actually like. Speer says of the published version that it “more or less filtered [Hitler’s] torrent of speech and subsequently smoothed and styled it” (Spandau 345). The book, Speer says, reduced Hitler’s repetition, “the slow, painful process of gestation which could be felt in the way phrases were formed [….] Vivid monologues have been produced out of agonizing long-windedness” (Spandau 346). It’s hard to imagine that the actual talk would have been even more long-winded and incoherent, since reading Hitler’s Table Talk is like reading the transcript of what a narcissistic sophomore in college who thinks he has smoked good weed would say to a room of people who have passed out long ago or are already getting at it on the bunk bed above. It’s hard to read them and not come to the conclusion that Hitler is a bloviating, self-deluded, thin-skinned blowhard.
It’s equally hard to believe that the people at the tables with him didn’t come to that conclusion as well.
There are similar problems with the transcripts of Hitler’s meetings with his generals (Hitler and His Generals). While the post-war narrative promoted by many of Hitler’s generals (that he continually got in their way, that they could have won the war if left to make their own decisions, that they didn’t know about the serial genocides, and that they continually resisted him, and so on) was simply untrue, the deliberations do show a leader not very good at deliberating. Like the meal-time monologues, they have passages of Hitler browbeating, rambling, and being more concerned with being right than with finding the right course of action. As his generals are pressuring him to make a decision, he might suddenly veer off into a windy digression about medals, the racial characteristics of troops, how right he was in some previous disagreement with generals, why his experience as a private means he understands strategy better than any general.
My point is that the people exposed to this blathering and bullshitting would have known Hitler was not a stable genius with universally valid insight. Yet they were the ones who most enabled him and enabled the Hitler myth. Why support him, why support the lie that Germans should trust him? What persuaded them to support him publicly? And the answer is: the way that the power relations inherent to charismatic leadership can inhibit not only deliberation, but doubt of any kind.
Charismatic authority is most famously described by Max Weber, who described it as one of three ways that a ruler can be perceived as legitimate. Charismatic authority comes from the beliefs of the followers, “how followers see things” (Economy and Society page 374). In the relationship of charismatic authority, “supernatural, superhuman, or at least exceptional powers or properties are attributed to the individual” (374). Ian Kershaw summarizes how charismatic authority relies on continually good outcomes for the followers: the power of the charismatic leader is “sustained by great deeds, resounding successes, and notable achievements, which provide the repeated ‘proof’ of the leader’s ‘calling’” (Hitler Myth 9). The charismatic leader must continually surprise his followers with his “universal genius”—that’s why Hitler would grasp at petty successes (like claiming to have picked the marble personally), and refuse to admit errors.
The question is why those obvious moves would work.
And they would work partially because they had to work. The power of the charismatic leader comes from self-confidence, which is necessary for the risk-taking. Thus, the dynamic of charismatic—the need for fawning followers, the need to impress those followers, the need for self-confidence—mean that the charismatic leader him (or her) self has to be the first and most fooled about their own supernatural abilities. And, it’s hard to maintain that level of self-delusion if the people immediately surrounding the leader are even dubious, let alone critical, of the leader. Thus, dissent is treated as disloyalty, and the consequence is that the leader has to be surrounded by people who are, or who believe themselves to be, not as insightful and charismatic.
Oddly enough, it was Speer (who was not and never had been as good at his job as his post-war autohagiographies would claim) who identified the problem with Hitler’s regime: that it put and kept in place people who were weak, corrupt, and just not very good (“inferior” is the term Speer used). Hitler’s “joy” at hearing “news which suited his course of action” and “anger at news which crossed him” (Overy Interrogations 226) meant that people didn’t give him the information, insights, and suggestions that would have led to better decisions (an important theme in Kershaw’s Fateful Choices). Hitler’s emphasis on loyalty, his need to be a universal genius, his faith in himself—all those characteristics meant that he didn’t want people around him who were smarter than he, better informed, or threatening to his ego in any way. As Speer said, Hitler’s “methods of necessity led to weak collaborators for his arbitrary method of choice brought no men with proper qualifications to the right positions” and the “inferiority” of his subordinates ensured that their subordinates would also be “inferior” (Overy 226). Speer draws the conclusion that “A system which makes the selection of the leading personalities dependent solely on the judgment, arbitrary discretion, and whims of the dictators inevitably leads to such results” (Overy 226). And that is the kind of system encouraged by the model of charismatic leadership.
Charismatic leadership, despite serious problems, remains the dominant model of leadership, especially in the popular culture of self-help books and management seminars. Americans’ persistent fascination with charismatic leadership is important for scholars of rhetoric because charismatic leadership is a theory of rhetoric and deliberation. Or, more accurately, it’s a theory of rhetoric that is anti-deliberation. The fantasy of charismatic leadership is that there are people whose ability to lead (that is, both make decisions and motivate others to go along with those decisions [deliberate and persuade]) is not discipline- or field-specific. It’s universal. People with field- or discipline-specific expertise inform these leaders who are then able to discern the correct course of action because they have a kind of judgment—extraordinary insight, vision, they’re great judges of people—that makes their assessment better than anyone else’s. This is an incipiently authoritarian model of power, in that power comes from the supposedly superior judgment of the leader. For a leader to admit error, uncertainty, or ignorance, then, is to reduce their power. Dissent, disagreement, and deliberation have problematic places in systems reliant on charismatic leadership, especially the more that the leader believes in their own charismatic leadership—they come to believe the myths about themselves (see especially Kershaw Hitler Myth 264)
Scholars in leadership have tried to manage the problem of leaders who lead organizations, corporations, and countries right off a cliff (sometimes called “the Hitler Problem,” Tourish and Pinnington 149). by distinguishing between good and bad charismatic leadership on the grounds of outcome and/or the leader’s intention. Both criteria lead one into the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy and survivorship bias.
If good charismatic leaders are ones that get good outcomes, then Hitler was a good leader until, at the earliest December of 1941; some Germans began to lose faith in November of 1943, with the encirclement at Stalingrad; and US intelligence reports said that 25% of Germans still believed in Hitler in 1945, as Allied troops were crashing into Germany (Kershaw The End, Gellately Backing Hitler, Evans The Third Reich at War). There is the same problem with assessing leaders of corporations in terms of outcomes–what if they are getting good outcomes through processes that guarantee eventual disaster? Ken Lay of Enron, Eckhard Pfeiffer of Compaq, Adam Neumann of WeWork, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, Travis Kalanick of Uber—they were all celebrated as excellent examples of transformational leaders until the moment they weren’t. Until news broke about fraud, dodgy accounting, misleading claims, cultures of bullying and harassment, they were, after all, getting good outcomes–being lauded in the press, successful at finding backers, and effectively silencing dissenters (through intimidation, NDA, nuisance suits). Their methods of leading didn’t change; the outcomes did because the methods became public.
In effect, then, “good” charismatic leadership isn’t really a different management style from “bad” charismatic leadership as long as we measure by outcomes. It’s just leadership with accurate press.
There’s a similar problem with trying to distinguish good from bad charismatic leadership on the grounds of intent—if there is one thing about which people who met Hitler agreed, it was that he sincerely believed that what he was doing was right. Intending to do good, and doing good aren’t the same thing, and believing that one is on the side of good can contribute to exploitative and dishonest practices. The problem with much scholarship on charismatic leadership is that there is a “no true Scotsman” quality about it (leaders who are exposed as exploitative were never really charismatic leaders) as well as survivorship bias (only looking at leaders who seem to be getting good outcomes).
So, why am I talking to scholars of rhetoric about a leadership model backed by scholarship that is largely “no true Scotsman” and survivorship bias? Because, the rhetoric and ideology of charismatic leadership is probably second only to the just world model (in its most powerful form—prosperity gospel) in terms of frames from within which Americans imagine the possibilities, responsibilities, and stases of political discourse. Scholars who care about rhetoric as a critical project, as something that could help people deliberate better, need to understand the extent to which the rhetoric about charismatic leadership pathologizes (and sometimes feminizes) what scholars of deliberation promote as useful and effective deliberation.
Hitler’s rhetoric worked because the people in his inner circle made sure it worked, because he had a wickedly effective propaganda machine that continually presented him as someone who, as Rush Limbaugh said about Trump, “has excellent instincts,” despite all the evidence to the contrary. A large number of Americans think deliberation is unnecessary because the correct course of action (which just happens to benefit them or fulfill their political agenda) is obvious, and anyone who disagrees with them is villainous or the dupe of villainous entities (a way of thinking about politics not restricted to one position). A concerningly large number of Americans believe that the right course of action is to put in positions of power decisive people who get the real people, will refuse to compromise, and are willing to violate any norms of discourse, fairness, process, accountability, precedence, even legality in order to enact the policy every reasonable person knows is right. We are in a world in which “disruptive” is an end in and of itself.
In other words, a large number of people, all over the political spectrum, don’t want a democracy because they don’t want inclusive deliberation, compromise, negotiation, and accountability. They want their way, and they want violence if they can’t get it. Rhetoric is, at its best, the discipline of democratizing deliberation, the alternative to violence. The rhetoric of charismatic leadership is anti-deliberation; its cultural dominance explains a lot, I’m arguing, about our current culture of demagoguery. American worshipping (and I use that word deliberately) of charismatic leadership explains many otherwise odd things about our current political situation.
Speer’s insight was that charismatic leadership is always at least a little at odds with an administration of hiring the best people. The more that we value charismatic leadership as the best kind of leadership, the more that we sideline inclusive deliberation and accountability as political goods.
Cicero, in De Inventione, said that, if you are presenting an argument with which your audience already agrees, you land your thesis in the introduction. If you are arguing for something your audience disagrees, you delay your thesis. Oddly enough, as I’ve taught a lot of workshops across the disciplines for scholarly writing, I’ve found that Cicero is right. When people are making an argument their audience doesn’t want to hear, they delay their thesis, even in scholarly arguments (they have a partition instead, or sometimes a false thesis).
I have always required that my students write to a reasonable and informed opposition, and that means delaying their thesis, delaying their claims till after they’ve given evidence, beginning by fairly representing the opposition, getting evidence from sources their opposition would consider reliable, giving a lot of evidence, and explaining it well. I don’t have those requirements because I think this is what all teachers should teach–we shouldn’t. Since student writing requires announcing a thesis, giving minimal explanation, starting paragraphs with main claims, and various other non-persuasive strategies, it is responsible for people teaching the genre of college writing to teach students how to do that. I’m describing that pedagogy because I want it clear that I understand the value of reaching out to an audience and trying to find common ground.
The hope of rhetoric is that we can avoid violence by talking.
We use violence when we believe that we are in a world of existential threat, when we believe that the out-group is engaging in actions that might exterminate us. Sometimes that belief is an accurate assessment of our situation—Native Americans through the entire nineteenth century, Jews in Nazi Germany, free African Americans in the antebellum era, powerful African Americans in most of the nineteenth and twentieth century, Armenians in Turkey, and so on. Whether violence or non-violence is the most strategic choice for the people being threatened with extermination is an interesting argument. For me, whether third-party groups should use violence to stop the extermination is not an interesting argument. The answer is yes.
Sometimes the rhetoric of in-group extermination is simultaneously right and irrational. Antebellum white supremacists correctly understood that abolition would mean that their political monopoly would end were African Americans allowed to vote. Their sense of existential threat was the consequence of so closely and irrationally identifying with white supremacy–with believing that losing that system was essentially extermination. It wasn’t; it was just losing the monopoly of power. Racist demagoguery enabled them to persuade themselves that, because they were threatened with extermination, they were not held by any bounds of ethics, Christianity, legality.
That’s how demagoguery about existential threat works, and that’s what it’s intended to do. It’s designed to get people to overcome normal notions that we should follow the law, be fair to others, listen to others, treat children well, be compassionate, behave according to the ethical requirements of the religion we claim to follow, and so on by saying that, while we are totally ethical people, right now we have to set all that aside–because we’re faced with extermination. When, actually, we’re just faced with losing privilege. That connection is sheer demagoguery.
Republicans now correctly understand that allowing everyone to vote would end their political monopoly. White evangelicals correctly realized that they were losing the political power they had with Bush and Reagan. Coal miners are faced with a world that doesn’t need a lot of people to have that job. Racists, homophobes, and bigots of various kinds are being told they need to STFU. None of these groups are faced with being actually exterminated, but they are faced with their political power being lessened. And too many people in those groups listen to media that has taken the Two-Minute Hate to 24/7 demagoguery about existential threat.
Trump supporters have spent years drinking deep from the Flavor-Aid of the pro-GOP Outrage Machine, and so they believe a lot of things. They believe they’re the real victims here, that the media is against them, that white people are about to be persecuted, that there is no legitimate criticism of their position, that libruls have nothing but contempt for them and think they’re racist,that they are so threatened with extermination that anything done on their behalf is justified.
And here I have to stop and say that authoritarians (regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, and authoritarians are all over the place, but at any given time they tend to congregate on a few spots) misunderstand the concept of analogy. If, for instance, I say that supporters of Hitler reasoned the same way that squirrel haters are now reasoning, I am not saying that they are the same people (or dogs) in every way. I am not making an identity argument; I am making an argument about reasoning.
But, all over the political spectrum, people who are, actually, reasoning the way that people who supported the Nazis reasoned, are outraged at the comparison. It isn’t a comparison about identity; it’s a comparison about methods of reasoning.
We aren’t in a crisis of facts. Everyone has facts. We’re in a crisis of meta-cognition. We have a President who is severely cognitively impaired and obviously declining rapidly, fires people who disagree with him, can’t make a coherent argument for his policies, doesn’t argue from a consistent set of principles. Trump supporters can find ways to support him, but none of those ways fit all the other ways, let alone are ways that explain their opposition to out-group members. The debacle about ingesting disinfectants is just the latest.
What I’m saying is that Trump supporters grant all the criticisms of Trump–their argument is that he’s incompetent.
But their defenses of him show something about them–that they can’t put forward a rational defense of him. I mean “rational” in the way that theorists of argumentation use the term. They can’t put forward an argument for Trump without violating most of rules of rational-critical argumentation. (And, I’d love to be proven wrong on this, so if any Trump supporters want to show me an argument for him that follows that rules, I’d love to see it.)
In other words, support for Trump isn’t about any kind of rational support for his enhancing democratic deliberation, nor even his trying to ground his political decisions and rhetoric in a coherent ideology, but a “fuck libruls, we’re winning” rabid tribal loyalty that eats its own premises.
Trump happens to be the most obvious example right now, but, again, all over the political spectrum are people who can’t defend their positions in a coherent and consistent way. They can defend their positions—but by giving evidence that relies on a major premise they don’t believe, engaging in kettle logic, or whaddaboutism.
If we’re paying attention to Cicero, then we should find common ground with them, be fair to their representation of their own argument, and delay our theses. And, as I said, I think that is great advice.
But it isn’t useful advice when we’re arguing with people who, as soon as they sense you are going to criticize them, refuse to listen because they think they know what you are going to argue, and they know they shouldn’t listen. People well-trained in what the rhetoric scholars Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrecths-Tyteca called “philosophical paired terms” just assume that, if you’re saying Trump isn’t the best, then you are part of the ruling elite–just as Stalinists used to say that Trotsky must be a capitalist, since he criticized Stalin; Nazis said that anyone who criticized Hitler must be a Jew; anyone who opposed McCarthy was a communist; slavers said that anyone who criticized slavery must want a race war. If you aren’t with us, you are against us.
In the 1830s, the major critics of slavery were predominantly Quakers and free African Americans who described slavery accurately, but that (accurate, it should be emphasized) description hurt the feelings of slavers.
Slavers and pro-slavery rhetors said that any criticism of slavery was an incitement to slave rebellion. Much like pro-Trump rhetoric that inadvertently gives away the game–their argument is that he doesn’t have the skillset to be a good President–this rhetoric gave away that slaves hated being slaves, and that the actual conditions of slavery were indefensible.
Many people tone-policed the anti-slavery rhetors (to the extent of having a gag rule in Congress, which is pretty amazing if you think about it). Oddly enough, some anti-slavery rhetors said that these (accurate) descriptions of individual slavers beating and raping slaves were inflammatory, and so some of them tried to write conciliatory anti-slavery tracts. They were accused of fomenting slave rebellion.
Individuals can be persuaded to change their ways on the basis of individual interactions, and there are a lot of anecdotes saying that can work. That’s how individuals leave cults, for instance. But conciliatory rhetoric to groups of people who are drinking deep from a propaganda well is a waste of time.
If you have a personal connection to someone who is a Trump supporter, then building on that personal connection might work, but it’s worth noting that the notion of being able to change people is why people stay in abusive relationships.
But, when we’re talking about relative strangers–the strange world of social media interlocutors–then I don’t think engaging the claims is as useful as pointing out the inability to follow the basic rules of rational-critical argumentation. When people are fanatically committed to an ideology that is internally incoherent and incapable of defended in rational-critical argumentation—and that’s where support of Trump is now—no level of “let’s be inviting to them” will persuade them. It’s worth the time to be precise in our criticisms of their position, but not because being precise will be more or less rhetorically effective. It’s worth the time to be right.
People in rhetoric need to understand that some people are engaged in good faith argumentation, and some aren’t, and we behave toward them differently.
Shaming Trump supporters on that point is a good rhetorical strategy. Whether you do that through conciliation with individuals or through generally pointing it out is an audience choice.
My first experience of the digitally connected public sphere was Usenet in the mid-80s, and since then I’ve spent a fair amount of time arguing with people, including arguing with extremists. Here are some notes I recently made about what I’ve learned by arguing on the underbelly of the internet.
Highly-educated people don’t necessarily argue better than people with a lot fewer degrees.
People reason associatively, grounded in the binary of some things are good, and some things are bad. If something is associated with a good thing, it can’t be bad in any way. (This explains why people, in response to substantive criticism of a public figure, say, “S/he couldn’t have done that because s/he did this completely unrelated good/bad thing.”
Some (many?) people think and reason in binaries and extremes (all or none, always or never) when they’re threatened (and some people are easily threatened). Not everyone does this, but the people who don’t are rare; I’ve seen it all over levels of education, ideological commitment, apparently calm demeanor, discipline. It’s about how people handle threats (hell, I’ve had people who self-identify as skeptics do this, and I’ve caught myself doing it).
Some people argue vehemently because they really want to be right, and that means that they want really good arguments on the other side, and they’re open to good opposition arguments; some people argue vehemently because they are swatting away any disconfirming information. Those two kinds of people can look really similar in terms of tone, vehemence, and even snarkiness. It takes time to figure out whether someone is open to argument.
On the other hand, people who claim to dislike argument and just want everyone to get along can be the most rigid thinkers and least open to new ideas.
Far too many people don’t know how to do research or assess sources, and much teaching on that subject makes this situation worse. Also, having access to good sources is expensive, and doing good research is time-consuming.
Instead of doing research on the basis of the quality of argument of sources, people tend to rely on gut instincts about trustworthiness, and that generally means confirmation bias and in-group favoritism. This, too, is all over the political and educational map.
People completely misunderstand the issue of “bias” and have an incoherent epistemology about perception—highly educated people might just be worse on this than people on the street. They’re certainly no better.
People use bad examples to stereotype out-group and good examples to stereotype in-group.
People confuse “giving an example” (a datum or quote) with proving a point.
People engage in motivism way too fucking much.
Extremists argue the same way, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, or even if it’s a political question at all.
People have bad stopping rules when it comes to research.
People pay too much attention to tone.
People tone police women and POC way too fucking much.
Charismatic leadership is a drug, and a lot of people are way too high on it.
People value loyalty to the in-group (and especially to the leader) more than truth because they redefine truth as loyalty.
No argument is too ridiculous if it enables you to say that you were right all along.
If a media source is in-group, makes their audience feel connected with them, makes their audience feel good about their beliefs and choices, then that audience will remain loyal no matter how many times that media source is just completely wrong.
Far too many people reason deductively from non-falsifiable premises, and think they’ve thereby proven a point to be true.
People are desperate to resolve cognitive dissonance, especially the dissonance created by being fanatically committed to a faction (or unwilling to consider any disconfirming information) and wanting to see ourselves as fair, compassionate, and rational.
