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blimix[Note: "Liberals" and "conservatives" refer here to the American left and right wings respectively. Other countries use these terms differently.]
The distinction between liberals and conservatives is at once simpler and more complex than people like to acknowledge. This is hugely important, because if liberals are to make long-lasting, significant gains, we have to understand why conservatives act the way they do. I don't just mean, "Stop vilifying them and try to reach across the divide," because that won't work: They're not offering handshakes to reach for, and they are happily supporting widespread oppression and murder while we hand-wring about getting them to like us. (However, I will make a point or two about reaching out, near the end.) We need to understand them so that we are better equipped to talk to them, to oppose them, and to more efficiently save the human lives that they threaten. (Thanks to their confirmation bias, I am not worried about similarly enabling conservatives to understand liberals, even though all the information they would need is right here.)
I promised simple and complex. The simple part is: Conservatives want to be on the side of the biggest bully. The "biggest bully" is the person or entity who is most willing and able to harm others. Imagine maleficence multiplied by power. This is an unexamined, subconscious desire, which they would deny, but that's all there is to it. This explains every nonsensical and harmful thing that conservatives do. Let's see some examples:
This one should be clear. The biggest bullies are a class of sociopathic billionaires, who use their money and power to seize more money and power, at the expense of millions (and soon, if they have their way, billions) of human lives. They have a wide network of henchmen in banking, industry, government, and media, many of whom are bullies in their own right.[1] Young children learn to cooperate with bullies as a survival mechanism. Many of us learn within a few years of middle school that there are appropriate times to stand up to bullies, but this lesson is lost on conservatives.
Conservatives have two primary emotional motivations. The first, and universal, motivation is fear of bullies, which is reinforced by an inevitable, defensive backlash of their peers if they dare to defy said bullies. The second is particular to those who are themselves bullies or prospective bullies: They enjoy getting away with harming people. It makes them feel clever and powerful. A large number of conservatives had hidden this part of themselves from public view, contenting themselves with online trolling, commiserating on message boards, and occasionally abusing servers, children, employees, animals, or anyone else they can mistreat without risking accountability. The election of Donald Trump has them feeling vindicated and validated. They now celebrate their rush of relief and their suddenly perceived social acceptability, proudly and joyously wearing the symbols of those willing to cause the most harm to the most people.[2]
Oil industry bully: "There's no evidence for human-caused climate change."
Scientist: "The evidence is overwhelming, surpassing any reasonable doubt. Global warming is at catastrophic levels, causing droughts leading to wars, and threatening mass extinctions. If we don't curb carbon emissions immediately—"
Bully: [Punches scientist in the gut, then leans in close and whispers.] "Don't. Threaten. My. Profits."
Bully: "Stupid scientists! They don't even know what they're talking about!"
Henchmen on Fox News: "Yeah, stupid scientists! They don't even know what they're talking about!"
Conservatives: "Ha, stupid scientists! They don't even know what they're talking about!"
Coal rollers: "Hey, since liberals love the environment so much, let's wreck it! Yeah!"
Facts, logic, and even compassion for humanity cannot move conservatives to overcome their instinctive need to side with the biggest bully. It's not that conservatives want to kill the planet. They just would rather kill the planet than disobey bullies. This is why facts don't work to convince conservatives.
Why would any gay person, or person of color, ever support a party that openly reviles and oppresses them? The two reasons for being conservative still stand: First, members of a vulnerable population can be kept in line with fear even more easily than those with privilege. Supporting bullies who despise them may feel terrible, but they have had a lifetime of lessons in the dire consequences of disobedience. You know what happens, for example, when an unarmed black person dares to talk back to a police officer. Those in power enjoy extra privilege when it comes to harming oppressed people with impunity: That is part of oppression. Second, those minority members who are bullies — who are not in short supply, as bullies are often motivated by feelings of helplessness — still enjoy degrading and harming other minorities and out-groups, making them natural conservatives.[3]
The original purpose of organized religion was to enable wealthy, powerful people to become more wealthy and powerful at the expense of the masses. This should sound familiar. You might be disinclined to leave your family and wage a foreign war for your ruler, but you would probably do it for your god. (For more on this, see Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.) In the case of religion, the biggest real bullies, religious rulers, cite the authority of an even bigger bully, their god, to back up their authority. This is why Christians, for example, see no contradiction in calling their god "good" despite his clearly being capricious and cruel: You have to support the bully. Authoritarianism is at the core of organized religions, but it makes up almost the entirety of those, such as evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity, that redefine "good" to mean "useful to the church". By no coincidence at all, those churches are exactly where you will find the most members and clergy engaging in and supporting child torture and rape. The political right further empowers religious fascists to vilify and attack people with impunity. Anti-abortionists seem hypocritical, given their lack of concern for human lives, and their promotion of policies that increase abortions, but their stance makes sense as a simple excuse to attack women.
On an organizational level, note the parallel between the Catholic church hoarding money and treasures during the early middle ages ("dark ages") and the autocratic billionaires hoarding money now, while the U.S. regresses to a developing nation. It's practically the same band of corrupt tyrants, and they attract the same followers. (I do not mean to imply that the Catholic church is not still hoarding money and treasures. Who could resist all that Nazi gold?) Finally, and very importantly, conservatives have a profound reason for loudly proclaiming absurd religious beliefs that clearly contradict themselves and reality: Showing their proud commitment to irrational beliefs demonstrates their willingness to cast aside all that is good and right in order to kowtow to bullies. This is a show of appeasement.[4] Note how close to the surface their motivation comes when they call themselves "god fearing".
Non-religious people can perform that same appeasement by contradicting reality in other ways, such as by being outspoken Flat Earthers. If they are bullies, they can add their own bullying through terrorism denial, attacking victims of mass shootings as "crisis actors".
What happens when you aid a bully's victim? You become the next victim, of course. Conservatives have a strong aversion to aiding refugees from violence partly because, as irrational as it may be in this situation, they are intuitively afraid that this will bring the violence to them. For example, they did not want to get on ISIL's bad side, and if that meant turning a blind eye to facts, logic, and the suffering and deaths of millions of people, so be it. Note that proclamations of intent to "kick ISIS's ass" constituted aggressive posturing, and did not lessen the impact of appeasing ISIL by turning away refugees. Additionally, vilifying refugees is an excellent excuse for them to attack an oppressed ethnicity, just as they did to Jews fleeing the Holocaust.
It was never about rights, of course. MRAs reframe women's wishes to not be systemically oppressed and murdered as an attempt by women to oppress men. This gives MRAs a framework for attacking, silencing, and ignoring women. Note that actual bad treatment of men would be alleviated by the feminism that MRAs despise, which addresses the cultural misogyny by which men are punished for doing anything seen as feminine. Men's Rights Activism is about having the ability to freely revile and bully women, with the support of a community of like-minded bullies. Once MRAs discovered the joys of communal bullying, the alt-right spread itself before them as a mecca, welcoming them home. "Here there be bigger bullies, and you can be one of us."
Now for the complex part. There are two factors that determine whether a person supports bullies: Inclination, which is born from fear and/or malice, and culture. These two can be at odds with each other.
For example, a person could be raised in conservative culture — immersed in the hatred, lies, harmful stereotypes, and rationalizations of all sorts of evil — but have a courageous heart. At some point, they may decide that needlessly harming people on the basis of race or sexuality is wrong. They may shift from Republican to Libertarian, and quietly do what they can to persuade those close to them, without making too many waves. They will continue to support all of the rest of the harm caused by conservative policies, often saying things like, "I'm fiscally conservative but socially liberal," because their indoctrination still blocks real world facts, and also because their willingness to pay social costs for what is right only goes so far.
Similarly, a person can be raised in liberal culture but have a cowardly heart. They may attempt to silence and/or distance themselves from their friends who speak out against fascism, because those friends are failing to heed the most basic survival strategy, "Keep your head down". They may refuse to support feminism or other movements designed to protect people from bullies, fearing backlash from their more conservative friends and from Internet trolls.
Bullies who are raised amid liberal culture participate in oppressive behaviors, gaslighting or lashing out at anyone who calls them out, proudly proclaiming their own tolerant and benevolent attitudes, and wondering why they keep alienating their friends. To relieve their cognitive dissonance, they may be drawn toward conservative, and specifically fascist, culture, where they feel more at home. If they get so far as to admit that they like the idea of putting on that red armband, they will retain enough background knowledge to be aware that there is something seriously wrong with them for it.
The cleverest bullies on the left will, at least in public, hold to liberal ideals about systemic oppression. They satisfy their desire to harm people, but mostly on a personal level. They may have recourse to publicly harm others on a larger scale by becoming GamerGaters, or by joining the ranks of frightened and misguided parents in refusing to vaccinate their children, neither of which is viewed as specifically right-leaning. A public anti-vaccination stance also serves the same purpose — bully appeasement — as other declarations of absurd beliefs: See religion, above. Like bullies in any culture, if they have the charisma to get away with it, they maintain control over a band of rapt supporters who praise them but also fear their wrath.
Note that this is not hypothesis. When I say, "They may..." and the like, it is because I have seen this happen.
What I've presented so far seems cut-and-dried, and perhaps insultingly contemptuous. But wait! There's more to know than, "Conservatives are characterized by their cowardice, doing evil out of fear of bullies, while liberals are characterized by their courage, doing good despite fear of bullies." If you were getting complacent, here's the uncomfortable part.
The fears faced by liberals and conservatives are fundamentally different, and people in conservative circles have a naturally harder time facing their fears. A liberal who stands up to bullies takes a very real risk, but is bolstered by the support of their community. A conservative who stands up to bullies takes the same risk, but also risks having their community turn on them like a pack of jackals. A white person not loyal to white supremacy may be derided as a "cuck". An evangelical Christian who opposes abuse may lose all of their church friends. Abusive religions, like abusive boyfriends, intentionally restrict your outside friendships so that you'll have nowhere to run. Losing church friends may mean losing all friends. We must understand that, when we ask conservatives to stand up for what is right, we are asking more of them than when we ask liberals to do so. It is more akin to "coming out" in a hostile community. In some cases, it could even cause their family to disown them. This is not to say that we should excuse evil behavior that is motivated by fear, but we must understand its source if we hope to change it.
In light of this, let's revisit the bit where I said, "This is why facts don't work to convince conservatives." There are common ways in which conversations between conservatives and liberals can go off the rails. One that is particularly frustrating for both sides occurs when the liberal uses verifiable facts to disprove the conservative's position, then acts as if the debate is over and won. The conservative still fails to accept the demonstrable reality of the situation, and is left resentful because the liberal's "conclusive" argument never even touched upon the real reasons that the conservative holds and proclaims their beliefs. To be fair, the conversation cannot touch upon those reasons, because the conservative is forbidden from acknowledging them. They can't say, or even think, "If I stop pretending that climate science is wrong, then I'll be breaking an implicit rule, which will bring down upon me wrath and ostracism from my peers." That would admit the pretense, and thus break the rule. Following the rule feels like a survival strategy. How would you feel if, while debating, you had to ignore and disclaim your most pressing reason for your beliefs? It's no wonder that they relieve their cognitive dissonance by ignoring evidence! A liberal who does not understand that motive will be appalled and disheartened by this display of confirmation bias, and may be tempted to explain it simply by dismissing conservatives as willfully ignorant (which, while technically true, is merely a description, not an explanation). There are other ways in which conversations between conservatives and liberals can go off the rails.[5]
Now that the conservatives have taken enough offense to stop reading, let's talk about what we can do about this situation, politically. Practical application of the "biggest bully" explanation can involve removing conservatives' barriers to better behavior, or encouraging them to switch sides — without feeling as though they have switched sides — in the voting booth.
Most of the stories of reformed conservatives that I have seen have involved them moving away from their conservative communities before they could change their minds and allegiances. This is clearly not a tenable large-scale solution. If folks could find compassionate communities at home, they would have a kind of social safety net to fall back on, if they wanted to explore considerate and responsible behavior. Redneck Revolt sets a spectacular example in working to accomplish just that. They allow people to cooperatively resist white supremacy while building community, all without abandoning their tough, rural culture.
Liberals are getting out the vote in response to the explicitly fascist government takeover. However, Republicans still have gerrymandering. They still have voter suppression. They still have electronic election fraud. They still have viral Russian social media accounts radicalizing young people. They may shortly have censorship of Internet content. Complacency with the tactic of getting more liberal votes than conservative votes will spell our doom. A good candidate ought to pursue both liberal and conservative votes.
In my estimation, here's how you would do it: Optimally, start off running in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, and preferably as many more as you can deal with. Yes, this has been done successfully. But even if you lose the red ones, anyone who voted for you in the primary will probably remember your name and vote for you in the general election. Regardless of whether this is accomplished, a liberal candidate can and should use conservative sounding "tough" talk, targeting only the corrupt corporate fascists and the extremist fascists: For example, neo-Nazis and the KKK. "The banksters who destroyed the economy and your jobs will pay!" And so forth.
Yes, this will cost you some big donations. Would you rather be owned by fascists giving you extra campaign funds to reach your existing voters, or have an entire population of extra voters? If this is a hard question for you, either step aside for a better candidate or see if you can slip vague, dog-whistle language past the banksters. The fascists have split their party in two: It's an opportunity on a silver platter, and liberal candidates would be foolish to refuse it. If you can present some urban and rural revitalization policies, and stomach talking like a conservative half the time (you're in politics; suck it up), trashing only the extreme fascists and their corporate overlords, then you can give moderate conservative voters an excuse to say, "Yeah, screw the KKK, and stick it to Goldman Sachs. This person's okay." Note that this is not an original idea: Doug Muder advocated in 2005 for liberal politicians to learn to "talk conservative," and he made a better case for it than I have here.
Let's see how the "Biggest Bully" explanation compares and contrasts to others' observations of differences between liberals and conservatives.
Many and varied studies show that fear and anxiety drive conservatives' political attitudes. Bullies rule conservatives through fear, so this fits. The "Biggest Bully" theory is merely more specific.
George Lakoff draws a comparison to families, claiming that liberals think government should take the role of a "nurturing parent," while conservatives think that government should take the role of a "strict father". To the conservative, dominance hierarchies must be obeyed. "Bully" is my liberal term for those who claim dominance and use it to harm others. Since this is pretty much the entire ruling class, the "Biggest Bully" explanation is only more specific in its language, in including non-government entities such as the Vatican and ISIL, and in addressing conservatives who are themselves bullies.
Siderea's essay on The Two Moral Modes establishes that, for some people, morality (Mode 1) describes behavior owed to all other people, whereas for others, morality (Mode 2) describes only behavior owed toward one's own in-group. For people operating in Mode 2, oppressive behavior toward others might be moderated by concerns such as consequences for one's self, but not by morality. Mode 2 corresponds to practicing or aspiring bullies/Nazis. My essay focuses on understanding the motivations of conservatives in general, but barely touches on the motivations of Nazis, treating them as conservatives who take particular enjoyment in directly harming others. Siderea's essay fills in that gap, exploring both the details of Mode 2 morality and the factors which often keep the rest of us from understanding it.
Part 3 of "The Two Moral Modes" mentions that "people functioning in Mode 2 want to have people to subjugate – but they're not really fussy whom," which fits with the bit above about Men's Rights Activists flocking to the alt-right. The degree to which conservative non-bullies might subscribe to Mode 2 morality is, I think, an open question. If they support their president's right to commit crimes against humanity, with no inclination to personally participate, I suspect that they still use Mode 2 morality. The "nice" ones might simply consider a larger portion of the population to be in their in-group. (Note that Siderea's essay was imported from Livejournal to DreamWidth. The direct links between the sections will take you to their original Livejournal counterparts, so I have linked to the calendar page that includes all three of the DreamWidth entries.)
Thank you for getting all the way through this! For related reading, here are some insights into bullies from my personal experience. My comments section is open for corrections, further discussion of the thoughts I have shared here, and discussion on furthering understanding, but not for debate over typical political topics. You can have those here. Comments here are screened to discourage trolling.
Footnote 1. In daily life, "biggest bully" refers to the child who mugs others for lunch money and trading cards, the friend who lashes out at any criticism, the boss who treats their employees like crap, the abusive head of household, the police officer confident in their lack of accountability, et alia. In political life, "biggest bully" refers to mass-murdering oligarchs and their mouthpieces: The Koch brothers, the churches, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Mussolini, Putin, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, oil companies, gun manufacturers, et cetera. Such people and organizations are easily identified by their massive corruption.
Footnote 2. Note that while conservatives in general support fascism, and are therefore fascists, we tend to reserve use of the terms "fascist" and "Nazi" for those who proudly self-identify as such. There is certainly a case to be made against such reservation, as the word for "someone who joined the Nazis for reasons other than racism" is still "Nazi". But the real question should regard the utility of the label, rather than its aptness.
Footnote 3. I have a gay Republican friend. He hates the oppression of gay people, but is fully on board with every other sort of oppression. He once said to me, after I expressed concerns about terrorism by the American government, "I don't care how many foreigners have to die to preserve my way of life." For him, gay rights are just an unfortunate speed bump on the conservative highway.
Footnote 4. A similar show of bully appeasement is made by religious practices, rather than proclamation of religious beliefs. To visibly and greatly inconvenience one's self in the name of strictly following religious law is a public statement establishing how "religious" one is. This is code for, "I am willing to subjugate my own needs to the orders of those in authority, regardless of the merit of those orders. Be assured, bullies, that I am your faithful servant." To cite religious reasons while harming others (for example, by picketing abortion clinics or beheading atheists) serves the dual purposes of establishing said willingness and of proclaiming one's own power as a bully.
Footnote 5. A second common cause of derailed debates is that liberals and conservatives talk past each other, starting with different definitions and understandings of the subject. The most obvious example of this is racism, which conservatives define as "judging someone by their race". This definition allows them to demonize backlash against the oppressive behaviors of white people as "judging white people by their skin". Liberals use "racism" as a shorthand for "systemic racial prejudice used as a tool of widespread oppression and murder". It requires background knowledge to understand why this is a more useful definition than the first one. Conservatives typically lack this knowledge, and so cannot be persuaded to even discuss racism by this definition. Of course, a strength of systemic racism is its immunity to discussion and introspection by those most committed to it. Those who lack the courage to break rules of silence in order to become better people will never succeed at communicating about the topic.
A third common cause of derailment is argument in bad faith. The popular Sartre quote on anti-Semites really applies to any fascist: "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." (Jean Paul Sartre, Anti‐Semite and Jew, George J. Becker translator.)
The distinction between liberals and conservatives is at once simpler and more complex than people like to acknowledge. This is hugely important, because if liberals are to make long-lasting, significant gains, we have to understand why conservatives act the way they do. I don't just mean, "Stop vilifying them and try to reach across the divide," because that won't work: They're not offering handshakes to reach for, and they are happily supporting widespread oppression and murder while we hand-wring about getting them to like us. (However, I will make a point or two about reaching out, near the end.) We need to understand them so that we are better equipped to talk to them, to oppose them, and to more efficiently save the human lives that they threaten. (Thanks to their confirmation bias, I am not worried about similarly enabling conservatives to understand liberals, even though all the information they would need is right here.)
I promised simple and complex. The simple part is: Conservatives want to be on the side of the biggest bully. The "biggest bully" is the person or entity who is most willing and able to harm others. Imagine maleficence multiplied by power. This is an unexamined, subconscious desire, which they would deny, but that's all there is to it. This explains every nonsensical and harmful thing that conservatives do. Let's see some examples:
Support for authoritarianism, including fascism.
This one should be clear. The biggest bullies are a class of sociopathic billionaires, who use their money and power to seize more money and power, at the expense of millions (and soon, if they have their way, billions) of human lives. They have a wide network of henchmen in banking, industry, government, and media, many of whom are bullies in their own right.[1] Young children learn to cooperate with bullies as a survival mechanism. Many of us learn within a few years of middle school that there are appropriate times to stand up to bullies, but this lesson is lost on conservatives.
American Nazis.
Conservatives have two primary emotional motivations. The first, and universal, motivation is fear of bullies, which is reinforced by an inevitable, defensive backlash of their peers if they dare to defy said bullies. The second is particular to those who are themselves bullies or prospective bullies: They enjoy getting away with harming people. It makes them feel clever and powerful. A large number of conservatives had hidden this part of themselves from public view, contenting themselves with online trolling, commiserating on message boards, and occasionally abusing servers, children, employees, animals, or anyone else they can mistreat without risking accountability. The election of Donald Trump has them feeling vindicated and validated. They now celebrate their rush of relief and their suddenly perceived social acceptability, proudly and joyously wearing the symbols of those willing to cause the most harm to the most people.[2]
Climate science denial.
Oil industry bully: "There's no evidence for human-caused climate change."
Scientist: "The evidence is overwhelming, surpassing any reasonable doubt. Global warming is at catastrophic levels, causing droughts leading to wars, and threatening mass extinctions. If we don't curb carbon emissions immediately—"
Bully: [Punches scientist in the gut, then leans in close and whispers.] "Don't. Threaten. My. Profits."
Bully: "Stupid scientists! They don't even know what they're talking about!"
Henchmen on Fox News: "Yeah, stupid scientists! They don't even know what they're talking about!"
Conservatives: "Ha, stupid scientists! They don't even know what they're talking about!"
Coal rollers: "Hey, since liberals love the environment so much, let's wreck it! Yeah!"
Facts, logic, and even compassion for humanity cannot move conservatives to overcome their instinctive need to side with the biggest bully. It's not that conservatives want to kill the planet. They just would rather kill the planet than disobey bullies. This is why facts don't work to convince conservatives.
The existence of minority member Republicans.
Why would any gay person, or person of color, ever support a party that openly reviles and oppresses them? The two reasons for being conservative still stand: First, members of a vulnerable population can be kept in line with fear even more easily than those with privilege. Supporting bullies who despise them may feel terrible, but they have had a lifetime of lessons in the dire consequences of disobedience. You know what happens, for example, when an unarmed black person dares to talk back to a police officer. Those in power enjoy extra privilege when it comes to harming oppressed people with impunity: That is part of oppression. Second, those minority members who are bullies — who are not in short supply, as bullies are often motivated by feelings of helplessness — still enjoy degrading and harming other minorities and out-groups, making them natural conservatives.[3]
The religious right.
The original purpose of organized religion was to enable wealthy, powerful people to become more wealthy and powerful at the expense of the masses. This should sound familiar. You might be disinclined to leave your family and wage a foreign war for your ruler, but you would probably do it for your god. (For more on this, see Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.) In the case of religion, the biggest real bullies, religious rulers, cite the authority of an even bigger bully, their god, to back up their authority. This is why Christians, for example, see no contradiction in calling their god "good" despite his clearly being capricious and cruel: You have to support the bully. Authoritarianism is at the core of organized religions, but it makes up almost the entirety of those, such as evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity, that redefine "good" to mean "useful to the church". By no coincidence at all, those churches are exactly where you will find the most members and clergy engaging in and supporting child torture and rape. The political right further empowers religious fascists to vilify and attack people with impunity. Anti-abortionists seem hypocritical, given their lack of concern for human lives, and their promotion of policies that increase abortions, but their stance makes sense as a simple excuse to attack women.
On an organizational level, note the parallel between the Catholic church hoarding money and treasures during the early middle ages ("dark ages") and the autocratic billionaires hoarding money now, while the U.S. regresses to a developing nation. It's practically the same band of corrupt tyrants, and they attract the same followers. (I do not mean to imply that the Catholic church is not still hoarding money and treasures. Who could resist all that Nazi gold?) Finally, and very importantly, conservatives have a profound reason for loudly proclaiming absurd religious beliefs that clearly contradict themselves and reality: Showing their proud commitment to irrational beliefs demonstrates their willingness to cast aside all that is good and right in order to kowtow to bullies. This is a show of appeasement.[4] Note how close to the surface their motivation comes when they call themselves "god fearing".
Conspiracy theorists
Non-religious people can perform that same appeasement by contradicting reality in other ways, such as by being outspoken Flat Earthers. If they are bullies, they can add their own bullying through terrorism denial, attacking victims of mass shootings as "crisis actors".
Conservatives sided with the Islamic State by vilifying their victims.
What happens when you aid a bully's victim? You become the next victim, of course. Conservatives have a strong aversion to aiding refugees from violence partly because, as irrational as it may be in this situation, they are intuitively afraid that this will bring the violence to them. For example, they did not want to get on ISIL's bad side, and if that meant turning a blind eye to facts, logic, and the suffering and deaths of millions of people, so be it. Note that proclamations of intent to "kick ISIS's ass" constituted aggressive posturing, and did not lessen the impact of appeasing ISIL by turning away refugees. Additionally, vilifying refugees is an excellent excuse for them to attack an oppressed ethnicity, just as they did to Jews fleeing the Holocaust.
Men's Rights Activists flock to the alt-right.
It was never about rights, of course. MRAs reframe women's wishes to not be systemically oppressed and murdered as an attempt by women to oppress men. This gives MRAs a framework for attacking, silencing, and ignoring women. Note that actual bad treatment of men would be alleviated by the feminism that MRAs despise, which addresses the cultural misogyny by which men are punished for doing anything seen as feminine. Men's Rights Activism is about having the ability to freely revile and bully women, with the support of a community of like-minded bullies. Once MRAs discovered the joys of communal bullying, the alt-right spread itself before them as a mecca, welcoming them home. "Here there be bigger bullies, and you can be one of us."
Now for the complex part. There are two factors that determine whether a person supports bullies: Inclination, which is born from fear and/or malice, and culture. These two can be at odds with each other.
For example, a person could be raised in conservative culture — immersed in the hatred, lies, harmful stereotypes, and rationalizations of all sorts of evil — but have a courageous heart. At some point, they may decide that needlessly harming people on the basis of race or sexuality is wrong. They may shift from Republican to Libertarian, and quietly do what they can to persuade those close to them, without making too many waves. They will continue to support all of the rest of the harm caused by conservative policies, often saying things like, "I'm fiscally conservative but socially liberal," because their indoctrination still blocks real world facts, and also because their willingness to pay social costs for what is right only goes so far.
Similarly, a person can be raised in liberal culture but have a cowardly heart. They may attempt to silence and/or distance themselves from their friends who speak out against fascism, because those friends are failing to heed the most basic survival strategy, "Keep your head down". They may refuse to support feminism or other movements designed to protect people from bullies, fearing backlash from their more conservative friends and from Internet trolls.
Bullies who are raised amid liberal culture participate in oppressive behaviors, gaslighting or lashing out at anyone who calls them out, proudly proclaiming their own tolerant and benevolent attitudes, and wondering why they keep alienating their friends. To relieve their cognitive dissonance, they may be drawn toward conservative, and specifically fascist, culture, where they feel more at home. If they get so far as to admit that they like the idea of putting on that red armband, they will retain enough background knowledge to be aware that there is something seriously wrong with them for it.
The cleverest bullies on the left will, at least in public, hold to liberal ideals about systemic oppression. They satisfy their desire to harm people, but mostly on a personal level. They may have recourse to publicly harm others on a larger scale by becoming GamerGaters, or by joining the ranks of frightened and misguided parents in refusing to vaccinate their children, neither of which is viewed as specifically right-leaning. A public anti-vaccination stance also serves the same purpose — bully appeasement — as other declarations of absurd beliefs: See religion, above. Like bullies in any culture, if they have the charisma to get away with it, they maintain control over a band of rapt supporters who praise them but also fear their wrath.
Note that this is not hypothesis. When I say, "They may..." and the like, it is because I have seen this happen.
What I've presented so far seems cut-and-dried, and perhaps insultingly contemptuous. But wait! There's more to know than, "Conservatives are characterized by their cowardice, doing evil out of fear of bullies, while liberals are characterized by their courage, doing good despite fear of bullies." If you were getting complacent, here's the uncomfortable part.
The fears faced by liberals and conservatives are fundamentally different, and people in conservative circles have a naturally harder time facing their fears. A liberal who stands up to bullies takes a very real risk, but is bolstered by the support of their community. A conservative who stands up to bullies takes the same risk, but also risks having their community turn on them like a pack of jackals. A white person not loyal to white supremacy may be derided as a "cuck". An evangelical Christian who opposes abuse may lose all of their church friends. Abusive religions, like abusive boyfriends, intentionally restrict your outside friendships so that you'll have nowhere to run. Losing church friends may mean losing all friends. We must understand that, when we ask conservatives to stand up for what is right, we are asking more of them than when we ask liberals to do so. It is more akin to "coming out" in a hostile community. In some cases, it could even cause their family to disown them. This is not to say that we should excuse evil behavior that is motivated by fear, but we must understand its source if we hope to change it.
In light of this, let's revisit the bit where I said, "This is why facts don't work to convince conservatives." There are common ways in which conversations between conservatives and liberals can go off the rails. One that is particularly frustrating for both sides occurs when the liberal uses verifiable facts to disprove the conservative's position, then acts as if the debate is over and won. The conservative still fails to accept the demonstrable reality of the situation, and is left resentful because the liberal's "conclusive" argument never even touched upon the real reasons that the conservative holds and proclaims their beliefs. To be fair, the conversation cannot touch upon those reasons, because the conservative is forbidden from acknowledging them. They can't say, or even think, "If I stop pretending that climate science is wrong, then I'll be breaking an implicit rule, which will bring down upon me wrath and ostracism from my peers." That would admit the pretense, and thus break the rule. Following the rule feels like a survival strategy. How would you feel if, while debating, you had to ignore and disclaim your most pressing reason for your beliefs? It's no wonder that they relieve their cognitive dissonance by ignoring evidence! A liberal who does not understand that motive will be appalled and disheartened by this display of confirmation bias, and may be tempted to explain it simply by dismissing conservatives as willfully ignorant (which, while technically true, is merely a description, not an explanation). There are other ways in which conversations between conservatives and liberals can go off the rails.[5]
Now that the conservatives have taken enough offense to stop reading, let's talk about what we can do about this situation, politically. Practical application of the "biggest bully" explanation can involve removing conservatives' barriers to better behavior, or encouraging them to switch sides — without feeling as though they have switched sides — in the voting booth.
Most of the stories of reformed conservatives that I have seen have involved them moving away from their conservative communities before they could change their minds and allegiances. This is clearly not a tenable large-scale solution. If folks could find compassionate communities at home, they would have a kind of social safety net to fall back on, if they wanted to explore considerate and responsible behavior. Redneck Revolt sets a spectacular example in working to accomplish just that. They allow people to cooperatively resist white supremacy while building community, all without abandoning their tough, rural culture.
Liberals are getting out the vote in response to the explicitly fascist government takeover. However, Republicans still have gerrymandering. They still have voter suppression. They still have electronic election fraud. They still have viral Russian social media accounts radicalizing young people. They may shortly have censorship of Internet content. Complacency with the tactic of getting more liberal votes than conservative votes will spell our doom. A good candidate ought to pursue both liberal and conservative votes.
In my estimation, here's how you would do it: Optimally, start off running in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, and preferably as many more as you can deal with. Yes, this has been done successfully. But even if you lose the red ones, anyone who voted for you in the primary will probably remember your name and vote for you in the general election. Regardless of whether this is accomplished, a liberal candidate can and should use conservative sounding "tough" talk, targeting only the corrupt corporate fascists and the extremist fascists: For example, neo-Nazis and the KKK. "The banksters who destroyed the economy and your jobs will pay!" And so forth.
Yes, this will cost you some big donations. Would you rather be owned by fascists giving you extra campaign funds to reach your existing voters, or have an entire population of extra voters? If this is a hard question for you, either step aside for a better candidate or see if you can slip vague, dog-whistle language past the banksters. The fascists have split their party in two: It's an opportunity on a silver platter, and liberal candidates would be foolish to refuse it. If you can present some urban and rural revitalization policies, and stomach talking like a conservative half the time (you're in politics; suck it up), trashing only the extreme fascists and their corporate overlords, then you can give moderate conservative voters an excuse to say, "Yeah, screw the KKK, and stick it to Goldman Sachs. This person's okay." Note that this is not an original idea: Doug Muder advocated in 2005 for liberal politicians to learn to "talk conservative," and he made a better case for it than I have here.
Let's see how the "Biggest Bully" explanation compares and contrasts to others' observations of differences between liberals and conservatives.
Many and varied studies show that fear and anxiety drive conservatives' political attitudes. Bullies rule conservatives through fear, so this fits. The "Biggest Bully" theory is merely more specific.
George Lakoff draws a comparison to families, claiming that liberals think government should take the role of a "nurturing parent," while conservatives think that government should take the role of a "strict father". To the conservative, dominance hierarchies must be obeyed. "Bully" is my liberal term for those who claim dominance and use it to harm others. Since this is pretty much the entire ruling class, the "Biggest Bully" explanation is only more specific in its language, in including non-government entities such as the Vatican and ISIL, and in addressing conservatives who are themselves bullies.
Siderea's essay on The Two Moral Modes establishes that, for some people, morality (Mode 1) describes behavior owed to all other people, whereas for others, morality (Mode 2) describes only behavior owed toward one's own in-group. For people operating in Mode 2, oppressive behavior toward others might be moderated by concerns such as consequences for one's self, but not by morality. Mode 2 corresponds to practicing or aspiring bullies/Nazis. My essay focuses on understanding the motivations of conservatives in general, but barely touches on the motivations of Nazis, treating them as conservatives who take particular enjoyment in directly harming others. Siderea's essay fills in that gap, exploring both the details of Mode 2 morality and the factors which often keep the rest of us from understanding it.
Part 3 of "The Two Moral Modes" mentions that "people functioning in Mode 2 want to have people to subjugate – but they're not really fussy whom," which fits with the bit above about Men's Rights Activists flocking to the alt-right. The degree to which conservative non-bullies might subscribe to Mode 2 morality is, I think, an open question. If they support their president's right to commit crimes against humanity, with no inclination to personally participate, I suspect that they still use Mode 2 morality. The "nice" ones might simply consider a larger portion of the population to be in their in-group. (Note that Siderea's essay was imported from Livejournal to DreamWidth. The direct links between the sections will take you to their original Livejournal counterparts, so I have linked to the calendar page that includes all three of the DreamWidth entries.)
Thank you for getting all the way through this! For related reading, here are some insights into bullies from my personal experience. My comments section is open for corrections, further discussion of the thoughts I have shared here, and discussion on furthering understanding, but not for debate over typical political topics. You can have those here. Comments here are screened to discourage trolling.
Footnote 1. In daily life, "biggest bully" refers to the child who mugs others for lunch money and trading cards, the friend who lashes out at any criticism, the boss who treats their employees like crap, the abusive head of household, the police officer confident in their lack of accountability, et alia. In political life, "biggest bully" refers to mass-murdering oligarchs and their mouthpieces: The Koch brothers, the churches, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Mussolini, Putin, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, oil companies, gun manufacturers, et cetera. Such people and organizations are easily identified by their massive corruption.
Footnote 2. Note that while conservatives in general support fascism, and are therefore fascists, we tend to reserve use of the terms "fascist" and "Nazi" for those who proudly self-identify as such. There is certainly a case to be made against such reservation, as the word for "someone who joined the Nazis for reasons other than racism" is still "Nazi". But the real question should regard the utility of the label, rather than its aptness.
Footnote 3. I have a gay Republican friend. He hates the oppression of gay people, but is fully on board with every other sort of oppression. He once said to me, after I expressed concerns about terrorism by the American government, "I don't care how many foreigners have to die to preserve my way of life." For him, gay rights are just an unfortunate speed bump on the conservative highway.
Footnote 4. A similar show of bully appeasement is made by religious practices, rather than proclamation of religious beliefs. To visibly and greatly inconvenience one's self in the name of strictly following religious law is a public statement establishing how "religious" one is. This is code for, "I am willing to subjugate my own needs to the orders of those in authority, regardless of the merit of those orders. Be assured, bullies, that I am your faithful servant." To cite religious reasons while harming others (for example, by picketing abortion clinics or beheading atheists) serves the dual purposes of establishing said willingness and of proclaiming one's own power as a bully.
Footnote 5. A second common cause of derailed debates is that liberals and conservatives talk past each other, starting with different definitions and understandings of the subject. The most obvious example of this is racism, which conservatives define as "judging someone by their race". This definition allows them to demonize backlash against the oppressive behaviors of white people as "judging white people by their skin". Liberals use "racism" as a shorthand for "systemic racial prejudice used as a tool of widespread oppression and murder". It requires background knowledge to understand why this is a more useful definition than the first one. Conservatives typically lack this knowledge, and so cannot be persuaded to even discuss racism by this definition. Of course, a strength of systemic racism is its immunity to discussion and introspection by those most committed to it. Those who lack the courage to break rules of silence in order to become better people will never succeed at communicating about the topic.
A third common cause of derailment is argument in bad faith. The popular Sartre quote on anti-Semites really applies to any fascist: "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." (Jean Paul Sartre, Anti‐Semite and Jew, George J. Becker translator.)
Some initial thoughts
Date: 2018-03-12 09:36 pm (UTC)- I'd like to see you be more explicit about whether you are talking only about an attitude of "pick whoever seems more powerful and follow them", or else something more like "everything is about conflict between interest groups, so I better pick whoever is the most powerful to look out for mine, even if that person or institution is flawed". Does it matter to your argument whether (or to what extent) conservatives assume liberals are outgroup bullies who think just like conservatives?
- I predict that on the wider Internet, you will encounter people who think "conflict vs. mistake" theory explains everything, and people who think the book Albion's Seed explains everything. Probably other trendy things I'm not thinking of. If you've never seen those before, I had better not try to explain them, since I'll miss nuances.
- Where you say "there are at least three different ways . . .", putting the second two in the footnote was confusing and made things hard to follow. Maybe boil them down and put them inline, or clearly indicate that someone really should follow the footnote if they want to know what your other two items are.
- I'd personally love to see less of a focus on just the US. We're only what, 4% of humans? At least clarify whether you are making claims about the other 96%.
Re: Some initial thoughts
Date: 2018-03-12 11:52 pm (UTC)