Expanding the Circle
Changing minds, attitudes, and beliefs is hard, slow work, but it can be done with an approach that starts with a willingness to listen.
I recently read The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy by Anand Giridharadas. One question readers are asked to consider is how those of us on the center-left of the political spectrum make space for people on the center-right. In a time of extreme polarization, how do we even start a dialogue and begin to find areas of common agreement? One point made very clear in the book is that facts alone will not bridge the divide. In a contest between facts and emotion, emotion wins almost every time. The trick is to uncover the origins of emotion, why, for instance, the authoritarian policies and personality of Donald Trump appeals to some people.
It took me a long time to understand the facts-emotion dynamic; until Donald Trump came along my working assumption was that people were persuaded by facts and logic, reason and commonsense.
Giridharadas doesn’t spend time comparing or contrasting how conservatives make political meaning or craft messaging strategies, because, as he said in this interview with Intelligence Squared, conservatives are not trying to bring about the kind of society in which he’s interested, one that is more equitable, pluralistic and fair. That work is happening on the left, driven, not by white men, but primarily by women of color like Linda Sarsour, Alicia Garza, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The way the left and Democrats in particular communicate with voters has been a source of frustration for me since Bill Clinton steered the party away from its working-class base. First, Democrats are too wonky, too focused on process and inside-the-game narratives that make voters’ eyes glaze over. Though usually oversimplified, Republicans are much sharper with their messaging. Freedom. Liberty. Tax relief. Law and order. Border security. Pro-life. The Democrats lose the thread in the weeds, as they did with Biden’s Build Back Better initiative. Though I follow the political scene fairly closely, I don’t to this day know how, or if, Build Back Better would have improved my life or that of my family. I think BBB was a social spending plan, a shoring up of the caring state after decades of neglect and cruel austerity, but what it meant in concrete terms for people like me and the community where I live remains opaque. There’s a quote in the book that gets at this perfectly: sell the brownie, not the recipe.
“The job of social justice activism is to end oppression, not to make you feel safe, comfortable, and loved.”
Voters don’t care about budget reconciliation or horse-trading in the Senate -- they want to know how a piece of legislation will make their lives more secure, safer, and saner. Voters want the brownie, the vision of a better life; they want relief from financial anxiety and fear of immigrants. The good news is that people like AOC understand this messaging problem and are teaching others how to overcome it. AOC is clear on her values but flexible on how she achieves her ends, and if that includes bringing imperfect allies along, she will make room for them.
Whether they come from the left or the right, ideological purity and litmus tests back people into corners; extremists can’t compromise for fear of being ostracized from the tribe. One transgression against orthodoxy and you’re out, ridiculed, canceled. We see this with the enforcement of wokeness on the left and with Republicans who turn to jelly at the idea of calling out Donald Trump for his lies, racism, and bigotry. Another quote that struck me came from the long time social activist Loretta Ross who said, “The job of social justice activism is to end oppression, not to make you feel safe, comfortable, and loved.”
The activists portrayed by Giridharadas all agree that the key to building a broadly-based social movement lies in expanding the circle rather than shrinking it, but this requires being open to people who aren’t in complete agreement on every issue -- those imperfect allies -- who are perhaps waking but not woke; who are unlikely to change their minds overnight, but might be persuaded if given space and time to tell their stories; who might, for example, not fully believe that climate change is a real threat, but support the idea that everyone deserves access to clean air and drinking water. In the abstract they might believe that immigrants are undeserving of a path to citizenship, but feel differently about immigrants they know personally.
Giridharadas writes, “Their work -- for racial justice, for a humane economy, for planetary sustainability -- required attracting more people to a given cause today than believed in it yesterday.” Changing minds, attitudes, and beliefs is hard, slow work, but it can be done with an approach that starts with a willingness to listen.