If we are to counter the rising tide of fascism, we need to build a broad-based, powerful progressive movement. The recent elections have left many of us enraged, embittered, frustrated and depressed, but they have also motivated us to reach out for community. But to build community in the face of repression, we must become better at creating a culture in which people feel seen and valued, which in turn creates belonging and connection. So in this post, I’m looking at the things we do that push people out instead of inviting them in.
(This series of writings is an experiment—I’m writing a book and releasing it a chapter at a time on Substack, accompanied with podcasts available on Substack, Apple, Spotify, etc. This is the second post in the section on Value, and the fourteenth post in the series. I have now numbered the posts that are part of the book, to make them easier to find,)
Framing, Blaming, Shaming and Name-Calling
When I was writing The Empowerment Manual, I read many books of advice for leaders of groups—mostly business management, as that is the focus of most work on organizational development. I can't remember which one it was where the coach’s advice began with “Stop being an asshole!”.
That’s good advice for movements as well as organizations. We can create a better sense of belonging, first, by stopping some of the norms and practices that exclude and marginalize people and create unsafety. In earlier posts I’ve explored how, when we frame ‘safety’ In a punitive fashion, we actually make our movements more unsafe. Let’s look at how this impacts our sense of being seen and valued.
Identity politics, and the call-out culture that too often goes with them has been unfairly weaponized by the right and the MAGA movement. Yet there's a kernel of truth in some of their accusations. There's also been much discussion within the movement about replacing calling-out with calling-in, but we rarely discuss exactly how to do this. It's our job as a movement to educate, to persuade, and to invite in if we want to grow our numbers and our power.
The positive impetus behind calling-out is the wish to make our communities more aware of subtle forms of discrimination and microaggressions, little hurtful remarks and actions that don't seem very great in themselves but add up to larger harm. But if we go about calling-out in the ways we usually do, we end up devaluing our allies and potential comrades, pushing people out instead of educating and bringing them in. Many people have been driven into the arms of the MAGA movement by feeling blamed and shamed by the Left. If we want to call-in rather than push out, we must examine how we frame our issues and conflicts, and we must avoid blaming, shaming, and name calling one another.
Framing:
Framing means the context, the larger metaphorical structure, in which we see an action or statement. For example, take the simple action of wearing a mask during the COVID epidemic. Masking started as a reasonable health precaution. The alt-right rapidly framed it as an unfair imposition by unreasonable authorities. Soon the frame shifted so that whether or not you wore a mask became a political statement and a marker of identity, not just a way of protecting yourself and others.
Or consider the case of Luigi Mangioni, arrested for gunning down a CEO of a major health insurance corporation renowned for denying needed care to its members. His action is framed by the government, corporations, the mainstream media and others as an act of indefensible violence, even terrorism. But the public at large, albeit generally against cold-blooded murder, seems to have embraced him as a hero, who took action against the pervasive violence of a profit-driven health insurance industry that too often denies needed coverage and condemns thousands to lives of pain, financial ruin or death. Images portraying him with a halo, icons showing him as Patron Saint of Health Care Justice, even votive candles emblazoned with his image pop up everywhere. Is he a Holy Martyr—or just a hoodlum? It depends on your frame.
On the Left, we have an unfortunate tendency to frame every interaction as a morality trial, every utterance as a test of whether or not you are truly woke. This may feel like constantly having a pop quiz sprung on you for a course you didn’t know you were taking. It seems that almost every day someone on the left decides that a word in common usage is actually offensive, and castigates someone else for using it. While the critic’s conscious intent might be to expand awareness, their unconscious intent often seems to be to display how much more they’re in the know than you are, and the impact is to undermine self worth and to create a sense of precarity in everyone’s sense of belonging.
Another frame which does not serve us well is that of ‘identitarianism’: ascribing people's character and behavior to some characteristic of their identity rather than to choices they make. Comedians make fun of national stereotypes. Some wings of the feminist movement ascribe oppressive behavior to men per se, rather than to the system of patriarchy. The Internet abounds with memes saying “White people do ____”
There's often some truth in all of these memes, and sometimes they are genuinely funny, especially when people make fun of themselves or their own groups. But they tend toward breaking, toward dividing and separating rather than bridging: bringing people together to work for a common goal of justice. And they are inherently devaluing.
Identitarianism fixes the hierarchy the value based no no on people's personal choices but on extraneous factors they did not choose, such as their heritage or the shape of their genitalia. When we are not seen in the full complexity of who we are, but only as representatives of a certain identity, our humanity is devalued.
Identitarianism undermines incentives to make choices that lead to greater inclusion and value for everyone: if my weakness or maleness dooms me to be of the oppressor class why not turn that to my advantage and embrace white supremacy or patriarchy? While Identitarianism may seem to accord higher value to those who have been traditionally devalued and targeted, it actually reinforces those systems that judge us, not by the content of our character, but by the color of our skin.
And identitarianism actually conceals the structural aspects of white supremacy, patriarchy, and other overarching systems of oppression. If we ascribe bad behavior to men or to white people generically, we are less able to see clearly how society’s institutions, expectations and norms generate certain behaviors and excuse others. We create an unconscious sense of helplessness and absolution: I can’t change the color of my skin, so I’m doomed to be an oppressor, so therefore it’s not really my fault if I behave in oppressive ways any more than it’s the cat’s fault for torturing a mouse. It’s just our nature. It then divides those of targeted groups from those who might potentially be strong allies. In a world of greater justice, people would be judged for their choices and actions, not for inherent aspects of their biology or heritage.
Blaming:
Humans love to blame. When something goes wrong, we feel better if we can identify who is at fault and exact some penance. The alt-right thrives on directing blame away from those truly responsible for bad conditions and onto some group they dislike.
You're stuck in a low paying, dead end job and haven't seen a real wage increase since the 1970s. And you’re suffering from colon cancer because you didn't have health insurance and never got a timely colonoscopy. You’re going bankrupt trying to pay for health care. You’re angry! How easy it is for the MAGA movement to channel that anger into blame! It’s those immigrants supposedly taking all the jobs and public money that could have gone toward paying for your operation, rather than the greed-driven privatized health care system.
During the recent devastating L.A. fires, Trump blamed Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome for vetoing a water project that never existed, and Elon Musk blamed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, presumably because the Chief of the L.A. Fire Department is a woman. Yet anyone who actually knows anything about fire behavior understands that in a wildfire driven by hurricane-force winds, little can be done in the moment to stop it, and the real driver of the destruction is climate change, which exacerbates drought and amplifies windstorms. Politicizing the blame deflects our attention from the true, underlying cause of the disaster, and undermines good-faith efforts to learn what could actually be done better in the future.
The Left is also fond of blame, and some people deserve it! But when we combine blame with identitarianism, we blame people for who they are, rather than what they might choose to do or say. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we blame “the color of their skin, rather than the content of their character.” Again, this distracts us from holding accountable the structures of oppression, undermines the work of creating broader webs of belonging, and leads to hopelessness and apathy.
We also tend to more eagerly blame our imperfect allies rather than our actual adversaries. We especially love to blame the Democrats, lumping everyone from AOC to Joe Manchin into one undifferentiated pudding. All politicians deserve to be held accountable, and sometimes they do deserve blame. But this morning, I open my Instagram feed and see a post alerting us that Trump has canceled an executive order originally signed by Lyndon B. Johnson, that bans discrimination in hiring for federal jobs and companies that receive federal contracts. “I thought this was long ago made law,” the post complains. “Just another thing the Democrats failed to do!” Huh? How did this suddenly become the fault of the Democrats? Who did, in fact pass a slew of anti-discrimination laws over the last half-century. Why is our blame directed at them instead of at Trump’s blatant racism?
Perhaps it’s easier to blame our allies, as they are closer and more influenceable than the opposition. But blame is a direct attack on value. It’s a powerful weapon, one we need to use judiciously if we are to restore any measure of justice in the land.
The Democrats deserve to be held accountable for many things, but too often we get so involved in blaming them for their faults that we never get around to blaming the real culprits. It's as if we're trying to storm the castle built of lies and disinformation protecting the kings and lords, their treasure and their power. We've got to keep the battering ram trained on the gate, and not run around randomly clubbing our allies.
Right-wing lies and disinformation repeatedly blame the wrong people. They blame immigrants for our economic woes, instead of fifty years of trickle-down economics, blame Biden for inflation, instead of price-gouging corporations, blame DEI for raging fires instead of climate change. Our strategy has got to be to redirect the blame toward where it truly belongs.
Shaming:
Blaming also goes with shaming: making people look bad in front of their friends and community, causing them to lose face and feel devalued. Any public criticism risks being humiliating. A public call-out is inherently shaming: it says “You've done something wrong or harmful! You have violated our norms!” In personal relations, we've learned that when people have a conflict, it's far easier to resolve in a private mediation then a public session where each party needs to save face. If you want someone to change their behavior toward you, telling them privately is more likely to be effective than shaming them publicly. If your purpose is to more broadly educate others, this can better be done in ways that don't require heaping shame on the transgressor.
Social movements are creative and inventive. We are constantly coming up with new insights, new norms and new aspects of political culture. No one could possibly keep up with them all! And we often don’t bother explaining them or educating people about their underlying intention. Suddenly, everyone is announcing what their pronouns are—if the practice is new to you, you might be wondering, ‘Why?’ “Who decided this?” Maybe you laugh nervously, or make a joke, or announce that your pronouns are ‘human.’ Eyes roll, people sigh, shake their heads, and signal that you are clearly out of it, unwoke, probably transphobic. You’ve been shamed.
But suppose instead someone in the group introduced the practice with even a few words of education: “We want to lift up the awareness, which is new to some of us, that a person’s outward appearance might not conform to their inner sense of their gender. So to make this space truly welcoming, would we all be willing to share the gender pronouns we prefer?”
To build a welcoming movement, we must avoid shaming one another. And if we are to broaden the movement to potentially include those who may formerly have been our opposition, we have to be very careful about how we employ shame. We should never shame someone, richly though they may deserve it, without offering choices that could build real pride and true value.
Name-Calling:
Shaming often quickly turns to name calling, whether that’s ‘fascist pig’, ‘bourgeoise dupe’, ‘Karen’ or ‘racist’. If I call someone a racist, I'm branding them with an identity rather than holding them accountable for a choice they’ve made. In a subtle way, I’m relieving them of responsibility—after all, if they are a racist, how could they not say racist things? Whereas if they’ve made a choice tto make a racist joke, for example, they could also choose differently. Name-calling both takes away agency and diverts focus from the larger systems in which we’re embedded.
What does this all look like? After Roe V Wade was overturned, someone on one of our listserves posted a meme that originated in Hillary Clinton's campaign that simply said, “I'm with her!” The writer, we’ll call him Bob, meant this as a statement supporting reproductive rights, but the first response Bob got was “When you say “I'm with her”, you're ignoring the fact that there are trans men who might be biologically capable of getting pregnant but who identify as male!” Let’s call that writer Sue, herself a biological woman who identifies as such. Sue had reframed the interchange from one of support for reproductive rights, to a test of how woke Bob was about trans awareness. To give Sue her due, her intention may well have been simply to broaden our community’s awareness of the complexities of gender. But in reframing what was meant to be a supportive comment, Sue was shaming Bob, blaming him for not already being more aware, and ended up, after an exchange of a few more comments, calling him ‘transphobic’: name-calling. If Bob was new to our community, this interchange would probably have convinced him to go find a spiritual, political home somewhere more welcoming and friendly.
How could Sue have raised our awareness in a more welcoming way? Quite simply, maybe by saying something like: “Thank you for your support! It's vitally important at this moment, when our bodily autonomy is under assault. Let’s also remember that the trans community is also fighting for their rights to bodily autonomy, and they are also under assault. And some people who are biologically capable of getting pregnant may identify as male. Bodily autonomy is a core human right for all of us, and we are stronger when we stand together.”
So how do we stop being assholes? Maybe by just holding off for a moment before we make that remark, or push that Send button, and asking a few key questions:
Am I Being An Asshole Checklist:
How am I framing this issue or interaction? As a test of moral purity? As a trial of righteousness?
How might I frame this to be supportive and welcoming?
Am I placing blame where it truly belongs?
How will the person receiving this intervention feel? Appear to others?
How do I imagine others will see me?
Am I trying to make them look bad and me look good?
Could this intervention be made privately rather than publicly?
If some public education is in order, can I offer it in a way that doesn’t come off as an attack?
Am I offering a path toward pride and value?
Will this intervention broaden our movement or narrow it?
And here's a little exercise that you can do: find any post on your social media or on an e-mail list or think about any verbal interaction when someone has been calling out rather than calling in. Reframe and rewrite it to make it welcoming rather than exclusionary.
Do be an Asshole: Strategically!
I know I just told you not to be, but there are times when we need a little assholism! Or at least we need to respond aggressively to lies, assaults and attacks, by reframing, placing blame and shame where they truly belong, and clearly naming what is happening.
The first rule of framing is never to buy into the opposition's frame. We need to frame our own issues and frame events for ourselves. We should never argue about whether Musk’s so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency is finding too much or too little waste in government. In fact, we should never use the term “Department of Governmental Efficiency” at all, as repetition reinforces legitimacy. Instead, we might talk about the “Department of Graft and Extraction”, or Musk’s crew of thieves, or Pickpocket Politics: with Trump distracting your attention while Musk empties your wallet.
Whenever possible, we should frame things positively, or at least, counter a negative with a positive. Every word we say creates an image in our minds, and we respond more to the image than to its negation. When we say “Decolonization” our minds are filled with colonization.
Naming clearly what we don’t want has its own power, but we are stronger when we can also name what we do want. “Demonizing vulnerable groups is hate speech; free speech challenges the powerful!” “Diversity makes us stronger and more resilient.” “Immigrants harvest our crops.” “Immigrants care for our elders”. “Tracking disease saves lives and money.” “Our veterans deserve the best possible care!”
They used to say, in Hollywood, that the camera adds ten pounds. Today, we might say that social media removes about twenty or more IQ points. In other words, the frames we choose have to be clear and simple. The world is a complex and nuanced place, but nuance and complexity work well in literature, not social media.
Many people on the Left are framing the MAGA takeover as a coup. That’s accurate, but I’m not sure everybody knows what a coup means. It’s also a word that can have a positive connotation: “Jane scored a real coup when she found that genuine antique in the thrift store!” How about ‘power grab’ or ‘hostile takeover?’
We also need framing that’s as inclusive as possible of all those who are or might be brought around to be in opposition to the Trump regime. “It's the oligarchs, stupid” is a nice reference to “It’s the economy, stupid,” a phrase coined by strategist James Carville for Bill Clinton’s campaign. It and works well if you’re old enough to recognize the allusion, don’t feel shamed by ‘stupid’, and if you don’t need to Google the meaning of ‘oligarch’. The Occupy Slogan “We are the 99%” is inclusive, but maybe not as clear as we need to be at this moment. “It’s the billionaires against the rest of us”, or “Working people against the morbidly rich” might be alternatives. We don’t argue about ‘tax cuts’, we say, “Make greedy billionaires pay their fair share!” Cutting social security or Medicare isn’t about ‘entitlements’, it’s “Stealing the savings you’ve worked for”, or “breaking the contract with America’s workers”. It’s not about critiquing every program of USAID, it’s “Stealing AIDS medicine from babies to plump up Musk’s portfolio,” or “Trump and Musk’s arrogant incompetence unleashes Ebola!”. Or, to frame it positively, “Decent people feed starving children,” or “I’m proud that my tax dollars keep children safe from polio,” or “It’s a better use of our money to feed hungry refugees than to line Musk’s pocket.”
When we frame the issues correctly, then we can place blame where blame is due. Trump is a master gaslighter and victim-blamer. He wants us to deny the evidence of our own eyes: January 6 was a ‘peaceful protest’ and the thugs who beat police with flag poles are persecuted patriots; Ukraine started the war and Zelenskyy is refusing to make peace. Trump blatantly lies, then the Republicans and the right-wing news media back him, and soon people are too confused to know what to believe.
People are angry, and blame is a weapon. It needs to be aimed at those who deserve it: the morbidly rich and their Republican enablers who are stealing your money your attention, and your labor.
I often say that if there's one thing Americans universally believe, it's that some hidden cabal of the ultra powerful are secretly controlling the world. We just don't agree on who they are. But the truth is, the power mongers are not secret. They're right out in the open. They’re on the platform at the inauguration. Their weapon is misdirection: keeping you looking in the corners and the shadows instead of seeing what's clearly right in front of your eyes, getting you to blame immigrants or trans folks or other vulnerable communities instead of pointing the blame where it belongs. You have less health care today than you did three months ago? Blame the morbidly rich guys who already have too much, who want to deny you care so they can get more. Did you or your partner or brother-in-law just lose their job? Blame morbidly rich guys who already have too much and want what little you have. Have tariffs tanked your business? Blame Trump's failed attempt to extort money from other countries so that morbidly rich tax-dodgers don't have to pay their fair share.
Repetition is important. A battering ram does not knock down a gate at the first blow. It must hammer over and over again to break the hinges and splinter the wood. Repetition works on the architecture of the brain. When two things are named together, a neural link is created, and each repetition adds myelin, a chemical sheath that enables electrical impulses to pass through more quickly. That's how, when you're learning to play the drum, repeating a rhythmic pattern over and over and over again allows you to build speed and eventually play it without having to think about it. Trump uses this technique all the time, repeating his lies and his scurrilous nicknames until you can’t think “Joe” without adding “sleepy”. We can and should use it too. Who are we blaming? The morbidly rich guys who already have too much, the corrupt billionaires, Putin’s lap-dog Trump.
And shame? Republicans seem to be impervious to the kind of shame most of us would feel if were caught in a blatant lie, revealed as being an utter hypocrite, or perhaps got caught stealing food from hungry babies. We feel shame when we look bad to others, when our self-image cracks, when we are revealed as doing something harmful, wrong, or that violates the standards or norms of our society. We also feel shame when we suffer a status loss, even one that is not our fault. Women who are raped or violated often feel shame, even if the shame should rightfully be cast on the perpetrator. As I age, and need to ask for help to do things I used to do easily, I often feel ashamed, even though I know I don’t deserve to. But any diminution in ability or resources feels like a loss of value.
Still, shame has its uses. Many of us might do harmful or selfish things were we not afraid of the shame should we be caught.
Trump and the MAGA folks, however, seem impervious to actually feeling shame, which is in itself a mark of a deep, characterological disorder. Yet there are ways that shame can be brought to bear on them. Whether or not they feel it internally, we can remind the public when they violate standards of common human decency that these things are shameful. Firing the doctors and nurses who take care of our veterans? Shame on you! Cutting Medicaid so poor people die in order to further enrich a corrupt billionaire? Shame, shame, shame!
The challenge in using these weapons is that at this moment, we also have an opportunity to bring toward us many people who may have previously voted for Trump or been drawn to the MAGA movement. Republicans in Red districts have faced so much outrage from their constituents that they have ceased holding town halls. There are many who dislike Trump personally, but voted for him because of the illusion that he was somehow good for the economy, or out of their frustration with higher prices and low wages. Many people were simply conned by the world's biggest con man, and are now starting to realize it.
But being conned generally causes people feel ashamed, and shaming them further won't help them change. I see a lot of people online using the FAFO meme: “fuck around and find out”. Meaning, you voted for him, now it's your wife being deported, your farm going broke, your kids’ school losing grants.. Haha, you get what you deserve!
Satisfying as that might be, it will not broaden our movement. So do this: go outside where no one can hear you, and for fifteen minutes scream “I told you so!” over and over and over again, until you get it out of your system. It's cathartic, believe me, and will make you feel better. Then avoid saying that in person or online.
Instead of saying “You voted for this!” say “You didn't vote for this!” or “You didn’t sign on for this!” After all, nobody voted to cut off funding for AIDS babies or preventing the spread of Ebola. You didn't sign on for forcing US farmers to lose their farms. You didn't sign on for letting an unelected billionaire fire nurses who take care of Veterans.
Don't say “You were duped”, say “Trump lied!” Say “Elon Musk is pulling the strings!” Say “Trump can’t seem to rein him in.” Frame Trump as weak and clueless.
And then offer a path back to pride. That might include:
Pride in the heritage every lineage has of those who stood up for justice and equality. Even “white” people are the inheritors of Peasants’ Revolts and revolutions, of abolitionists and suffragists.
Pride in knowing that we all make mistakes, and it’s a mark of maturity to admit it when we have.
Pride in choices we can now make to take action and stand against tyranny.
So, to sum up, don’t be an asshole to our friends and allies, do use our weapons of framing, naming, blaming and shaming carefully and judiciously to batter down the barricades of lies and hate, and use the rubble to build a culture of pride, value and appreciation. Future posts will delve more deeply into just how we do that.
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This post has been syndicated from Starhawk’s Substack, where it was published under this address.