It’s Christmas and I have a question. My question is an important question. I want to pose my important question at Christmastime because it suggests themes that are evoked by the Christmas story. I didn’t choose to ask this important question so that I could be seasonally appropriate; I chose to ask it because the question is worth asking whatever the time of the year. But it pricks my conscience more at Christmastime. My important question is this:
Why have our conversations become so polarized?
Think of the news this year. Think of how the stories have lined up depending upon the source.
Straight– Gay
Afghanistan – Nobel Peace Prize
Right– Left
Conservative – Liberal
Markets – Socialized Health Care
State– Church
Science – God
Athabasca Tar Sands– Copenhagen
Stimulus – Accountability
Piracy – Open Source
Emerging Markets– Poverty
Justice – Diplomacy
Genesis – Darwin
Fundamentalism – Moderate
Israel– Palestine
Please don’t read me as suggesting that a polarized public discourse is unique to 2009. In fact, it’s plausible to suppose that humans have been engaging one another in this way since the beginning of articulate speech. George W. Bush’s “for us” or “with the terrorists” has a venerable precursor in the New Testament (Matt 12:30 and Luke 11:23), and I expect the gospel writers based their accounts on legends that had been floating on the air for thousands of years already.
What distinguishes the public discourse of 2009 is more than simple polarization. The “more” is difficult to define. It has something to do with tone. It’s the kind of conversation you’d expect around a dinner table as tuxedoed cannibals prepare for the feast. They carry themselves with civility, but everybody knows that, by the end of meal, only one will rise from the table and, as a necessary outcome, conversation will have died. During the meal, the conversation is strident and insistent, and because everybody knows where things are headed, it is tainted by a hint of violence.
It is with great reluctance that I use labels because the commitment implied by a label involves me in considerable risk, nevertheless, in a room full of cannibals, being vilified for my commitments is the least of my worries. As I listen to these cannibals, I find an apt label to describe the tone of their conversation. It is “proto-fascist.”
The year 2009 has seen its fair share of such cannibals. One near to my heart (because I’m Canadian) is our prime minister, Stephen Harper. Initially, I had thought of him as a relatively benign figure whose brand of proto-fascism rendered him an obscure player on the international stage, but his recent performance at Copenhagen, response to torture of Afghani detainees, and bizarre war on anti-Semitism vaults him to new heights.\r\n\r\nIn addition to Harper, I have compiled a list of other candidates for the proto-fascist label:
- Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni whose anti-homosexuality bill would impose the death penalty on the crime of “aggravated homosexuality” and prison terms for run-of-the-mill homosexuality. See reports in the Guardian & Huffington Post.
- Nigerian President Obasanjo whose efforts to criminalize homosexuality successfully avoided the Western publicity that Uganda has attracted.
- Members of the religious right who have incited this anti-homosexuality movement in African countries through evangelism, men like Scott Lively, president of California’s Abiding Truth Ministries. Don Schmierer, board member of Exodus International, which promotes the “ex-gay” movement, and Caleb Lee Brundidge, who promotes psychotherapy as a cure for homosexuality.
- Tzipi Livni (now leader of the opposition in the Knesset), Yarden Vatikai (head of Israel’s National Information Directorate), Ehud Barak (Minister of Defense) & Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, all of whom were instrumental in Operation Cast Lead aka the War on Gaza that ushered in 2009.
- Barack Obama who has ordered another 40,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan while receiving the world’s highest honour for peace which he accepted with these words: I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago – “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak – nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. – Nobel Prize speech
- Marlo Lewis, Czech president Vaclav Klaus, Glenn Beck, Christopher Monckton and a handful of climate change deniers
- So-called New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens & Sam Harris whose secular brand of fundamentalism this year supported one side of a conversation conducted exclusively on the sides of buses. Sadly, even moderate organizations like the United Church of Canada were suckered into the fray. Much useful dialogue was accomplished.
How, you may ask, have I compiled such a list? What have I used for my criteria? For that, I have resorted to Italian semiotician and novelist, Umberto Eco, who has compiled a list of fourteen characteristics of Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism. By Eternal Fascism, I take Eco to mean that these characteristics are not dependent upon historical context but can be applied with equal force in Italy of the 1930’s or Canada in the 2000’s. I use the term proto-fascism to describe Harper’s conservative government because, while he does take pains to limit dissent and hamstring the vocabulary of critical thought, I don’t personally feel threatened. Also, despite suspicions (1, 2), Harper has not made any overt show of a religious underpinning to his political ideology.
It’s not my purpose here to determine whether any on my list deserve the label fascist. I leave that for your consideration. Instead, I have raised the term to answer my initial question: why have our conversations become so polarized? While a state of proto-fascism may account in part for it, not everything in our conversations is as eternal as Eco requires. First, in the West, polarized discourse is driven in large measure by private interests. This is a feature that wasn’t present with the rise of fascism in the twentieth century. Furthermore, much of the current discourse arises from private religious interests – bus advertising, evangelism in African countries, even climate denial. Much also arises from financial interests, as we’ve witnessed in conversation about executive compensation from economic stimulus packages, and obfuscation in the U.S. around the comparative merits of private health insurance and a government-administered social option.
However, another factor driving today’s polarized conversation, which Eco could not have anticipated in 1995 when he compiled his list, is the influence of social media. If we want to give it a more scientific description to satisfy professor Eco, then let’s call it “the disintegration of ethical journalism with the onset of social media.” This leaves media vulnerable to manipulation at the hands of partisan interests. (This is more problematic in Eco’s Italy where Berlusconi’s choke hold on Italian media guarantees that private media already serves government aims. See Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism for more on this.)
A case study is in order. Consider tolerance of open homosexuality. I don’t want to debate the issue here, since that would be a distraction. I merely draw attention to differing approaches to the issue. It is the approaches that are important. On the one hand are articles, cited above, which draw attention to the potential for a witch-hunt culminating in human rights violations and crimes against humanity. These articles, published in the Guardian and the Huffington Post, illustrate a fundamental role of journalism in democracy. They expose facts which we raise before power to hold it accountable.
Now consider the Dec. 17th, 2009 Toronto Star story of a Nova Scotia Liberal MP, Scott Brison, whose holiday greeting card featured a photo of Mr. Brison with his spouse, Maxime St. Pierre, standing outside with their golden retriever.
It’s the story of a story. The Globe and Mail posted a story about—what? about how a gay MP sent a Christmas card? Not much of a story. But readers posted comments, many of which were extreme. That became the Toronto Star’s story. Unfortunately, the Toronto Star offered little by way of observation and analysis, and this is understandable since it would have engaged the Toronto Star in some unpleasant self-examination. As I view it, this is the story of how print news outlets try to compensate for flagging circulation by baiting readers/viewers to flaunt online their otherwise privately held bigotry. The result is like a traffic accident: even those of us who won’t be baited can’t help but stare at the bloody wreckage. This leads to several observations:
- Comments are anonymous and unmoderated. If these were letters to the editor, they could never be published without first being vetted by an editor and accompanied by full name and address. Personal responsibility is a cornerstone of journalistic ethics. If published opinions can’t be attributed to an individual, then the publisher has to assume responsibility for them. In this case, the Globe and Mail must adopt the expressions of bigotry that were posted on its web site. Instead, the Globe chose to close commenting, but not before its competitor turned it into a story.
- News becomes decontextualized. What is life like in a Nova Scotia riding such that Scott Brison feels free to send his constituents a Christmas card from both him and his partner? Presumably it is very different from life in Colorado or Calgary or Uganda. However, online news removes stories from their context and it becomes impossible to discern the cultural nuance that can come only from local familiarity. Unfortunately, in Canada, with Harper’s evisceration of the CBC and the gradual dismantling of local newsgathering, all Canadian news will lose this nuance which is essential to civil conversation.
- News has become indistinguishable from entertainment. In the age of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, this is a trite observation. But to find our venerable news institutions aiding and abetting Springer-style confrontation to attract readership suggests a trivializing effect upon public discussion.
- We become the blackshirts. The accounts from the Guardian and Huffington Post report that anti-homosexuality legislation creates incentives for citizens to report suspected homosexuals and those engaged in dissenting activities. In other words, the legislation manufactures a class of blackshirts. However, our shrill participation online isn’t far behind. People name names, point fingers, use epithets, and do so without consequences. However, it is the genius of the West that its incentives are not the negative incentives like fear of punishment, but the positive incentives of a market economy which rewards us with—well? What do we get? What is our motivation? With Springer, participants get the chance to be on TV. Online participants get the chance to build a reputation. They develop a persona, a digital presence, and they promote it as they would any other product. But it doesn’t matter what the incentive when the result is the same—blackshirts who suppress difference.
There are antidotes to polarized conversation:
- avoid labels, but if you feel compelled to use labels (as I have here), acknowledge that they may also apply to you
- assume responsibility for yourself by attaching your name to everything you say and write
- think in threes e.g. if there is a left and a right, then there must be a middle too
- assume those you disagree with are friends in disguise
- forgive yourself for slipping into polarized conversation; you’ll find it easier to forgive others their extreme statements when you’ve set aside yours
- acquaint yourself with the notion of attachment; no idea is so good that it deserves your loyalty for all your life; let things go.
These antidotes are appropriate at Christmastime because the Christmas story is, itself, an antidote to polarized conversation. It was first told at a time when polarized conversation was the only way to talk. Life was divided between rich and poor, Caesar and Herod, Roman and Jew, empire and colony, man and woman, propertied and homeless, educated and ignorant, indigenous and immigrant. The Jesus story offered the hope of a new way. And while more polarized voices in the religious conversation insist, along with John, that Jesus is The Only Way, nevertheless I prefer to think Jesus offered a lifetime of service to middle ways. He could render both to Caesar and to God without succumbing to false oppositions. That is the Way that Christmas ushers in to the world.
Blessings from me to you, however you describe yourself.