I wrote this back in June after the first deployments of the national guard in DC and LA. I think it weirdly speaks to the moment, whatever collective action ultimately emerges in the wake of the Pretti killing would do well to recognise the importance of symbolic branding as this allowed organic networking to occur with MAGA that really forms the backbone of the populist movement. Ideology isn’t enough, and liberal values must be demonstrated not simply preached, ie some inclusive outreach towards men as a consistent matter of practice:
Make America Whole Again (MAWA)
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is so hard with Trump’s second term and why collectively, much of America continues to struggle with the daily cycle of outrage coming from the current Trump administration. Part of this is the lack of a brand or symbol that would allow a movement to form. Ideally, this would be an alternative (and not in opposition) to what say MAGA stands for as I think we’re all on some level sick of tribalism (more on this in a moment). Let me start by qualifying the idea that even now, 12 years on from his emergence as a political outsider, many not in his camp still seem to be unhelpfully paralysed by disbelief at both his rise and return to power. A good number of influential Liberals thought broadly “there’s still lots of work to do on a systems level, but for me personally America is great…Trump and this MAGA thing is just so fucking stupid” and this attitude seems widespread even if some are showing signs of a more pragmatic acceptance.
But this is the brilliance of the MAGA branding in generating gut level dismissals. It’s a type of bait for maintaining populist momentum, when you dismiss/attack MAGA (even if it’s not deliberate, i.e. reacting from a place of frustration) your attacking peoples aspirations and can easily invalidate their perspectives and experiences. Nor is the MAGA premise as a symbol an easy refutation, how do you counter “so you don’t want America to be great again?” without loads of explaining?
Unfortunately when looking dealing with the flood of recent norm violations, illegalities and performative outrages the Anti-trump stance just doesn’t work. Not as a policy, not as an ideology, an certainly counter-culture movement evidenced by limp protest numbers and largely timid opposition from key democrats. It might help to consider why exactly this is. Trump the man is the definition of self-serving, resulting in many repugnant behaviours to the non-MAGA/conservative outgroup. However, seeing him through an emotional lens risks stereotyping him based on his worst optics/soundbites only, in that it misses what he’s so very good at. For instance, in endless self-marketing and advocating for disenfranchised groups that are angry about their outsider status from emotionally authentic positions.
This might include; being spontaneously charismatic when speaking to a crowd (knows how to read a room. Watch this clip of off the cuff speaking about 7 time Olypmia body building champ, Phil Heath, clearly someone he was completely unaware of until that very moment https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1892692597937745920/pu/vid/avc1/480x270/HNsdofVBfX90H5OE.mp4?tag=12) and incredibly hard working when he’s motivated. Liberals see Trump the golfer, smoozer, etc. but miss the fact that he’s held over 300 rallies since 2015.
This is almost the same amount of concerts that the foo-fighters have held in the same time frame (300-350)
Bernie Sanders? He’s has had over 200
AOC? 50-100
Barrack Obama? 20-40, and only during actual election cycles
Coming back to the idea of MAWA (Make America Whole Again) in light of recent small-scale unrest in LA and Trump’s strongman antics. This framing would allow protests to have a more peaceful symbolic foundation to build upon, which in turn might help weed out antisocial/provocateurs who are more prone to violence and just the kind of optics that Trump thrives off of.
Ideally this would not be linked to election cycles via the droll dem playbook of having a good ground game deployed with the delusion of political physics that no longer exist with the get out to vote efforts during midterms or presidential elections… what happens in-between considering optics and how the democratic party is seen? I think the most recent favourability polls speak for themselves. Something more genuinely inclusive is needed.
For instance, aims for MAWA might include the following:
· How to energize grassroots civic involvement & community building
· How to promote increased Urban & Rural exchanges/interactions
· Making serious efforts towards boys outreach both in giving them more of a voice but also demonstrating through action of MAWA members (providing mentorship, creating vocational funding/programs that offer alternatives to traditional academic routes for employment, etc)
· Re-establishing independent local news outlets
I realize it’s a dark hypothetical to think of, but here it is: what happens if the national guard in either this current or future context where to become violent towards the MAWA movement? How would that compare to anti-trump specific outrage or dissidents going after ICE agents?
All of these issues touched on are important as organizing a collective identity that can generate momentum is harder in the current moment; there isn’t any real cohesion about aims between one protest to the next. What are they trying to achieve?
As they’re currently reactionary, it’s also harder to mobilize when protest is warranted. With MAWA it’s easier to focus on norm breaking/behavioural transgressions without discrediting the values that are still so critical to civic make up of our democratic experiment that Trump hides behind. I would hope that people yearning for a return to civility would run with this and over time we might find ourselves organically healing and heading towards an actual future where America is in fact great again
This is a wonderful framing, Chris. I want to come back to this and think about it more, but you raise a number of critical issues both in terms of the need to provide alternatives that are not merely oppositional and the need to provide a comprehensive framing that isn't itself divisive. MAWA is great on both fronts. Your points about outreach are critical too. I talked about the research from More in Common and it points to a very real need that the Dems have so far ignored. We need to outreach to communities who have real concerns without being condescending or minimizing their preferences and goals to bigotry or various phobias, which is what a lot of left-leaning people I know are doing. Your focus on men and rural voters are two critical areas the Dems are just now starting to think about, which is a bit nuts whether you're looking at it from the perspective of electoral victory or actual governing.
Thanks Lauren, that’s most kind of you to say. And please keep it up, I very much appreciate your considered, thoughtful explorations of such topics and am heartened to think of others out there working towards solutions.
I would be curious to hear more of what you make of some of the points raised, but to quickly elaborate a bit more on the idea of branding: MAGA is a functional big tent under which some seemingly disparate values and ideologies from the various factions of traditional conservativism and populist right can co-exist even in circumstances when they should be at complete odds
Good question to ask, is there any such equivalent on the left?
I’d argue no. Imagine for a moment in some parallel universe if the populist right had briefly found traction in promoting the ideological equivalent of the values based DEI movement, say Loyalty, Strength and Community (LSC).
Even though these values are still generalities open to interpretation that could technically operate as a partisan umbrella, there is just enough conceptual meat there to instead form black and white polarities.
And when people operate on a spectrum, differences form around interpretations of what is and isn’t important (Kurt Gray’s brilliant book Outraged on perceptions of harm immediately comes to mind) and something like consensus becomes kind of impossible.
But here’s the genius of MAGA and potentially an alternative like MAWA in that it is potentially unipolar.
And that fits with the vibe-heavy, mentally breezy and gut level reasoning that has seemingly come to dominate pretty much any political narrative, you get a personal Rorschach test to filter content through while rarely being called on to compare results.
There is something genuinely inspiring that has been stirring in suburbs of Minneapolis, but it will need structural support to move beyond a local level into something that can be replicated elsewhere when Trump overreaches again (which he of course will). I would love to see the noble humanism inherent in MLK’s example of civil disobedience be a bedrock for something like MAWA, but I suppose only time will tell?
Thanks for sharing this, Chris. I appreciate your thesis "Something more genuinely inclusive is needed." Responding to MAGA excesses by protesting and name-calling does not win minds (as Lauren's piece explores).
I also appreciate that you call out the fact that I think gets missed every time people align purely in opposition to Trump and his followers rather than offering a viewpoint that attracts: Trump engages in "endless self-marketing and advocating for disenfranchised groups that are angry about their outsider status from emotionally authentic positions." In a free society, until people feel heard they and respected they will not back down. This is true of Trump's "disenfranchised groups" as well as his opponents.
This truth - that people needed to feel heard and respected - is old. As an example, it's why Rome added Tribunes of the plebs and gave them veto power even though it made the elites mad to so. But the people had to have power and be recognized, or else the social contract would break down and monarchy would return.
I think it's listening and sharing power with those who disagree with you that makes the social contract work. I wrote a piece about this last week if you're curious for more: https://raphaelrosen.substack.com/p/seductive-universalism
I really like that idea that MAGA as a movement provokes outrage that strengthens its internal cohesion. It makes the walls stronger; people are less likely to come in but it's sticky and harder to be drawn out.
That's a good summary of it Sam, with Donald Trump as a symbolic, aspirational avatar who relies on antagonism to keep momentum up within the movement.
Always curious to hear from others, what if anything do you think would need to shift for that change?
I am not sure who Trump is aspirational for. I and my friends are on the “New Right”, which overlaps with MAGA policy only about 50% of the time. I would rather J.D. Vance was president and Sohrab Ahmari was advising him, But Trump and Miller is what we get.
The antagonism is complicated, because Trump himself is a childish and greedy person who likes provoking people. This can be an entertaining spectacle for the politically alienated or those with little investment in how smoothly the govt. runs.
He has successfully negatively polarized the left against welfare reform, immigration enforcement, free trade with communist China, etc.
The area where I strongly disagree with you is in the acceptability of the left prior to Trumps emergence. The leadership of the Dems has become more and more gerontocratic and they are totally out of touch with the actual trends in schools and online. They are still fighting to open up society with racial equity and sexual self-fulfillment like it is the 1960s. But they not only won on those issues, the left has staffed the Dep. of Ed. and the judiciary with endless emptyminded clerks who agree with them. Now onlyfans is an option for millions of American girls and the child of Nigerian royalty can get job or admissions preference over a white American boy just by checking that he is a person of color. The Dems will never self-examine on these issues because to them, sexual gratification is self-actualization and Somali fraud or DEI is just a way of doing reparations, paying down an eternal moral debt and it is unquestionable.
In your description of MAWA, you include talking, outreaching to boys. First of all, boys and young men don’t need to be “saved” from the right wing or “immunized” from becoming religious. The values we are moving toward have been the default for much of human history. Open borders and feminized education is a very recent development. It does not suit young men well, and if the Dems want to get any ground back with us, they will make a 180 on how they run the education system and how they show solidarity within the nation.
I think your criticisms of the left wing are fair, I think what's changed from even a year ago is that the actions from the current admin have brought actual threat/stakes to more than a few front door steps, i.e. what's happening in Minneapolis where sticking up for values isn't just online performative outrage but comes with actual real world risks
Regarding boys/men, never intended that to come across about saving. I'm a US expat living in the UK and appreciate some key differences for accessing opportunity in life I'd like to see made stateside. Namely, at 16 young lads can can enter apprenticeships via vocational training at Colleges with really good wages in just a few years time. With hard work and a bit of luck it is possible to provide for your family as a roofer, electrician, joiner, brick-layer, etc., at a young age (housing affordability is another issue).
I was diagnosed with ADHD in school and while I loved parts of academia (and still do) I hated being sat in a chair all day. I was lucky to come from privilege to get some support so I could go on graduate but think it's madness that we don't cater to young people's strengths with a more hands on approach to career pathways than is currently provided.
To help the country heal, the left wing will need to practice actual inclusion of thought and gender (not stereotyping white males or men in general) and that means passing legislation and preforming outreach and not simply as a part of empty campaign promises
This is thoughtful and deserves a more considered response than I gave. I think part of the problem with the left is the idea that they need to mandate inclusion and then practice it in a more evolved way that lets everyone in on the therapy and struggle sessions. "Performing outreach" is also a telling phrase from your writing, because it implies that leftists have hegemonic control over educational institutions and then welcome in the groups that are morally stained, but which Dems are gracious enough to welcome, with conditions.
That is not natural, for there to be such group think in the education system. it's fundamentally unamerican, as well- it feels more like European monarchs from the middle ages decreeing the religion and rites of schools. Now those same European states have high priests in their overgrown governing agencies who perform the same function, mandating sensitivity training or endless WW2 history.
If America had always had such a standardized, lowest common denominator education system, we would not have had such variety in accomplishment and regional culture, from the Wright Brothers to WEB DuBois.
The fact is that a government lead by todays' bureacrats is incapable of reconstructing boarding schools for boys or rites of passage or programs for poor urban boys. They cannot abide standards or hierarchies and they are too neurotic to delegate the building to men who would be capable of building.
Ironically, some of these very highly educated people send their sons and daughters to very expensive schools which have some of the elements of a previous schooling. Near where I live, in Chestnut Hill, MA, there are expensive Catholic schools and Jewish schools which even people who are not of the faith send their kids to if they can afford to.
Harry, it's interesting in a lot of ways I think we're on the same page. In a different universe I would be a bog standard moderate on the right; fiscally conservative, proud of traditions and institutions (army, law enforcement, 3 branches, etc.) while socially a bit more liberal.
I attended a pricey College in the early 2000s and watched the early signs of conservative thought being devalued and squeezed out from the margins. I think the administrative bloat that followed as higher education costs took off further entrenched left-wing thinking while neutering the power of professors to protect liberalism as practice. This is where conservative ideology originally had much more involvement in the 20th century as opposed to now as you can see in way that college faculty and admin totally mishandled the Palestinian campus protest in Biden's last year
I would love to see traditional colleges better integrated with conservative systems (more vocational programs, more scholarships based on geographics and not demographics, coordinate with law enforcement/first responder training, etc.,). My thought is that America is at it's best when there are fewer silos and more mixing involved and something like this via an overhaul of education could be a helpful way of doing just that
I don’t think “sticking up for values” means protecting people who broke the law by crossing the border and that is where the fundamental split in politics lies. I would like to see gradual and civilized politics stand as the playing field, but the Covid response and the relentless lawfare and speech suppression from the Democrats changed my mind as well many other right wingers. We now have an appetite for demonstrating raw power. There is a simple lack of fear in many left wingers minds (coupled with a smile of satisfaction if they can make right wingers feel fear for their jobs and vanishing way of life). The Democratic voters and administrators have gotten used to saying, “lets be civilized, we can talk about it” and then declaring a moral emergency every time they hold power and running roughshod over any principles of individual and group rights they don’t like. It’s time to scare them a little, really set them back, let them know what’s coming when younger right wingers take control
Well I suppose that makes me sad to hear on some level.
Wanting power for the purposes of teaching lessons sounds at best, like a continuation of grievance politics
It kind of seems like what you'd really like is more respect and acknowledgement of the value the right can provide to be collectively given from the left?
I'm genuinely curious here if that is the case; do you actually think that will be achieved with a retribution mentality from the younger right wingers you mentioned above?
I agree with Harry that aspirational isn't broadly applicable, at least not anymore.
He could stop except I don't think he actually can. His voters could change their minds, and while that likely won't happen in droves it does happen individually. Some of it is happening in my extended family.
But we're talking about a political phenomenon, about the use of intentional division to make the core support stronger rather than the use of persuasion to make support broad. And I think that means acting like the wall is imaginary, because it is. There is not an actual wall between me and the others in my church or my immediate and extended family. The trick is to make clear that we stand where there would seem to be a wall between us without acting like it is. And as that relates to rhetoric, that means listening and looking for points of connection rather than division. It means choosing to not show the revulsion and anger you allude to in reaction to a MAGA talking point but to reflect those talking points in a way hopefully recognizable to both parties.
And it won't change the broader dynamic. Since the article is about what works, I admit I don't think we can. If enough people are shown that the wall isn't real, it won't be. But no one can force someone else to look up.
That's fair to point out. On reflection, I meant to say aspirational in two distinct phases as part of election cycles; firstly it refers to the big tent MAGA ideology when Trump is in campaign mode making promises to whatever gets the biggest audience reaction at rallies, but it's changed now he's back in office to a projection of a lived experience regarding masculinity.
I still believe there are men beyond counting out there that aspire to Trump's narrative example of overcoming the system and sticking it to the man even if they disagree with his methods.
It's a power fantasy that Trump is acutely aware of, and seems to be at the core of whatever erratic calculus drives him. It suspect it's also the lynchpin that holds his floor up regarding his popularity, but maybe that's just speculation on my part
Can you elaborate a little on what you mean by a wall? I feel like the division we currently see is most akin to a couples fight where the history of disagreement carries it's own weight and you get stuck in messy patterns that can feel intractable.
Listening, validation, taking ownership for actions, discarding score keeping/grievances and demonstrating through behaviour changes are steps that would be needed literally from both parties to go in a different direction.
I don't think we're there yet, but maybe closer than people realize as I still think the vast majority of people aren't happy with where we find ourselves. There just needs to be more of a template for how to go forwards and think hashing that out starts with conversations like these. Some further food for thought?
The couple fighting is an interesting model and might go along with my wall idea.
The couple fight is when the fighting itself is a problem with a history that needs to be addressed on its own. I agree that citizens with any engagement in politics in the US has some level of this. I'm tired of both pro-life and pro-choice activism apart from my beliefs about the topic. But I don't think that's everything.
The wall is for the perceived substance of the fights. Some people really do want more immigrants. Some really do want fewer. That's a policy disagreement. The reason I call the wall illusory is that there are, usually, common desires people on both sides share that could be connected on such that the policy disagreement is about method to an end rather than perceived as a foundational disagreement about the nature of the country. Certainly there are people, esp. political actors, who have concrete and foundational disagreements about the nature of the country. But I really don't think that's most people, largely because most people don't pay politics much less political theory much mind.
We need to talk about wall issues without exacerbating the relational conflict. In many cases, that means spending a lot of time talking about non-political topics with people on the other side of the wall - pay down the couple conflict debt - before addressing the perceived wall itself.
Come to Minnesota and see what is happening. Everything this regime throws but Minnesotans show up non violently for neighbors. People here doing the work that needs to spread.
I would if I could, I have a lots of respect for the strength of community currently on full display for the world to see.
Shining a light on decent people living by their values in the face of adversity fills me with hope and faith in how humanity can rise up to challenge in meaningful and largely constructive ways.
I'm a firm believer that you guys will come out the other side of this stronger for your experiences, so keep going my man!
Thanks for trying to be effective in better societal responses. I believe that as long as the framing is in left/right or liberal/conservative language, it will not be effective. We must get away from that binary to speak about concrete actions. Masked, armed men beating the snot out of people, or putting neighbors in for-profit prisons (over 70,000 there) without due process, or taking away 1st and 4th amendment rights while shooting observers, or kidnapping a head of state after "double-tapping" fishing boats - those are not debatable in old binaries. Trying to be effective within that framing is impossible because it no longer applies to our reality. Come to Minnesota and see what we are dealing with on a daily basis while billions of dollars are spent to militarize actions against people going to school, work or health care appointments, or afford groceries.
I grew up in Orange County CA when it was more red than it is now. I was in a self-identified independent fundamentalist Baptist church. I still consider myself an evangelical by any theological standard - I don't know what other people hear when they say the word, but I don't hear "MAGA." I also hate the MAGA movement. You are, in short, talking to me. So let me share what it looks like.
It's maddening. I've known for a long time that the Religious Right made an unholy pact with the pro-life movement, but I wasn't quite prepared for the extent of spiritual and religious twisting the group would enact to stay inside that pact. Any cost for Roe overturned. I talked with a seminary student who wanted to argue mathematically that Trump couldn't possibly cause enough harm to outweigh the harm caused by Roe. The pact went on long enough that the deal was altered, and we altered right with it. The evangelical voting bloc doesn't have political power of its own anymore, and it hardly cares. It has accepted that it is for the GOP, and right now that means Trump. This means that "trans ideology" is worth nuking NATO (figuratively if we're lucky). That means accepting the nakedly bad-faith free speech posturing of Chris Rufo and Elon Musk. It means giving the presumption of validity to Jan 6 protestors and CBP officers alike.
It's maddening.
My wife doesn't want to go to a Bible study because she knows she'll hear prayers coming from views tainted by a fully Fox view of the world, where Christians are persecuted and Muslims are safe in places like Nigeria. Where the current nation-state of Israel is part of God's eschatological plan and if you aren't with it than you're with the Beast.
I'd tell them what I thought of that, if I thought it wouldn't be immediately alienating.
So I'll tell you what we've done instead.
There's a woman who is currently suing...I think it's the CDC? It might be HHS. Because her husband died some amount of time after getting a COVID vaccine. This woman will ask during a Sunday School class about Joseph "What do you think about dual citizenship?" because she knows an expat in Canada who votes in US elections and that bothers her on principle. My wife has decided that the most important things about this woman are that she is a Christian and a widow, and God has some specific things to say about how we treat his church and widows. With gentleness, with care, with honesty. So she's trying to say "I'm sorry, I can't go there with you" when necessary but generally to just listen to her concerns. They're friends, and that is really hard on my wife because again, it's all maddening.
Me, I've been trying to find a 3 time Trump voter who will tell me they aren't happy with what the man's doing. I found that recently. It was actually nice to hear. Yes, their 2024 vote came from a bad estimate of free speech values and a skewed view of what schools actually do with transgender students. But I got to hear, "Yes, I voted for him. Yes, I think he's wrong." And that was nice? I've also decided that I won't care about past voted if we can just agree, now, about what's happening.
All this is separate from my thoughts on political straetgy, but it's good for my well-being, spiritually and mentally. And I don't know anything about political strategy, so I might as well stick with this.
Open AMA by the way for anyone curious about a blue voter who both grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical church and never deconstructed.
Thank you for sharing this, Sam. I really appreciated hearing your story! Also, it made me laugh when you told the story about the woman asking about Joseph as a "dual citizen." The man spends years in prison then becomes vice president. Not your ordinary dual citizen!
You can go back further than Bush. Truman was calling Thomas Dewey a fascist in the 1940s, right after World War II. Dewey was a moderate who supported anti discrimination laws.
Lauren, I didn't reply when you first posted this because I'm not convinced that the question you posed is all that useful imostly because the political scientist in me studied/taught/wrote/ about facism which is a century-old phenomenon, and most/many criteria aren't terribly useful today.
But I returned to this after listening to the podcast you did with Lura and Shaka and hones in on the things you raise that do help people connect. Deep canvassing (whether done for marriage equality or Moms for Liberty). Finding and spreading share identities. Etc/
And decoded to post after a conversation with a guy who was interested in the blog post I did on the three of you but couldn't see beyond his own stereotypes of what you (must be) like.
The key is to see each other as whole people. The fact that I met you at Mercatus (which my interlocutor had never heard of) tells me something about you, but not everything. Not by a long shot.
For what it's worth, when this came in, I was on a call with a guy who is doing research on Trump voters. Serious, in depth interviews from a perspectie of curiosity. Not superiority. Or anger. But with the assumption that we will have to live with.
Don't sweat getting back to me. I've never been busier in life which is not a cofmortable feeling. That despite the fact that something like of thirty more years of coping with chaos than you do.
I'm appreciative you wrote this piece, Lauren. No crap from me! Just gratitude and thoughts. I am grateful chiefly because I hear you focusing on practical results. As you wrote "Tradeoffs exist with our public communication just like they exist with every other kind of human endeavor....Being right and effective? That’s the goal."
Personally, I'm not convinced we ever know we're "right" on an issue. But being *effective* for the sake of civil, peaceful, coherent society (to me an unquestionable good) is extremely important.
My view of what works is summarized in much of what you share: personal stories, from someone trusted, that opens our eyes to different ways of the world. Personal stories leads to different ways of seeing different *words* which we all pack with meaning. Even anodyne words like city, rural, schools, healthcare, labor, immigrant, all mean something specific to each person in a political context. So when a friend or coworker or neighbor whom you like tells you a personal and specific story - one involves an immigrant family from Mauritania or a healthcare home aide struggling to make ends meet - that changes how we think about the words and de-escalates the singular view we hold about the word.
Which is part of my I find the 'fascist' label counterproductive. Is any Trump supporter convinced otherwise about how they should vote by labeling their candidate with a terrible label? Are Democrats suddenly flocking to support Republicans because Trump and his acolytes inveigh against Democratic leaders as commies or dangers to the country? Exactly.
Much of my exposure to "Trump is a fascist" commentary is in the stream of fearful outcries from friends who live in deep blue cities. I think it accomplishes nothing other than momentarily making people feel righteous and being able to label actions they don't like with a word they consider evil. That may help them emotionally, and I'm glad for them it does. But it doesn't help the country. As you write, "research consistently shows that moralized political labels activate defensive responses rather than promoting persuasion." Is anything gained by people who hate the President's actions labeling them morally evil? Just the opposite. The only way to gain anything in a free society is to appeal to fellow citizens, genuinely. If you don't convince people, you have to be willing to accept it, not denigrate them with labels of the contempt in which you hold them.
We are up against human tribalism, as you say, but even more fundamentally I think we are up against human moral zeal. In a free society, this isn't going away anywhere. If people want to call someone a fasict because they love their country, I treat it as a sign of people who love their country. Similarly if someone wants to label someone else a communist because they love their country, I treat it the same way. Is it effective? Of course not! Listening is what is effective. And we need to find as many avenues as possible to listen to others and lead by example. But if you're looking for a silver lining about American Democracy it is, as I wrote in an essay published this morning (https://raphaelrosen.substack.com/p/democracys-moxie) that "partisan opponents who treat each other as threats to democracy are all driven by the same motivation—which is also the very source of American democracy’s might: the righteous, tenacious power of free and equal people."
Trump is a fascist and Mamdani is a communist. Both are accurate statements.
Neither are particularly useful though, because they’re talking about people and not ideas. A lot of lazy partisans think they can just walk around shouting these terms like a magical incantation to win arguments, rather than deconstruct why the ideas offered up by these public figures are such terrible ones.
"Also transferable to most political topics, most things are never analysed in the terms of "what does it actually do?"."-
Such a good point, I think we easily default to sense making and asking why questions; which are circular in nature, often unanswerable, don't lead to any real functional understanding of processes and as result, make it hard to take meaningful actions towards solving problems
One problem with calling Trump a fascist is that it enables the activated left to become even more thoughtless. They have become used to calling their political opponents illegitimate and demonic and then spiraling out into ever more irresponsible positions on academic integrity, law enforcement, discrimination, etc.
If Trump was responsible, he would only send ICE to cooperating cities and states and avoid these confrontations. He likes feeling powerful (that’s not fascism, just ambition to counterevolt).
Obviously, if the Democrats were in any way responsible, they would acknowledge that law enforcement is legitimate and stop encouraging thousands of agitators to march, block, and slow the state from accomplishing what it was elected, legitimately, to do.
Yep. I think a big problem with this conversation is that Dems have been calling Republicans fascists for decades. The word stops having meaning (and thus serving as even a weak tool for persuasion) given that long-standing practice.
I like your framing around responsibility. Neither side is practicing that critical governance art.
Polls indicate that Republicans see a difference between law enforcement as an abstract goal and law enforcement as practiced on the ground. The latter is not inherently legitimate, and that's why Trump's immigration policy can have less support than his border security policy even among the GOP (that the latter is a function of the former is beside my point; people perceive a distinction between abstract goal and concrete reality). Trump was elected to Do Law Enforcement (any President is by constitutional definition). That doesn't make anything his people call law enforcement valid anymore than bringing out the hoses against Civil Rights marchers was valid then.
You bring up a good point about Democrats. Plenty of individual Democrats - even those in Minneapolis filming border patrol - view law enforcement as a legitimate concept if not always legitimately practiced. People gathered outside a detention facility to get food, a new cell phone, and a ride home for people who were released without charge after being detained without explanation are not fighting against the concepts of law and order. Someone walking around for hours filming ICE agents is not being inherently disruptive. But it's obvious that many people are intentionally and illegally disruptive. I think it's morally valid, sometimes, to be intentionally andi llegally disruptive, but I take for granted that most people who do it aren't making a measured cost- benefit call and that many times they are making an obviously wrong call. On a wider scale, the Democratic Party does not have a credible plank that they believe in the enforcement of law as an abstract concept broadly, and that's a problem for them.
Watch this and see what is happening here in Minnesota with an autistic citizen who masked agents terrorized, as one example of so-called law enforcement
Okay, I hope the tiny percentage of ICE agents who behave in an unnecessarily harsh way get fired.
I am sure we have very different political priorities and one of the problems with this whole debate is that I think a plurality of left wingers now simply don't believe in any distinction between citizen and non-citizen. Because of that, right wingers see a few years with Trump in charge as a chance to get to work and restore borders, legal boundaries, norms of solidarity against outsiders. I want it done legally and civilly, but I think the damage to the country if the left gets their way is so great that I sympathize with ICE agents and the Tom Homan types much more than any lefty who has created or cheered on this situation.
Do you deal with facts beyond neat categories of right/left? Come and see beyond what corporate media allows here on the ground - it is not the nice version that lets you stay comfortable in your assumptions. That's why 70 year grampas and 30 year old moms are involved in response here. What is happening is awful! Inhumane! Lawless, without due process. It is not a tiny circumstance. Please, I beg you to look afresh. The suffering is unconscionable.
And once the rioting subsides and ICE leaves, you will go back to voting for Democrats and calling anyone who opposes open borders mass migration a Nazi and anyone who opposes racial and gender preferences for the entire planet except for young straight white men a KKK member. You will learn absolutely nothing. The Minnesota Dems won’t even investigate the Somali fraud
Good bye. There is no "rioting," unless you call 50,000 peaceful protestors and thousands of other regular citizens delivering food in the midst of occupation by that denigrating moniker.
I wish you well, and hope someday when you witness the violence and indiscriminate injustice visited upon good people because of tribalistic labels that your soul can be moved.
Hi Harry, I really respect you speaking honestly about your perspective here.
I agree with you that the left has it's own version of black and white thinking/approaches that can really miss the mark on the practicalities of big issues like immigration.
There's a interesting book from Musa Al-Gharbi called "We've never been woke" that explores some of the ideological hypocrisies found on the left, and I've had no luck in getting any left leaning friends to read it, which probably speaks for itself?
I'd be curious to see what you think would be needed to build trust for when the left is next in charge again.
We have to start somewhere and feel that more conversations, maybe even especially the difficult ones, are needed so cheers for your contributions
That's a useful overview of the persuasion research, and it applies well beyond the current fascism debate. The humbling reality for those of us in the opinion business is that communication strategies matter less than most advocates assume. Being right about the label matters less than whether people see systems working or failing with their own eyes.
-One issue with the constant use of the word "fascist" is that many of the people out there using it to describe their political opponents don't quite seem to know exactly what they mean by it; some people pretty much admit they're really just using it as a swear word essentially, as a vague sort of pejorative, some of them would tell you that America has pretty much always been fascist, or at least that the Republican party post-Eisenhower has always been fascist, others would argue that Trump and Trumpism are categorically different from other and earlier forms of American conservatism / republicanism, some aren't quite clear-minded enough about the whole thing to definitively make any of these assertions. In a way, I think that lack of clarity itself can be pernicious.
-It Can't Happen Here is a work of fiction, but I think it's helpfully illustrative. The Minutemen essentially show up armed and arrest members of congress and that's how the US government gets abolished and replaced with the Corpos. And that is part of what defines fascism, from what I understand, the use of paramilitary to overthrow democratic systems. In this sense, it's worth asking to what extent it makes sense to talk about fascism as a realistic possibility in a country with a permanent armaments industry, a large and sophisticated standing army. Are the Oathkeepers or the Proud Boys really any match for the US military? (Also, do either of those groups actually want to abolish any of the branches of our government?) Of course the counterargument to this would be that the more realistic fear at this point would be that in a situation like the 2020 election where one side claims the election is rigged / stolen, that their opponent is being installed rather than having been elected. If the military population is similar to the civilian population and at least 30% of the military believes this, that could lead to a break in the chain of command, which in a situation like that could get very, very ugly. But that didn't happen in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and as disturbing as that situation is, there may very well never be another situation quite like it.
-Like Jason Stanley says in the opening pages of his book, there's a difference between fascist rhetoric and fascist politics, and fascist rhetoric does not always lead to an explicitly fascist state, but it doesn't have to lead to an explicitly fascist state to be dangerous / damaging.
So it's worth asking, to what extent is the contemporary American right's rhetoric / polices fascist? Conservatism is not fascism, but fascism has some conservative elements to it. Conservativism is fundamentally about hierarchies - and hierarchies are important in fascism. Both tend to ascribe to traditional views on gender, both tend to be anti-union (though of course there are exceptions). Mussolini saw fascism as a pragmatic political philosophy distinct from liberalism, conservatism, and socialism, but willing to borrow whatever worked from any of those categories.
And I think that's part of the key to understanding the difference. Economic libertarianism can be useful to fascism, but a lot of fascist groups are surprisingly agnostic on socialism vs fiscal conservatism, and a lot of fascists treat principled fiscal conservatism with derision. If you listen to a contemporary fascist like Richard Spencer, something you find runs through his political thought is a contempt for abstract political principles in general (especially liberal political principles). Fascism is very much a might is right kind of philosophy.
Of course, one could argue that Trump's apparent lack of coherent political philosophy / principles is itself a disturbing sign in this respect, but it's not like unprincipled or opportunistic politicians are a new thing.
Conspiracy theories, anti-empiricism, appeal to the mythic past are all elements of fascism that are not necessarily part of conservatism (or at least tend to be a lot more muted in conservatism). These things are of course valuable things to criticize regardless of whether they are part of any kind of broader fascist agenda.
So. . . There are fascists in the United States of America and there is a subset of conservatives whose rhetoric sometimes bleeds into fascist rhetoric. With that said, these two groups don't have much in common, don't really work together, or like each other very much.
I don't think I such a congenital anti-alarmist that I couldn't make the case for being pessimistic about the future if I wanted to, but if I wanted to sketch out a very pessimistic vision of the next ten or twenty or thirty years, it wouldn't involve the US becoming an ethno-state, or concentration camps, or women losing the right to vote or the right to own property. It wouldn't involve the fascists getting anything that they want.
There are narrower and broader definitions, but if you broaden it to the point where you can say, "The US has always been fascist" then it's not too big of a leap from there to say that the world has always been fascist, at which point the term doesn't really mean much at all. Moreover, it's tantamount to suggesting Hitler and Mussolini were not uniquely evil individuals, and that's the kind of shit that holocaust deniers try to claim. It's really not a good road to go down.
I wrote this back in June after the first deployments of the national guard in DC and LA. I think it weirdly speaks to the moment, whatever collective action ultimately emerges in the wake of the Pretti killing would do well to recognise the importance of symbolic branding as this allowed organic networking to occur with MAGA that really forms the backbone of the populist movement. Ideology isn’t enough, and liberal values must be demonstrated not simply preached, ie some inclusive outreach towards men as a consistent matter of practice:
Make America Whole Again (MAWA)
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is so hard with Trump’s second term and why collectively, much of America continues to struggle with the daily cycle of outrage coming from the current Trump administration. Part of this is the lack of a brand or symbol that would allow a movement to form. Ideally, this would be an alternative (and not in opposition) to what say MAGA stands for as I think we’re all on some level sick of tribalism (more on this in a moment). Let me start by qualifying the idea that even now, 12 years on from his emergence as a political outsider, many not in his camp still seem to be unhelpfully paralysed by disbelief at both his rise and return to power. A good number of influential Liberals thought broadly “there’s still lots of work to do on a systems level, but for me personally America is great…Trump and this MAGA thing is just so fucking stupid” and this attitude seems widespread even if some are showing signs of a more pragmatic acceptance.
But this is the brilliance of the MAGA branding in generating gut level dismissals. It’s a type of bait for maintaining populist momentum, when you dismiss/attack MAGA (even if it’s not deliberate, i.e. reacting from a place of frustration) your attacking peoples aspirations and can easily invalidate their perspectives and experiences. Nor is the MAGA premise as a symbol an easy refutation, how do you counter “so you don’t want America to be great again?” without loads of explaining?
Unfortunately when looking dealing with the flood of recent norm violations, illegalities and performative outrages the Anti-trump stance just doesn’t work. Not as a policy, not as an ideology, an certainly counter-culture movement evidenced by limp protest numbers and largely timid opposition from key democrats. It might help to consider why exactly this is. Trump the man is the definition of self-serving, resulting in many repugnant behaviours to the non-MAGA/conservative outgroup. However, seeing him through an emotional lens risks stereotyping him based on his worst optics/soundbites only, in that it misses what he’s so very good at. For instance, in endless self-marketing and advocating for disenfranchised groups that are angry about their outsider status from emotionally authentic positions.
This might include; being spontaneously charismatic when speaking to a crowd (knows how to read a room. Watch this clip of off the cuff speaking about 7 time Olypmia body building champ, Phil Heath, clearly someone he was completely unaware of until that very moment https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1892692597937745920/pu/vid/avc1/480x270/HNsdofVBfX90H5OE.mp4?tag=12) and incredibly hard working when he’s motivated. Liberals see Trump the golfer, smoozer, etc. but miss the fact that he’s held over 300 rallies since 2015.
This is almost the same amount of concerts that the foo-fighters have held in the same time frame (300-350)
Bernie Sanders? He’s has had over 200
AOC? 50-100
Barrack Obama? 20-40, and only during actual election cycles
Coming back to the idea of MAWA (Make America Whole Again) in light of recent small-scale unrest in LA and Trump’s strongman antics. This framing would allow protests to have a more peaceful symbolic foundation to build upon, which in turn might help weed out antisocial/provocateurs who are more prone to violence and just the kind of optics that Trump thrives off of.
Ideally this would not be linked to election cycles via the droll dem playbook of having a good ground game deployed with the delusion of political physics that no longer exist with the get out to vote efforts during midterms or presidential elections… what happens in-between considering optics and how the democratic party is seen? I think the most recent favourability polls speak for themselves. Something more genuinely inclusive is needed.
For instance, aims for MAWA might include the following:
· How to energize grassroots civic involvement & community building
· How to promote increased Urban & Rural exchanges/interactions
· Making serious efforts towards boys outreach both in giving them more of a voice but also demonstrating through action of MAWA members (providing mentorship, creating vocational funding/programs that offer alternatives to traditional academic routes for employment, etc)
· Re-establishing independent local news outlets
I realize it’s a dark hypothetical to think of, but here it is: what happens if the national guard in either this current or future context where to become violent towards the MAWA movement? How would that compare to anti-trump specific outrage or dissidents going after ICE agents?
All of these issues touched on are important as organizing a collective identity that can generate momentum is harder in the current moment; there isn’t any real cohesion about aims between one protest to the next. What are they trying to achieve?
As they’re currently reactionary, it’s also harder to mobilize when protest is warranted. With MAWA it’s easier to focus on norm breaking/behavioural transgressions without discrediting the values that are still so critical to civic make up of our democratic experiment that Trump hides behind. I would hope that people yearning for a return to civility would run with this and over time we might find ourselves organically healing and heading towards an actual future where America is in fact great again
This is a wonderful framing, Chris. I want to come back to this and think about it more, but you raise a number of critical issues both in terms of the need to provide alternatives that are not merely oppositional and the need to provide a comprehensive framing that isn't itself divisive. MAWA is great on both fronts. Your points about outreach are critical too. I talked about the research from More in Common and it points to a very real need that the Dems have so far ignored. We need to outreach to communities who have real concerns without being condescending or minimizing their preferences and goals to bigotry or various phobias, which is what a lot of left-leaning people I know are doing. Your focus on men and rural voters are two critical areas the Dems are just now starting to think about, which is a bit nuts whether you're looking at it from the perspective of electoral victory or actual governing.
Thanks Lauren, that’s most kind of you to say. And please keep it up, I very much appreciate your considered, thoughtful explorations of such topics and am heartened to think of others out there working towards solutions.
I would be curious to hear more of what you make of some of the points raised, but to quickly elaborate a bit more on the idea of branding: MAGA is a functional big tent under which some seemingly disparate values and ideologies from the various factions of traditional conservativism and populist right can co-exist even in circumstances when they should be at complete odds
Good question to ask, is there any such equivalent on the left?
I’d argue no. Imagine for a moment in some parallel universe if the populist right had briefly found traction in promoting the ideological equivalent of the values based DEI movement, say Loyalty, Strength and Community (LSC).
Even though these values are still generalities open to interpretation that could technically operate as a partisan umbrella, there is just enough conceptual meat there to instead form black and white polarities.
And when people operate on a spectrum, differences form around interpretations of what is and isn’t important (Kurt Gray’s brilliant book Outraged on perceptions of harm immediately comes to mind) and something like consensus becomes kind of impossible.
But here’s the genius of MAGA and potentially an alternative like MAWA in that it is potentially unipolar.
And that fits with the vibe-heavy, mentally breezy and gut level reasoning that has seemingly come to dominate pretty much any political narrative, you get a personal Rorschach test to filter content through while rarely being called on to compare results.
There is something genuinely inspiring that has been stirring in suburbs of Minneapolis, but it will need structural support to move beyond a local level into something that can be replicated elsewhere when Trump overreaches again (which he of course will). I would love to see the noble humanism inherent in MLK’s example of civil disobedience be a bedrock for something like MAWA, but I suppose only time will tell?
Thanks for sharing this, Chris. I appreciate your thesis "Something more genuinely inclusive is needed." Responding to MAGA excesses by protesting and name-calling does not win minds (as Lauren's piece explores).
I also appreciate that you call out the fact that I think gets missed every time people align purely in opposition to Trump and his followers rather than offering a viewpoint that attracts: Trump engages in "endless self-marketing and advocating for disenfranchised groups that are angry about their outsider status from emotionally authentic positions." In a free society, until people feel heard they and respected they will not back down. This is true of Trump's "disenfranchised groups" as well as his opponents.
This truth - that people needed to feel heard and respected - is old. As an example, it's why Rome added Tribunes of the plebs and gave them veto power even though it made the elites mad to so. But the people had to have power and be recognized, or else the social contract would break down and monarchy would return.
I think it's listening and sharing power with those who disagree with you that makes the social contract work. I wrote a piece about this last week if you're curious for more: https://raphaelrosen.substack.com/p/seductive-universalism
I really like that idea that MAGA as a movement provokes outrage that strengthens its internal cohesion. It makes the walls stronger; people are less likely to come in but it's sticky and harder to be drawn out.
That's a good summary of it Sam, with Donald Trump as a symbolic, aspirational avatar who relies on antagonism to keep momentum up within the movement.
Always curious to hear from others, what if anything do you think would need to shift for that change?
I am not sure who Trump is aspirational for. I and my friends are on the “New Right”, which overlaps with MAGA policy only about 50% of the time. I would rather J.D. Vance was president and Sohrab Ahmari was advising him, But Trump and Miller is what we get.
The antagonism is complicated, because Trump himself is a childish and greedy person who likes provoking people. This can be an entertaining spectacle for the politically alienated or those with little investment in how smoothly the govt. runs.
He has successfully negatively polarized the left against welfare reform, immigration enforcement, free trade with communist China, etc.
The area where I strongly disagree with you is in the acceptability of the left prior to Trumps emergence. The leadership of the Dems has become more and more gerontocratic and they are totally out of touch with the actual trends in schools and online. They are still fighting to open up society with racial equity and sexual self-fulfillment like it is the 1960s. But they not only won on those issues, the left has staffed the Dep. of Ed. and the judiciary with endless emptyminded clerks who agree with them. Now onlyfans is an option for millions of American girls and the child of Nigerian royalty can get job or admissions preference over a white American boy just by checking that he is a person of color. The Dems will never self-examine on these issues because to them, sexual gratification is self-actualization and Somali fraud or DEI is just a way of doing reparations, paying down an eternal moral debt and it is unquestionable.
In your description of MAWA, you include talking, outreaching to boys. First of all, boys and young men don’t need to be “saved” from the right wing or “immunized” from becoming religious. The values we are moving toward have been the default for much of human history. Open borders and feminized education is a very recent development. It does not suit young men well, and if the Dems want to get any ground back with us, they will make a 180 on how they run the education system and how they show solidarity within the nation.
Hi Harry,
I think your criticisms of the left wing are fair, I think what's changed from even a year ago is that the actions from the current admin have brought actual threat/stakes to more than a few front door steps, i.e. what's happening in Minneapolis where sticking up for values isn't just online performative outrage but comes with actual real world risks
Regarding boys/men, never intended that to come across about saving. I'm a US expat living in the UK and appreciate some key differences for accessing opportunity in life I'd like to see made stateside. Namely, at 16 young lads can can enter apprenticeships via vocational training at Colleges with really good wages in just a few years time. With hard work and a bit of luck it is possible to provide for your family as a roofer, electrician, joiner, brick-layer, etc., at a young age (housing affordability is another issue).
I was diagnosed with ADHD in school and while I loved parts of academia (and still do) I hated being sat in a chair all day. I was lucky to come from privilege to get some support so I could go on graduate but think it's madness that we don't cater to young people's strengths with a more hands on approach to career pathways than is currently provided.
To help the country heal, the left wing will need to practice actual inclusion of thought and gender (not stereotyping white males or men in general) and that means passing legislation and preforming outreach and not simply as a part of empty campaign promises
This is thoughtful and deserves a more considered response than I gave. I think part of the problem with the left is the idea that they need to mandate inclusion and then practice it in a more evolved way that lets everyone in on the therapy and struggle sessions. "Performing outreach" is also a telling phrase from your writing, because it implies that leftists have hegemonic control over educational institutions and then welcome in the groups that are morally stained, but which Dems are gracious enough to welcome, with conditions.
That is not natural, for there to be such group think in the education system. it's fundamentally unamerican, as well- it feels more like European monarchs from the middle ages decreeing the religion and rites of schools. Now those same European states have high priests in their overgrown governing agencies who perform the same function, mandating sensitivity training or endless WW2 history.
If America had always had such a standardized, lowest common denominator education system, we would not have had such variety in accomplishment and regional culture, from the Wright Brothers to WEB DuBois.
The fact is that a government lead by todays' bureacrats is incapable of reconstructing boarding schools for boys or rites of passage or programs for poor urban boys. They cannot abide standards or hierarchies and they are too neurotic to delegate the building to men who would be capable of building.
Ironically, some of these very highly educated people send their sons and daughters to very expensive schools which have some of the elements of a previous schooling. Near where I live, in Chestnut Hill, MA, there are expensive Catholic schools and Jewish schools which even people who are not of the faith send their kids to if they can afford to.
Harry, it's interesting in a lot of ways I think we're on the same page. In a different universe I would be a bog standard moderate on the right; fiscally conservative, proud of traditions and institutions (army, law enforcement, 3 branches, etc.) while socially a bit more liberal.
I attended a pricey College in the early 2000s and watched the early signs of conservative thought being devalued and squeezed out from the margins. I think the administrative bloat that followed as higher education costs took off further entrenched left-wing thinking while neutering the power of professors to protect liberalism as practice. This is where conservative ideology originally had much more involvement in the 20th century as opposed to now as you can see in way that college faculty and admin totally mishandled the Palestinian campus protest in Biden's last year
I would love to see traditional colleges better integrated with conservative systems (more vocational programs, more scholarships based on geographics and not demographics, coordinate with law enforcement/first responder training, etc.,). My thought is that America is at it's best when there are fewer silos and more mixing involved and something like this via an overhaul of education could be a helpful way of doing just that
I don’t think “sticking up for values” means protecting people who broke the law by crossing the border and that is where the fundamental split in politics lies. I would like to see gradual and civilized politics stand as the playing field, but the Covid response and the relentless lawfare and speech suppression from the Democrats changed my mind as well many other right wingers. We now have an appetite for demonstrating raw power. There is a simple lack of fear in many left wingers minds (coupled with a smile of satisfaction if they can make right wingers feel fear for their jobs and vanishing way of life). The Democratic voters and administrators have gotten used to saying, “lets be civilized, we can talk about it” and then declaring a moral emergency every time they hold power and running roughshod over any principles of individual and group rights they don’t like. It’s time to scare them a little, really set them back, let them know what’s coming when younger right wingers take control
Well I suppose that makes me sad to hear on some level.
Wanting power for the purposes of teaching lessons sounds at best, like a continuation of grievance politics
It kind of seems like what you'd really like is more respect and acknowledgement of the value the right can provide to be collectively given from the left?
I'm genuinely curious here if that is the case; do you actually think that will be achieved with a retribution mentality from the younger right wingers you mentioned above?
I agree with Harry that aspirational isn't broadly applicable, at least not anymore.
He could stop except I don't think he actually can. His voters could change their minds, and while that likely won't happen in droves it does happen individually. Some of it is happening in my extended family.
But we're talking about a political phenomenon, about the use of intentional division to make the core support stronger rather than the use of persuasion to make support broad. And I think that means acting like the wall is imaginary, because it is. There is not an actual wall between me and the others in my church or my immediate and extended family. The trick is to make clear that we stand where there would seem to be a wall between us without acting like it is. And as that relates to rhetoric, that means listening and looking for points of connection rather than division. It means choosing to not show the revulsion and anger you allude to in reaction to a MAGA talking point but to reflect those talking points in a way hopefully recognizable to both parties.
And it won't change the broader dynamic. Since the article is about what works, I admit I don't think we can. If enough people are shown that the wall isn't real, it won't be. But no one can force someone else to look up.
That's fair to point out. On reflection, I meant to say aspirational in two distinct phases as part of election cycles; firstly it refers to the big tent MAGA ideology when Trump is in campaign mode making promises to whatever gets the biggest audience reaction at rallies, but it's changed now he's back in office to a projection of a lived experience regarding masculinity.
I still believe there are men beyond counting out there that aspire to Trump's narrative example of overcoming the system and sticking it to the man even if they disagree with his methods.
It's a power fantasy that Trump is acutely aware of, and seems to be at the core of whatever erratic calculus drives him. It suspect it's also the lynchpin that holds his floor up regarding his popularity, but maybe that's just speculation on my part
Can you elaborate a little on what you mean by a wall? I feel like the division we currently see is most akin to a couples fight where the history of disagreement carries it's own weight and you get stuck in messy patterns that can feel intractable.
Listening, validation, taking ownership for actions, discarding score keeping/grievances and demonstrating through behaviour changes are steps that would be needed literally from both parties to go in a different direction.
I don't think we're there yet, but maybe closer than people realize as I still think the vast majority of people aren't happy with where we find ourselves. There just needs to be more of a template for how to go forwards and think hashing that out starts with conversations like these. Some further food for thought?
The couple fighting is an interesting model and might go along with my wall idea.
The couple fight is when the fighting itself is a problem with a history that needs to be addressed on its own. I agree that citizens with any engagement in politics in the US has some level of this. I'm tired of both pro-life and pro-choice activism apart from my beliefs about the topic. But I don't think that's everything.
The wall is for the perceived substance of the fights. Some people really do want more immigrants. Some really do want fewer. That's a policy disagreement. The reason I call the wall illusory is that there are, usually, common desires people on both sides share that could be connected on such that the policy disagreement is about method to an end rather than perceived as a foundational disagreement about the nature of the country. Certainly there are people, esp. political actors, who have concrete and foundational disagreements about the nature of the country. But I really don't think that's most people, largely because most people don't pay politics much less political theory much mind.
We need to talk about wall issues without exacerbating the relational conflict. In many cases, that means spending a lot of time talking about non-political topics with people on the other side of the wall - pay down the couple conflict debt - before addressing the perceived wall itself.
Come to Minnesota and see what is happening. Everything this regime throws but Minnesotans show up non violently for neighbors. People here doing the work that needs to spread.
I would if I could, I have a lots of respect for the strength of community currently on full display for the world to see.
Shining a light on decent people living by their values in the face of adversity fills me with hope and faith in how humanity can rise up to challenge in meaningful and largely constructive ways.
I'm a firm believer that you guys will come out the other side of this stronger for your experiences, so keep going my man!
Thanks for trying to be effective in better societal responses. I believe that as long as the framing is in left/right or liberal/conservative language, it will not be effective. We must get away from that binary to speak about concrete actions. Masked, armed men beating the snot out of people, or putting neighbors in for-profit prisons (over 70,000 there) without due process, or taking away 1st and 4th amendment rights while shooting observers, or kidnapping a head of state after "double-tapping" fishing boats - those are not debatable in old binaries. Trying to be effective within that framing is impossible because it no longer applies to our reality. Come to Minnesota and see what we are dealing with on a daily basis while billions of dollars are spent to militarize actions against people going to school, work or health care appointments, or afford groceries.
A reader share brought me here, so yay for that.
I grew up in Orange County CA when it was more red than it is now. I was in a self-identified independent fundamentalist Baptist church. I still consider myself an evangelical by any theological standard - I don't know what other people hear when they say the word, but I don't hear "MAGA." I also hate the MAGA movement. You are, in short, talking to me. So let me share what it looks like.
It's maddening. I've known for a long time that the Religious Right made an unholy pact with the pro-life movement, but I wasn't quite prepared for the extent of spiritual and religious twisting the group would enact to stay inside that pact. Any cost for Roe overturned. I talked with a seminary student who wanted to argue mathematically that Trump couldn't possibly cause enough harm to outweigh the harm caused by Roe. The pact went on long enough that the deal was altered, and we altered right with it. The evangelical voting bloc doesn't have political power of its own anymore, and it hardly cares. It has accepted that it is for the GOP, and right now that means Trump. This means that "trans ideology" is worth nuking NATO (figuratively if we're lucky). That means accepting the nakedly bad-faith free speech posturing of Chris Rufo and Elon Musk. It means giving the presumption of validity to Jan 6 protestors and CBP officers alike.
It's maddening.
My wife doesn't want to go to a Bible study because she knows she'll hear prayers coming from views tainted by a fully Fox view of the world, where Christians are persecuted and Muslims are safe in places like Nigeria. Where the current nation-state of Israel is part of God's eschatological plan and if you aren't with it than you're with the Beast.
I'd tell them what I thought of that, if I thought it wouldn't be immediately alienating.
So I'll tell you what we've done instead.
There's a woman who is currently suing...I think it's the CDC? It might be HHS. Because her husband died some amount of time after getting a COVID vaccine. This woman will ask during a Sunday School class about Joseph "What do you think about dual citizenship?" because she knows an expat in Canada who votes in US elections and that bothers her on principle. My wife has decided that the most important things about this woman are that she is a Christian and a widow, and God has some specific things to say about how we treat his church and widows. With gentleness, with care, with honesty. So she's trying to say "I'm sorry, I can't go there with you" when necessary but generally to just listen to her concerns. They're friends, and that is really hard on my wife because again, it's all maddening.
Me, I've been trying to find a 3 time Trump voter who will tell me they aren't happy with what the man's doing. I found that recently. It was actually nice to hear. Yes, their 2024 vote came from a bad estimate of free speech values and a skewed view of what schools actually do with transgender students. But I got to hear, "Yes, I voted for him. Yes, I think he's wrong." And that was nice? I've also decided that I won't care about past voted if we can just agree, now, about what's happening.
All this is separate from my thoughts on political straetgy, but it's good for my well-being, spiritually and mentally. And I don't know anything about political strategy, so I might as well stick with this.
Open AMA by the way for anyone curious about a blue voter who both grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical church and never deconstructed.
Thank you for sharing this, Sam. I really appreciated hearing your story! Also, it made me laugh when you told the story about the woman asking about Joseph as a "dual citizen." The man spends years in prison then becomes vice president. Not your ordinary dual citizen!
You can go back further than Bush. Truman was calling Thomas Dewey a fascist in the 1940s, right after World War II. Dewey was a moderate who supported anti discrimination laws.
Lauren, I didn't reply when you first posted this because I'm not convinced that the question you posed is all that useful imostly because the political scientist in me studied/taught/wrote/ about facism which is a century-old phenomenon, and most/many criteria aren't terribly useful today.
But I returned to this after listening to the podcast you did with Lura and Shaka and hones in on the things you raise that do help people connect. Deep canvassing (whether done for marriage equality or Moms for Liberty). Finding and spreading share identities. Etc/
And decoded to post after a conversation with a guy who was interested in the blog post I did on the three of you but couldn't see beyond his own stereotypes of what you (must be) like.
The key is to see each other as whole people. The fact that I met you at Mercatus (which my interlocutor had never heard of) tells me something about you, but not everything. Not by a long shot.
As always, thanks fo rmaking me think.
You're welcome, Chip! And stay curious! I owe you a bunch of emails, which I will hopefully get to this week. It's been a bit crazy.
And yes, seeing each other as whole people is critical. And something we're not great at right now.
For what it's worth, when this came in, I was on a call with a guy who is doing research on Trump voters. Serious, in depth interviews from a perspectie of curiosity. Not superiority. Or anger. But with the assumption that we will have to live with.
Don't sweat getting back to me. I've never been busier in life which is not a cofmortable feeling. That despite the fact that something like of thirty more years of coping with chaos than you do.
I'm appreciative you wrote this piece, Lauren. No crap from me! Just gratitude and thoughts. I am grateful chiefly because I hear you focusing on practical results. As you wrote "Tradeoffs exist with our public communication just like they exist with every other kind of human endeavor....Being right and effective? That’s the goal."
Personally, I'm not convinced we ever know we're "right" on an issue. But being *effective* for the sake of civil, peaceful, coherent society (to me an unquestionable good) is extremely important.
My view of what works is summarized in much of what you share: personal stories, from someone trusted, that opens our eyes to different ways of the world. Personal stories leads to different ways of seeing different *words* which we all pack with meaning. Even anodyne words like city, rural, schools, healthcare, labor, immigrant, all mean something specific to each person in a political context. So when a friend or coworker or neighbor whom you like tells you a personal and specific story - one involves an immigrant family from Mauritania or a healthcare home aide struggling to make ends meet - that changes how we think about the words and de-escalates the singular view we hold about the word.
Which is part of my I find the 'fascist' label counterproductive. Is any Trump supporter convinced otherwise about how they should vote by labeling their candidate with a terrible label? Are Democrats suddenly flocking to support Republicans because Trump and his acolytes inveigh against Democratic leaders as commies or dangers to the country? Exactly.
Much of my exposure to "Trump is a fascist" commentary is in the stream of fearful outcries from friends who live in deep blue cities. I think it accomplishes nothing other than momentarily making people feel righteous and being able to label actions they don't like with a word they consider evil. That may help them emotionally, and I'm glad for them it does. But it doesn't help the country. As you write, "research consistently shows that moralized political labels activate defensive responses rather than promoting persuasion." Is anything gained by people who hate the President's actions labeling them morally evil? Just the opposite. The only way to gain anything in a free society is to appeal to fellow citizens, genuinely. If you don't convince people, you have to be willing to accept it, not denigrate them with labels of the contempt in which you hold them.
We are up against human tribalism, as you say, but even more fundamentally I think we are up against human moral zeal. In a free society, this isn't going away anywhere. If people want to call someone a fasict because they love their country, I treat it as a sign of people who love their country. Similarly if someone wants to label someone else a communist because they love their country, I treat it the same way. Is it effective? Of course not! Listening is what is effective. And we need to find as many avenues as possible to listen to others and lead by example. But if you're looking for a silver lining about American Democracy it is, as I wrote in an essay published this morning (https://raphaelrosen.substack.com/p/democracys-moxie) that "partisan opponents who treat each other as threats to democracy are all driven by the same motivation—which is also the very source of American democracy’s might: the righteous, tenacious power of free and equal people."
Trump is a fascist and Mamdani is a communist. Both are accurate statements.
Neither are particularly useful though, because they’re talking about people and not ideas. A lot of lazy partisans think they can just walk around shouting these terms like a magical incantation to win arguments, rather than deconstruct why the ideas offered up by these public figures are such terrible ones.
"Both liberals and conservatives are remarkably bad at asking a simple question: Does this actually work?"
Also transferable to most political topics, most things are never analysed in the terms of "what does it actually do?".
"Also transferable to most political topics, most things are never analysed in the terms of "what does it actually do?"."-
Such a good point, I think we easily default to sense making and asking why questions; which are circular in nature, often unanswerable, don't lead to any real functional understanding of processes and as result, make it hard to take meaningful actions towards solving problems
One problem with calling Trump a fascist is that it enables the activated left to become even more thoughtless. They have become used to calling their political opponents illegitimate and demonic and then spiraling out into ever more irresponsible positions on academic integrity, law enforcement, discrimination, etc.
If Trump was responsible, he would only send ICE to cooperating cities and states and avoid these confrontations. He likes feeling powerful (that’s not fascism, just ambition to counterevolt).
Obviously, if the Democrats were in any way responsible, they would acknowledge that law enforcement is legitimate and stop encouraging thousands of agitators to march, block, and slow the state from accomplishing what it was elected, legitimately, to do.
Yep. I think a big problem with this conversation is that Dems have been calling Republicans fascists for decades. The word stops having meaning (and thus serving as even a weak tool for persuasion) given that long-standing practice.
I like your framing around responsibility. Neither side is practicing that critical governance art.
Polls indicate that Republicans see a difference between law enforcement as an abstract goal and law enforcement as practiced on the ground. The latter is not inherently legitimate, and that's why Trump's immigration policy can have less support than his border security policy even among the GOP (that the latter is a function of the former is beside my point; people perceive a distinction between abstract goal and concrete reality). Trump was elected to Do Law Enforcement (any President is by constitutional definition). That doesn't make anything his people call law enforcement valid anymore than bringing out the hoses against Civil Rights marchers was valid then.
You bring up a good point about Democrats. Plenty of individual Democrats - even those in Minneapolis filming border patrol - view law enforcement as a legitimate concept if not always legitimately practiced. People gathered outside a detention facility to get food, a new cell phone, and a ride home for people who were released without charge after being detained without explanation are not fighting against the concepts of law and order. Someone walking around for hours filming ICE agents is not being inherently disruptive. But it's obvious that many people are intentionally and illegally disruptive. I think it's morally valid, sometimes, to be intentionally andi llegally disruptive, but I take for granted that most people who do it aren't making a measured cost- benefit call and that many times they are making an obviously wrong call. On a wider scale, the Democratic Party does not have a credible plank that they believe in the enforcement of law as an abstract concept broadly, and that's a problem for them.
Watch this and see what is happening here in Minnesota with an autistic citizen who masked agents terrorized, as one example of so-called law enforcement
https://youtu.be/zrcW8SZtYpI?si=CEk9jSXnug5dLRgf
Okay, I hope the tiny percentage of ICE agents who behave in an unnecessarily harsh way get fired.
I am sure we have very different political priorities and one of the problems with this whole debate is that I think a plurality of left wingers now simply don't believe in any distinction between citizen and non-citizen. Because of that, right wingers see a few years with Trump in charge as a chance to get to work and restore borders, legal boundaries, norms of solidarity against outsiders. I want it done legally and civilly, but I think the damage to the country if the left gets their way is so great that I sympathize with ICE agents and the Tom Homan types much more than any lefty who has created or cheered on this situation.
Do you deal with facts beyond neat categories of right/left? Come and see beyond what corporate media allows here on the ground - it is not the nice version that lets you stay comfortable in your assumptions. That's why 70 year grampas and 30 year old moms are involved in response here. What is happening is awful! Inhumane! Lawless, without due process. It is not a tiny circumstance. Please, I beg you to look afresh. The suffering is unconscionable.
And once the rioting subsides and ICE leaves, you will go back to voting for Democrats and calling anyone who opposes open borders mass migration a Nazi and anyone who opposes racial and gender preferences for the entire planet except for young straight white men a KKK member. You will learn absolutely nothing. The Minnesota Dems won’t even investigate the Somali fraud
Good bye. There is no "rioting," unless you call 50,000 peaceful protestors and thousands of other regular citizens delivering food in the midst of occupation by that denigrating moniker.
I wish you well, and hope someday when you witness the violence and indiscriminate injustice visited upon good people because of tribalistic labels that your soul can be moved.
“Mostly peaceful” protests, you say?
Hi Harry, I really respect you speaking honestly about your perspective here.
I agree with you that the left has it's own version of black and white thinking/approaches that can really miss the mark on the practicalities of big issues like immigration.
There's a interesting book from Musa Al-Gharbi called "We've never been woke" that explores some of the ideological hypocrisies found on the left, and I've had no luck in getting any left leaning friends to read it, which probably speaks for itself?
I'd be curious to see what you think would be needed to build trust for when the left is next in charge again.
We have to start somewhere and feel that more conversations, maybe even especially the difficult ones, are needed so cheers for your contributions
That's a useful overview of the persuasion research, and it applies well beyond the current fascism debate. The humbling reality for those of us in the opinion business is that communication strategies matter less than most advocates assume. Being right about the label matters less than whether people see systems working or failing with their own eyes.
There's a lot to say about this.
-One issue with the constant use of the word "fascist" is that many of the people out there using it to describe their political opponents don't quite seem to know exactly what they mean by it; some people pretty much admit they're really just using it as a swear word essentially, as a vague sort of pejorative, some of them would tell you that America has pretty much always been fascist, or at least that the Republican party post-Eisenhower has always been fascist, others would argue that Trump and Trumpism are categorically different from other and earlier forms of American conservatism / republicanism, some aren't quite clear-minded enough about the whole thing to definitively make any of these assertions. In a way, I think that lack of clarity itself can be pernicious.
-It Can't Happen Here is a work of fiction, but I think it's helpfully illustrative. The Minutemen essentially show up armed and arrest members of congress and that's how the US government gets abolished and replaced with the Corpos. And that is part of what defines fascism, from what I understand, the use of paramilitary to overthrow democratic systems. In this sense, it's worth asking to what extent it makes sense to talk about fascism as a realistic possibility in a country with a permanent armaments industry, a large and sophisticated standing army. Are the Oathkeepers or the Proud Boys really any match for the US military? (Also, do either of those groups actually want to abolish any of the branches of our government?) Of course the counterargument to this would be that the more realistic fear at this point would be that in a situation like the 2020 election where one side claims the election is rigged / stolen, that their opponent is being installed rather than having been elected. If the military population is similar to the civilian population and at least 30% of the military believes this, that could lead to a break in the chain of command, which in a situation like that could get very, very ugly. But that didn't happen in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and as disturbing as that situation is, there may very well never be another situation quite like it.
-Like Jason Stanley says in the opening pages of his book, there's a difference between fascist rhetoric and fascist politics, and fascist rhetoric does not always lead to an explicitly fascist state, but it doesn't have to lead to an explicitly fascist state to be dangerous / damaging.
So it's worth asking, to what extent is the contemporary American right's rhetoric / polices fascist? Conservatism is not fascism, but fascism has some conservative elements to it. Conservativism is fundamentally about hierarchies - and hierarchies are important in fascism. Both tend to ascribe to traditional views on gender, both tend to be anti-union (though of course there are exceptions). Mussolini saw fascism as a pragmatic political philosophy distinct from liberalism, conservatism, and socialism, but willing to borrow whatever worked from any of those categories.
And I think that's part of the key to understanding the difference. Economic libertarianism can be useful to fascism, but a lot of fascist groups are surprisingly agnostic on socialism vs fiscal conservatism, and a lot of fascists treat principled fiscal conservatism with derision. If you listen to a contemporary fascist like Richard Spencer, something you find runs through his political thought is a contempt for abstract political principles in general (especially liberal political principles). Fascism is very much a might is right kind of philosophy.
Of course, one could argue that Trump's apparent lack of coherent political philosophy / principles is itself a disturbing sign in this respect, but it's not like unprincipled or opportunistic politicians are a new thing.
Conspiracy theories, anti-empiricism, appeal to the mythic past are all elements of fascism that are not necessarily part of conservatism (or at least tend to be a lot more muted in conservatism). These things are of course valuable things to criticize regardless of whether they are part of any kind of broader fascist agenda.
So. . . There are fascists in the United States of America and there is a subset of conservatives whose rhetoric sometimes bleeds into fascist rhetoric. With that said, these two groups don't have much in common, don't really work together, or like each other very much.
I don't think I such a congenital anti-alarmist that I couldn't make the case for being pessimistic about the future if I wanted to, but if I wanted to sketch out a very pessimistic vision of the next ten or twenty or thirty years, it wouldn't involve the US becoming an ethno-state, or concentration camps, or women losing the right to vote or the right to own property. It wouldn't involve the fascists getting anything that they want.
Quick answer for anyone that knows what a fascist is: no
There are narrower and broader definitions, but if you broaden it to the point where you can say, "The US has always been fascist" then it's not too big of a leap from there to say that the world has always been fascist, at which point the term doesn't really mean much at all. Moreover, it's tantamount to suggesting Hitler and Mussolini were not uniquely evil individuals, and that's the kind of shit that holocaust deniers try to claim. It's really not a good road to go down.
yes. come visit