Jeffrey Isaacs, a distinguished professor of political science at IU Bloomington, had a very thought-provoking essay in Common Dreams.It was evidently triggered by the issuance of a Chinese State Council position papers asserting that China is a “democracy that works.” The paper argued that the “Chinese model” is superior to the “Western model,”–that it is more efficient, promotes solidarity, and is not “an ornament to be used for decoration.”
As Isaacs notes
Most readers of the piece will rightly focus on the manifest hypocrisies of the Chinese power elite and its intellectual supporters who justify terrible violations of human rights.
But this rhetorical appeal by authoritarians to the values of “democracy” is nothing new. It has antecedents in the official rhetorics of Italian fascism, German Nazism, and Russian Communism—all of which claimed to represent a “higher form” of “folk democracy” or “proletarian democracy” or “people’s democracy.” In more recent times, Hugo Chavez presented himself as a proponent of an anti-imperialist “protagonistic democracy,” and Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary’s increasingly authoritarian regime, famously declared in 2014 that Hungary was an “illiberal democracy,” pointing to Singapore, China, India, Turkey, and Russia as his models. And we must not forget, of course, that Vladimir Putin long extolled his regime as a form of “sovereign democracy” that placed national traditions above global commitments and regarded “human rights” as a “Western” abstraction.
As Isaacs goes on to discuss, the Chinese claim to be a democracy is just the most recent iteration of a longtime debate over what the term means. “Democracy,” as he reminds us, is a “complex and essentially contested” concept, and arguments over the connections between liberalism and democracy have been central to modern politics.
But we don’t need to look to mid-20th century totalitarianism, or current-day anti-liberal authoritarians in China or Russia or Hungary, to see versions of this contestation. For it is taking place before our very eyes in the U.S., in the form of a Republican party that is deliberately assaulting core norms and institutions of liberal democracy and doing it in the name of . . . democracy itself.
In the essay, Isaacs highlights a critical and too-often overlooked element of America’s current political impasse: the misuse–the intentional corruption–of language in service of propaganda and power.
He reminds us that GOP “leaders” from Tucker Carlson to Mike Pence have made it their business to commune with Viktor Orban, and that Republican efforts to “Orbanify” U.S. politics don’t just adopt Orban’s authoritarian legal tactics–they also mimic his rhetorical ones.
Isaacs is quite right that when Trump and his MAGA supporters pontificate about “democracy,” they mean something quite different from American liberal democracy.
They mean the popular sovereignty of “true Americans.” They do not mean by this universal adult suffrage, they mean voting restrictions designed to limit the participation of “undesirable” and “un-American” people. They do not mean by this a system based on robust debate and free and fair party competition. They mean a system that opposes “fake news” and “liberal science,” that privileges their own media and their own academics and their own partisan advantage, and regards any alternatives as “enemies of the people.”
This essay–well worth clicking through and reading in its entirety–reminded me of the following exchange from Alice in Wonderland between Alice and Humpty-Dumpty:
When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less. ‘ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
Communication is difficult even when the participants to a conversation agree on the meanings of the words they are using. Tone, body language, professional and “hip” jargon can change the connotation of otherwise simple exchanges, even when no misdirection is intended. When language is is corrupted–when, in the words of Tallyrand, words are chosen “to conceal true thoughts”–we no longer have the critically-important ability to engage in productive conversation.
Language is what allowed humans to emerge from caves, to collaborate, to investigate, to create. It’s not only essential for intellectual and emotional expression, it’s the primary vehicle through which humans transmit culture, scientific knowledge and world-views across generations, the way we link the past with the present.
When words no longer have objective content–when we lose the ability to understand what other people are really saying–the resulting chaos empowers the worst of us.
I’m a longtime reader of the Hedgehog Review, and was reading a review in the current issue of a book I’ve recently purchased but haven’t yet read: The Dawn of Everything. The review was very positive–the reviewer was a longtime fan of one of the co-authors, who recently died–but the final paragraph of that review brought me up short.
[The authors’] one undeniable achievement, it seems to me, is to show what a dangerous tool common sense can be. As more than a few people have pointed out lately, no government in the history of the world—not even Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany—has ever had anywhere near the force needed to repress all of its people at once. States have always depended on their people to repress themselves. When most people—most anthropologists, even—deny that we can have iPhones and equal freedom at the same time, the chances of revolutionary change dwindle to zero, and glib cynicism becomes the new wisdom. “The moral basis of a society,” John Lanchester has written, “its sense of its own ethical identity, can’t just be: ‘This is the way the world is, deal with it.’” The Dawn of Everything says, in essence, “This isn’t the way the world has to be. There are literally thousands of other ways.” It’s high time we give some a try.
The “common sense” to which the reviewer alludes is the frequent, confident assertion that hierarchies are inevitable in a technologically-advanced society. (Evidently, the book includes a number of historical exceptions to that “common-sense” rule). More striking, however–and definitely more thought-provoking–is recognition of the undeniable reality that no government can repress all of its people all at once.
We do, as the reviewer asserts, repress ourselves–and although the author didn’t elaborate on how or why we do that, it seems to me that there are a some rather obvious causes of that self-repression: propaganda that encourages beliefs grounded in falsehoods, tribalism that encourages conformity with “our” positions, and civic ignorance. They combine to reinforce the conviction that individual citizens are powerless. Even people who recognize that Fox News and its clones are promoting lies tend to believe there is little or nothing that can be done about it–or about the gerrymandering that they think makes an effort to cast a ballot worthless.
It’s just “common sense,” that the forces that have distorted our democracy and impeded the passage of policies desired by large majorities of Americans–big money, big Pharma, the NRA, et al– are too powerful for mere citizens to vanquish.
Ukrainians are challenging that conviction.
After all, it was also “common sense” that the Russians would easily overpower Ukraine. Russian propaganda–quite probably even believed by Putin–assured its audiences that Ukraine was filled with Russian sympathizers who would greet invaders with flowers (a belief with some uncomfortable resonance with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.) Even if there were no flowers, however, most of the West shared the “common sense” that Ukraine would quickly fall to Russia’s greater military power.
The people who didn’t buy either form of that “common sense” propaganda were the Ukrainians. Thanks in part to their recent history, they knew better.
I previously posted about a documentary chronicling the Ukrainian’s 2014 uprising against the Russian puppet President who had refused to sign an agreement tying Ukraine to the EU. Despite an unbelievably brutal response by the Russian-dominated government to initially-peaceful protests, they prevailed.
As I noted in that post, what was amazing to me was the Immense size of the Ukrainian protests, the enormous numbers of ordinary citizens–teenagers and grandparents, labor and management, men and women– who joined in the demand for change, took to the streets, and actively participated in the ensuing deadly combat with government forces.
The Ukrainians who are having surprising successes battling Putin’s army learned a great deal from that 2014 experience: that politics matters, that citizens have agency, and that “common sense” opinion is often very wrong.
Those are lessons Americans (and especially Hoosiers) need to learn.
Everyone has his or her theory about the roots of Americans’ current political and cultural hostilities. Most of those theories are rooted in history or sociology, but I recently stumbled across a very different analysis, offered in a lengthy letter from a Finnish reader to Talking Points Memo
The writer linked the growth of America’s internal divisions to a very external culprit: Russia. In his view, Russia has used America as a “tool”–a Western backdoor to its goal of weakening Europe and NATO
Since Western Europe and the USA together (in the form of NATO and otherwise) has been too strong for Russia to expand, and since the USA is the greatest military backup fortress of NATO/Europe, they simply circumvented Europe and went to the core of the power using the kitchen door, the internal political structure of the USA.
I understand you would like to see your heroic country as the navel of the world and as the main focus of any operation, but I am sorry to inform that, in this case, you are only cheap tools. You had to be weakened (and Britain manipulated to Brexit etc) in order to facilitate invasions to Ukraine, Belarussia and a list of other neighboring pieces of land in Putin’s future Menu.
So, as a KGB officer would plan, they came exactly from the opposite direction than where they were expected. They professionally built an operation web among the rural redneck cowboys, evangelical christians, the NRA, the most republican of all republicans, your law enforcement, some military people, big business etc etc. They popped up to the surface from within the “core americans”, but their long dive before that was planned and had started from the Kremlin’s operation board.
The writer goes on to say that the Russian plot nearly succeeded on January 6th, one of several efforts to incite and coordinate seemingly “spontaneous” protests and prop up “corrupt politicians like a welding flame to the same point and to the same moment.” He then adds, ominously, that “They just barely failed – for the time being!”
Had Trump succeeded to keep in power, the march of Putin to various targets in the Eastern Europe would have been more like an easy summer parade. NATO would be partially paralyzed by his loyal friends in the White House (who likely would have got their personal share of the profits).
It was no coincidence that some crucial (and criminal) incidents of the Trump term had to do with the Ukraine. It was one of Putin’s main targets already then. Trump was because of Ukraine, not vice versa! GOP (short for “Girlfriends Of Putin”??) just blocked any consequences for him.
After laying out this theory of Putin’s/Russia’s strategy, the writer comes to his major concern about what he clearly (and maybe correctly) sees as the fecklessness of the United States. We have yet to hold Trump or any significant member of the GOP accountable–and meanwhile, “the GOP is working in three shifts to make the next election even more rigged than the previous one. And you are just going to let it happen.. Tralala!”
So, if you really want to do something for the Ukraine, for the Europe and to any other decent country or person, please also Do. Your. Own. Homework! Show to both your home audience and to the rest of the world that also the western flank of Putin’s army, the one located in your country, is kept accountable! No special treatment, just f**king enforce your old existing laws to ultra-rich/influential white dudes, as well! You are just tools, but you are very important tools for Putin also in the European front. Don’t let him use you.
The letter ends with a declaration that, by our collective inaction, we Americans are facilitating the bad things that are happening in the whole world.
My reaction to this analysis–this diatribe, actually–is mixed. Geopolitical events are almost never reducible to simple “cause and effect,” after all. But it is impossible to ignore the basic outlines of our Finnish friend’s accusations, because most of the grounds of those accusations have been confirmed by U.S. Intelligence, journalists, and the January 6th Committee. We know that Russian bots influenced the 2016 election; and we know that they have been effective in disseminating conspiracy theories and disinformation on social media.
We also know that it is very unlikely that Russian activities in cyberspace were undertaken independently–i.e., without Putin’s knowledge or direction.
There is one area where I am in total agreement with the gentleman from Finland: the pressing need to hold Trump and his enablers accountable–and soon.
A newsletter from TNR summed up my astonishment over recent revelations detailing the extent of Ginni Thomas’ involvement in the Big Lie. (I can never find URLs for newsletters–sorry about that.)
That stunning Washington Post piece by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa about Ginni Thomas’s text messages to Mark Meadows needs to be read at least twice to take in the full measure of corruption and venality it conveys. Here were people trying to overturn American democracy, saying that this was not politics but war—oh, and while saying all this, invoking the name of Jesus Christ.
TheNew Yorkerdescribed the reaction of legal ethicists to the revelation that Virginia (Ginni) Thomas–wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas–“colluded extensively with a top White House adviser about overturning Joe Biden’s defeat of then President Donald Trump.”
On March 24th, the Washington Post and CBS News reported that they had copies of twenty-nine text messages between Ginni Thomas and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. In those texts, she urged Meadows to help invalidate the results of the Presidential election, and employed QAnon conspiracy theories to justify her assertion that the election was an “obvious fraud.”
It was necessary, she told Meadows, to “release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.” Ginni Thomas’s texts to Meadows also refer to conversations that she’d had with “Jared”—possibly Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who also served as a senior adviser to the Administration. (“Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am.”)
Not surprisingly, the legal ethicists quoted in the New Yorker article were aghast; all of them agreed that–at a minimum–Clarence Thomas would have to recuse himself from participating in any case involving Trump, January 6th or the election. (In any sane political environment, these revelations would immediately generate an impeachment of Thomas, but given the extent to which partisanship reigns supreme in today’s Senate, the prospects of that outcome seem dim.)
Supreme Court Justices aren’t bound by the judicial code of conduct that applies to all other federal judges, which mandates that they recuse themselves from participating in any cases in which personal entanglements could cause a fair-minded member of the public to doubt their impartiality. Yet Justices are subject to a federal law that prohibits them from hearing cases in which their spouses have “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” The statute, 28 U.S.C. section 455, also requires them to disqualify themselves from any proceedings in which their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
Some of us have questioned Clarence Thomas’ “impartiality” for many years; the recent disclosures would seem to vindicate our suspicions.
Clarence Thomas was the only Justice to dissent from a Supreme Court decision allowing the House investigative committee to obtain records of Trump’s communications relating to the 2020 election results. It is very possible that those records included communications implicating Ginni Thomas in improper or illegal activities. And Thomas strongly dissented when the Court refused to hear a case filed by Pennsylvania Republicans trying to disqualify mail-in ballots.
Richard Hasen, an expert in election law who teaches at the University of California, Irvine, also believes that Justice Thomas should never have participated in the case weighing whether Congress had the right to review Trump’s papers. Hasen told me, “Given Ginni Thomas’s deep involvement in trying to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election based upon outlandish claims of voter fraud, and her work on this with not only activists but the former President’s chief of staff, Justice Thomas should not have heard any cases” involving disputes over the 2020 election or Congress’s investigation of the January 6th riots.
Yes, married people can lead independent professional lives, and it is not a justice’s responsibility to police the actions of his or her spouse. But the brazenness with which the Thomases have flouted the most reasonable expectations of judicial rectitude is without precedent. From the Affordable Care Act to the Trump administration’s Muslim ban to the 2020 election challenges, Ms. Thomas has repeatedly embroiled herself in big-ticket legal issues and with litigants who have wound up before her husband’s court. All the while, he has looked the other way, refusing to recuse himself from any of these cases. For someone whose job is about judging, Justice Thomas has, in this context at least, demonstrated abominably poor judgment.
I have previously noted that I learn a lot from the people who comment on this blog. (Even those with whom I strongly disagree provide me with valuable insights about the world-views of people I have trouble understanding.)
Because I continue to be impressed with the breadth of knowledge of so many who comment here, I’m asking for your help with a project I am currently pursuing in collaboration with a (much better informed) colleague.
The project grew out of our joint concern over what I’ll call “the woke wars–” the efforts to label accurate history instruction as the vilified “CRT,” the accusations of “cancelling” and commissions of “micro-aggressions”–the use and misuse of a whole vocabulary of culture war. We wanted to write a small book (or long article) aimed at the substantial number of Americans who are unfamiliar with that vocabulary–people who aren’t bigots, who believe in racial reconciliation–but who are unaware of the ways in which some behaviors, words and phrases are experienced as stereotypical and/or hurtful. We wanted to communicate with the numerous Americans who fall somewhere between the nationalists and nativists clinging to their hatreds and the”woke” purists who decry the racism that they detect virtually everywhere.
We define purists as those who elevate the perfect (as they define it) over the good, who tend to view the world as binary– us vs. them, good versus evil—and to view any recognition of nuance, shades of gray and/or context as evidence of insufficient “wokeness.”
Our working title is: How To Be Anti-Racist Without Being a Jerk.
Below is the current draft of our introduction, explaining why we are writing this and for whom. We follow it in the book with a “glossary” explaining terminology. A third section has examples and accompanying tips on how to distinguish between ignorance (lack of awareness) and negative intent, while a fourth section offers what we think are appropriate responses to various common situations. The fifth and final section is a summary re-emphasizing that we consider the proper goal of anti-racist behavior to be a world in which individuals are treated as individuals, not as representatives of any particular “tribe” –a world where each person is treated with dignity and respect until and unless they demonstrate behaviors that divest them of the right to demand such respect.
We have talked mainly to each other, and shared the whole draft with a very limited number of diverse friends; accordingly, we would really appreciate other suggestions as we go forward. What points are important to include? What messages are likely to resonate with our target market (which is neither White Supremicists nor the armies of the rabidly “woke.”)
In case you feel you need to read the entire draft in order to comment, I’ll post it in the comments section.
____________________________
We decided to offer this small book because we think we have a somewhat different approach to the subject-matter, one that we hope will allow people of good will to navigate the increasingly choppy waters of tribal discord.
We live in a time of social change, much of it positive. We especially recognize and celebrate the practical and symbolic progress toward equality. Many people point to the 2008 election of President Obama, the 2015 Obergfell v. Hodges Supreme Court recognition of gay marriage, and the very public rejection of racist behaviors and institutions that animate protest movements and viral messaging on social media as signs of progress.
That said, America is finally coming to terms with the reality that a far-too-substantial portion of our population is composed of White Christian Nationalists—a belief system that goes well beyond prejudice against people of color. It includes anti-Semitism and bigotries against Islam and various other religions, as well as a healthy dose of misogyny. When this book talks about being “anti-racist,” it’s shorthand for combatting that expansive distaste for the “other” to which we’re referring.
What, exactly, is racism, as we are using that term? It is the belief that identity trumps individuality and behavior—the belief that people who share a skin color or religion share essential characteristics that distinguish “them” from “us.” (We use the term identity in its political sense: the tendency of people of a particular gender, religion, race, social background, social class or other identifying factors to develop political agendas that are based upon these identities.) It is a worldview that fails to see people as people—individuals who deserve to be approached and evaluated as individuals. There are certainly cultural and regional differences among Americans, but humans of every color and faith and gender can and do vary from delightful to annoying to truly damaged and/or deplorable. Racism is denial of that reality, accompanied by a belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own “tribe.” Such a worldview is racist whether people harboring such beliefs are members of the majority or part of a marginalized group, whether they act on those beliefs or not, and whether or not they are fully conscious of the fact that they harbor such beliefs.
Recognition of the persistence and outsized influence of White Supremacist ideology, and the emergence of efforts to combat it, are welcome. It’s a truism that you cannot solve a problem of which you are unaware, and many, if not most Americans were unaware of the extent and persistence of these attitudes until the election of an African-American President brought them to the surface. The rise of anti-racism efforts is very welcome. We also recognize, however, that all culture clashes prompt excesses and oversimplifications. Well-meaning—and not so well-meaning—people too often engage in “virtue signaling”—performances meant to signal moral superiority– in situations in which thoughtful, civil discussions would be more productive.
Speaking of productivity–this is intended to be a book about getting the job done, moving the needle, being effective. If you are an activist who is determined to make the perfect the enemy of the good, if your goal is to garner attention, to feel morally superior, to curry favor with this or that constituency—if you believe that your particular experiences or insights entitle you to set the agenda irrespective of the setbacks your behavior might trigger or the harm that could be caused by hasty or unfair accusations– this isn’t a book for you.
It isn’t only physicians who must abide by the admonition: do no harm. Our goal in this little book is to help Americans move toward a fair and equitable society while doing no harm—or at least as little harm as possible. We are firmly convinced that progress toward a more fair and equitable society will be retarded, rather than advanced, by shaming, “cancelling” or self-righteous denunciations, and that social justice is more likely to result from educational interventions communicated with kindness and civility.
Rather obviously, this isn’t a book for those who have bought into the myths of White Christian Supremacy. We are aware that we aren’t going to change the minds or hearts of those who are convinced of their own innate superiority. This is also not a book for people who see racism and bigotry in every offhand remark. It is meant to be a helpful guide for people who recognize the pervasiveness and immorality of both personal prejudice and structural racism, people who don’t see themselves as culture warriors, but who do want to be effective allies in the effort to right systemic wrongs—and who are uncertain of the (often-shifting) terms upon which today’s battles are being fought. This book is for the majority of people who find themselves in the broad, uncharted territory between the more extreme anti-racist activists and America’s increasingly vocal White Supremacists.
Americans are currently awash in advice about how to be an ally—how to combat racism, how to see stereotypical assumptions that underlie seemingly neutral acts and comments, how to investigate one’s own biases and beliefs. Much of that advice is important and useful. There are fewer admonitions—okay, we haven’t seen any—about summoning the courage required to support people who are the target of overblown, unfair and/or unsupported accusations of bigotry. (Those situations aren’t as rare as we’d all like to believe.) Paradoxically, the orgies of condemnation that all too often become part of efforts to combat racism and “cancel” the racists can end up actually impeding progress– creating circular firing squads that silence or antagonize would-be allies. Insisting on fair play helps avoid the angry reactions to unjustified accusations that can end up disrupting organizations and movements and retarding efforts to move us toward a fairer, more equitable society. We need to understand and remember that there are meaningful differences between ignorance, “micro”-aggressions, and bad behaviors—and that even bad behavior does not automatically equal “bad person.”
In short, in this little book, we hope to provide readers with tools to: (1) understand the sometimes-bewildering vocabulary of the anti-racist movement; (2) identify and avoid pernicious stereotypes; (3) distinguish between inadvertent offenses and more harmful and deeply-rooted attitudes; and (4) recognize the most effective ways to deal with both the inadvertent offenses and more intentional displays of prejudice.
In other words, how to be anti-racist without being a jerk.
