Don’t Fight Authoritarianism. “Drain” It.
Also: how celebrities can reduce polarization, and Bernie Sanders builds a new coalition — BCB #147
Today, 52% of Americans see Trump as a “dangerous dictator.” (Naturally, mostly not Trump voters.) Some people are taking to the streets, while others are speaking out in other ways. But before you fight authoritarianism, you need to reckon with the reasons why people might find it attractive, argue James Coan and Sarah Weinstein from More Like US.
Right now, Coan and Weinstein say, most people who are speaking out against “authoritarianism and censorship” are adopting one of two main approaches: fighting or Constitution-defending. But neither of these strategies does anything to mitigate the other side’s potential interest in heavy-handed tactics. As they point out, there’s ample research demonstrating that Americans vastly overestimate the threat of their political opponents. Remember that the fear is symmetric — Republicans overwhelmingly feel that democrats are a threat to democracy.
To tackle this issue, they propose a third strategy: “draining” the desire for authoritarianism in the first place:
Start by correcting the faulty, overblown threats people perceive from others across politics. Given that authoritarianism and censorship flourish when people perceive threats from each other, if the threat perceptions can be reduced and right-sized, the activation of authoritarianism and censorship should also decline. That desire for authoritarianism and censorship starts draining away.
Readers of BCB will clock the familiarity of this approach. We’ve written before about the fact that people tend to overestimate the extent to which their opponents are threatening or acting in bad faith. The language of “draining” offers a compelling new way to think and talk about this strategy that doesn’t feel escalatory. We don’t necessarily need to throw punches. Rather, we need to help the other side understand that we’re not the monsters they think we are.
How? Coan and Weinstein have a few places to start:
More Like US offers resources including a lesson plan / presentation that shows Americans have deeply distorted views of those in the other political party in terms of threat (dehumanization, support for political violence, and breaking democratic norms). Our guidance for those in the Arts shows how to portray people across politics in a more accurate and less threatening light.
How a single soccer player can reduce prejudice
When Mohamed Salah joined Liverpool F.C. in 2017, a few remarkable things happened. In his first three seasons with the team, they had impressive showings at consecutive U.E.F.A. Champions League and English Premier League finals, ultimately winning both titles in back-to-back years.
But also, a new study finds that hate crimes in the Liverpool area dropped 16%, and Liverpool F.C. fans posted half as many anti-Muslim tweets as fans of other top soccer clubs. Unlike most of his teammates, Salah is Muslim, and was outspoken about his faith on and off the pitch, even performing a Muslim prayer after scoring goals.
As the paper’s authors point out, role-model celebrities from minority groups have a history of shaping social attitudes. Think of Jackie Robinson or Nadiyah Hussain, the headscarf-wearing 2015 winner of The Great British Bake-Off. This is often called the “parasocial contact hypothesis”: “the idea that mediated contact with celebrities or characters from out-groups has the potential to reduce prejudice toward the out-group as a whole.” We're also reminded of “The Team,” a decade-old TV show created by the international peacebuilding organization Search for Common Ground, which airs in more than 17 countries and portrays fictional soccer teams overcoming their differences to win games .
The case of Salah provides a real-world example in support of the theory of parasocial contact. To measure rates of hate crimes, the authors examined data from 25 police departments across England and compared what happened in Liverpool to what happened across the rest of the country. They used the same method to examine anti-Muslim tweets coming from Liverpool fans, and found that they were 3.8% of all tweets posted after Salah joined, compared to the 7.3% they would have expected had he not joined.
In addition, they conducted a survey with 8,000 Liverpool fans where they asked a series of questions about whether Islam is compatible with British values and whether immigrants are generally a positive influence in the U.K. When participants were given information about Salah’s religious practices before answering these questions, it boosted their belief that Islam is compatible with British values by 5%.
These results are a promising look at how powerfully and simply celebrities can help to reduce prejudice, especially in contexts where people don’t necessarily have much opportunity to interact with others who are different from them.
Is Bernie Sanders trying to build the next majority coalition?
In the wake of Trump’s inauguration, Bernie Sanders took to the road, leaving Washington for an eight-week tour of the Midwest and West – mostly in districts held by Republican Members of Congress. His “Fighting Oligarchy” tour featured 17 events across eleven states, including rallies attended by more than a quarter of a million people. His team has said that a third of the attendees were either Republicans or Independents.
What is Sanders trying to accomplish here? In a recent article writer and organizer Micah L. Sifry talked to folks on the ground, who explained that they are leading organizing calls and collecting new lists of people who are inclined towards Bernie Sanders—if not the Democrats as a whole.
As Sifry explains, some within the world of Democratic politics are critical of Sanders’ focus on personalized organizations and building his own brand. On the other hand, Sanders’ interest among Trump voters is a promising validation of the idea that coalition-building is still possible, even in these highly polarized times.
As the American Enterprise Institute pointed out last year, durable majority parties have historically been the norm in America, but right now neither party currently has a substantial, stable majority coalition. In their report, authors Ruy Teixeira and Yuval Levin argue that the next party to earn a majority will be the one that figures out how to build a new coalition:
Deadlock is not the American party system’s natural equilibrium. Durable majority coalitions are not only possible; they are the norm. And we will see them again. But the next durable majority must result from self-conscious coalition building, which in turn must result from realizing that what both parties are now doing is not working and will not work.
Whichever party first grasps that it has been losing for a generation will have a chance to make itself the next big winner in American politics.
Whether you agree with Sanders’ politics or not, it’s striking that this is what he seems to be trying to do, rather than staying squarely on the Democrats’ side.
Quote of the Week
Libertarianism certainly has plenty of flaws. But it was keeping a lid on the right's more statist, authoritarian tendencies. Now it's largely gone, and the monsters have broken free.