And life continues beyond the anti-polarizing heterotopia of the Better Angels Convention.
Case in point: at the airport, I checked one of my standard progressive/lefty blogs, Lawyers, Guns & Money. In a post titled "Banning Trump Supporters from Non-Political Sites," LGM regular Paul Campos shared a link from knitting/crocheting site Ravelry--specifically its new policy banning posts supporting President Trump or his administration. "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy," reads the Ravelry statement. "Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy."
Campos offers his own commentary:
... Supporting Trump makes you a white supremacist, whether you think of yourself as one or not. Trumpism is an authoritarian ethno-nationalist movement, whose core principle is that America is and should be a country run by and for white people.
Therefore bans of this sort are not only defensible, but affirmatively good. White supremacy should be opposed in every legal way possible, which means Trumpism should be opposed in every legal way possible.
Social ostracism in general is a powerful tool, and should be employed against Trump supporters at every opportunity. This includes telling Trump supporters on non-political websites such as these that their political affiliation is beyond the pale, and needs to be hidden if they wish to socialize with people who oppose white supremacy.The LGM commentariat mostly aligned with Campos, cheering Ravelry's decision (and decisions of other websites/forums). The support runs the gamut from "Yeah, fuck those fuckers!" and "I hope they all get stabbed with knitting needles" to "Social ostracism is the best these supremacists can expect" and "It's good that sites are making it harder for open white supremacists to spew their bile." (NB: Throughout this post I paraphrase the gist of comments rather than linking to or quoting them. I'm not interested in engaging specific commenters here, or else I'd have commented on LGM myself. I'm only working through my thoughts on some of the general positions raised there. For the conversation itself, see LGM post.)
Most commenters also endorsed the equation between "supporting Trump" and "white supremacist." Posters diverged slightly about whether this judgment includes "people who voted for Trump in 2016 (because he was the Republican)" or just "people who still support Trump." For some commenters, there's a little leeway given; for others, any Trump voter deserves to be "up against the wall."
A few posters ventured questions or disagreements with Campos. "Would we be OK with a union or other organization doing this? What are the limits?" Such questions were interpreted as trollish derails rather than good-faith inquiries. (This interpretation could be right. Comments are usually judged and responded to by folk who know the asker's history; sometimes that history suggests such inquirers are just sealioning).
One poster contested the Trump voter=white supremacist argument, insisting they know lots of Trump voters who aren't. That view cut no mustard with the LGM community. Actions speak louder than words, went the criticism. You can say you're not really white supremacist (write the commenters), but when you support a guy who strikes ethno-nationalist chords in his rhetoric regularly and whose policies demonize and immiserate people of color, well...?
In other words, at the airport I found myself (virtually) immersed in just the kind of single-color, polarized space Better Angels tries to disrupt. The LGM community, by and large, would likely be among those who would respond to news about BA with disgust: giving space and voice to evil = endorsing evil.
I read such voices--as I read those of similarly polarized communities on the right--because they represent a non-BA viewpoint. Dipping into that Schmittian friend/enemy world, taking its measure, listening to its point of view, keeps me realistic. It puts the anti-polarization ethos of BA into perspective, makes it stand up and defend itself. It keeps Better Angels from becoming (for me, at least) the same kind of echo-chamber of unquestioned/unquestionable assumptions that BA would accuse LGM of being.
It also lets me flesh out my own defenses of BA-ish initiatives in the face of LGM-like criticisms. "How do you live in the real world," asked some posters, "if roughly half the country is evil?" I think that's a really, really good question. The responses from the LGM community that didn't instantly dismiss that question ran something along the lines of "So? There are plenty of times in US history where half or more of the citizenry were evil. You can still do politics."
I'm struck by that willingness to accept that half or more of the populace is--not just misguided or ignorant or duped, but--plain evil. They can't be reasoned with; compromise with them is betrayal. They need to be ostracized, expelled, made to disappear (de facto or de jure). And to be clear, right-wing communities manifest exactly the same polarized mechanisms. The world isn't just full of fools; it's full of demons. You gotta live your best life among the devils.
I see a slippage between "they did a bad thing" and "they are a bad thing" common to just about any in-group's assessments of out-group actions. Ravelry, as some commenters (and even Campos himself) note, didn't ban Trump supporters; they banned comments supporting Trump. But the title of the post mentions banning supporters; the comments mainly run in that vein. In practice, the hating the action/hating the actor distinction proves about as fragile as conservative evangelicals' "hate the sin/love the sinner" rhetoric. Declare your hatred of homosexual acts often and vehemently enough, and all anyone sees is how much you hate homosexuals.
A lot of the distinction between BA and LGM (and I'm of course oversimplifying this comparison for now) boils down to the ethics of compartmentalization. BA relies on the capability and morality of compartmentalizing fundamental disagreements. Pro-lifers and Pro-choicers (BA would say) can and should work, live, socialize, and flourish together even as they diverge sharply on a life-or-death issue. Other communities balk at that notion. Some political positions (they would say) have all-or-nothing consequences. Some positions can be, must be, litmus tests for possible/ethical coexistence.
Tricky.
More tomorrow,
JF
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