[Image from here]
A crucial concept in political science, sociology, social psychology, neuroscience and various other fields is that we maneuver through our world by identifying every person we meet as in-group or not. In-group doesn’t mean the group in power—it means the group we’re in. That is, as scholars of rhetoric would say, the first move when we meet someone is that we unconsciously try to decide what kind of rhetorical relationship we’re in—is this going to be a friendly, hostile, amorous, commercial, weird interaction? Do we need to be skeptical about this person, or should we assume good faith? And we intuitively answer those questions by categorizing the person as in-group (trustworthy) or out-group (untrustworthy).
In other words, is this someone with whom we identify (in which case we lower our guard) or not (in which case we raise our guard)? That’s a normal initial reaction.
It’s also normal to be in an ethical world in which we are called to treat others as we would want to be treated. Thus, if we’re ethical, we are open to reconsidering our initial impulse to categorize, we know we have it and resist, we don’t treat all non-in-group members as hostile or dangerous, we meet a non-in-group member and find that an inviting and interesting opportunity, we have more reasonable ways of assessing danger than just in- v. out-group. To be ethical means not to rely on our in- v. out-group impulses.
Some people, however, never move past that initial in- v. out-group response. I mentioned this incident in another post, but it’s relevant here too. Many years ago, I was at a wedding shower, and one of the guests was going on about Jewish women being pushy. I said (because I was raised by wolves and don’t know how to behave at wedding showers), that I thought she was being antisemitic. She said, “You’re just saying that because you’re Jewish.” I said I’m not Jewish. She said, “Oh you probably are and don’t know it.”
She believed that only Jews object to antisemitism, so my objection meant she categorized me as Jewish (out-group). Instead of a counter-example causing her to rethink her premise (that only Jews object to antisemitism), she made the counter-example (me, a non-Jew objecting to antisemitism) something that proved her premise (I had been pushy by objecting to her comments). Of course, were I Jewish and didn’t know it, I wouldn’t have objected to her antisemitism, but that was a level of logic beyond her.
A disturbing number of people, all over the political spectrum, enter every political argument the way she thought about Jews. For her, you only object to slurs about your in-group, and no one applies standards of behavior across groups. Everyone is only out for their own group.
For many people our vexed and complicated political world is a zero-sum game between US and THEM, and every political issue or event is not something that challenges us to think inventively about our policy options, but an opportunity to prove that US is better than THEM. Instead of our arguing with people with whom we have a shared future and with whom we face multiple policy options, and, therefore, with whom we should be working together with our various perspectives to find the best policy option for all (which is a policy that hurts everyone in some way), we are people at a football game screaming at each other. If they gain ground, we lose; if they lose ground, we win. It’s as though all public discourse is a football game with refs who have wandered off for a beer.
For people like that, call them rabid factionalists, an in-group member behaving badly is almost an existential threat—it threatens the identity of the in-group as essentially better than the out-group. If being a dog-lover is important to me, I will want to find a way to manage that, by all accounts, Hitler was genuinely a dog lover. I might respond by saying that Hitler wasn’t really in-group (not a true Scotsman—Hitler didn’t really love dogs). Sometimes they respond by saying #notallingroupmembers—by which they mean that this bad behavior on the part of an in-group member shouldn’t be taken as indicative of the goodness or badness of the group (Hitler’s being a dog lover doesn’t mean much about all dog lovers).
That second move, Hitler isn’t indicative, is a much more complicated argumentative move than I think a lot of people realize, and more significant. It’s significant in that it signifies how someone is reasoning.
A passionate vegetarian might argue that Hitler’s vegetarianism shouldn’t be used to condemn vegetarianism, and that Stalin’s being an omnivore shouldn’t be used to condemn not being vegetarian. That’s a principled stance about how to reason. People who demonstrably and openly hold the in- and out-group to the same standards undermine our culture of demagoguery.
#notallingroupmembers can sometimes do important political work in another way. It can say that this person claiming to speak for all Christians/Republicans/vegetarians/Texans/teachers is not actually doing so. That kind of #notallingroupmembers can be important for times when the NRA claims to speak for all gun owners (it doesn’t), bigots claim to speak for all Christians (they don’t), some rando claims to speak for all Americans (no one does). By pointing out that demagogues who claim that all [group] support [policy] are lying, this argument can undermine our culture of demagoguery.
But #notallingroupmembers can also just be another instance of our culture of demagoguery. A passionate vegetarian might argue that Hitler’s vegetarianism shouldn’t be used to condemn vegetarianism, but Stalin’s being an omnivore (or not vegetarian) is a relevant example for arguing that non-vegetarians are bad.
That’s motivated reasoning, and an irrational stance. That’s how people argue in a culture of demagoguery.
If you are willing to take a single example of bad behavior on the part of an out-group individual as indicative of the moral status/intelligence of the out-group as a whole, but don’t take a single example of bad behavior on the part of an in-group individual as indicative of the moral status/intelligence of the in-group as a whole, then you are not thinking about politics rationally. If Stalin proves that non-vegetarians are bad, then Hitler proves that vegetarians are bad.
Or, perhaps, arguing from single examples is a bad way to argue in general. Perhaps, even, treating politics as a zero-sum argument as to which group is better is a bad way to think about politics.
If you make the argument that this one guy proves that the out-group is bad, and yet you reject single examples of in-group behavior as irrelevant, then you aren’t engaged in policy argumentation. You are just some irrational fanatic in the stands cheering wildly for your team with no internal or external ref.