Why people become radical extremists and how to help them
New research sheds light on the indoctrination process of radical extremist groups.
08 April, 2021
Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images
- A new study features interviews with 24 former extremists on the radicalization process.
- Financial instability, online propaganda, and reorienting events that caused them to "snap" are leading causes of indoctrination.
- The research team offers potential solutions, including exposure to diverse ideas during childhood and a tamping down of polarization and media sensationalism.
<p>Researchers are continuing to unpack the reasons why extremists stormed the Capitol on January 6. Political scientist Robert Pape hypothesized that answers could be found in increasingly desperate economic conditions—the distance between the wealthiest and everyone else has <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/07/6-facts-about-economic-inequality-in-the-u-s/" target="_blank">never been so stark in America</a>. As he dug into the data, however, a different story emerged. </p><p>The insurrectionists, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/06/capitol-insurrection-arrests-cpost-analysis/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">he found</a>, were predominantly from areas that feared immigrants and minorities are taking away rights and opportunities from white people. As Pape <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/politics/capitol-riot-study.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">told the <em>NY Times</em></a>, </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"If you look back in history, there has always been a series of far-right extremist movements responding to new waves of immigration to the United States or to movements for civil rights by minority groups. [The Capitol insurrectionists] are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around them, they will see a decline in their status in the future."</p><p>Pape isn't the only researcher contemplating the path from aggrievement to insurrection. A <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1071-1.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">new study</a>, published by the RAND Corporation, takes a detailed look at the indoctrination process through interviews with white nationalists, Islamic extremists, and their family members and friends. </p><p>The researchers set out with a basic set of questions to better understand the radicalization process in the hopes of developing prevention and intervention measures. </p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>What factors lead individuals to join violent extremist organizations? </li><li>How and why do extremists become deradicalized, leave their organizations, change their minds, and in some cases join the fight against radicalism? </li><li>What can we do better to assist those who have been radicalized and prevent extremist organizations from recruiting new members? </li></ul><p>After poring over existing research, the team conducted 36 interviews, consisting of 24 former extremists, 10 family members, and two friends. Most of the subjects were active in this millennium, with six only active before the year 2000. </p><p>The researchers discovered three major background characteristics that led people to become extremists. (1) Financial instability: In 22 cases, financial instability was key, with seven former extremists claiming this as the main reason they joined an extremist organization. (2) Mental health issues: In 17 cases, overwhelming anger predominated, but PTSD, trauma, substance abuse, and depression around physical issues also played a role. (3) Social factors: Marginalization, victimization, and stigmatization were mentioned in 16 cases. </p><p>Often, these background characteristics weren't enough. In over half the cases, there was a "reorienting event," that is, a moment that "broke" them, such as being rejected from the military, experiencing long-term unemployment, or enduring a friend's suicide. Propaganda was involved in 22 cases, predominantly through social media but also through books and music. Another factor was direct and indirect recruitment, with indirect recruitment being much more common. In other words, the individuals sought to join extremists groups. Social bonds played a role in 14 cases, including "graduating" from one organization to a more extreme group.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjAzMTExMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MTQ3MTY3NX0.NCbZBnI6VCJ1dLOIeN5qmmybpWBHHlMmSmg5YgEJlj8/img.jpg?width=980" id="1ac2b" width="4032" height="2688" data-rm-shortcode-id="bde6214516f750f61682b249ee410e99" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption..." spellcheck="false">A Proud Boy member is armed with a gun labeled "Zombie Killer" as members and supporters of Patriot Prayer gather in Esther Short Park for a memorial for member Aaron J. Danielson in Vancouver, Washington on September 5, 2020. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Credit: Allison Dinner / AFP via Getty Images</small></p><p><br></p><h2>How to help extremists</h2><p>Why do extremists quit? The most common reasons for leaving are feelings of disillusionment and burnout. Members grew disappointed by the failed promises of leaders or noticed hypocrisy among the ranks. Over half of the individuals were involved in failed deradicalization efforts, however, showing the resilience of these organizations even when family members and friends try to intervene. </p><p>The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. An extremist isn't a lost cause. The team lists important steps for helping extremists leave hate groups as well as for preventing people from being seduced in the first place. The researchers' recommendations include: </p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Exposure to diverse ideas, especially during childhood</li><li>The development of critical thinking skills</li><li>Participation in prosocial activities that promote positive behaviors and inclusiveness</li><li>Exposure to different racial and cultural groups</li><li>Addressing marginalization more broadly</li><li>A tamping down of polarization and media sensationalism</li><li>Better access to mental health treatment </li><li>Targeted outreach and support for military veterans</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"></ul><p>The researchers note that this is a small study sample, so further work is necessary. Yet, these interviews offer a starting point for understanding the true scope of the problem. The reasons people become extremists are complex and multivariate. Preventing extremism therefore requires a holistic approach that addresses topics such as childhood education, poverty, mental health, ethnic and racial animosity, and the prevalence of propaganda.</p><p>--</p><ul class="ee-ul"></ul><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Facebook</a>. His most recent book is</em> "<em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KRVMP2M?pf_rd_r=MDJW43337675SZ0X00FH&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy</a>."</em></p><p><em><br></em></p>
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Math explains polarization, and it's not just about politics
People often divide the world into "us" and "them" then forget about everybody else.
07 April, 2021
Credit: YE AUNG THU via Getty Images
- A new study shows that our polarized "us" vs. "them" view of the world can be modeled mathematically.
- Those who don't fit easily into either group tend to be disliked.
- The model is not limited to politics and could be used to explain many aspects of society.
<div><p>In most of the great debates, many possible stances get reduced to two options in a hurry. In American politics, we often frame all debates as "Democrats versus Republicans" and proceed to label every policy or action as belonging to one of those factions. Anybody else, particularly those in the middle, are quickly swept aside and forgotten.</p><p>According to a new<a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247562" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> <u>study</u></a>, this tendency is not only common but is so ingrained in our thinking that you can make a formula to describe it.</p></div><blockquote>"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down." — Aneurin Bevan</blockquote><p><br></p><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="430" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zFfWv0EnHQw" title="YouTube video player" width="730"></iframe></div><p><br></p><p>A team of researchers at the Santa Fe Institute studied the system using a commonly applied model to try to "solve" for where social boundaries appear on a political scale. The researchers added cognitive and social components -- which often drive people into an "us vs. them" style of thinking -- to the model's equations. They hypothesized that people would devise measurable camps of "us" and "them" which would appear in the models. Those who don't fit cleanly into these roles would tend to be overlooked. </p><p>The results of the model were compared to data from surveys in the 1980s, which included questions about how respondents felt about members of other political groups, to check for accuracy. Importantly, during that decade, many people were asked about political independents in the center, deemed "inbetweeners" by the researchers, as well as about their stance on members of other parties.</p><p>Though one might suspect that people viewed those in the middle as potential allies, the tendency to divide the world into two buckets simply excludes those in the middle. The model predicted, and the survey's from the 80s confirmed, that both those on the left and right viewed centrists unfavorably. </p><p>Lead author Vicky Chuqiao Yang explained the unfortunate situation of these<a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/sfi-wtm032421.php" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> <u>centrists</u></a>:</p><p>"By being 'inbetweeners,' independents are viewed as unfavorably as the other party by both sides, and left out. So Independents get the worst of both worlds, and there are downstream consequences."</p><p><br></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image image-crop-custom">
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjAyMzY1MS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzODI0ODA3NX0.KWr5qHvwT2o6mselhrEcCo7zN_PURj9sihhuSqn1M3Q/img.png?width=1386&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0&height=758" id="b6a93" width="1386" height="758" data-rm-shortcode-id="8cf89ad293d8ba138094f44c3aeceef6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption..." spellcheck="false">Graph showing how members of both major American parties viewed fellow party members, those of the other party, and independents. The values came from the American National Election Studies surveys. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Credit: Yang et al. </small></p><p><br></p><p>The authors speculate that this phenomenon could cause those in the middle to drift towards the extremes in hopes of avoiding the ills of being in the middle. Over time, this could lead to a highly polarized society, as nobody is left in the middle at all.</p><p>These findings are not necessarily limited to politics. The model could be applied to how society views people of indeterminate race or who do not fit cleanly into categories of sexuality, for example. Additionally, because group labels evolve over time, we should see the formation of entirely new groups and inbetweeners. In the study, the authors note that the model was limited for exactly this reason and hope that future studies will expand on the concept.</p>
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How important is civility for democracy? For Habermas, not very.
The public sphere should be open to conflict.
29 March, 2021
Sushil Nash on Unsplash
Have we become unreasonable?
<p>In democracies around the world, anxious commentators exhort their fellow citizens to be more open-minded, more willing to engage in good-faith debate. In our era of hyperpolarisation, social-media echo chambers and populist demagogues, many have turned to civility as the missing ingredient in our public life.</p><p>So, how important is civility for democracy? According to one of the greatest theorists of the democratic public sphere, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, not very. Habermas is deeply concerned with protecting our ability to solve problems through the use of reason. Yet he <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2006.00280.x">believes</a> that democracy is best served when the public sphere is left open, anarchic and conflictual.</p><p>For Habermas, the function of public debate is not to find a reasonable common ground. Rather, the public sphere 'is a warning system', a set of 'sensors' that detect the new needs floating underneath the surface of a supposed political consensus. And if we worry too much about civility and the reasonable middle, we risk limiting the ability of the public sphere to detect new political claims. To get those claims on the agenda in the first place often requires uncivil and confrontational political tactics. </p><p>Habermas's vision of politics focuses on the power of a wild public sphere. His great fear, one he expresses already in his <em>habilitation</em> thesis in 1962, published in English as <em>The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere</em>, is that large-scale, formal political and economic institutions are increasingly shutting themselves off from public criticism. Habermas traces the development of the idea of the critical public in 18th-century Europe, one that would hold state power accountable through the use of reason, and then its decline in an era of public-relations management focused on minimising the role of the public in political decision-making. While Habermas has been accused of romanticising the European Enlightenment, his goal was to draw attention to the stark gap between the ideals of the critical public and the reality of political and social domination.</p>
<p>Like other individuals associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Habermas has always been guided by the hope of creating an emancipated society – one where the use of political, social and economic power can be fully justified to those potentially affected. To this Frankfurt School ideal, Habermas adds an insight that goes back to Aristotle – that the central human capacity is language. The fact that we can understand one another, Habermas argues, means that we are committed to using reason to resolve disputes. In our day-to-day life, we have to continuously use language to organise our lives and make plans – instances of what Habermas in 1981 called 'communicative action'.</p><p>Habermas thinks this has radical consequences. In all these instances, we accept, just by entering into the continuous flow of communication, that the only thing that should count are reasons that everyone accepts. Habermas's critics point out that, in the real world, social differences in power affect whose voices are heard and whose ideas are recognised in all deliberation. But this point is not incompatible with Habermas's insights. From his early work, he has seen reasoning as a fundamentally social practice, one that must always include moral and political questions. Bringing to light these subtle forms of power and exclusion helps to realise the ideal of rational enquiry.</p><p>What follows politically from Habermas's theory of communication? Again, one possibility is to find some way to make people live up to an ideal of disinterested, civil deliberation. In the face of increasing polarisation and the potential breakdown of the rules of the game, we should search for some way to restore the underlying norms of mutual forbearance that ensure politics does not descend into civil war. But this is hardly the direction in which Habermas goes. It's not that he then prizes incivility in and of itself. Rather, Habermas worries that a public sphere shackled by excessive regard for the norms of deliberation and rational debate loses its essential function. And that function is to bring to light questions, issues, concerns and needs that are currently invisible to political leaders and the larger public. In <em>Between Facts and Norms</em> (1992), he argues that 'liberal misgivings about opening up an unrestricted spectrum of public issues and topics are not justified'. Rather, because of its 'anarchic structure', contestation in the public sphere can enable the perception of 'new problems' and help to overcome 'the millennia-old shackles of social stratification and exploitation'.</p>
<p>Confrontation, protest and incivility are all components of deliberative politics as Habermas understands it. These forms of conflict, of refusing existing norms and institutions, are what bring to light whether those institutions and norms can survive rational scrutiny. Habermas goes so far as to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41035345?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" target="_blank">call</a> the ability to withstand and even celebrate civil disobedience the 'litmus test' for the maturity of a constitutional democracy. Even as Habermas has a famously ambitious understanding of our capacity for the collaborative search for truth, his is an activist's view of politics. Consensus is not the highest good. Rather, the possibility of a society based on rational consensus becomes visible only in moments of dissensus, when the failure of existing norms is unmasked. Enlightenment comes about when social groups show that the dominant social organisation fails to take into consideration their legitimate claims and concerns. This is why Habermas is <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/habermas/1968/theory-knowledge.htm" target="_blank">clear</a> that he is interested, not in rational political communication as such, but 'the history of its repression and re-establishment'.</p><p>Habermas's recent work has focused on the fate of European integration, of which he is a prominent defender. This activist current in his thought has receded as he has worried more and more about the lack of long-term political vision on the part of Europe's leaders. Yet he has also more recently come to recognise the dangerous failures of those institutions to produce their own legitimacy. The more those institutions, such as the European Union, insulate themselves from the unruly forces of the public sphere, the more they provide ammunition for whoever can claim to speak on behalf of a suppressed public opinion. Large-scale political institutions, from the European Union to the modern administrative state, approach politics as a set of management problems, best solved without extensive input from a potentially recalcitrant public.</p><p>Democracy, according to Habermas, requires a vibrant political sphere and political institutions that are able to respond to and incorporate the energy that arises from debate, protest, confrontation and politics. Perhaps it's not citizens who have become unreasonable. Rather, their leaders have too long refused to listen, instead treating the public as nothing more than a periodic reservoir of votes, an obstacle to be managed on the path to smooth, technocratic governance.<img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/10500a57-b140-4d03-a954-ef07c21c3a31.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>Steven Klein</p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/against-civility-or-why-habermas-recommends-a-wild-public-sphere" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Politics desperately needs hope, so why does it no longer inspire it?
For some philosophers, hope is a second-rate way of relating to reality.
23 March, 2021
EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the word 'hope' was ubiquitous in Western politics.
<p> While its use in the Barack Obama presidential campaign has become iconic, appeal to hope was not limited to the United States: the Leftist Greek Syriza party relied on the slogan 'hope is on the way', for example, and many other European parties embraced similar rallying cries. Since then, however, we rarely hear or see 'hope' in the public sphere.</p><p>Even in its heyday, the rhetoric of hope wasn't universally popular. When in 2010 the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin rhetorically asked: 'How's that hopey, changey stuff working out for ya?' she tapped into a widespread skepticism that views hope as unrealistic, even delusional. Palin's skepticism (many will be surprised to hear) has long been at work in the philosophical tradition. From Plato to René Descartes, many philosophers have argued that hope is weaker than expectation and confidence since it requires belief merely in the <em>possibility</em> of an event, not evidence that it is likely to occur.</p><p>For these philosophers, hope is a second-rate way of relating to reality, appropriate only when a person lacks the requisite knowledge to form 'proper' expectations. The radical Enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza gives voice to this opinion when he writes that hope indicates 'a lack of knowledge and a weakness of mind' and that 'the more we endeavour to live by the guidance of reason, the more we endeavour to be independent of hope'. According to this view, hope is particularly unsuitable as a guide to political action. Citizens should base their decisions on rational expectations about what governments can achieve, rather than letting themselves be motivated by mere hope.</p>
<p>This skepticism should be taken seriously and can indeed point us toward a better understanding of the rise and fall of the rhetoric of hope. So is there space for hope in politics?</p><p>We need to be precise about what kind of hope we are talking about. If we are considering what individuals hope for, any policy that has consequences for people's lives will be tied to hope in some way – whether this is hope for that policy's success or hope for its failure. The generation of such hope isn't necessarily good or bad; it is simply a part of political life. But when political movements promise to deliver hope, they are clearly not speaking of hope in this generic sense. This particular rhetoric of hope refers to a more specific, morally attractive and distinctively <em>political</em> form of hope<em>.</em></p><p>Political hope is distinguished by two features. Its object is political: it is hope for social justice. And its character is political: it is a collective attitude. While the significance of the first feature is perhaps obvious, the second feature explains why it makes sense to speak of hope's 'return' to politics. When political movements seek to rekindle hope, they are not acting on the assumption that individual people no longer hope for things – they are building on the idea that hope does not currently shape our <em>collective</em> orientation toward the future. The promise of a 'politics of hope' is thus the promise that hope for social justice will become part of the sphere of collective action, of politics itself.</p>
<p>Even so, the question remains whether political hope is really a good thing. If one of the tasks of government is to realise social justice, would it not be better for political movements to promote justified expectations rather than mere hope? Is the rhetoric of hope not a tacit admission that the movements in question lack strategies for inspiring confidence?</p><p>The sphere of politics has particular features, unique to it, that impose limitations on what we can rationally expect. One such limitation is what the American moral philosopher John Rawls in 1993 described as the insurmountable pluralism of 'comprehensive doctrines'. In modern societies, people disagree about what is ultimately valuable, and these disagreements often cannot be resolved by reasonable argument. Such pluralism makes it unreasonable to expect that we will ever arrive at a final consensus on these matters. To the extent that governments should not pursue ends that cannot be justified to all citizens, the most we can rationally expect from politics is the pursuit of those principles of justice on which all reasonable people can agree, such as basic human rights, non-discrimination, and democratic decision-making. Thus, we cannot rationally expect governments that respect our plurality to pursue more demanding ideals of justice – for example, via ambitious redistributive policies that are not justifiable relative to all, even the most individualistic, conceptions of the good.</p><p>This limitation stands in tension with another of Rawls's claims. He also argued, in 1971, that the most important social good is self-respect. In a liberal society, the citizens' self-respect is based on the knowledge that there is a public commitment to justice – on the understanding that other citizens view them as deserving fair treatment. However, if we can expect agreement on only a narrow set of ideals, that expectation will make a relatively small contribution to our self-respect. Compared with possible consensus on more demanding ideals of justice, this expectation will do relatively little to make us view other citizens as being deeply committed to justice.</p>
<p>Fortunately, we need not limit ourselves to what we can expect. Even though we are not justified in <em>expecting</em> more than limited agreement on justice, we can still collectively <em>hope</em> that, in the future, consensus on more demanding ideals of justice will emerge. When citizens collectively entertain this hope, this expresses a shared understanding that each member of society deserves to be included in an ambitious project of justice, even if we disagree about what that project should be. This knowledge can contribute to self-respect and is thus a desirable social good in its own right. In the absence of consensus, political hope is a necessary part of social justice itself.</p><p>So it is rational, perhaps even necessary, to recruit the notion of hope for the purposes of justice. And this is why the rhetoric of hope has all but disappeared. We can seriously employ the rhetoric of hope only when we believe that citizens can be brought to develop a shared commitment to exploring ambitious projects of social justice, even when they disagree about their content. This belief has become increasingly implausible in light of recent developments that reveal how divided Western democracies really are. A sizable minority in Europe and the US has made it clear, in response to the rhetoric of hope, that it disagrees not only about the meaning of justice but also with the very idea that our current vocabulary of social justice ought to be extended. One can, of course, still individually hope that those who hold this view will be convinced to change it. As things stand, however, this is not a hope that they are able to share.</p><p><em>This Idea was made possible through the support of a grant to Aeon magazine from Templeton Religion Trust. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton Religion Trust.</em></p><p><em>Funders to Aeon Magazine are not involved in editorial decision-making, including commissioning or content approval.</em><img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/b28112c1-c1e4-4ba1-818a-aaf7f86dc9e6.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>Titus Stahl</p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/why-politics-needs-hope-but-no-longer-inspires-it" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Hannah Arendt: Change the world, not yourself
How the German political philosopher called out Henry David Thoreau on civil disobedience.
16 March, 2021
JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images
It is not often that a neighbourhood squabble is remembered as a world-historical event. In the summer of 1846, Henry David Thoreau spent a single night in jail in Concord, Massachusetts after refusing to submit his poll tax to the local constable.
<p> This minor act of defiance would later be immortalised in Thoreau's essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience' (1849). There, he explains that he had been unwilling to provide material support to a federal government that perpetuated mass injustice – in particular, slavery and the Mexican-American war. While the essay went largely unread in his own lifetime, Thoreau's theory of civil disobedience would later inspire many of the world's greatest political thinkers, from Leo Tolstoy and Gandhi to Martin Luther King.</p><p>Yet his theory of dissent would have its dissenters, too. The political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote an essay on 'Civil Disobedience', published in <em>The New Yorker</em> magazine in September 1970. Thoreau, she argued, was no civil disobedient. In fact, she insisted that his whole moral philosophy was anathema to the collective spirit that ought to guide acts of public refusal. How could the great luminary of civil disobedience be charged with misunderstanding it so profoundly?</p>
<p>Thoreau's essay offers a forceful critique of state authority and an uncompromising defence of the individual conscience. In <em>Walden</em> (1854)<em>,</em> he argued that each man should follow his own individual 'genius' rather than social convention, and in 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience' he insists that we should follow our own moral convictions rather than the laws of the land. The citizen, he suggests, must never 'for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislation'. For Thoreau, this prescription holds even when the laws are produced through democratic elections and referenda. Indeed, for him, democratic participation only degrades our moral character. When we cast a ballot, he explains, we vote for a principle that we believe is right, but at the same time, assert our willingness to recognise whatever principle – be it right or wrong – the majority favours. In this way, we elevate popular opinion over moral rectitude. Because he places so much stock in his own conscience, and so little in either state authority or democratic opinion, Thoreau believed that he was bound to disobey any law that ran counter to his own convictions. His theory of civil disobedience is grounded in that belief.</p><p>Thoreau's decision to withhold his financial support for the federal government of 1846 was, no doubt, a righteous one. And the theory that inspired that action would go on to inspire many more righteous acts of disobedience. Yet despite these remarkable successes, Arendt argues that Thoreau's theory was misguided. In particular, she insists that he was wrong to ground civil disobedience in the individual conscience. First, and most simply, she points out that conscience is too subjective a category to justify political action. Leftists who protest the treatment of refugees at the hands of US immigration officers are motivated by conscience, but so was Kim Davis – the conservative county clerk in Kentucky who in 2015 denied marriage licences to same-sex couples. Conscience alone can be used to justify all types of political beliefs and so provides no guarantee of moral action.</p><p>Second, Arendt makes the more complex argument that, even when it is morally unimpeachable, conscience is 'unpolitical'; that is, it encourages us to focus on our own moral purity rather than the collective actions that might bring about real change. Crucially, in calling conscience 'unpolitical', Arendt does not mean that it is useless. In fact, she believed that the voice of conscience was often vitally important. In her book <em>Eichmann in Jerusalem</em> (1963)<em>,</em> for example, she argues that it was the Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann's lack of ethical introspection that enabled his participation in the unimaginable evils of the Holocaust. Arendt knew from the experience of Fascism that conscience could prevent subjects from actively advancing profound injustice, but she saw that as a kind of moral bare minimum. The rules of conscience, she argues, 'do not say what to do; they say what not to do'. In other words: personal conscience can sometimes prevent us from aiding and abetting evil but it does not require us to undertake positive political action to bring about justice.</p>
<p>Thoreau would likely accept the charge that his theory of civil disobedience told men only 'what not to do', as he did not believe it was the responsibility of individuals to actively <em>improve</em> the world. 'It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course,' he writes, 'to devote himself to the eradication of any, even to the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it…' Arendt would agree that it is better to abstain from injustice than to participate in it, but she worries that Thoreau's philosophy might make us complacent about any evil that we aren't personally complicit in. Because Thoreauvian civil disobedience is so focused on the personal conscience and not, as Arendt puts it, on 'the world where the wrong is committed', it risks prioritising individual moral purity over the creation of a more just society.</p><p>Perhaps the most striking difference between Thoreau and Arendt is that, while he sees disobedience as necessarily individual, she sees it as, <em>by definition</em>, collective.</p><p>Arendt argues that for an act of law-breaking to count as civil disobedience it must be performed openly and publicly (put simply: if you break the law in private, you're committing a crime, but if you break the law at a protest, you're making a point). Thoreau's dramatic refusal to pay his poll tax would meet this definition, but Arendt makes one further distinction: anyone who breaks the law publicly but <em>individually</em> is a mere conscientious objector; those who break the law publicly and <em>collectively</em> are civil disobedients. It is only this latter group – from which she would exclude Thoreau – that is capable of producing real change, she implies. Mass civil disobedience movements generate momentum, apply pressure, and shift political discourse. For Arendt, the greatest civil disobedience movements – Indian independence, civil rights, and the anti-war movement – took inspiration from Thoreau but added a vital commitment to mass, public action. In sharp contrast, Thoreau believed that 'there is but little virtue in the action of masses of men'.</p><p>'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience' is an essay of rare moral vision. In it, Thoreau expresses uncompromising critiques of the government of his era, while also capturing the powerful feelings of moral conviction that often undergird acts of civil disobedience. Nevertheless, it is Arendt's account of the practice that is ultimately more promising. Arendt insists that we focus not on our own conscience but on the injustice committed, and the concrete means of redressing it. This does not mean that civil disobedience has to aim for something moderate or even achievable but that it should be calibrated toward the world – which it has the power to change – and not toward the self – which it can only purify.<img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/38567123-9bc4-4e86-96cc-8b7857547e51.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/change-the-world-not-yourself-or-how-arendt-called-out-thoreau" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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