Pro-GOP media and supporters have long committed themselves to a view of politics as a zero-sum battle between the fantasy of an “Us” and a hobgoblin of “Them.” This rhetorical strategy goes at least as far back as McCarthyism, but Limbaugh was relentlessly attached to it, as is Fox News. They aren’t alone in this (I first became familiar with this way of thinking about politics when arguing with Stalinists, Libertarians, and pro-PETA folks many, many years ago). It’s working better for the GOP than it is for critics of the GOP, or Dems, or various groups for various reasons.
1) Demagoguery posits an Us (Good Persons) and a Them (Bad People With Bad Motives), and says that the correct course of action is obvious to every and any Good Person. While there are rhetors all over the political spectrum (it’s a spectrum, not a binary or continuum) who appeal to the false Us v. Them, the most anti-democratic and dangerous demagoguery relies on there being a third group—one that is unhuman (associated with terms and metaphors of animals or diseases)—and one of the things that characterizes Them is that They don’t recognize the danger of the animalistic group.
For Nazis, Romas and Jews were the dehumanized group, and liberals and socialists were the Them that didn’t recognize the danger. For proslavery rhetors, enslaved people and freed African Americans were the dehumanized group, and abolitionists and critics of slavery were the Them that didn’t recognize the danger. PETA used to dehumanize farmers and ranchers, and the Them was people who continued to buy animal products.[1]
Regardless of who does it–whether in- or out-group–, we need to object when rhetors dehumanize humans.
2) The media has long promoted a (false, incoherent, but easy and profitable) framing of policy questions as a horse race or tug-of-war between two groups. The “continuum” model is just as inaccurate, and just as incoherent. When I point out that it’s false, I’m told, “But everyone uses it.” That’s a great example of the “bandwagon” fallacy. “Everyone” used the substance v. essence distinction for hundreds of years. “Everyone” bled people to cure diseases for over a thousand years.
Our world is not actually two groups; our world is a world of people with different values, needs, and policy agenda. Media treating policy disagreements as a fight between two groups is a self-fulfilling description insofar as it teaches people to treat policy options as signals of in-group commitment rather than …well…policy options.
A person might be genuinely committed to reducing crime in an area. That commitment doesn’t necessarily mean they should be opposed to or in favor of more reliance on “Own Recognizance” rather than bail, or decriminalizing various activities, increasing infrastructure expenditure in that area, increasing punishment, privatizing prisons, applying the death penalty more often. The relationship between and among those policies is complicated in all sorts of ways, and data as to which policy strategy is most likely reduce crime is also complicated. Each of those topics is a policy issue that is complicated, nuanced, and uncertain, and something that should be argued as a complicated, nuanced, and uncertain issue and not a tug-of-war between good and evil.
Not everyone who believes that abortion should be criminalized also believes that our death penalty system is just, for instance. Despite how many media portray issues, neither of the major parties has a consistent policy agenda from one year to the next—keep in mind that as recently as the overturning of Roe v. Wade major figures in the GOP said there would not be a federal ban on abortion. They were not speaking for every member of their party, as was immediately made clear. Republicans disagree with each other about whether bi-partisanship is a virtue, gay rights, tariffs. Dems disagree with each other about universal health care, the death penalty, how to respond to climate change. As they should.
Talking about politics in terms of a contest between two groups means we don’t argue policies. Policies matter.
Most important, a person persuaded that the death penalty should be applied more often, but who believes that people who disagree have a legitimate point of view—a pluralist (which is different from a relativist)—enhances democracy, whereas a person who believes that every and anyone who disagrees with them is spit from the bowels of Satan is an authoritarian, regardless of whether they’re pro- or anti-death penalty.
Democracy depends upon values like pluralism, fairness, equality before the law. Media needs to talk about extremism in regard to those values, not one’s stance on a policy. The continuum model falsely conflates the two–a person who believes in universal health care is not more “extreme” in terms of their commitment to democracy than someone who believes that anyone who wants a change to our system is a dangerous radical who should be silenced, if not deported. The media would call that latter person a centrist. They aren’t.
Treating politics as a conflict between identities mobilizes an audience, and is therefore more profitable, but it is, at least, proto-demagogic, and it inhibits (and often prohibits) reasonable deliberations about our complicated policy options.
(And, just to be clear, so does a “let’s all just get along” way of approaching politics—if we think that “civility” is being nice to each other, and refraining from saying anything that hurts the feelings of anyone else, then we’re still avoiding the hard work of reasonably, and passionately, arguing about policy.)
So, if we want less demagoguery, we need to abandon a demagogic way of talking about politics. Stop talking about two sides. Talk about policies.
3) Mean girl rhetoric. A junior high mean girl (Regina) who wants to be friends with Jane is likely to do it in three steps. First, she tells Jane that Sally says terrible things about Jane. She’ll pick things about which Jane is at least a little insecure. “Jane keeps making fun of your acne.” “Jane says you’re fat.” Then she’ll badmouth Sally, thereby creating a bond between herself and Jane—they are unified against the common enemy (Sally). Sally may or may not have said those things—Regina might have entirely lied, taken something out of context, or even been the one to say the crappy things to Sally. Regina will continue to strengthen the bond with Jane by continually telling her about crap Sally is supposed to have said. Regina thereby creates resentment against Sally—“who is she to say I’m fat?”
The insecurity is necessary for the bonding, so, oddly enough, it’s Mean Girl who has to keep making Jane insecure by repeating what Sally may or may not have said. She has to keep fuelling that resentment.
If you pay attention to demagogic media, they spend a lot of time talking about the terrible things They say about Us. Sometimes someone in the out-group did say it, but often it’s a misrepresentation. Most often it’s cherry-picking. We tend to see the in-group as heterogeneous, but out-groups as homogeneous. So, while We are all individuals, any member of the out-group can stand for all of Them. That means demagogic media can find some minor out-group figure and use it to foment resentment against the out-group in general.
Find the best opposition arguments on policy issues before dismissing the Other as blazing idiots. Don’t rely on entirely in-group sources.
4) Demagogic media holds the in- and out-group to different standards. In fact, it holds the in-group to no standards at all other than fanatical commitment to the in-group.
Here’s what I mean. Imagine that we’re in a world that is polarized between Chesterians and Hubertians, and we’re Hubertians. Hubertian media finds some Assistant to the Assistant Dog Catcher in North Northwest Small Town who has said something terrible about Hubertians, perhaps called for violence against us. If our media is going to use that as proof that Hubertians are out to exterminate us, then if there is any Hubertian who has ever called for exterminating Chesterians, we are (if we have a reasonable argument), then we have to admit that we are out toe exterminate Chesterians.
If one what one member of the non in-group can be used to characterize what everyone other than the in-group says—if that’s a reasonable way to think about political discourse—then it’s reasonable for Them to characterize Us on the basis of what any in-group member says, no matter how marginalized.
If we don’t hold the in- and out-group to the same standards, then our position is unreasonable. We’re also rejecting Jesus, but that doesn’t generally matter to followers of demagogic media.
Hold in- and out-group media, rhetors, and political figures to the same standards: of argument, ethics, legality, accountability. If you won’t, then you’re an authoritarian.
Pro-GOP media isn’t the only media doing these things. (I’ve seen exactly this rhetoric in regard to raw food for dogs.) But if someone replies to this post by telling me that “Both Sides Are Bad,” I will point out that they have completely misread my argument. They are applying the false model of two sides that enables and fuels demagoguery. Saying “both sides are bad” is almost always in service of deflecting criticism of in-group demagoguery and is thereby participating in demagoguery.
If you don’t like demagoguery, stop engaging in it. That means stop talking about our political situation as a tug-of-war between two sides. Argue policies, acknowledge diversity and complexity, and seek out the smartest opposition arguments.
[1] There are various anti-GOP rhetors whom I cannot watch now that I’ve retired (studying demagoguery is my job, not something I do for fun), and I used them in classes as examples of demagoguery, but even I will admit that they don’t openly dehumanize some group the way that many pro-GOP rhetors dehumanize immigrants. They irrationalize “conservatives” and engage in a lot of motivism, but don’t equate “conservatives” with animals, viruses, and so on to the same extent. I’ve been told that dehumanizing metaphors don’t play as well with people who self-identify as “conservative,”and that’s why such rhetors avoid them, but I don’t know.
